Culture in Mind
In his book entitled Culture in Mind, Bradd Shore proposes how what he calls cultural model can be worked as a link between cultural anthropology and cognitive psychology. According to him, after the movement of cognitive revolution, the contribution of cultural anthropology to the field of cognitive psychology has been marginalized if not diminished. In considering so-called human mind, a certain gap has been taken place between these two disciplines. To understand this gap, we need to know the significance of this cognitive revolution.
What is cognitive revolution? This is a kind of methodological shift in understanding the human mind and consciousness. Prior to this movement of cognitive revolution, psychologists used mainly to see the external factors to comprehend the human mind since we see this tendency typically in the field of behavioral psychology. For, they inclined more to the natural scientific, logical positivistic approaches. Due to the influence of such approaches, they tend to think that the external factors can be the only reliable objective knowledge to understand the human mind.
As Piaget persuasively demonstrated, however, by using the so-called mental models and schema, which is the essence of cognitive revolution and its methodological set up, many psychologists have started turning into the internal domain that leads us to the deeper understanding of the human mind and consciousness. What Piaget proposed was the mental levels from pre-conventional to conventional to post-conventional that can show the internal development of human mind. While the behavioral, external factors can show the surface, superficial phenomena of human acts, such mental levels represented as model and schema can show what is called "deep structure" beneath superficial human acts. For example, while we see two behaviors as the same external phenomena, if we pay more attention to the "inside," then depending on the level of the developmental model, the very meaning of such same behavior can be changed. In other words, what we cannot see based on the external factors can be manifested if and when we use and focus on the model and schema.
As Shore pointed out, the same approach has been taken place in the field of linguistics like the generative grammar of Chomsky. This is also what we pay attention to the "deep structure" of each sentence that cannot be seen in the traditional, normative grammar. In short, due to the cognitive revolution in utilizing the concept of models and schema we start looking at the internal domain of human acts.
On the other hand, according to Shore, cultural anthropology did not fully participate in this movement of cognitive revolution. Although it is true that structuralism of Levi-Strauss etc. and cultural pattern of Margaret Mead had the similar approach, the post-modern and post-structural approach in the latest methodological scene of cultural anthropology, the researchers tend to create the diverse cultural narratives rather than seeking for the internal domain of the culture that could be represented as a model of so-called psychic unity.
In other words, cultural anthropology is no longer interested in what cognitive psychology is working on since it seem to those anthropologists that cognitive psychology has been too much generalizing the mental acts of human by ignoring the cultural diversity that is the very motifs of cultural anthropology. Conversely, it seems that cognitive psychology is no longer interested in the filed of cultural anthropology since psychologists think that metal models and schema are supposed to be freed from any cultural particularity. They think that the mental model and schema should universality explain the internal domain of human mind and consciousness. They should not be changed by the difference of each cultural background and so on. For example, if you are in the pre-conventional level, this means that you are in this level and in this developmental stage whether you are Americans, Samoans, Japanese or Filipinos.
Shore thinks that such mutual indifference has created the gap between these two disciplines and cultural anthropology has been marginalized in the trend of cognitive revolution that have been well-accepted in the other human sciences.
********
Shore's attempt in this book is to see how and what kind of contribution cultural anthropology can make to the movement of cognitive psychology. It is to install the concept of psychic unity or of the mental model in the realm of cultural narratives. In short, it is the installment of cognitive psychological approach in the field of cultural anthropology. And from the view of cognitive psychology it is to introduce what the author calls cultural model to be installed in the cognitive dimension of human mind.
According to Shore, cognitive psychology recognizes both species knowledge and personal knowledge. The former shows the biological frame of the human cognitive development, while the latter the individual variety of the same development, just as the maturity of cognitive level is differed depending on each person. And in considering how the eco-logical, environmental factors influence each human cognitive development, together with such two kinds of knowledge, there should be the third kind called "cultural knowledge" that can be the very source of cultural model. Put it bluntly, species knowledge and its biological model can be analyzed in the medical laboratory and personal knowledge and its individual model can be comprehended in the psychiatric consultation, etc. If that is the case, then what we need to figure out is the cultural knowledge and its cultural model in the anthropological research, more specifically, the ethnographic narratives.
The ethnographic narrative can be considered as cultural knowledge and the analysis on this knowledge is the approach to produce the cultural models. And only when we can propose both cultural knowledge and its cultural model, we can see how the socio-cultural, collective or institutionally intentional creation of the meaning and the context can be generated.
One of the most critical elements in the field of cognitive psychology is how we could create the meaning of reality out of our collective activity and language use and how we could share the context in such reality. In these questions the contribution of cultural anthropology is to provide the cultural model. In doing so, we can see the set up of "Culture in Mind" but not "Culture and Mind." Culture is located inside Mind. That is possible only when cultural anthropology has decided to participate in the scene of post cognitive revolution and only when cognitive psychology has accepted its (or Shore's) very attempt of cultural anthropology.
*********
Starting from the introduction, the first chapter has devoted to the explanation of Shore's above-mentioned proposal. In the first chapter the reader can see why the recent cultural anthropology is not the part of cognitive revolution and why nevertheless the contribution of cultural anthropology is needed from the author's point of view. In the second chapter, which is divided into four sections, Shore tries to demonstrate how the particular cultural knowledge can be converted into the specific cultural modes by focusing on the modern setting of American society. While he is also focusing on the "exotic" culture from his (American) point of view in the subsequent chapters, first he tries to describe his own culture. In so doing he tries to avoid a kind of bias that anthropologists do their researches only on the "exotic" or other cultures. Such bias may weaken his proposal that the role of cultural anthropology especially in the field of cognitive psychology is to provide the cultural knowledge and its models that can show the "deep structure" of the collective consciousness of each member. In other words, in his attempt it is necessary to deal with his own culture, which is American modernity. And in this case he is more specifically focusing on one of the most famous sports loved by all Americans, which is baseball.
If you are familiar with the rules of baseball, his description or ethnographic reflection on the baseball games are quite interesting. He is pointing out a lot of interesting taken-for-granted matters on how the things on the baseball have been imbedded on the American way of life and thought. Fortunately as Japanese I am familiar with the rules of baseball since it is also one of the most famous and well-accepted sports in Japan, then I was able to enjoy reading his insightful ethnographic description on "baseball in America." However, while being impressed by his witty articulation on how the cultural knowledge and its model can be distilled out of his somewhat nostalgic narratives about baseball, I can not help but feeling his analysis is quite arbitrary. For, I have read a number of similar kinds of description on the relation between baseball and Japanese culture (not American) in analyzing why and how a particular sport such as baseball, but not any other sports, has been uniquely well-accepted in Japan.
Considering this fact, what we have to notice in his approach is that the baseball is not necessarily symbolizing the very cultural knowledge of American people. It is just one of many other sports and rituals that can be used for describing the cultural knowledge. We can use basketball or American football to do the same kind of ethnographic reflection to produce the cultural knowledge and its model. Or we can use baseball to do the same kind of ethnographic reflection to produce the Japanese cultural knowledge and its model -- in fact, some anthropologists did so.
Thus, what is important in his attempt is not the fact that he is selectively focusing on baseball alone, but the fact that he is focusing on sports as such. For, as the author also mentioned, sports contain some interesting factors as one of unique products of modernity. Conducting sports can be signified as games, playfulness, specific rules, ritualistic time and space set up, etc. In the sense that anthropologists try to observe the religious rituals in his field research on a certain tribal community, his approach to observe the sports events for the ethnographic reflection is quite understandable. In its inter-subjective reality and its context/meaning generative nature, any sports events in the modern society can be represented as one of the essential symbols to access to the cultural knowledge and its cultural models. In doing so, this can also represent the cognitive, collective, and internal realm of human mind and consciousness. While his baseball-based explanation of American culture is quite interesting, we should not miss such very motif of his approach.
***********
In the latter part of the second chapter, Shore discusses some peculiar feature of modernity, which is, according to him, the process of "modularization." In these latter sections he started talking about again the generative grammar of Chomsky, but this time he uses this linguistic theory in order to explain the modularized feature of phenomena. The process of modularization is to reduce the natural phenomena to the combination of minimum unit. Some simple examples are such things as Lego block, modular furniture, etc. This can be also considered as the "modern" version of atomism. And the interesting thing in this "modern atomism" is that such modularized feature has been pervaded in all the details of American lifestyle and even their way of thinking individually and institutionally.
The concept of mass production is also the part of modularization. For example, if the modern company produces the large number of commodities, in this process there is no longer such sense of originality. We cannot say that a beer can in this convenience store is more "original" than another beer can in the other convenience store. As the sense of originality has been lost, the sense of "copy" is no loner available – it is replaced with the sense of "clone." The replication of the original maintains the historical perspective that the copied one is less authentic and yet chronologically newer. Since clone does not contain such sense as newness and authenticity, it is non-historical or ahistorical. The typical example is a photo taken by the digital camera. Or any kind of digital information can be the same kind. Whatever the substantial images, sounds and emotional attributes may be kept in us, once they have been dissolved into the digital codes or modularized minimum units, then the concept of originality, authenticity and historicity have been disappeared. This seems as if we have been brought into the quantum leap where spatial-temporal dimensions have been diminished.
Then, Shore continues the discussion to produce the cultural knowledge and its cultural models by introducing the further examples of "modularization." Just as the digital duplication has made the sense of originality and newness meaningless – this then threatens the value of historical documentation and copy right. The modern airline industry and the internet hyper textual, virtual reality have made the sense of spatial geography meaningless, too. And such tendency derived from the modern modularization brings us to the post-modern reality.
In this post-modern reality, the process of modularization is no longer or not only one of the rational, logical compartmentalization that makes our life more convenient and prosperous in a modern sense, but rather this threatens us in the sense that everything and everyone can be dissolved into the collection of mere units and modules; therefore ironically everything is possible as it can be virtually constructed or as the so-called digital presentation. This inevitably leads us the so-called post-modern nihilism in which we have lost any sense of substantial, tangible realities. While the author does not clearly say such nihilistic tendency, the very sense of techno-totems or cyborg-like figures may symbolize the dilemma on how humans can restore the true sense of spatial, temporal reality that can be connected to the ontological sense of true non-spatial, non-temporal Being, which is not the result of the mere extension of the modern digital modularization.
In the subsequent chapters Shore continues the same kind of discussion in order to demonstrate how the cultural knowledge and its models can be figure out in the ethnographic description. And yet in these sections his focus is on the non-Western cultures. But his intention is still the same. And in the fifth and sixth chapters the author goes back to the theoretical discussions on how his approach can work to provide the cultural models in the cognitive realm where the models and schema can be installed as he expects.
While the discussion has been extended and deepened by referring to the diverse theoretical frameworks, put it bluntly, it seems that such discussions can be summarized to the point that how the meanings have been created and re-created and the contexts have been generated and shared in the inter-subjective, collective reality where the cultural knowledge has been represented as the form of cultural models. And just like any cognitive reality is generative based on the unique feature of the human brain and of the intentionality of human mind, the discussions lead us to the fact that cultural reality is also generative.
Culture is not the static information that is traditionally perceived in our experiences passively, but rather it is an evolutionally dynamic reality to be represented as a specific model installed in our mind, which is called "Culture in Mind." In this way, it seems that we have to revise and re-think our conventional perception of "culture" itself. Culture is not what is preserved, but it is continuously generated just as our cognitive perception is continuously evolved and expanded. Culture is what is generated whenever and wherever we humans gather and share the particular context. If we compose a certain group, then this group inevitably generates its own "culture." For, the members of the group share their particular cultural knowledge and its cultural model in their mind, that is to say, they have "Culture in Mind".
What is cognitive revolution? This is a kind of methodological shift in understanding the human mind and consciousness. Prior to this movement of cognitive revolution, psychologists used mainly to see the external factors to comprehend the human mind since we see this tendency typically in the field of behavioral psychology. For, they inclined more to the natural scientific, logical positivistic approaches. Due to the influence of such approaches, they tend to think that the external factors can be the only reliable objective knowledge to understand the human mind.
As Piaget persuasively demonstrated, however, by using the so-called mental models and schema, which is the essence of cognitive revolution and its methodological set up, many psychologists have started turning into the internal domain that leads us to the deeper understanding of the human mind and consciousness. What Piaget proposed was the mental levels from pre-conventional to conventional to post-conventional that can show the internal development of human mind. While the behavioral, external factors can show the surface, superficial phenomena of human acts, such mental levels represented as model and schema can show what is called "deep structure" beneath superficial human acts. For example, while we see two behaviors as the same external phenomena, if we pay more attention to the "inside," then depending on the level of the developmental model, the very meaning of such same behavior can be changed. In other words, what we cannot see based on the external factors can be manifested if and when we use and focus on the model and schema.
As Shore pointed out, the same approach has been taken place in the field of linguistics like the generative grammar of Chomsky. This is also what we pay attention to the "deep structure" of each sentence that cannot be seen in the traditional, normative grammar. In short, due to the cognitive revolution in utilizing the concept of models and schema we start looking at the internal domain of human acts.
On the other hand, according to Shore, cultural anthropology did not fully participate in this movement of cognitive revolution. Although it is true that structuralism of Levi-Strauss etc. and cultural pattern of Margaret Mead had the similar approach, the post-modern and post-structural approach in the latest methodological scene of cultural anthropology, the researchers tend to create the diverse cultural narratives rather than seeking for the internal domain of the culture that could be represented as a model of so-called psychic unity.
In other words, cultural anthropology is no longer interested in what cognitive psychology is working on since it seem to those anthropologists that cognitive psychology has been too much generalizing the mental acts of human by ignoring the cultural diversity that is the very motifs of cultural anthropology. Conversely, it seems that cognitive psychology is no longer interested in the filed of cultural anthropology since psychologists think that metal models and schema are supposed to be freed from any cultural particularity. They think that the mental model and schema should universality explain the internal domain of human mind and consciousness. They should not be changed by the difference of each cultural background and so on. For example, if you are in the pre-conventional level, this means that you are in this level and in this developmental stage whether you are Americans, Samoans, Japanese or Filipinos.
Shore thinks that such mutual indifference has created the gap between these two disciplines and cultural anthropology has been marginalized in the trend of cognitive revolution that have been well-accepted in the other human sciences.
********
Shore's attempt in this book is to see how and what kind of contribution cultural anthropology can make to the movement of cognitive psychology. It is to install the concept of psychic unity or of the mental model in the realm of cultural narratives. In short, it is the installment of cognitive psychological approach in the field of cultural anthropology. And from the view of cognitive psychology it is to introduce what the author calls cultural model to be installed in the cognitive dimension of human mind.
According to Shore, cognitive psychology recognizes both species knowledge and personal knowledge. The former shows the biological frame of the human cognitive development, while the latter the individual variety of the same development, just as the maturity of cognitive level is differed depending on each person. And in considering how the eco-logical, environmental factors influence each human cognitive development, together with such two kinds of knowledge, there should be the third kind called "cultural knowledge" that can be the very source of cultural model. Put it bluntly, species knowledge and its biological model can be analyzed in the medical laboratory and personal knowledge and its individual model can be comprehended in the psychiatric consultation, etc. If that is the case, then what we need to figure out is the cultural knowledge and its cultural model in the anthropological research, more specifically, the ethnographic narratives.
The ethnographic narrative can be considered as cultural knowledge and the analysis on this knowledge is the approach to produce the cultural models. And only when we can propose both cultural knowledge and its cultural model, we can see how the socio-cultural, collective or institutionally intentional creation of the meaning and the context can be generated.
One of the most critical elements in the field of cognitive psychology is how we could create the meaning of reality out of our collective activity and language use and how we could share the context in such reality. In these questions the contribution of cultural anthropology is to provide the cultural model. In doing so, we can see the set up of "Culture in Mind" but not "Culture and Mind." Culture is located inside Mind. That is possible only when cultural anthropology has decided to participate in the scene of post cognitive revolution and only when cognitive psychology has accepted its (or Shore's) very attempt of cultural anthropology.
*********
Starting from the introduction, the first chapter has devoted to the explanation of Shore's above-mentioned proposal. In the first chapter the reader can see why the recent cultural anthropology is not the part of cognitive revolution and why nevertheless the contribution of cultural anthropology is needed from the author's point of view. In the second chapter, which is divided into four sections, Shore tries to demonstrate how the particular cultural knowledge can be converted into the specific cultural modes by focusing on the modern setting of American society. While he is also focusing on the "exotic" culture from his (American) point of view in the subsequent chapters, first he tries to describe his own culture. In so doing he tries to avoid a kind of bias that anthropologists do their researches only on the "exotic" or other cultures. Such bias may weaken his proposal that the role of cultural anthropology especially in the field of cognitive psychology is to provide the cultural knowledge and its models that can show the "deep structure" of the collective consciousness of each member. In other words, in his attempt it is necessary to deal with his own culture, which is American modernity. And in this case he is more specifically focusing on one of the most famous sports loved by all Americans, which is baseball.
If you are familiar with the rules of baseball, his description or ethnographic reflection on the baseball games are quite interesting. He is pointing out a lot of interesting taken-for-granted matters on how the things on the baseball have been imbedded on the American way of life and thought. Fortunately as Japanese I am familiar with the rules of baseball since it is also one of the most famous and well-accepted sports in Japan, then I was able to enjoy reading his insightful ethnographic description on "baseball in America." However, while being impressed by his witty articulation on how the cultural knowledge and its model can be distilled out of his somewhat nostalgic narratives about baseball, I can not help but feeling his analysis is quite arbitrary. For, I have read a number of similar kinds of description on the relation between baseball and Japanese culture (not American) in analyzing why and how a particular sport such as baseball, but not any other sports, has been uniquely well-accepted in Japan.
Considering this fact, what we have to notice in his approach is that the baseball is not necessarily symbolizing the very cultural knowledge of American people. It is just one of many other sports and rituals that can be used for describing the cultural knowledge. We can use basketball or American football to do the same kind of ethnographic reflection to produce the cultural knowledge and its model. Or we can use baseball to do the same kind of ethnographic reflection to produce the Japanese cultural knowledge and its model -- in fact, some anthropologists did so.
Thus, what is important in his attempt is not the fact that he is selectively focusing on baseball alone, but the fact that he is focusing on sports as such. For, as the author also mentioned, sports contain some interesting factors as one of unique products of modernity. Conducting sports can be signified as games, playfulness, specific rules, ritualistic time and space set up, etc. In the sense that anthropologists try to observe the religious rituals in his field research on a certain tribal community, his approach to observe the sports events for the ethnographic reflection is quite understandable. In its inter-subjective reality and its context/meaning generative nature, any sports events in the modern society can be represented as one of the essential symbols to access to the cultural knowledge and its cultural models. In doing so, this can also represent the cognitive, collective, and internal realm of human mind and consciousness. While his baseball-based explanation of American culture is quite interesting, we should not miss such very motif of his approach.
***********
In the latter part of the second chapter, Shore discusses some peculiar feature of modernity, which is, according to him, the process of "modularization." In these latter sections he started talking about again the generative grammar of Chomsky, but this time he uses this linguistic theory in order to explain the modularized feature of phenomena. The process of modularization is to reduce the natural phenomena to the combination of minimum unit. Some simple examples are such things as Lego block, modular furniture, etc. This can be also considered as the "modern" version of atomism. And the interesting thing in this "modern atomism" is that such modularized feature has been pervaded in all the details of American lifestyle and even their way of thinking individually and institutionally.
The concept of mass production is also the part of modularization. For example, if the modern company produces the large number of commodities, in this process there is no longer such sense of originality. We cannot say that a beer can in this convenience store is more "original" than another beer can in the other convenience store. As the sense of originality has been lost, the sense of "copy" is no loner available – it is replaced with the sense of "clone." The replication of the original maintains the historical perspective that the copied one is less authentic and yet chronologically newer. Since clone does not contain such sense as newness and authenticity, it is non-historical or ahistorical. The typical example is a photo taken by the digital camera. Or any kind of digital information can be the same kind. Whatever the substantial images, sounds and emotional attributes may be kept in us, once they have been dissolved into the digital codes or modularized minimum units, then the concept of originality, authenticity and historicity have been disappeared. This seems as if we have been brought into the quantum leap where spatial-temporal dimensions have been diminished.
Then, Shore continues the discussion to produce the cultural knowledge and its cultural models by introducing the further examples of "modularization." Just as the digital duplication has made the sense of originality and newness meaningless – this then threatens the value of historical documentation and copy right. The modern airline industry and the internet hyper textual, virtual reality have made the sense of spatial geography meaningless, too. And such tendency derived from the modern modularization brings us to the post-modern reality.
In this post-modern reality, the process of modularization is no longer or not only one of the rational, logical compartmentalization that makes our life more convenient and prosperous in a modern sense, but rather this threatens us in the sense that everything and everyone can be dissolved into the collection of mere units and modules; therefore ironically everything is possible as it can be virtually constructed or as the so-called digital presentation. This inevitably leads us the so-called post-modern nihilism in which we have lost any sense of substantial, tangible realities. While the author does not clearly say such nihilistic tendency, the very sense of techno-totems or cyborg-like figures may symbolize the dilemma on how humans can restore the true sense of spatial, temporal reality that can be connected to the ontological sense of true non-spatial, non-temporal Being, which is not the result of the mere extension of the modern digital modularization.
In the subsequent chapters Shore continues the same kind of discussion in order to demonstrate how the cultural knowledge and its models can be figure out in the ethnographic description. And yet in these sections his focus is on the non-Western cultures. But his intention is still the same. And in the fifth and sixth chapters the author goes back to the theoretical discussions on how his approach can work to provide the cultural models in the cognitive realm where the models and schema can be installed as he expects.
While the discussion has been extended and deepened by referring to the diverse theoretical frameworks, put it bluntly, it seems that such discussions can be summarized to the point that how the meanings have been created and re-created and the contexts have been generated and shared in the inter-subjective, collective reality where the cultural knowledge has been represented as the form of cultural models. And just like any cognitive reality is generative based on the unique feature of the human brain and of the intentionality of human mind, the discussions lead us to the fact that cultural reality is also generative.
Culture is not the static information that is traditionally perceived in our experiences passively, but rather it is an evolutionally dynamic reality to be represented as a specific model installed in our mind, which is called "Culture in Mind." In this way, it seems that we have to revise and re-think our conventional perception of "culture" itself. Culture is not what is preserved, but it is continuously generated just as our cognitive perception is continuously evolved and expanded. Culture is what is generated whenever and wherever we humans gather and share the particular context. If we compose a certain group, then this group inevitably generates its own "culture." For, the members of the group share their particular cultural knowledge and its cultural model in their mind, that is to say, they have "Culture in Mind".
Comments