Page 9 - Contribution To Phenomenology

2 LESTER EMBREE

I. What is a ''Discipline"?

There are matters that appear best called "cultural practices:' Mowing
the lawn is an example even if it may not obviously be a component of
a form of high culture such as religion, art, myth, or science. Cultural
practices can be classified in many ways. If there is innate or instinctual
behavior, mowing the lawn would hardly be a case of it, for lawn mowing
does involve at least a modicum of learning and skill. Not only does lawn
mowing not occur in all societies, but also not throughout those societies
in which it does occur. In some places the lawn is mowed to keep snakes
from coming out of the bush into the house. In American suburbia,
however, the practice seems less practical.^ Variation according to society
and by group and area within societies can help the difference between
the learned and the instinctual, e.g., breathing, be recognized. Lawn
mowing is also not a matter that occurs but once; rather, it is something
that is repeatable, it can recognizably be done again and again. This is
what "practice" chiefly connotes. Being learned and being repeatable
suffice preliminarily to define a behavior as a cultural practice.
Cultural practices thus defined can be divided into the personal or
idiosyncratic (the present writer habitually changes to an old pair of
sandals when he comes home, but knows not and cares less whether
others also do so) and the social, which at least two subjects perform
with definite awareness that others engage in practices of the same sort
That social practices attract the most attention in public discourse does
not preclude recognition of idiosyncratic practices, some of which are
considered matters of creative style. Finally, some cultural practices are
reflective and some are not; the former presuppose the latter. It is
difficult to contend that lawn mowing is an essentially reflective practice.
One may consider how to do it, perhaps through watching others, before
first trying to perform the task, use recollection in order to describe the
technique to others, and even consider alternative techniques and
equipments, e.g., electric mowers, when presented with them, and such
glimpses might be considered at the root of systematic reflective
investigation of the practice, but they are not the tree.

^ Regarding the cultural character of lawns, cf. Michael Pollan, "Why Mow?
The Case against Lawns," in Scott H. Slovic and Terrel F. Dixon, eds., Being in the
World (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 433ff.