In the sciences, certainty is a relative measure based on what we know now, and how well we can test it. The rank of theory is the highest honor that knowledge can achieve. There is also a long tradition of building on what we think we know, using it to evolve greater and greater ideas – using it as a heuristic.

I’ve been thinking we should view culture this way as well. Culture is too mutable, abstract, and diffuse to be concrete, but perfectly applied as a learning tool. The reason that anthropological knowledge (knowledge about culture) applies so well to so many other fields is not because it provides any degree of certainty, but because it provides a frame of reference – a window for gleaning other pieces of information. The sum of culture is far too much to codify in a useful or meaningful way. We can begin to codify the artifacts of culture – I don’t just mean physical artifacts, but social, psychological, and emotional as well. But I think the artifacts of culture should exist not as things we say definitely about a group, but as heuristic tools for greater understanding, to whatever specific or general degree.

I realize this is an abstract statement. But I’m having these rough thoughts after a few weeks of being tweaked by social scientists’ predilection to talking about ‘the culture of X’ or ‘the anthropology of Y.’ They sound so authoritative, when in actually they speak for a niche group or a narrow (but often valuable) aspect of culture. I don’t mean to say that we can’t make any definitive statements about culture or that we need to qualify statements with those horrible academic cop-outs like ‘seems to,’ ‘appears to,’ or ‘may.’ I think I simply take issue with the idea that any one person can ‘speak’ about or on behalf of a culture as a whole. I take a strict constructionist approach – a social scientist who works with a culture and then becomes a commentator on it also becomes a part of that culture. Because of his or her unique position, the best we can say is that the social scientist is well situated to balance emic and etic in a way that leads to valuable perspectives.

So having gone on about what anthropologists should not do, I suppose I should say something about what I think they should do.

First, it’s not just the responsibility of anthropologists to position themselves as heuristic gateways, but the responsibility of people who use and apply anthropological knowledge to take it in its proper course. To take it with a grain of salt. As the tools and theories of anthropology have diffused out into the world, I think there’s a tendency to reify culture. This is not good. Anthropologists have a unique and valuable perspective, yes, but it deserves the same critical eye as decision makers and planner would give to any other kind of knowledge.

Second, anthropologists have a responsibility to be absolutely diligent about acknowledging their own perspectives. One who speaks for only a small niche of a larger group without being diligent about explaining that perspective is creating fiction as much as reporting on ‘fact.’ (Let’s not talk about the problems of ‘facts’ and ‘fictions’…)

End Note: I babble on about culture this way because writing it down helps me think. I post them to the blog because I like to read and re-read what I’ve written, and on the (perhaps wrong) assumption that there might be someone else out there who likes to read this junk too. I’m not really so pretentious.