Chapter One:

Basic Cultural Concepts

 Lecture One:

Defining Culture

1. The Meaning of the Term

Perhaps the very first question that springs to mind in the study of cultures is that which

concerns its meaning; what does the term "culture" really signify? Does it, for instance,

signify the level of sophistication reached by a specific group of people; "the arts and

other manifestations of human intellectual achievements regarded collectively" as the

Oxford Dictionary states,1 or does it involve something a little more complex and multi-

layered than that.

On the one hand, culture really does identify the standard of complexity attained by an

individual and / or a group of people in a specific time and place. On the other hand, it

involves all forms of human activity both individually and collectively. Every social act

participates in the formation of that which identifies our cultures. This includes

practically everything from the language we speak to the clothes we wear, with all their

underlying values, customs and faculties; and from the sort of politics we advocate to the

fantasies, dreams and ambitions we happen to have, or prefer to pursue. In short,

"culture" involves peoples' ways of life both as individuals and as groups; customs, belief

systems, moral and psychological attitudes, capabilities, habits and social organizational

structures.2

1
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Eighth Edition, R. E. Allen (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
p.282.
2
Michael Payne, 'Introduction' p.2, in A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, Michael Payne
(ed.), (Oxford & Cambridge MA.: Blackwell, 1996).
This, however, leads us directly to the question of identities, that is, to the question of

differences and similarities. For, if so was the case regarding the meaning of the term

"culture", what would then make one culture different from another, or one group of

people different from another in the same culture, or indeed one person different from

another in the same group? Paradoxically, the strong areas of commonness among human

beings do not neutralize their respective distinctive particularities. Rather, in more ways

than one, such areas themselves work to strengthen these particularities' uncompromising

existence.

 Identity: The specific traits, both physical and intellectual, clarifying the

particularity of a person or a group.

 Social Act: Every activity sprung from an individual or a group and aimed at an

individual or a group.

 Cultural Act: Every activity that transgresses the confines of a person's or a groups'

abstract thinking and passes to a practical or a social space of any sort.

Questions:

Define the following terms: "Culture"," Social Act" and "Cultural Act"?
In what way does the term "Culture" define you as a human being?
 Lecture Two:

Cultural Identity

2. General and Individual Cultural Identities:

But, first we aught to clarify what is meant by commonness and particularity. There are

general cultural attitudes and behaviours shared by all groups of people all over the

globe. For example, we all speak a language, have organizational social systems (kinship

relationships: father, son, husband, wife, ant, uncles and so on…). We all play sports (any

sports), exercise a sort of social customs and habits, live in dwellings or homes and so on.

Such areas of sameness collectively form a General Cultural Identity which, as human

beings, we all share.

Yet, we are all also very different with regards to the specifics of each and every one of

such areas of sameness or commonness. For example, we speak different languages, have

different meanings attached to our similar social systems (a father to an Arab is different

from a father to a Westerner, or a Chinese, or a native-American). We also play the same

sports, but very differently, attaching different meanings and values to the sports and

their structures. Again, we practice very different social customs and follow very

different traditions. Even the types of homes or dwellings we live in are quite different.

The collective specifics of these differences define the Individual Cultural Identity of

every person, group or community.

What this means is that each and every one of us simultaneously has both a general,

and an individual, cultural identities, working continuously and inseparably at all

times regardless of the circumstance. The general cultural identity defines you and me,

him or her, within ever increasingly wider groupings of people by identifying areas of

similarity common to bigger and bigger communities or groupings of people. First, you

share a general identity with your family, physical appearance, personal history, many

psychological tendencies and preferences, belief-systems, customs, and so on, even your

name. Then you begin to share lesser number of areas with bigger numbers of people

beginning by your school group, your religion group, your age group, your sex group,

your ethnic group, your language group, and ending with the human group. Perhaps, in

the future we will discover an even larger group of beings with which we would then

share a general identity too. That is, the intelligent-thinking group.

Individual cultural identity works by almost the exact opposite mechanism, since it

defines you and me, him or her, within ever increasingly smaller groupings of people by

identifying areas of differences that particularize smaller and smaller communities or

groupings of people until it reaches a group of only one. You are different from the

largest group of all, the human being group, because, beside being a human being, you

are also a female (or a male) who belongs to this smaller group of people. Yet, despite

being human, female (or male), you are also a teenager, an Arabic speaking, a Muslim /

or a Christian, an Egyptian (or any other nationality), a Cairo-girl, a collage student, a

literature student, a member of so-and-so family and, finally, a strong-willed person who

defines his / her own path in life.

This is how the paradox of cultural identity works. Both the general and the individual

identities work together inseparably to particularizes each and everyone of us to the

extent of uniqueness, and simultaneously generalizes him / her to the extent of

commonness and sameness. Every identity statement carries within it the workings of this

paradox, telling everyone, at the same time, of our sameness and particularity, of our

uniqueness and generality.

Identity statement: Any social act designed for stressing a particular set of views or

perspectives of one's self for the purpose of recognition (the western punk, religious dress

codes, peasant and urban clothes and so on).

Questions:

Define the following concepts: 'Individual Cultural Identity', 'General Cultural Identity',

'identity Statement'. From your own experience drive examples to demonstrate your

answers.

Each and every one of us possesses and projects both an individual and a general

cultural identity? Explain this statement in your own words

 Lecture Three:

Cultural Products and Codes

3. Cultural Criticism

Here the practice of cultural criticism finds its most challenging equation. Having to deal

not only with concepts related to the general identity of a culture, but simultaneously with

the personal cultural identity of each member of that culture too. Because, like it or not,

one is the other, at least in one sense. What this means to the cultural critic is that when

defining a problem, or praising an aspect, of a culture, he / she is always running the risk

of being either too general or too personal, but, worse still, of being, paradoxically both at

the same time. Cultural criticism is then more than the simple evaluation of a social

phenomenon, or a state of consciousness or even a mentality of an age. Because of this

paradox, cultural criticism is both the search for, and the evaluation of, the socio-

political effects of human activity in their widest and most particular forms for the

purpose of better understanding our relationships to each other both as groups and

as individuals. The role of the cultural critic is then to re-define and re-evaluate the

cultural codes used to qualify most identity statements.

Cultural Codes: The symbols, signs and markings used to communicate the particulars

of a cultural identity (clothes styles, accents, distinctive features, ideas and beliefs etc.) be

it general or individual, of a group or of a single person.

Cultural Products: All objects and / or practices associated with cultural identity

starting from technological products such as computers and cars, and ending with the
language we speak, the customs we follow and the ideas and principals we generate and

value.

 Every cultural product carries within it many cultural codes that should, in

principle, identify the culture of its origin.

 Ideas and beliefs can, thus, be both cultural products belonging to a certain

culture and cultural codes identifying it.

  Lecture Four:

Cultural Dialogue

4. Cultural Purity

However, what all of this means is that there is no such thing as cultural purity, since we

all share, a basic cultural sameness which, like it or not, interferes with the individual

identity we claim is totally ours. All cultural products are instantaneously a product of

that paradox. They carry within them all of us, regardless of the depth of our

distinctiveness and individuality. Yet, and in addition to the inevitability of multiple

cultural identity, all cultures have historically developed means of influencing one

another with much more particular cultural products than the effects of that paradox.

Today, we can see in our streets cultural products from almost every culture in the globe.

And in the past, the west managed to borrow many advances in science and technologies

from many different cultures including the Arab culture. Yet, now, as was the case in the

past, we can see, we are still at war?

Questions:

In your own terms, define the following terms: "cultural products", "cultural codes",

"cultural criticism"?

Ideas and beliefs can be both cultural codes and cultural products, explain?