Politicization Of Culture Essay

The politicization of ‘culture’

Susan Wright Culture has 164 definitions for anthropologists and this was found by Kroeber and Kluckhohn. Based on their observation, these definitions in time is interesting and that in either space or time, the distribution of all cultural phenomena always reveals significant. Meanwhile, the meaning of culture for decision-makers in anthropological sense is “a phrase which closes off further exploration by claiming that there is one meaning of culture which is at once too self-evident to warrant explanation and too deep to delved into by non-anthropologists”. Tylor has his own approach for the notion of culture. He stated that “culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. He also pointed out that groups of people have their own distinctive cultures at different periods and stages depending on the evolution of civilization. But Boas contradicted Tylor’s

Cultural studies in Britain pointed out that cultural identity are dynamic, fluid, and constructed rather than inherent, bounded or static. There are other new meanings of culture and that it is a dynamic concept, always negotiable and in process of endorsement, contestation, and transformation and it are also an active process of meaning making and contestation over definition. The latter meaning has three stages, first, overt attempts by identified agents to redefine key symbols which give a particular view of the world. Second, a view of the world becomes institutionalized and works through non-agentive power. Third, a key term which carries a new way of thinking about one aspect of life enters other domains and becomes a diffused and prevalent way of thinking in everyday life. In the end, culture is not ideological but it appears coherent, systematic, and