What is Culture?

There is so much to delve into in Kathleen Stewart’s A Place on the Side of the Road that I choose to only focus on one small point here; one I am more familiar with from before as a student of sociology for many years. The question of what Culture really is. The academic history within my field is long, and involves most of the important contributors. From Marx’s false consciousness, to Weber’s values, to Durkheim’s collective sentiments; later, Parsons’s normative systems, and Ann Swidler’s a tool-kit for signification.

Unsurprisingly, the latter, Ann Swidler, comes closest to the understanding of culture espoused by Kathleen Stewart. Swidler does not think there is a unitary and overarching system of meaning in any society or any group, but rather a symbolic arsenal it is possible for members to draw from when justifying opinions, or explaining/justifying actions. Hence, a tool-kit.

Stewart’s prose is dense (rich at best, confusing at worst), and makes claims to lineage from several famous literary critics, such as Kristeva and Bakhtin. The closest I could come to a definition of culture in A Space, was on page 210: something that cannot be read, but only recounted, through “multilayered narratives of the poetic in the everyday of things”.

In other words, sort of a combination of Geertz’s textual approach and the praxis view of his critics, as we discussed last week’s readings? Through her abundance of material, I think Stewart makes a strong case for her reading of local culture. I just wonder if she doesn’t stretch her conclusions a bit far when she implies that the derelict mining towns are essential to modern capitalism. This argument is not new: Marx himself talked about the need of capital to have a certain proportion of the population excluded from active participation in the production process. If this is the point Stewart is trying to make, it is probably fine, and interesting in view of the topic and location she chooses to investigate the matter. I would still like to stress that there is a difference between cause and effect, and I am not so sure we can say that deserted mining towns are causal to Capitalism; maybe they just express the effects of the system.

Also, is it really possible to couch sweeping (systemic) claims with the multilayered and narrative view of culture endorsed by the author?

- Alexander