I don't know of a single instance where the culture concept has helped, by the standards of the 21st century. It's a non-scientific concept, a modern morph of "race."
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Miles Jackson
> Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 6:08 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Culture? was How Americans...
>
>
>
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > Fascinating. (Aside: Is there an lbo-talk 'culture'? How specialized, in
> > its membership, can a "culture" be without emptying the word of
> > significance? E.g., there are 7 houses on a given block, call it Block
> > Q, one household unit each. Can one speak intelligibly -- or, rather,
> > usefully -- of The Culture of Block Q?)
>
> Social scientists grapple with this. To the extent that people share
> values, norms, and beliefs created by ongoing social interactions, they
> create and sustain a culture. Large scale, nations/regions, cultural
> distinctions are apparent (e.g., different languages, religious rituals,
> holidays). Smaller scale, it gets fuzzy: do people in Block Q and R
> create and belong to distinct cultures?
>
> One way that social scientists finesse this is by identifying subcultures
> within a larger culture: in the U. S., we have subcultures based on
> profession, religion, political affiliation, ethnicity. In a subculture
> (say, as a lawyer), I share most of the values and norms of the broader
> culture, but I participate in a lawyer culture as well (shared
> knowledge, lingo, injokes, values) that clearly differentiate lawyers
> from nonlawyers.
>
> I don't really see LBO as a distinct subculture, using this standard.
> The posters are all over the place, on everything from whether or not
> it's useful to read Marx to the Schiavo case. I like that lack of
> cultural consistency myself (the list would be pretty boring if
> everybody just toed the party line), but we're definitely not
> a cohesive culture.
>
> Miles
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk