[lbo-talk] Culture? was How Americans...

[Michael Dawson]

Yeah, I overstated the point.  But I still think 9 out of 10 attempts to
deploy the culture concept are stillborn.  As you say, it's important to
understand how a particular culture works, but so many cultural theorists
forget to explain where the cultures they think they see come from.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Miles Jackson
> Sent: Sunday, May 01, 2005 10:30 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Culture? was How Americans...
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2005, Michael Dawson wrote:
> 
> > Sure, fine, but why preserve the culture concept at all?  I would say
> that
> > it played a role 100 years ago, when whiteys needed to be shown that
> Adam
> > Smith and Social Darwinist presumptions were BS.
> >
> > 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."
> 
> Cultural psychology is a subfield in psychology that has generated
> a lot of interesting theories verified by research.  If you buy
> the idea that scientific investigation is a good thing, culture is
> every bit as helpful as other empirically supported abstract
> concepts (e.g., gravity).
> 
> Miles
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