Cultures do not exist
Abstract
Too often we forget that culture is not a social fact but a concept. In this article it will be argued that cultures do not exist, in spite of their apparent pervasiveness within the social sciences and in daily life. A question will be raised as to the ideological role of the idea of culture, that is, what effects does it produce in the social construction of reality? To do that, the concept and its uses will be criticized, noting that the very concept and its use in daily life represents practices of classification and segregation. Finally, it is suggested that the concept of culture should be abandoned and that we should look forward to new ways of conceiving human diversity more suitable to a situated ethical thinking.Keywords
Culturalism, Multiculturalism, Discrimination, EthicsReferences
Castany, B. (1998). Contrapunt modernitat-postmodernitat. A Diversos autors. Postmodernitat. Barcelona: Liceu Joan Maragall-La Busca.
Crapanzano, V. (1980). Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.
Dwyer, K. (1982) Moroccan dialogues: anthropology in question. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
Favret-Saada, J. (1977). Les Mots, la mort, les sorts. Paris: Gallimard.
Kuper, A. (1999). Culture. The anthropologists’s account. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (versió en castellà: Cultura, la versión de los antropólogos. Paidós, 2001).
Mira, J. F. (1990). Cultures, llengües, nacions. Barcelona: La Magrana.
Nash, J. (1993). We eat the mines and the mines eat us: dependency and exploitation in bolivian tin mines. New York: Columbia University Press.
Obeyesekere, G. (1994). The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press.
Rabinow, P. (1992). Reflexiones sobre un trabajo de campo en Marruecos. Madrid: Júcar.
Rosaldo, M. Z. (1980). Knowledge and passion: llongot notions of self and social life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shostak, M. (1981). Nisa, the life and words of a !Kung woman. New York: Vintage Books.
Taussig, M.T. (1987). Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man: a study in terror and healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thompson, J.B. (1990). Ideology and Modern Culture: critical social theory in the era of mass communication. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Turner, T. (1993). Anthropology and Multiculturalism: What is Anthropology That Multiculturalists Shoulb Be Mindful of It? Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 8(4): 411-429.
Wallerstein, I. (1990). Culture as the Ideological Battleground of the Modern World-System. A M. Featherstone. (Ed.). Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. Londres: Sage.
Wallerstein, I., (1980). The future of the world economy. A T. K. Hopkins & I. Wallerstein. (Eds.). Processes of the World-System. Londres: Sage.
Wolf, E.R. (1982). Europa y la gente sin historia. Ciutat de Mèxic: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987.
Published
How to Cite
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2004 Joel Feliu i Samuel-Lajeunesse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
