Beyond political culture

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Beyond political culture

• Warsaw, May-June 2009 Lectures

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Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869)
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Interaction (basic unit of the society)
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• Comments on the chart
• At the outset of an interaction the participating
  actors are in symmetrical or asymmetrical (more
  often) positions initial power differential.
• Interaction actualizes this differential and may
  change it final/outcome power differential.
• Interaction is ALWAYS an act of communication
  (meaning).
• Interaction is ALWAYS carried our within some
  (institutional) constraints.
• Interaction has ALWAYS (?) an impact on the
  distribution of resources (sometimes indirectly
  see Goodin and Klingemann on this point
  (19967)).
• Interaction can be usefully modeled as a game
  (with rational actors).

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(Political) Field
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Definitions of politics

• Institutional
• Politics might best be characterized as the
  constrained use of social power.
• The study of politics the study of the nature
  and sources of those constraints and the
  techniques for the use of social power within
  those constraints (7).1
• Material-institutional
• "A conception of politics as decision making and
  resource allocation is at least as old as Plato
  and Aristotle" (47) Laswells who gets what
  when and how.
• "the organizing principle of a political system
  is the allocation of scarce resources in the face
  of conflict of interests
• 1 Robert Gooding and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (A
  New Handbook of Political Science, Oxford, 1996)
  7.

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Definitions of politics

• 3. Structural

From Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles
Tilly, Dynamics of Contention
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Definitions of politics

• "Although there are exceptions, the modern
  perspective in political science has generally
  given primacy to substantive outcomes and either
  ignored symbolic actions or seen symbols as part
  of manipulative efforts to control outcomes." /?
  These challenges echo another ancient theme of
  political thought, the idea that politics
  creates, confirms, or modifies interpretations of
  life. Through politics, individuals develop
  their identities, their communities, and the
  public good" (March, Olsen, 198947-48).
• Cultural-institutional
• "Politics is usually conducted as if identity
  were fixed. The question then becomes, on what
  basis, at different times in different places,
  does the nonfixity become temporarily fixed in
  such a way that individuals and groups can behave
  as a particular kind of agency, political or
  otherwise? How do people become shaped into
  acting subjects, understanding themselves in
  particular ways? In effect, politics consists of
  the effort to domesticate the infinitude of
  identity. It is the attempt to hegemonize
  identity, to order it into a strong programmatic
  statement. If identity is decentered, politics
  is about the attempt to create a center."1
• 1 Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B.
  Ortner, "Introduction" to Culture/Power/History.
  A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, Nicholas
  B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner,
  editors, 1994, Princeton Princeton University
  Press 32.

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Definitions of culture total/global

• Total concept of culture
• E.B.Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871)
• Culture is "that complex whole which includes
  knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and
  any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
  as a member of society."

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Selective definitions

• Psycho-social
• Almond and Bingham Powell, Jr., (196623)
• Culture "attitudes, beliefs, values and skills
  which are current in an entire population, as
  well as those special propensities and patterns
  which may be found within separate parts of that
  population."
• Semiotic
• Clifford Geertz (1973145)
• "Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of
  which human beings interpret their experience and
  guide their action social structure is the form
  that action takes, the actually existing network
  of social relations. Culture and social
  structure are then but different abstractions
  from the same phenomena."

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Ann Swidler (1986273)

• Culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of
  meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art
  forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal
  cultural practices such as language, gossip,
  stories, and rituals of daily life. These
  symbolic forms are the means through which
  'social process of sharing modes of behavior and
  outlook within a community' (Hannerz, 1969184)
  take place.

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Political culture (psycho-social Almond and
Verba (196315)

• Political culture is "a people's predominant
  beliefs, attitudes, values, ideals, sentiments,
  and evaluations about the political system of its
  country, and the role of the self in that
  system.
• (196313) culture "a set of orientations toward
  ... social objects
• political culture "orientations toward
  specifically political objects"

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Political culture (semiotic) Gamson (1988220)

• "A nonredundant concept of political culture
  refers to the meaning systems that are culturally
  available for talking, writing, and thinking
  about political objects the myths and metaphors,
  the language and idea elements, the frames,
  ideologies, values, and condensing symbols."

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Six pairs of contrasts

• Psycho-social (culture as attitudes) versus
  semiotic (culture as texts)
• Culture as a constraint (Geertz) versus culture
  as a resource (utilitarian) (Cohen)
• Public (inter-subjective, collective) versus
  individual level Hannertz versus StraussQuinn
• Emic (natives point of view) versus etic
  (external)
• Holism (Huntington) versus individualism (game
  theory)
• Semiotic system (structuralism) versus (social)
  practice (post-structuralism)

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Four possible conceptualizations of the elements
of culture
Elements of culture as constraints Elements of culture as resources
Psycho-social (attitudes) Attitudes as constraints (homo sovieticus)
Semiotic (signs) Symbols as tools of manipulation
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Ulf Hannertz Cultural Complexity Studies in the
Social Organization of Meaning (7).

• Three dimension of culture
• Ideas and modes of thought as entities and
  processes of the mind
• Forms of externalization, the different ways in
  which meaning is made accessible to the senses,
  made public
• Social distribution, the ways in which the
  collective inventory of meanings and meaningful
  external forms - is spread over a population and
  its social relationship.

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