Culture as Identification

Presentation-Handout by Marc Mallocci and Lutz Stoffels: Comparing Cultures

Quoted and Based on: Hall, Edward T (1976): “Culture as Identification“, in “Beyond Culture“, published by Anchor Books/Doubleday, pp.1-25, 223-240

Hall’s main assumption:

There are two related crises in today’s world: The population/environmental crisis and Humankind’s relationships to it’s extensions, institutions, ideas, as well as the relationships among individuals and groups (cultural crisis). Both crises are closely related to each other!

The relation lies a.o. in the limited resources of the planet: There’s a lack of territory for farmers and a Lack of finite resources (in connection to that stand the crises in the middle east, which effects the oil depended countries)

These crises can’t be solved only by technological means. They have a need of cultures collaborating with each other. For that we have to know each other’s way of thinking! For Hall the solution lies in transcending the limits of individual cultures:

“The answer lies in not restricting human endeavors, but in evolving new alternatives, new possibilities, new dimensions, new options, and new avenues for creative uses of human beings based on the recognition of the multiple and unusual talents so manifest in the diversity of human race”

What he claims, is that human creativity and the talents which every human is born with, should be used, not restrained. In the actual state these advantages are not used properly, but suppressed (by human extensions/institutions) which leads to his cultural theory. In relation to his theses, his endeavor tries to answer the following questions: Why don’t we already use our “full potential”? Hall’s cultural theory:

Meaning of “extensions” and “institutions”: Following Hall this is related to a kind of self-restraint of humans against their “true nature”. As he calls it, through extensions, which are e.g., language, tools and especially institutions. To provide his argument he relates to Freud’s theory of “Sublimation”

Freud’s Theory of Sublimation (in short): Sublimation is some kind of transformation of emotions. A pillar on which Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is based, is the libidinal force (erotic energy), a sort of destructive and hard to contain drive, which lies in every human. The sublimation is the process of transforming this energy into creative and socially acceptable behavior and it ends up in people building institutions. So it is a necessary form to live in a society, and therefore every society deals with sublimation somehow. Hall’s Theory of sublimation: When people began evolving their extensions “they got incapable of controlling the monsters they created” (Which is probably a reference to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). He calls this process: “extension transference”.

The consequence of this process is that people fail to fulfill their full potential which leads to gnawing emptiness, frustration, and displaced anger. How does the limitation of creativity work? It is a result of the institutionalization of work, e.g. in factories, where your rhythm and life is controlled by the working time. This leads to a feeling of powerlessness and a lack of self-affirmation which turns out into aggression against oneself or others.

These are the basic assumptions towards the evolution of culture in the modern/western world. Western Men do not use their full mental capabilities due to the self inflicted restraints. They are trapped in one way of thinking - logic. Hall sees this system as a linear way of thinking, which additionally restrains the creativity through bureaucracy and institutions; because they make sense (in a logical way). Also, models are created to deal with the enormous complexity of the world by leaving a big part of reality outside. To show the difference between different ways of thinking, he mentions the monochromic and the poly chronic time. He sees them as two models, which are completely different and have each their advantages and disadvantages. The downside of the M-Time: Scheduling – Compartmentalization – concentration on one thing at a time – But no context! Topic-Concentrated While P-time: Has a lot of communication and happens all the time in all the places – The downside: Handling such an amount of information depends on a single person, to arrange the “chaos”(contingency)

Hall’s theory of consolidation and detachment as a core function in the human socialization process

Coming back to Freud's Theory the following quote by Edward T Hall gives an idea of culture as identification.

"Life is a continuous process of consolidation and detachment" – E.T.H.

Everyone experiences that life is punctuated by separations. Whether it is the pet which has past away, friends leaving town and moving far away or the boy-/girlfriend who broke up. After those separations a person forms a foundation for new stages of integration, can build a different identity and grow psychically.

The first separation already begins at a very early stage of life. As soon as the child realises that it isn't a part of it's mother anymore it starts to explore its own body, its surroundings and everything it gets in touch with.

To be truly alive in a culture and to internalise it, one must grow up in the certain culture. Growing up involves meeting a lot of challenges which help creating the fundament for the culture.

The full impact of the process is not realised until one has „cut the apron strings” and established oneself as independent of one's parents. “Cutting the apron strings” means to leave home, live alone and not hanging on ones mother/father anymore.

That doesn't always mean that one has to leaf his family behind. There are those cultures whose members cut the apron strings and establish an own identity; But also in many other cultures the bonds with the parents, grandparents and ancestors are maintained and reinforced. The families keep living together for all their life and even the old family members are still fully included in the family life. In this particular case the individual does not establish an identity separate from that of his community.

It is hard to separate oneself from something because of our environment which influents us uncontrollably. This is what is so insidious about environmentally imbedded dynamisms.

Dynamisms such as greed or envy can also be cultural and can control us as well. Those dynamisms can also be positive.

Culture draws the line separating one thing from another. Not only gender, language, skin colour or ethnic affiliation belong to those differentiations but also the social class and believes.

Depending on the environment in which a person grew up this person experiences a certain culture. Other people having grown up in another culture lack the experience of having grown up in such a group and find it difficult to comprehend the other culture.

Growing up and experiencing a culture is directly connected to the cultural identification. As the children cut the apron strings they will continue as an individual gaining their own cultural experiences and cultural identification through the process of growing up and meeting challenges.

To be able to refine the term identification one has to take those parts into account that have been dissociated. Dissociation can be a dynamism or a drive but also an impulse or behaviour pattern that has been disapproved by our parents or sisters or other significant persons. The dissociation starts already as a child. An example can be the small boy who was having some struggle with his younger brother or sister and got punished by his mother. Those actions influence the identification process and help us finding our own identity.

Intercultural and interethnic encounters are usual in our recent time and there is an intellectual understanding that each party has a different set of beliefs, customs, mores, values etc. Until this point everything is fine but once people with a different cultural background start working together things are getting a bit more complicated. People are and remain in the grip of the cultural type of identification.

Obviously the most important psychological part of culture is the identification process. It builds the bridge between culture and personality. The most difficult task for us is to “free ourselves from the grip of unconscious culture”.

Bibliography

• Hall, Edward T (1976): “Culture as Identification“, in “Beyond Culture“, published by Anchor Books/Doubleday, pp.1-25, 223-240