Page 52 - Culture Technology Communication

Introduction: What’s Culture Got to Do with It? 37

documented that Arabic cultures are usefully characterized as high con-
text/low content; hence, while the Internet and the Web are clearly spread-
ing rapidly throughout the Islamic world—witness Deborah Wheeler’s
contribution to this volume—there may be a greater cultural mismatch be-
tween communication preferences and values in Arabic-speaking cultures
and CMC technologies than found among the communication preferences
and values of cultures more fully represented at CATaC’98 (see Hall 1979;
Zaharna 1995).
22. In doing so, Lacroix and Tremblay observe that the non-material
character of norms and values frees them from the reductive materialism
and determinism presumed in many theoretical approaches: in particular,
values and norms are collectively “owned” and, in that sense, freely avail-
able. This frees cultural norms and values from both the commodification
and utilitarian calculations based on scarcity which they see centrally at
work in the “culture industries” (1997, 41).
More broadly, the non-material character of norms and values opens
up precisely the possibility of choice, both individual and collective, in the
face of the otherwise overwhelming power of culture and technology. Such
choice, as we have seen, is apparent in multiple ways and is theoretically in-
cluded in the notion of habitus as elaborated here especially by Yoon.
23. In addition to Lacroix and Tremblay’s recognition of the difficul-
ties of defining “culture,” see Star (1995, 26). While her anthology, The Cul-
tures of Computing, includes a number of significant and pertinent essays,
her focus is on culture in a related but different sense than we use it here.
That is, Star seeks to “talk about a set of practices with symbolic and com-
munal meaning” (26)—i.e., as in the example of “organizational culture,” the
“transnational culture” of professionals from different countries working to-
gether via e-mail, etc. For our part, “symbolic and communal meaning” is
certainly of central interest, but primarily as affiliated with national and
linguistic boundaries, communication preferences, etc.
Moreover, in light of Moon’s meta-analysis of how the term “culture”
is used in intercultural communication, it would appear that our difficulty
in identifying a clear understanding of “culture” reflects changing under-
standings and debate within the field of intercultural communication itself
(1996). She notes:

As a rule, intercultural communication scholars are not interested
in the idea of “culture” per se, but use operationalized notions of
cultural variation (e.g., individualism/collectivism) as one among
many independent variables that affect the dependent variable. . . .
“Culture,” at this level, is most often defined as nationality, and the
constructedness of this position and its intersection with other posi-
tions such as gender and social class is not considered. The outcome
is that diverse groups are treated as homogenous, differences with-
in national boundaries, ethnic groups, genders, and races are