A matter of culture

Abstract

The nature of culture as the symbolic expression of inarticulate matter is explored from a range of different cultural perspectives. Raymond Williams's work on culture, especially his ideas on material and symbolic production, serves to introduce an analysis of matter and its place in cultural production. The mutable nature of matter is explored through the modern physics of quantum theory as well as modern art, especially the work of Jasper Johns. Late‐modern culture is viewed in terms of a mutable space of matter that resists meaning and location. The implications of this resistance for understanding the cultivation of knowledge and subject‐object relations are then pursued in the contexts of art history (Michael Baxandall), the ‘social body’ (Jean‐Frangois Lyotard), the society of generalized communication (Gianni Vattimo), multi‐media culture (J. Hillis Miller), and computerization.     

The Body in Mind: Mead's Embodied Cognition

This article highlights the role played by the body in the work of George Herbert Mead. For Mead, the social emergence of mind depends on human physiology. This is revealed through a detailed exploration of three thematic domains in his work: the organism–environment dyad, perception, and the manipulatory stage of the act. From this, I argue that Mead saw the body as constitutive of cognition and central to the development of mind and self. Present-day research supports this view and demonstrates Mead's relevance for understanding embodied cognition.     

Dialogic landscapes: Toward a nuanced understanding of globalization in urban Indonesian signage

This article shows that a perspective rooted in Bakhtin's dialogism between the fixed centripetal and fluid centrifugal forces of language and culture is useful in achieving a nuanced understanding of globalization in general and semiotic landscapes in Indonesia in particular. Drawing on data from Indonesia, this article shows dialogic interconnections between fixed and fluid notions of languages and cultures through a multimodal and indexical analysis of governmental and commercial signage in the urban center of Semarang, the provincial capital of Central Java. The analysis highlights the nuanced localizing and globalizing strategies in signage and how dialogicity helps shape the semiotic landscape.     

Bending Modernity: Chairs,Psychoanalysis and the Rest of Culture

Coming from the premise that in order to capture the social in action, we have to be able to re‐construct or re‐assemble reality through parallel histories, I propose to re‐examine the notion of modern subjective culture by focusing on a historically specific interaction of human and non‐human actors. The main vehicle of comparison utilized for this purpose is the cultural history of psychoanalysis and contemporary furniture design. Specifically, the bent‐wood furniture and its emblematic example, the Thonet chair, are used to recover a cultural history of design through bending. By cross‐referencing such design practice with the contemporaneous to it moment of psychoanalysis, I propose that the cultural logic of the fin de siècle, viewed through this particular configuration of the human and material cultures, rests on the practice of plasticity; a conditions which, since then, has become an indispensable component of modern individuality and its numerous identity “construction‐projects”.     

Actions Speak Louder than Words: Close Relationships between Humans and Nonhuman Animals

Symbolic interactionism and other sociological perspectives traditionally have not attended to a significant form of close relationship—that which exists between people and the companion animals with whom they share their everyday lives. After a brief presentation of a portion of the relevant literature that deals with how humans understand and interact with their animal companions, I present the process by which caretakers come to define the unique identities of their animals and the ways in which the human‐animal couple identity shapes public interaction. Since play, mutual gaze, and “speaking for” animals are key elements of friendly human‐animal interaction, I discuss these activities as central to the process by which caretakers establish and express intersubjective connections with their animals. Finally, I maintain that attention to human‐animal relationships holds promise for advancing an appreciative understanding of how personhood, mind, and culture are constructed in the process of interaction. Of special significance to the broadening of the interactionist perspective is that the understandings and emotional connections that bind people and their animals are created and maintained in the absence of a shared body of linguistic symbols.     

The push for transgender inclusion: Exploring boundary spanning in the gay–straight alliance

Gay–straight alliance (or gender‐sexuality alliance; GSA) is a high‐school based club aimed at providing a safer environment for sexual and gender minority youth as well as their straight allies. Yet, as a club historically rooted in addressing sexual orientation‐related concerns, less attention has been given to understanding the changing relational dynamics of internal GSA activities aimed at expanding membership boundaries through the promotion of transgender inclusivity. I address this by bridging existing scholarship on GSAs, social movements, and the sociology of culture to showcase the impact boundary‐spanning strategies are having on GSA mobilization, in‐group solidarity, and external political and social activism. My findings reveal that membership boundary negotiations around gender diversity issues are shifting the social landscape of these clubs. Emerging barriers that impede boundary‐spanning efforts are also highlighted and discussed. More broadly, I generate new theoretical insights into how boundary spanning can shape political and social activism as well as offer promising future research directions in this area.     

The Living Gesture and the Signifying Moment

Drawing from Peircean semiotics, from the Greek conception of phronesis, and from considerations of bodily awareness as a basis of reasonableness, I attempt to show how the living gesture touches our deepest signifying nature, the self, and public life. Gestural bodily awareness, more than knowledge, connects us with the very conditions out of which the human body evolved into its present condition and remains a vital resource in the face of a devitalizing, rationalistic consumption culture. It may be precisely these deep‐rooted abilities for what I term “self‐originated experience” that can ultimately offset automatism.     

More on the ontological status of autism and double empathy

This response to Milton’s recent article on the ontological status of autism and double empathy also explores, through the lens of ‘double empathy’ and ‘theory of mind’, the issues of relationality and interaction that researchers in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology hardly acknowledge. I go on to consider Wittgenstein’s criteriological view of mind, propose a synthesis of theory to describe autism, and suggest that public criteria of a non-autistic ontology enable many autistic people to eventually develop the understanding of other (non-autistic) minds that, in turn, enables them to survive, and even thrive.     

Thinking with the Mind,Syncing with the Body: Ballet as Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Interaction

Symbolic interactionist theory describes self‐consciousness as arising through symbolic interaction. I use one empirical case, ballet training, to suggest that symbolic interaction can, by producing self‐consciousness, cultivate unself‐consciousness. Using in‐depth interviews with twenty‐three individuals reporting on training experiences in six countries and twenty‐three American states, I show that dancers can learn, through self‐conscious symbolic interaction, how it feels to embody what an audience sees, as they strive to train their bodies to portray an institutionalized aesthetic. The embodiment of technique facilitates a markedly unself‐conscious “flow” experience while performing. In contrast, having an acute awareness of embodying an incompatible physiology inhibits flow and often motivates dancers to self‐select out of ballet. These interactionist sources of “nonsymbolic” interaction both evoke and suppress “mind” through social interaction.     

Why Top Executives Derail: A Performative-Extended Mind and a Law of Optimal Emergence

Abstract

This article defines the mind as an ecosystem within a larger ecosystem. It uses an extended model of the mind and proposes a definition of human values as attractors emerging from ecosystems. The classical model of the growth curve is linked to time and growth dependent conditions for the creation and destruction of ecosystems. The conclusion of this article suggests a direct link between top of the growth curve processes and the loss of values. Top executives feel a strong responsibility to their shareholders to maximise profits. To do this, they move themselves and their organisations precisely to the stage in the growth curve where values are at risk of being lost and derailment seems unavoidable. The combination of understanding the extended mind as an ecosystem within which the conditions to create or destroy values are related to phases of the growth curve might lead to an ecological explanation as to why many top executives derail in situations of wealth, profit, power, and status.     

Considering Alternate Sources of Role Identity: Childless Parents and Their Animal “Kids”

Identity theory posits that role identity is negotiated between human social actors and is based in broader cultural expectations about how particular statuses should be performed. I argue that the formation of role identity in actors can also occur in relationship to nonhuman actors, if they are perceived as minded. Depending on context and human perception, identity can be formed as a result of interaction and developing “theory of mind” with nonhuman animals, directly implicating the animal. Using in‐depth interviews of childless and childfree companion animal owners, I demonstrate the existence of a parent identity in childless participants that would not otherwise be present were it not for interaction with the animal “child.” This identity is confirmed in participant narratives describing substantial behavioral output aligned with the U.S. cultural ideal of “parent.” Likewise, I find that significant others provide external support for the enactment of this role identity, allowing participants to verify self‐in‐situation. Overall, my analysis emphasizes the importance of considering nonhuman sources as occupying counterstatus positions in the formation of role identity while highlighting how these relationships affect interaction in the childfree and childless home, thus expanding scholarly understanding about both identity formation and emerging family types.     

Not Ethnic Enough: The Cultural Identity Imperative in International Adoptions from China to Canada

Based on a qualitative research of adoptions from China to Canada, this article analyses changing attitudes and approaches to racial and ethnic differences in adoptive kinship in the last few decades. I argue that culture celebration labour over children adopted from China is shaped by the contemporary Canadian culturalist ethos, the Orientalist imagination, and the Asian model minority stereotype. The cultural identity imperative, a core component of multicultural governmentality, perceives culture as an object, demands non‐white Canadian subjects with rooted belongings, and operates in ways that sanctions and incorporates, as it depoliticises and subordinates.     

Articulating Theories of States and State Formation

Some historical sociologists have, with some justification, described the development of the sub‐discipline in the language of three successive “waves.” This framing implies that each wave supercedes the other across time. Given that second and third waves map onto generational distinctions, the whole idea of waves has been met with consternation from second wavers who are not ready to be superseded. In addition, there is some debate, if not confusion, over the criteria that define the waves. In this paper I suggest that the language of successive waves frustrates the potential to articulate different approaches with the aim of a more comprehensive understanding of historical societies. This is particularly the case with our understanding of states and state formation, which is the focus here. Instead of the waves framing, I suggest a strategy for articulating research agendas on state formation by conceiving of such in terms of their “centers of gravity” (or COGs) ¹ rather than their boundaries. I pay particular attention to the body of work that can be said to have a concern with culture as its center of gravity, a body of work that while overlapping considerably is not co‐extensive with that identified as third wave. In this context I elaborate a broad conceptual architecture of culture, at the foundation of which is the distinction between meaning, practice, and materiality. This triangulated conceptualization of culture can, I argue, clarify some ambiguities in the literature and aid articulation of three COGs in state theory. In addition, I suggest that many questions taken to be theoretical are actually empirical. I conclude by briefly illustrating the approach in the case of science and modern state formation in Ireland.     

The Educational Experience With Tikuna: A Look Into the Complexity of Concept Construction

In this article I present a study on concept construction through diverse forms of semiotic mediation developed in the upper Amazon with Tikuna tribe lay teachers who are undergoing formal schooling to get their teacher certification. This project explores the process of concept construction related to the cultural context of development and focuses on the milieu as a source of different tools and possibilities of semiotic mediation. It analyzes the processes of human development when the relationship between individuals and milieu is altered by the introduction of new forms of activity and of semiotic systems and tools. I present the effort to articulate diverse forms of semiotic mediation by integrating drawings—the culturally developed form used extensively by the entire Tikuna community—with written language and by introducing diagrams.     

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

Unravelling Mr President’s nomad lands: travelling to interdisciplinary frontiers of knowledge in disability studies

In this article the aim is to challenge essentialist ontological assumptions surrounding the impairment category of ‘learning difficulties’ as it was previously conceptualized in social theory and practice. I ground my knowledge production in self‐advocates connected to the self‐advocacy movement in Flanders (Belgium) and in critical feminist disability studies. Drawing upon the post‐structuralist feminist Rosi Braidotti, who introduced nomadology as a new figuration of layered, embedded and embodied subjectivity, I bring the illustrative nomadic subjectivity of the president of the self‐advocacy network to the public eye. In order to allow disability scholars and activists re‐inscribe new scenarios in our contemporary discourse and shared culture, I appeal for an interpretation of the impaired body and mind as a socio‐political field.     

Teacher Careers and Inhabited Institutions: Sense‐Making and Arsenals of Teaching Practice in Educational Institutions

This article advances emerging scholarship that emphasizes the benefits to new institutional theories of organizational functioning offered by empirical research rooted in the tradition of symbolic interactionism. I present evidence from in‐depth interviews with teachers from three high schools to show how individuals' perspectives about pursuing institutional goals are filtered through their accumulated experience working within those institutions. Findings show teachers develop what I call “arsenals of teaching practice” as they accumulate work experience, and this process creates a key source of difference by career stage among teachers that shapes their instructional decisions. I discuss implications for understanding the relationship between policy and practice, and extend existing theory of inhabited institutions by identifying a key way that people's sense‐making through experience drives institutional functioning.     

Status,socialization, and identities: Central factors to understand disparities in crime

Although issues related to disparities and inequalities have long been assessed in criminological research, the orthodox approaches to understanding these differences have historically been largely rooted in cultural deficit or individual pathology perspectives. Progressive scholars have long condemned these failings of orthodox criminology, calling for group‐based theories of crime, with some scholars attempting to heed the call. Although such specific articulations are worthwhile endeavors, they still often overlook the intersectional, multileveled, and historically rooted lived experiences of diverse people. To best understand disparate pathways to and from criminal behavior and entanglements with the criminal justice system, variations in historically rooted social statuses, unique socialization experiences, and how these influence various intersecting emergent identities must be acknowledged and better accounted for in empirical work. Building on Potter's call for a disruption of criminology and taking an interdisciplinary approach, I posit an integrative structured identities model as a potential framework for understanding within and between group disparities in crime. How this model may be achieved empirically as well as the potential theoretical and policy implications are discussed.     

REVEALING THE UNSEEN: TOURISM,ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY

Contemporary cultural criticism is increasingly recognizing the central place that tourism occupies in organizing interactions, both economic and social, between different peoples in the world today. In this paper, I take up the question of what role photography plays in determining the nature of touristic experience.By drawing on Martin Heidegger's account of modernity as the epoch of modern technology, I seek to articulate an understanding of touristic photography that goes beyond conventional critiques of its objectifying character and tendency to conform to predetermined semiotic markers. Instead, by considering the examples of the photographing of local peoples, and of attempts to photograph what I refer to ‘the unphotographable sight’, I develop an alternative perspective on both the dangers and the epistemic possibilities of touristic photography. Such a perspective, it is argued, allows us to move beyond the identification of photography with the ocularcentric discourses of Western modernity and towards a consideration of the possibilities of touristic photography as art. By foregrounding the role of photographic images in the production of memory and self identity, it is suggested that tourism can be understood in terms of what Michel Foucault refers to as the creation of one's life as a work of art. Finally, I argue that by attending to the limits of touristic photography, the potential to develop a new way of seeing may be fostered.