Prague University of Economics and Business
Master’s Thesis
2021 Adam Dolejš
Prague University of Economics and Business
Faculty of Business Administration
Master’s Field: International management
Title of the Master’s Thesis:
Cultural Concepts in Business Culture
Author: Adam Dolejš
Supervisor: Ing. Tomáš Ryška, PhD.
D e c l a r a t i o n o f A u t h e n t i c i t y
I hereby declare that the Master’s Thesis presented herein is my own work, or fully and specifically acknowledged wherever adapted from
other sources. This work has not been published or submitted elsewhere for the requirement of a degree programme.
Prague, December 15, 2021 Signature
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor Ing. Tomáš Ryška, PhD. for providing me with limitless support throughout the whole
process of thesis preparation and writing.
I would also like to thank my parents and Lucy for providing me unbelievable
support and an unconditional positive attitude during my studies.
Title of the Master’s Thesis
Cultural Concepts in Business Culture
Abstract
My diploma thesis focuses on the topic of culture within business culture. The main goal of my thesis is to portray cultural concepts from anthropological point of view and introduce a several ways to grasp the concept of culture. Furthermore, the thesis describes the overall phenomenon of business culture as we see them in many studies while pointing out the misconception of business culture which has been repeated since late 70s.
In the first part of my thesis, I thoroughly scrutinize the very concept of culture and the ways the concept has been shaped during past century. In the second part of the master thesis, overall grasp of business culture will be described. Finally, I will discuss the terrible misconception of the concept of culture (business culture) within the business studies literature.
Key Words
culture, concept, business, literature, misconception
List of Abbreviations
IBM - International Business Machines MBO - Management by Objectives USA - United States of America
IRIC - Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation HQ - Headquarters
JWC - Joint Warfare Center
NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front
GLOBE - Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness DACH - Germany (D), Austria (A), and Switzerland (CH)
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ... 9
1.1 Research Motives ... 9
1.2 Goals of the Thesis ... 9
2 Culture ... 10
2.1 Introduction ... 10
2.2 Discussion across the Century ... 10
2.3 Cultural Concepts ... 16
2.3.1 Culture as a Category of Social Life ... 18
2.3.2 Culture as System and Practice ... 21
2.3.3 Culture as Distinct Worlds of Meaning ... 23
2.4 Grasping the Culture... 25
3 Business Culture ... 27
3.1 Introduction ... 27
3.2 What is Business Culture ... 27
3.3 National Culture and Business Culture Dimensions ... 28
3.3.1 National Culture Dimensions ... 28
3.3.2 Business Culture Dimensions... 35
3.4 Mapping the Business Culture ... 39
3.5 Business Culture in Multinational Companies ... 47
4 Discussion ... 51
4.1 Misconception of Culture... 51
4.1.1 Reasons for Misunderstanding ... 52
4.1.2 Dispute over Hofstede’s Work... 54
4.2 Misconception of Cultural Concepts in Business Culture ... 56
5 Conclusion ... 60
References ... 61
Table of Figures
Figure 1 Three hypothetical distributions of features across individuals (Brumann, 1999, p.7) ... 14
Figure 2 Ten Differences between Small- and Large- Power Distance Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.9) ... 29
Figure 3 Ten Differences between Collectivist and Individualist Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.11) ... 30
Figure 4 Ten Differences between Feminine and Masculine Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.12)... 30
Figure 5 Ten Differences between Weak- and Strong- Uncertainty Avoidance Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.10) 31 Figure 6 Ten Differences Between Short- and Long-Term-Oriented Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.15) ... 32
Figure 7 Ten Differences Between Indulgent and Restrained Societies (Hofstede, 2011, p.16) ... 33
Figure 8 Scores for twelve countries (Ranks: 1 = highest, 53 = lowest) (Hofstede, 1994, p.5) ... 34
Figure 9 Fifteen Dimensions of Organizational Culture (Kalé, 2003) ... 37
Figure 10 Communicating scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 39
Figure 11 Evaluating scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 40
Figure 12 Feedback Intersection (Meyer, 2015) ... 41
Figure 13 Leading scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 41
Figure 14 Deciding scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 42
Figure 15 Leadership Cultures Intersection (Meyer, 2017) ... 43
Figure 16 Trusting scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 44
Figure 17 Scheduling scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 45
Figure 18 Disagreeing scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 45
Figure 19 Persuading scale (Meyer, 2015) ... 46
Figure 20 Culture Map of France, Germany China, and Japan (Meyer, 2015) ... 47
1 Introduction
The diploma thesis focuses on the topic of culture and the misuse of the term in many case studies and books about business culture. The problematic roots in the concept of culture which has been understood by many in a number of different ways, thus a misconception of business culture from an anthropological point of view has grown around this theory. In this diploma thesis, cultural concepts, and business culture as such will be analyzed as well as discussed from many points of view.
1.1 Research Motives
The diploma thesis deals with phenomenon of business culture in respect of cultural concepts portrayed by anthropologists. There are two main reasons why I have decided to elaborate on this topic and to conclude my studies in this particular manner.
The first reason is very selfish since I really wanted to get my hands on culture and get as much information about its concepts as possible. The reason being is that we live in a world where the boundaries of cultures have blurred together, making it even more difficult for us to recognize and understand them right. Thus, I wanted to grasp the problematics since I reckon that this may help me to pursue the goals in my future career.
The second reason is quite simple; the topic of cultural concepts has always captured my attention. Given the fact that in almost every developing country, there are many ethnicities present, bringing their own culture, it is very interesting to observe the way in which these cultures mix, how it works and what is the result. Moreover, deeper knowledge of this subject provides me with a great background to any conversation with a person coming from a different country. Ultimately, I believe that to get to know another individual well, it is important to understand where they are coming from.
1.2 Goals of the Thesis
Given the name of the thesis, its aim is to scrutinize the concept of business culture. In order to achieve the objective, it is necessary to understand what culture is. Thus, the second objective of the thesis is to review the ways culture as a concept has been understood within the social theory. Drawing on the social theory and anthropological critique, the thesis aims to portray the misconception of culture within the business literature.
2 Culture
2.1 Introduction
Cultural concepts have been discussed for over a century by many anthropologists, thinkers, and philosophers. It all began in the early 1900s with Franz Boas who is the founder of the modern anthropology in America. In the early years of American anthropology, he was the one who did the best to give shape to the concept of culture and culture itself (Lewis, 2001;
Stocking, 1982). Given that, the whole foundation of American anthropology grew out of the process of developing its Boasian perspective. That is why it is still scientifically based comprehensive study of humanity. This objective is carried on through the meticulous elaboration of its flagship notion, culture theory, during the twentieth century. Since then, many anthropologists tried to bend and dispute the concept of culture until it turned to be a well-constructed and significant part of everybody’s life (Boggs, 2004).
2.2 Discussion across the Century
Since the beginning, the cultural concepts and culture itself engaged many in the conversation how to properly grasp and name cultural concepts and how to settle them inside a picture of the organizing rules that underpin a category of tangible institutions or a domain of holistic structure. Based on these conversations many theories and approaches began to appear and in a peculiar way, it divided the anthropological world into two camps: the ones who led discussions for culture and the ones who had arguments against culture. The problem was that one camp perceived some implications of the concept within a certain context undesirable which was not so prevalent as the other camp supposed. The foundation of this problem was rooted in the way people share their learned routines (Brumann, 1999). In the mid 1970s, an idea was created which Sahlins called the “fashionable idea that there is nothing usefully called a culture” (Sahlins, 1993, p.15). Another thinker of this era, Abu-Lughod (1991), propagates writing against culture, where he provides this name to the entire motion of writing against culture which is well portrayed by Fernandez (1994). Before comparing this disciplinary discourse with normative anthropological formulations of history, it would be useful to provide a perspective of how it progressed. It turns out that the detractors are more concerned with specific applications of the culture principle than with the concept itself.
Brumann, in his Writing for Culture (1999), is contend that it is possible to separate the concept from particular misuses and determine what led to them historically.
The biggest problem of this critique on culture is that it implies boundedness, uniformity, consistency, steadiness, and form. Real world, unlike culture, is specified as more variable and conflicting place to be which is full of contradictions, in other words, the opposite of culture. Appadurai provides his take on what culture is “the noun culture appears to privilege
the sort of sharing, agreeing, and bounding that fly in the face of the facts of unequal knowledge and the differential prestige of lifestyles, and to discourage attention to the worldviews and agency of those who are marginalized or dominated” (Appadurai, 1996, p.12). Brumann (1999) adds to the argument that the traditional understanding of distinct cultural patterns prioritizes common characteristics over changing processes, inner discrepancies, disputes, and tensions. Clifford identifies himself with this statement when he claims that “culture orders phenomena in ways that privilege the coherent, balanced, and
“authentic” aspects of shared life. Culture is enduring, traditional, structural rather than contingent, syncretic, and historical. Culture is a process of ordering, not of disruption”
(Clifford, 1988, p.235). Then he develops on the point of fluidness and change within the reality as he compares culture to a living organism which is prone to evolve and alter. This statement is supported by Friedman as he says that “the most-dangerously misleading quality of the notion of culture is that it literally flattens out the extremely varied ways in which the production of meaning occurs in the contested field of social existence” (Friedman, 1994, p.207).
According to the collage of statements above, we may perceive the culture as a fluid, almost a living system with shared patterns being in balance with one another. There is also a bit different viewpoint of culture by Harris (1975), when he says that culture represents a certain type of living of a group of people which has characteristics of structured and repeating beliefs and assumptions. Keesing (1981) adds to the statement that culture is a term that applies to a person's acquired and collected knowledge. A culture is defined as the interpersonally transferred behavioral patterns that are unique to a specific ethnic community.
On the idea of social group and transmitted patterns develops Peoples and Bailey (2012) with the opinion that culture is a shared knowledge and conduct of a group of people that has been passed down through the generations. In an intriguing way, Kroeber and Kluckhohn sums up the community and habitual essence of culture when claiming that “culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the products of human activities as determined by these habits” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1985, p.82). Linton (1936) continues with this view and reinforces the idea of culture having shared patterns, sum total of ideas and responses which are gained via education, and which the society shares in varying degrees.
However, not all anthropologists agreed with the interpretation of culture mentioned above and had a plenty of doubts if such concepts should not be concerned as obsolete. For instance, Barth (1994) thought that it would be better to stop putting so much emphasis on the culture itself and rather concentrate our viewpoint to individuals, processes, and actions. With another statement followed Abu-Lughod (1991) who claimed that anthropological discourse gives cultural difference the aspect of being self-evident. She then believes that it is worth considering the consequences that anthropology must bear when it is maintaining and preserving the idea of having distinct and diverse cultures from our own. She also questioned the way that culture perceives concepts like race with saying “despite its anti-essentialist intent, the culture concept retains some of the tendencies to freeze difference possessed by concepts like race” (Abu-Lughod, 1991, p.144). This point of view shared Appadurai (1996)
when he viewed concept of culture as an actual reality though it tends to resemble any number of biologisms, especially ethnicity that has been largely left for theoretical concepts.
Consequently, the distance between the two camps widened. Ingold commented on this predicament that “in effect, the concept of culture operates as a distancing device, setting up a radical disjunction between ourselves, rational observers of the human condition, and those other people, enmeshed in their traditional patterns of belief and practice, whom we profess to observe and study” (Ingold, 1993, p.212). Other fellow anthropologists followed on the same note. “In global terms the culturalization of the world is about how a certain group of professionals located at central positions identify the larger world and order it according to a central scheme of things” (Friedman, 1994, p. 208). “The essentialism of our discourse is not only inherent in our conceptualizations of “culture” but it reflects as well our vested disciplinary interests in characterizing exotic otherness” (Keesing, 1994, p.303). The delicate question posed by Ingold “Would it not be preferable to move in the opposite direction, to recover that foundational continuity, and from that basis to challenge the hegemony of an alienating discourse? If so, then the concept of culture, as a key term of that discourse, will have to go” (Ingold, 1993, p. 230) even embraces the state of skepticism. According to Clifford (1988), concept of culture has outlived itself. On this note, Abu-Lughod (1991) followed that apparently, anthropologists may think about how to write against culture. Moore opposed to this idea when he stated, “even if one wanted to, it would be impossible to trash the culture concept because it is so deeply rooted in the history of ideas and in the discipline of anthropology” (Moore, 1994, p.373).
As we can see, a fundamental skepticism regarding the legitimacy of the culture concept, supported by the numerous deceptive connections is therefore assumed to contain, has been a significant cliché in anthropological debate (Brumann, 1999). Without a doubt, anthropologists have perpetrated many errors, which are mentioned above, in their theoretical and ethnographic work. Though, Brumann (1999) does not believe that the root cause of it is the culture concept.
In Writing for Culture, Brumann delves deeper into this subject while saying “except for the occasional use of an outmoded word (such as “race” or, arguably “civilization”) and for male bias, these definitions do not deviate fundamentally from the modern ones” (Brumann, 1999, p.4). If we take into account the definition of culture in anthropological essays and works, we could see the pattern that they commonly reference Tylor's formulation (2010), usually accompanied by lengthy remarks (see Harris, 1975; Keesing, 1981; Peoples and Bailey, 2012), however, this is often done without including an additional definition (Barnard and Spencer, 1996; Goodenough, 1996; Seymour-Smith, 2005). Brumann (1999) questions if there is a significant difference between what current and traditional cultural anthropologists consider to be the underlying meaning of the term culture, or if they just perceive the same thing differently. The point which Brumann (1999) is trying to find out is if the rules which apply to the modern take on culture also apply to the elder ones. Considering the provided quotes and interpretation of culture by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), no one refuses the fact that a culture has a well-defined limitation and is homogeneous. Brumann (1999) finds it important to say that there was nothing which was clearly said by mentioned definitions.
Instead, certain aspects are left available for inquiry.
One may claim that all the definitions presuppose distinct cultures by assigning a culture to a particular entity whereas nobody says that these subjects must be rigidly defined in order to be allocated a culture. Most definitions also lack the balance of dispersion required for defining a community. However, the few who discuss it do so in terms of a “greater or lesser degree” of sharing. Considering the majority of definitions in Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s book consider culture as a group of distinguishable components and describe it with a word followed by of and in case of a list of components, it is sum total of (Brumann, 1999). According to Herskovits (1948) and Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952), culture is basically a concept that represents the entire body of ideology, actions, awareness, sanctions, ideals, and goals that characterize every people's way of life. That is, although the student may regard culture as objectively definable, in the end, it consists of the stuff that people have, the things they do, and the things they say. In this case, Brumann (1999) believes that a variety of seldom debated yet strong stereotypes inherent in practices of ethnographic literature, traditions that predate the discipline of anthropology, must be charged. These beliefs require the life of the universe as a mosaic of territorially bounded, distinct societies. In most traditional ethnographic use, a culture was clearly understood to be associated with what was previously known as a nation. There were also established entities which were regarded as normal, inwardly homogenous, and uncontentious for classification, exactly in the same way they had been in most pre- and nonanthropological ethnography (Brumann, 1999). For instance, the concept of race is shown to be empirically baseless, was tremendously exploited, and to some extent, it continues to obstruct even those physical anthropologists who use new, nonracist approaches to evaluate human biodiversity (Keita and Kittles, 1997).
When discussing the definition of culture, it is essential to differentiate between culture in general and culture(s) in a particular context. The first one applies to the universal ability of people to exchange patterns of thought, sensing, and behaving among other people who they are in a close contact with. It is not quite straightforward and is stated only in a few definitions. Additionally, it appears to be extracted from the second sense which is the one that has the biggest focus. A culture is described here as the collection of taught patterns which are indicative of a defined community of individuals. These individuals are often included subtly or specifically. Any other culture presupposes the presence of other collections of rituals shared by other classes of individuals, resulting in diverse societies. In reality, the discussion is almost entirely focused on this second meaning. The act of distinguishing distinct communities is considered empirically baseless, logically deceptive, and morally objectionable by opponents of the definition. In order to define a community, we must separate this collection of objects from witnessed cases of thinking and action, choosing what happens consistently rather than what is singular (Brumann, 1999). Since no two objects are exactly alike in the scientific universe, the outcome of every such action is still debatable, and therefore one cannot claim the presence of Japanese culture any more than one can prove the existence of Baroque style. Cultures are fluid systems, so they do not come with any organic borders rather than they are given ones. This predicament causes the effect that cultures no longer possess a group of elements which defines them and thus become less
ultimate and precise. However, there is an on-going, controversial debate where exactly those borders are.
The three graphics depict the heart of the challenge of defining cultures in Figure 1 which was created by Brumann (1999).
Figure 1 Three hypothetical distributions of features across individuals (Brumann, 1999, p.7)
In the Figure 1, there are individuals represented by capital letters, and identifiable styles of perceiving, experiencing, and acting are represented by numbers. The first graphic portraits the complete sharing of elements 1 to 6 between individuals A through F and elements 7-12 between G to L. It is not hard to recognize cultures here since elements 1 to 6 reflect one culture, whereas elements 7 to 12 represent the other. This partition is the only conceivable means of separating cultures because the two classes of traits, as well as the two categories of persons who exhibit them, are perfectly distinct. In comparison, characteristics in the middle graphic are uniformly scattered through people, and it is difficult to make out cultures in the same unproblematic manner or even in some persuasive way. The issues begin with a scenario like the one shown in the last graphic. As we can see from the last distribution, there is no compact chunk of elements though there are parts, elements between 1-6 and 8-12, that might indicate two miscellaneous cultures. But the problem remains, meaning that both cultures will
have characteristics that are often identified with those of the other. Furthermore, element 7 is not in a direct association in any of two cultures whereas the person D engages in each culture with a majority of the first culture. In other words, there is no simple way how to portray a dispersion of acquired patterns within individuals. In the last graphic, it gets a bit more real though it is still a very simplified way how to bring any rules to woolly clustering of patterns.
There are many culture skeptics who perceive clustering of patterns in the middle and the first graphic very inadequate and resist to accept this clustering in any way. It is quite the same whether you perceive a glass is half-full or half-empty since no precise answer to this problem really exists as meaning either ideal uniformity or perfect randomness of distribution (Brumann, 1999).
In conjunction to the previous paragraph which provided more of a statistical point of view, the idea of socially transmitted knowledge (see Harris, 1975; Keesing, 1981; Peoples and Bailey, 2012) will described on Borofsky’s ethnographic fieldwork on Pukapuka. He conducted research on a small Polynesian atoll where he discovered that people living on the atol were all familiar with one particular story. Surprisingly enough, when Borofsky asked them about how they interpret the story, it varied enormously. And even one person, if having asked to tell the story twice, interpreted it every time a bit differently. These would differ from what the same individual introduced when sharing the story in front of an audience. As a result, no specific plot element was used in any way of the story (Borofsky, 1994). However, among the stories shared by Pukapuka people, a general family similarity is difficult to ignore (Brumann, 1999). In contrast to Borofsky, Brumann (1999) does not think it is an issue to refer to this repertory as Pukapuka culture. Reason being is how frequently elements occur in the tale and what constitution they provide as an ethnographic depiction of a distinct aspect of Pukapuka culture. This excellently illustrates how establishing anthropology as the science of culture does not imply that culture has to be the primary subject of study. Anthropologists are naturally interested in how events, actions, individuals, and processes interact with culture, as well as what culture does to them. Considering removing the culture(s) on the other hand, it leaves them without a term to describe certain clusters which are always present and play an important function in today’s world (Brumann, 1999). The statement above goes hand-in- hand with what Hannerz claims “the concept of culture has undoubtedly exerted an influence beyond the borders of the discipline” (Hannerz, 1996, p.30) and thus many individuals
“discovered” culture and started to believe anthropologists that culture can be found anywhere. Sahlins states that “the cultural self-consciousness is one of the more remarkable phenomena of world history in the late twentieth century. Culture, the word itself, or some local equivalent, is on everyone’s lips” (Sahlins, 1993, p.3). Given that, it seems some individuals, including ones in position of power, tend to desire culture in the limited, normative, and unchangeable form which many anthropologists currently oppose.
Furthermore, tradition has been a political and judicial fact, necessitating every effort to legitimize more fragmented conceptions to deal with enormous structural rigidity (Brumann, 1999). This, it is considered, must not deter anthropologists and society from dismantling such concepts as Brumann (1999) in this case decided to put emphasis on three fundamental insights about culture.
To begin with, cultural social replication is often difficult and never assured. It's understandable that if there was any element Foucault attempted to disprove, it was the concept of human authoring, and what was appropriate for the extremely wide rhetorical structures he investigated would not necessarily be appropriate for most culture (Brumann, 1999). Second, tradition has its boundaries and that is why it never discriminated the peculiar.
However, thinking of culture in respect of a bunch of tools which can be used in a variety of cases, but cannot do anything on its own, is no longer contentious within the context of relationship between structure and entity. If the number of articles published in major journals is any indication, cross-cultural experiments contributing to the discovery of universals have not done much better. Lastly, Brumann (1999) presents the last insight about culture where he argues that it is not consistently a case of ethnic culture, nor is it connected to the identity.
Brumann summarizes the debate about culture concepts and their meaning by suggesting that
“we retain the noun culture in its singular and plural form and clarify for those non- anthropologists who are willing to listen what the phenomenon so designated really is since it requires very clear and definite formulations about all the things it is not” (Brumann, 1999, p.13). He adds to this claim that without a doubt, the word culture has been and remains to be misapplied, particularly when cultural conservatives start talking about it. Staying with culture, while emphasizing its difficult replication, the constraints placed here by the human, and its distinction from ethnicity and identity, would allow anthropologists to maintain the mutual understanding that generated inside of anthropology and take advantage of the fact that people are gradually understanding what anthropologists imply when they use the term.
2.3 Cultural Concepts
Obviously enough, anthropology and its concept of culture have become powerfully constitutive forces in today’s world (Boggs, 2004). Elaborating on this note comes Sewell (2005) with his work “The concept(s) of culture” where he considers the many meanings of the term culture in several fields. His assessment is founded on the many anthropological arguments that have taken place between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. Over the course of these debates, a few disputed the concept's usefulness. Sewell is certain that the concept is as useful, if not more, as ever. However, considering the cacophony of the cultural debate, he believes as well as Brumann above, that the term needs to be modified and clarified.
The prevailing turbulence of the concept of culture stands in stark contrast to its condition in the early 1970s which is the time when Sewell became focused on social history from a sociocultural perspective (Sewell, 2005). He also states that he believed that cultural analysis would provide him with insights into the essence of employees' actions that he was not able to obtain through quantitative techniques. Here we can see a correlation with Brumann who also tried to interpret cultural features with numbers and thus grasp the idea of what had been referred to as the new social history (Sewell, 2005).
From a historical point of view, the early and very self-aware borrowing of the term new social history from anthropology was accompanied by a highly diversified surge to the study of culture, which was based on literary analyses and Michel Foucault's thesis on anthropology itself. Consequently, the term new social history lasted a decade when in the 1980s, it was followed by another progressive term new cultural history (Hunt, 1989). The boom years of cultural anthropology in America, though, were from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s with Clifford Geertz’s phenomenally popular publication “Interpretation of Cultures” (1973) which may be considered its embodiment. Not only did anthropology have no serious competitors in the research of history, but its innovation and reputation were at an all-time peak.
Furthermore, the cognitive ecology of the analysis of culture was changed during the 1980s and 1990s by a massive popularization of work on culture (Sewell, 2005). For instance, feminism was mostly associated with documenting women's interactions in the 1970s and has gradually shifted its focus to exploring the discursive development of sex disparity.
During the mid-1980s, the modern movement of cultural studies has expanded rapidly in a number of areas such as literary studies, media programs, and business studies. Interest in cultural themes has also been revived in political science, where the recent popularity of religious fundamentalism, imperialism, and racism have given the strongest reasons of political debate in the modern world. (Sewell, 2005).
As anthropology's most basic and unique definition, culture has been seen as a suspicious word by skeptical experts from the field. They argue that discussions about culture seek to essentialize those whose modes of life are being described as well as it seeks to normalize their distinctions from white middle-class Euro-Americans, both in academia and in popular discourse. As John Brightman (1995) comments on anthropological debates about culture, opponents of anthropology engaged in pervasive linguistic avoidance where they cannot make their mind about the way they should anchor the form of the term culture – whether it should be in quotation marks, used as a noun or as an adjective (Sewell, 2005). This particular phenomenon is perfectly portrayed by Borofsky when he said “following Keesing, I use the term “cultural” rather than “culture”. The adjectival form downplays culture as some innate essence, as some living, material thing” (Borofsky, 1994, p.235).
This new anthropological taboo seemed to Sewell (2005) to be incorrect on two counts. For starters, he perceives that it is founded on the tacit presumption that anthropology “possesses”
the term, thus it bears responsibility for any crimes committed by those who use the language.
Second, he understands the discourse as it is presumed, that anthropological abstinence from using the lexeme would magically eliminate those violations. The point Sewell (2005) is trying to make is that anthropologists have lost all influence over the word. Whatever lexical methods anthropologists follow, talks regarding culture will remain to flourish, in either destructive and permissible forms, across a variety of different scholarly fields as well as in everyday language. Furthermore, it seems difficult to abandon the definition of community in favor of the lexeme for many well-known anthropologists, Brightman says. As James Clifford laments, “culture is a profoundly compromised concept that I cannot yet do without”
(Clifford, 1988, p.10), this unfinished ambivalence is exemplified. If Clifford is correct that it is impossible to function without a concept of culture, Sewell (2005) believes that
anthropologists ought to strive to mold it into the one concept they are able to operate with.
They must alter, rearticulate, and revitalize the definition, keeping and reshaping what is valuable while discarding what is not.
In order to put things even more into perspective of how problematic it was for anthropologists to grasp the concept, Raymond Williams declared that “culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (Williams, 1985, p.87).
Despite the discourse, Sewell (2005) tries to clarify the concept.
“In one meaning, culture is a theoretically defined category or aspect of social life that must be abstracted out from the complex reality of human existence. Culture in this sense is always contrasted to some other equally abstract aspect or category of social life that is not culture, such as economy, politics, or biology. To designate something as culture or as cultural is to claim it for a particular academic discipline or subdiscipline - for example, anthropology. Or cultural sociology or for a particular style or styles of analysis” (Sewell, 2005, p.39).
In this case, culture primarily accepts the singular form although we progress to the second essential meaning every-time we talk about cultures. Culture, in the second sense, refers to a tangible and defined universe of ideas and activities. Within the second meaning, culture is often thought to be part of or closely related to a “society” or to easily recognized sub-society such as Czech culture, pop culture or Inuit culture. This contradiction between culture as a theoretical concept and culture as an actual and finite collection of ideas and activities, according to Sewell (2005), is a rare occurrence. Nonetheless, he believes it is critical for reflecting properly about cultural philosophy. Sewell (2005) then continues by comparing two approaches to culture where Ruth Benedict's definition of cultures, being both diverse and related in many ways, refers to the second sense whereas conception of Claude Lévi-Strauss, being defined by antagonistic systems, points to the first one. Consequently, these approaches are completely contradictory. Inability to understand this difference between two profoundly distinct definitions of the word has serious ramifications for modern cultural theory.
Nevertheless, anthropologists who maintain the concept of culture frequently combine both definitions, mistaking arguments that cultures are riven by faults or that their borders are permeable for an abandoning of the concept of culture entirely (Sewell, 2005).
Sewell's primary interest would be the consideration of culture more broadly, culture as a category of social life. In order to understand the more tangible metaphysical issue of the way cultural distinctions are structured and restricted in universe, one must clearly understand a culture at this abstract stage (Sewell, 2005). In the upcoming sub-chapters, the thesis examines Sewell’s view on concepts of culture and how he structured them in three main concepts.
2.3.1 Culture as a Category of Social Life
Sewell talks about various concepts of culture and begins one of his chapters on the topic as follows: “Culture as a category of social life has itself been conceptualized in a number of different ways. Let me begin by specifying some of these different conceptualizations, moving from those I do not find especially useful to those I find more adequate” (Sewell, 2005, p.40).
The first conceptualization he mentions is culture as learned behavior. In his perspective, culture is the entire collection of behaviors, ideas, structures and in this way, it was constructed and carried down through generations. In the setting provided by Sewell (2005), culture is likened to nature. Since anthropologists began striving to establish the cultural variations across populations were not traceable to physiological factors, a concept of culture as acquired behavior felt right. However, ethnic claims almost completely disappeared within anthropological debate, and defining a concept as wide as culture is untenable. During the second quarter of the twentieth century, anthropology developed a broader and therefore more useful conceptualization of culture, which has dominated the humanities in general since 1938. It describes culture as the class or component of learned behavior related to context, rather than just learned behavior in general. However, the idea of culture as meaning is just a set of similar frameworks (Sewell, 2005).
As Sewell proceeds to more useful construct, he presents “culture as all institutional sphere devoted to the making of meaning. This conceptualization of culture is based on the assumption that social formations are composed of clusters of institutions devoted to specialized activities. These clusters can be assigned to variously defined institutional spheres-most conventionally, spheres of politics, economy, society, and culture” (Sewell, 2005, p.41). Sewell (2005) perceives culture as the domain dedicated to the development, dissemination, and application of meanings. The cultural domain may then be subdivided into its constituent sub-spheres, such as architecture, literature, religion, media, or schooling. If culture is interpreted in this manner, culture theory is the review of the events which occur inside these organizationally specified domains and the concepts that emerge within them.
Sewell (2005) comments on this conception of culture a bit critically. He believes that “this conception of culture is particularly prominent in the discourses of sociology and cultural studies, but it is rarely used in anthropology” (Sewell, 2005, p.41). Its origins are most likely traceable to the highly evaluative interpretation of culture as a domain of “rich” or “elevating”
creative and mental activity which, according to Raymond Williams (1985), rose to popularity in the nineteenth century. Sewell (2005) solves this issue through the use of a concept of culture that focuses solely on a narrow variety of interpretations created in a narrow spectrum of social settings. Sewell elaborates on the rise cultural sociology even further. He contends that the enormous development hindered cultural sociology's ability to examine cultural institutions, resulting in a content knowledge separation that was hostile to cultural scientists (Sewell, 2005). Furthermore, Sewell agrees with Boggs (2004) in respect of exponential development of the subfield of cultural sociology over the last decade while claiming that only the abolition of this limiting definition of culture has allowed for it.
Considering the third concept of Sewell, it goes back in traditions which put forward a powerful determinism that may be found in Marxism and American sociology - the concept of culture as creativity or agency. Scholars operating through these cultures have built an understanding of culture as a domain of imagination that avoids the formerly dominant assumption of collective intervention by socioeconomic systems during the last three decades or so. Moreover, there is clear evidence that the difference between American anthropologists and sociologists about the understanding of society is that the contradiction in both culture and framework, which is unquestionably prevalent in contemporary sociological debate, is
meaningless in anthropology. Sewell (2005) regards this approach as pitiful since associating culture with agency and comparing it with form is simply perpetuating the teleological materialism of Marxists who protested against it at the beginning. He also believes that This amplifies the inflexibility of socioeconomic decisions as well as the freedom of symbolic activity. Form and agency are blended respectively in socioeconomic and cultural processes.
Cultural action, for example telling psychological games or creating poems, is inevitably bound by cultural frameworks such as verbal or graphical standards. Industrial activity like car manufacturing and reconstruction, is unlikely without the use of imagination and agency.
In cultural and economic processes, the specifics of the partnership between structure and agency can vary so in case of attributing economic or the cultural specifically to form or agency would be a major category mistake (Sewell, 2005).
The next two concepts Sewell (2005) mentions are the concept of culture as a system of symbols and meanings and the concept of culture as practice. He regards these as the most fruitful and perceives them as currently struggling for dominance. As already mentioned in previous parts of the thesis, these two concepts played the main role for almost half a century.
At the beginning of second half of 20th century, the concept of culture as a system of symbols and meanings played a main role until the late 1970s when the concept of culture as practice became more common.
Sewell provides his take on the first concept.
“Culture as a system of symbols and meanings has been the dominant concept of culture in American anthropology since the 1960s. It was made famous above all by Clifford Geertz, who used the term “cultural system” in the titles of some of his most notable essays.
The notion was also elaborated on by David Schneider, whose writings had a considerable influence within anthropology, but lacked Geertz’s interdisciplinary appeal. Geertz and Schneider derived the term from Talcott Parsons’ usage, according to which the cultural system, a system of symbols and meanings, was a particular “level of abstraction” of social relations” (Sewell, 2005, p.43).
For both of them, cultural interpretation meant separating the meaningful component of human behavior from the movement of actual experiences. The aim of conceptualizing culture as a set of symbols and meanings is to separate linguistic impact on conduct from the types of implications like sociological, regional, technical, and economical. Reason being is that they are inextricably linked within every specific sequence of actions for the purposes of study (Sewell, 2005).
Culture as practice. From mid 1980s until late 1990s, there has been a widespread backlash towards the notion of culture as a system of symbols and meanings in the field of anthropology, which has occurred in a variety of disciplinary settings and philosophical practices. The representation of culture as rational, cohesive, shared, standardized, and stagnant offends analysts employed under each of these banners. Furthermore, it was argued that culture is a realm of practical interaction marked by deliberate intervention, power dynamics, conflict, contradiction, and transition. Another anthropologist, Sherry Ortner (1984), noted the shift to culture, politics, and business, recommending Pierre Bourdieu's (2010) main word practice as an effective descriptor for the new perspective. The publishing
of James Clifford and George Marcus' anthology “Writing Culture” two years later signaled the public's recognition of the problem of anthropology’s culture definition (Sewell, 2005).
Since then, there have been several attacks on the idea of culture as a system of symbols and meanings. The most well-known anthropological literature has argued for the inconsistent and fractured nature of concepts, both in the cultures surveyed and in anthropological documents.
Recent anthropological research has effectively redefined culture as a reactive concept. This focus on the performative nature of culture is, unsurprisingly, consistent with the work of most cultural historians. Unsurprisingly, such emphasis on the reactive nature of culture is congruent with founding of many cultural analysts. They subtly altered the term when they studied history, emphasizing the ambiguity and elasticity of cultural concepts as well as the mechanisms whereby definitions were evolved (Sewell, 2005).
Given that, a plenty of them conceptualize culture as a set of characteristics whose impact on behavior may be likened to that of classic sociological variables like status, ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, business position and so on. Therefore, culture does not become a unified system of symbols and meanings rather than a diversified array of tools which ought to be interpreted as methods of action. Since some of the instruments are distinct, regional, and purpose-specific, they may be used as descriptive factors in ways that culture as a transnational, generic system of meanings cannot (Sewell, 2005).
2.3.2 Culture as System and Practice
According to Sewell (2005), the system and practice methods are contradictory since the most influential adherents of the culture as system of definitions essentially marginalized, if not completely excluded, consideration of culture as practice. Geertz explains cultural structures to overcome a puzzle resulting from concrete experience. Although he marginalized issues of practice, Schneider expressly omitted them in a sort of reductio ad absurdum, claiming that
“the particular task of anthropology in the academic division of labor was to study culture as a system of symbols and meanings in its own right and with reference to its own structure”
(Sewell, 2005, p.46).
Geertz and Schneider's study are not unique in the neglect of practice. According to scholars like James Clifford (1988), traditional ways of writing in cultural anthropology usually smuggle increasingly debatable conclusions through ethnographic narratives, such as the fact that cultural meanings are typically transmitted, set, bounded, and profoundly felt. Sewell (2005) quickly applies a criticism of ethnographic procedure to Clifford’s criticism on anthropological discourse. Anthropologists dealing with a systemic view of culture often continued to concentrate on system of symbols and meanings which, apparently, has a high level of uniformity or clarity. This practice leads to what sociologists refer to as sampling on the dependent variable. This school of anthropologists favors symbols and meanings that cluster neatly into cohesive structures to the ones which are broken or inconsistent, hence proving the theory that symbols and meanings do actually shape closely unified structures (Sewell, 2005).
Considering several of the issues with the culture as system school, the subsequent shift to a philosophy of culture as practice is comprehensible as well as fruitful, successfully exposing
much of the previous school’s weaknesses and compensated for several of the more obvious analytic shortcomings. However, the assumption that a definition of culture as a system of symbols and meanings is incompatible with a concept of culture as practice is perverse to Sewell. Since each presupposes the other, system and practice are complementary terms.
Engaging in cultural activity entails making use of current cultural symbols to achieve a goal.
The use of a symbol is anticipated to achieve a certain goal solely because the symbols have almost definite definitions defined by their methodically ordered connections to certain symbols. As a result, practice means system (Sewell, 2005).
Nevertheless, this became generally evident that the structure does not function separately of the sequence of practices which replicate it. Consequently, system entails practice. System and practice are inseparable dualities and dialectics. Given this, Sewell (2005) raises a significant theoretical question: whether or not can culture be conceptualized as a system of symbols and meanings or what is the best way to grasp the expression of system and practice.
He explains more in detail by saying “culture is neither a particular kind of practice nor practice that takes place in a particular social location. It is, rather, the semiotic dimension of human social practice in general. The cultural dimension of practice is autonomous from other dimensions of practice in two senses” (Sewell, 2005, p.48).
In the first sense, culture possess a linguistic structural theory distinct of the political values that often guide practice. For instance, an unemployed worker who is confronted with the only factory looking for laborers in that district would have no option but to take the bid.
However, by taking the contract, she or he is entering into a culturally established relationship as a wageworker, rather than merely submitting to the employer. Considering the second sense, the cultural component is self-contained in the way that the concepts that comprise it are formed and molded by a plethora of variety of different situations. The sense of a symbol often surpasses some single background, since the symbol is laden with its applications in a plethora of different situation of social experience (Sewell, 2005).
This became essential to remember that the system of linguistic connections which comprise culture does not seem to be closely related to the system of economic relations that comprise what is often referred to as a society. A provided sign is prone occur not just in multiple places in a sealed system realm, but also in various organizational realms. Culture could be viewed as a system of linguistic connections that spans society, having a distinct shape and notion from organizational, fiscal, or ideological systems. This is what allows the cultural component of practice to function independently of the other aspects (Sewell, 2005).
If society has a specific linguistic rationale, it must be consistent in any way. However, this became critical not to overstate or specify the cohesion of symbol systems. According to Sewell (2005), culture consumers may shape a linguistic group by understanding identical collection of adversaries and so being able to engage in socially significant symbolic activity.
It should be remembered, though, that this conception simply means just a very superficial level of cultural coherence, which could be referred to as “thin coherence”. The recognition of a defined collection of symbolic oppositions by representatives of a semiotic group does not decide the type of claims or acts members can make based on the linguistic ability. It also does not imply that they shape a group in the fullest context. The presence or absence of cultural coherence has little to do with if linguistic domains are large or narrow. It clearly
demands that, in order for interpretation to occur, there must be formal connections between signs and a community of people who know such relations and vice versa (Sewell, 2005).
The whole aim of dismantling was always to reveal the ambiguity of linguistic meaning. The sense of a linguistic symbol is often dependent on a comparison of what the sign is contrary to or distinct from; language is always plagued by the echoes of the words it lacks. The probability of coherence is not denied by deconstruction. However, this implies that given the context presented, coherence implied in a set of symbols seems thin which again proves the fact that such debates are contentious and unsettled. It appears to be completely consistent with a practice-oriented approach to culture. It is assumed that symbol systems possess an approach which is rather opened than limited. Furthermore, this implies the fact that a defined symbol system, perceived by its users, remains conclusive while its attributes are not considered solely from their linguistic quality point of view. They are rather connected to the reality with several patterns like ideological, cultural, and geographic (Sewell, 2005).
Given that the key emphasis has been placed on considering culture as a system, there are a variety of consequences about how anthropologists could think of culture as practice. Firstly, seeing culture as semiotic means a specific understanding of cultural experience. Engaging in cultural activity entails using a semiotic code to do something in the universe. What objects are in the universe is never entirely decided by the conceptual net we cast around them. The universe defies our interpretations of reality. As a result, any conduct of symbolic assignment jeopardizes the symbol, putting the meanings of the symbols at risk of being influenced and modified by the unpredictable effects of experience. Typically, these assumptions result in very minor changes to the interpretation of symbols (Sewell, 2005).
2.3.3 Culture as Distinct Worlds of Meaning
The central ideas Sewell tries to make are as follows “culture should be understood as a dialectic of system and practice, as a dimension of social life autonomous from other such dimensions both in its logic and in its spatial configuration, and as a system of symbols possessing a real but thin coherence that is continually put at risk in practice and therefore subject to transformation” (Sewell, 2005, p.52). He believes that such a theorization allows one to acknowledge the cogency of recent criticism while retaining a viable and robust concept of culture which integrates the accomplishment of anthropologists from the 1960s and 1970s. The criticism of current anthropological skeptics to the concept of culture as system and to the importance of practice has not been directed at the concept of system.
Reason being is the significance of a symbol which is defined by its system of links with other symbols. The primary emphasis of the critics is the idea that societies in the second, pluralistic environment, form neatly coherent parts: that they are logically stable, tightly interwoven, agreeable, immensely resistant to change, and very limited. Recent studies and thought regarding cultural traditions, though, have placed this traditional paradigm on its head. It now seems that realms of meaning are typically incompatible, poorly interconnected, disputed, mutable, and extremely permeable. As a result, the very concept of cultures as cohesive and separate bodies is highly contested.
Cultures are contradictory. Any classic ethnography writers were well conscious of the existence of inconsistencies in the societies they researched. This becomes normal for powerful cultural representations to show inconsistencies as well as coherence.
Cultures are weakly intertwined. Traditional ethnographies acknowledged that cultures were made up of various fields of interaction such as kinship, cultivation, hunting, combat, and religion. They also discovered that all mentioned components got an intangible cultural type. Classical ethnographers feel responsible to demonstrate the way components mix and form an interconnected cultural unit. Many cultural scholars will question this focus. Majority of them are likely to emphasize the differences among the consigned to separate practices, and to regard any “integration” that happens as dependent on authority or dominance rather than on a shared ethos. This trend is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that most anthropologists nowadays focus on varied, hierarchical, and sharply divided cultures instead of the “basic”
cultures which had been the subject of many traditional ethnographies (Sewell, 2005).
Cultures are in a state of flux. Traditional ethnographies often believed that the most significant views of culture are conventional, shared among almost all representatives of a community. With their increased knowledge of race, age and gender, contemporary scholars would argue that individuals who hold various roles in a given social structure would usually have very diverse cultural views or very divergent interpretations of what appeared to be similar ideas (Sewell, 2005).
Cultures are in a perpetual state of transition. Cultural experts, who study diverse and evolving civilizations, have long concluded that communities are highly malleable. Recent anthropological research on comparatively “normal” cultures, on the other hand, has discovered them to be surprisingly mutable (Sewell, 2005).
Cultures are loosely defined. This became exceedingly rare for populations or their cultural systems to be alone or precisely defined. Furthermore, the most primitive cultures have also seen commerce, combat, occupation and borrowing of various cultural objects such as science, religious views, sociopolitical and aesthetic styles, and so forth. However, there are more forms of reciprocal forces besides these, many significant sociocultural structures cross sociological borders such as colonization, interregional trade associations and economic and in the modern period, international companies, and transnational nongovernmental organizations. Everything we call a “society”, or a “nation” may refer to a number of interconnected and overlapped cultural systems where the majority of which are sub-societal, trans-societal or both (Sewell, 2005).
As a result, many of the predictions of the classic ethnographic paradigm of cultures seem to be untenable, namely that cultures are rationally coherent, strongly interconnected, immune to transition, and explicitly defined. This may contribute to the inference that the concept of cohesive cultures is merely fictitious. It can highlight the fact that cultural practice in each community is dispersed and decentralized. Sewell (2005) considers such a statement to be precipitous. While he assumes it is a mistake to say that societies have general coherence or convergence, those coherences cannot be ruled out a priori. However, he puts considerable emphasis on the fact that it is crucial to keep in mind that a lot of cultural practice takes place in and around influential institutional nodes. Sewell then comments on the matter by saying
“studies of culture need to pay at least as much attention to such sites of concentrated cultural
practice as to the dispersed sites of resistance that currently predominate in the literature”
(Sewell, 2005, p.56).
The traditional cultural approach of powerful players and organizations is to coordinate distinction rather than create uniformity. They are actively working to normalize and homogenize behaviors and populations who deviate from the sanctioned ideal, as well as to hierarchize, restrict and marginalize all that these do. By using such methods, authority actors aim to place a degree of coherence on the area of cultural activity, with differing degrees of effectiveness. Authoritarian cultural policy launched from power centers got the result of transforming what could have been a jumble of cultural views to a semiotically and socially organized space of disparities. This type of intervention provides a map of the culture and its variations, telling individuals and their actions how to fall into the established scope.
However, subordinated communities must align their own meaning structures with the ones known as authoritative since it is necessary to acknowledge the significance of prevailing definitions in order to challenge them (Sewell, 2005).
Of necessity, none of this means that cultures are always, wherever, or inherently cohesive.
Instead, it implies the coherence is complex, disputed, changeable, and insufficient. To such degree this remains, cultural coherence is as much a result of dominance and power conflicts as it is of semiotic logic. Cultural coherence is the practice of prescribing core principles, imposing restraint on dissenters, and defining limits and standards. To put it another way, to impose a focus on the creation and use of sense. In other words, put an emphasis on the development and utilization of meaning.
Sewell (2005) perfectly captures the main message of his work while pointing out that he might make a strong case for the non-pluralistic significance of the concept of culture. Since the way he perceives the utility of the term as pluralistic is more open to legitimate question.
Nonetheless, he believes that the above definition of culture often captures something important: a way of the specific patterns and coherence of worlds of meaning in various locations and periods, as well as a way that, through tensions and opposition, these worlds of meaning still hold together. He finishes the work by saying “whether we call these partially coherent landscapes of meaning “cultures” or something else, it seems to me relatively unimportant so long as we know that their boundedness is only relative and constantly shifting” (Sewell, 2005, p.58).
2.4 Grasping the Culture
As Boggs (2004), Brumann (1999) and Sewell (2005) already pointed out, elsewhere in anthropology and science, the term “culture” is growing rapidly and is broadly understood in a loose anthropological manner. Brumann (1999) insists that here is no doubt that it has often been misapplied and continues to be so. On the other hand, he believes that a clear clarification for non-anthropologists who are willing to listen is fundamental for grasping culture in its very clear and definite way while stressing out what all formulations are about and what they are not. Elaborating on this point, Sewell (2005) adds that it is the responsibility of cultural anthropologists to figure out what the forms and correlations of local definitions are as well as how, why, and to what degree they are linked. Furthermore, he
emphasizes the importance of knowledge about relativity and constant shift of cultural boundedness as well as an awareness of the basic forms and correlations of worlds of meaning in many locations and eras.
Another point of view provides Boggs (2004) in his intriguing paper where he summed up points of both camps and provided a perspective of how the conversation developed. He came up with a culture theory which arose in addition to and in direct engagement with the scientific discoveries and challenges provided by the systemic order sphere to which it relates.
He claims that
“The culture theory challenges key conceptual underpinnings of the historically situated local polity within which anthropology as both discipline and profession subsists.
Challenge and paradox are built into this circumstance and largely account for our current problems. Society can appeal to these values, as well as to a remarkable corpus of disciplinary knowledge, to react to the latest liberalist critique of culture, expose knowledge's assumption of immanence as well as reclaim culture as theory. It is crucial to point out that the pursuit of this agenda must remain nuanced and precise” (Boggs, 2004, p. 197).
He provides an example in natural systems since they are most of the time characterized as physical, definitive, and limited, whereas different systems are opened, loosely bounded, structurally organized and reactive. There are a plenty of analogies of loosely bounded systems including a genetic material and organisms. Culture finds the origins of social order in differing sets of symbols, rather than embracing the assumptions and rules established earlier by looking for them in presumed universal inherent properties of individuals. The key point of the theory is that cultural systems are loosely bounded and changeable which directly denies the justification for its theory status. The system, to which culture theory keeps referring, does not get own structure from innate human characteristics, since they vary in key aspects of a cultural heritage to another; it rather obtains its structure from differing systems of symbols and meaning which provide structure to equally differing system of language, governmental system and affinity order which is exposed by the anthropological inquiry (Boggs, 2004).
Consequently, the word culture, from an anthropological point of view, will imply in this thesis as loosely integrated system which is a subject to constant change while emphasizing its weakly boundedness and fluidness.
