Page 99 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

7

Identity, Lifestyle, and Subculture

Who we are as individual beings – our “ identity ” – is bound up with the
culture we live in. Although it is something outside us, culture makes its
way into us through our eyes and ears. We learn the languages of culture
as we grow up – what particular kinds of clothes “ mean, ” for example, or
what particular actions are good or bad or what words and attitudes are
appropriate or not in what situations. We also acquire ways of understand-
ing and methods of reasoning that we use to read the cultural world around
us. We see and know the meaning of a host of things – objects, events, and
institutions – because we internalize rules, grammars, and conventions
from the culture we grow up in. All of these ways of seeing, reading, and
assessing the world around us become part of who we are. If you grow up
in rural Wisconsin and engage in the culture of hunting, road sign stealing,
Saturday night drinking in crowded cars while listening to country music,
and working in auto assembly plants, you are more likely to see Hillary
Clinton as a threat to civilization as you know it and Sarah Palin as the way
a well - lipsticked lady is supposed to look and be. You are less likely to
embrace or endorse the cultural ideals and political ideas that are current
in more urban settings such as the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a loca-
tion more likely to be populated by highly educated professionals whose
culture includes evenings at the Kennedy Center listening to classical
music. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, you will be less likely to identify
with someone very different from yourself like Barack Obama.
None of us exist outside cultural immersion of this sort. We all learn to
see and feel and think from our culture in certain ways. We all acquire an
internal identity from outside ourselves. What we are inside ourselves is
shaped in part by what is outside of us. Although I come from Ireland,
I have lived long enough in American culture to be aware of its languages
and its dictionaries. My cultural identity is more American than Irish by