Page 87 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

DAVID C. CHANEY

symbolism, patterns of embellishment of elements of material culture such as
clothes, food, and utensils, and were celebrated in customary dances, songs, and
festivals. Third, what I have called the structure of values that informed
behavior, or the sorts of reasons that could be given, was not explicit or self-
consciously discussed within the community. Structures of values and inter-
pretations might indeed depend upon the analysis of an external observer in
order to become apparent. 1
Culture thus becomes essential to the basic perspective of the human sci-
ences. Culture provides a way of framing individual experience and action so
that it can be understood indexically (that is actions can be linked to a context).
Distinctive patterns in the organization of local customs can be recorded as ways
of life that display the persistence of culture through generations; a notion of
culture that is ‘descriptive of the whole pattern of representations of a recog-
nizable and coherent group of people’ (Jenks 1993: 159). Cultures and com-
munities are therefore mutually constitutive terms – each is established, if need
be, by reference to the other. The same process holds true for individuals. Thus
we find instances of culture in the performances and artifacts local actors pro-
duce, and we are able to explain their productions by reference to a culture that
makes sense of what might otherwise seem irrational. Ways or forms of life are
an essential bridge between individuals and culture that enable us to tell stories
about the diversity and continuity of experience. When I say ‘us’ here, I do not
mean just those of us involved in studying contemporary society, but all of us
who are members of modern societies. The idea of culture becomes part of a
general modern consciousness so that we all know how to use cultural themes
to make sense of a puzzling world. 2
I will now briefly describe some examples of the use of culture, plucked
almost at random, to illustrate how flexibly it can be used. I will then suggest
that this very flexibility disguises a crucial movement in the use of culture in an
3
era of mass communication and entertainment. The first concerns a relative of
mine who was married for some time to a Nigerian man. The family was
distressed to discover that there had been some domestic tension leading to
incidents of physical assault by the husband on his wife. In seeking to explain
these incidents it was pointed out that the female partner was very indepen-
dent. She was used to making her own judgments and then following them.
Some family members felt that such independence was foreign to marriage
customs in Nigerian culture, in particular the deference due to the status of the
male head of household, and therefore that the husband had felt threatened.
While it was agreed to be deplorable, his behavior was rendered less alarming,
less shameful, by a context of imputed cultural tradition.
A second example concerns the story of an undergraduate student at my
university who had been struggling for some time with an eating disorder. She
had been unable to maintain her studies, or, more accurately had approached
them with too high standards so that she couldn’t complete projects. Eventu-
ally the tension of struggling to keep up with academic expectations while

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