> Honestly,this isn't clear to me. If I try to make it make sense... the
popular
> cultures of particular racialised groups, rather than other social
mechanisms
> (including the economic), are often used to explain their continued
systemic
> impoverishment. Is that what you mean?
That's one example of what I mean, yes.
> So, in that case I'd say of course it's
> not the family systems or leisure patterns of Aboriginal Australians that
> demand they remain economically underpriveleged. Giving those things up --
> living more "white" -- is only incidentally successful in raising your
chances
> of not remaining poor. However, I can't think of one real contributing
factor
> to this problem that is clearly not "cultural".
As it happens I've done quite a bit of research into both Aboriginal history and contemporary Aboriginal politics. The problem with conceiving these issues as "cultural" is the problem that others on this list have already pointed to: "culture" cannot be defined in a way that is agreed or intelligible to/by everyone. More controversially, I guess, I would define it in a negative way, however, to say that nothing which is a "relation of production" is ever "cultural" _in_origin_. As I've said before, everyone from peasants to merchant bankers to pods of dolphins is involved in particular relations of production. And I would say that the "economically underprivileged" fact of life of contemporary Australian Aborigines is _essentially_ economic. That is, it relates to what happened in the violent transition from hunter_gatherer_relations_of_production_ to Aborigines' recruitment and work as labour, mostly notably (but not by any means mostly) in the capitalist pastoral industry, followed since the mid/late 20th Century by their marginality to actual relations of production _within_ many Aboriginal communities, rural and urban. I would say that this process of destitution is _most_ understandable (assuming that one thinks it should be "understandable" of course) in terms of the discipline called economic history, rather than the discipline called cultural studies. (Obviously the same general idea can be expained in terms of "cultural displacement" or whatever, but I know what I prefer...)
> > Of course these things can't be separated in the real world, but
> > isn't that why we have academics?
>
> I can think of reasons why we have academics, and this seems a generous
one,
> but I'm not sure what it means.
I (really) hate to sound like a deconstructionist, but perhaps to "unpack" these things -- the "economic", the "cultural", etc -- explicate them and reconstruct them?
> > It's simply not possible to discuss
> > everything and I can't think of many contexts where one's religious
> > denomination or the particular version of football one follows is
relevant
> > to the rate at which surplus value is being accrued by ones employers.
>
> Hmm. So, you don't see any connection then between the fact that someone
who
> makes said profit is more likely to have cultural allegiances to rugby
union
> than rugby league and the reproduction of a status quo in which some
people
> make said profit and others do not.
OK, my synopsis goes like this: rugby union _is_usually_ a bourgeois pastime, both in terms of players and spectators. Like RL or any other sport in which teams are _not_ profit-making entities in themsleves, it is nevertheless, indirectly, highly significant in terms of accumulation, i.e. as an advertising vehicle, a focus for networking, etc. However, it is "bourgeois" only by association and in certain contexts. For example, if one is a New Zealander, a Pacific Islander or Welsh, rugby union is a genuinely working class game, if not a national sport.
> I mean, though, seriously, the gap betweent the "Bali bombing" and Star
Wars,
> insofar as people consumed it by that label, is not that great.
And I would disagree. As you said:
> > > In each case I could say the event in itself and a representation of
> > > that are obviously qualitatively different.
...and, I believe, widely seen as such.
> > >... But the football thing, not being perceived as training for labour,
is so
> > much
> > > more effective at doing it. Oh, the teamwork, the sportsmanship, the
> > focus, the
> > > training regimens...
> >
> > All of these also being why many leftists think sport should be
encouraged
> > ...
>
> Part of the hideous heroising of (the Other) working class culture, as far
as I
> can see. Give me one, just one, reason to believe joining a rugby league
team
> will make a difference of the "leftist" kind.
How would a successful revolution, however you want to define revolution, possible without, in your own terms, "teamwork ... focus ... training regimens"?
> > An interesting concept of "Marxism"; it sounds more like Weber, or
> > postmodernism ... or at a stretch, I suppose, some varieties of
neo-marxism.
>
> Why?
>
> > Then again I suppose a lot of "marxist" cultural studies makes me think
"I
> > am not a marxist".
>
> And... why?
Well, what would "marxism" be if not a close awareness of Marx's _own_ practices? To oversimplify, because Marx's ( i.e. not Engels', Plekhanov's, Lenin's, Lukacs', Gramsci's, etc.) conception of his main thesis was an epistemological method called "historical materialism". I would say that, in the sense of that method, Marx reasoned that things which are (relatively) nebulous (e.g. culture or imperialism) are not as significant to the capitalist mode of production as (e.g.) the rate of profit or relations of production. As many people have pointed out, one of the great ironies of Marx's work is that his influence is _now_ so concentrated in the liberal arts academia when, if one looks at his career as a whole, as he has so little to say about such things.
Regards,
Grant.