Culture is... Hall of World Cultures, university museum

4 dimensions of culture: diverse, adaptive, dynamic, symbolic [click photo for larger view]

A quiet Saturday afternoon late in January was a chance to return for a visit to the Michigan State University Museum after several years. Some wide ranging reflections on the presentation of artifacts appears in this blog about museums following this day's brief visit. Part of the permanent exhibition is the Hall of World Cultures, above. Several of the glass cases go beyond the region-specific presentations and address the anthropological uses for the concept of culture. Among trained professionals in scholarly settings or in private sector social analysis the range of meanings for this term is wide, each person emphasizing the facets they know best: culture's integral place in language and thought, culture as extension of physical interface with the Earth's habitats and other creatures and resources there, culture as secondary to political economy, culture as source of meaning, culture as learned and shared and partly flexible but partly conservative and long-lasting, and so on.

In this photo the analytical overview of culture divides into the four facets (displayed from right to left): culture is symbolic, dynamic, adaptive, diverse. Synonyms are many but could restate these four as culture is: meaningful, flexible, reactive to circumstances, and multi-form. The display case illustrates each of the facets with material culture drawn from many different parts of the world to show that the assertion indeed fits all these contrasting examples. Other display cases focus on just one of the facets, such as "culture is adaptive" in the illustration of teapots of China from various locations, materials, and eras.

illustration for "culture is adaptive" [click photo for bigger view]

Perhaps the widest definition that encompasses the four facets in this permanent display, along with many others, is to say that "culture is what gives shape to your life." Much like the philosophers of design who say that "everything around you has a specific shape; many times it was a person or group of people who determined that form." So, too, of culture informing and shaping your thinking, speaking, actions, life plans, daily habits, procedures to solve problems - indeed, the ways to identify what counts as a "problem," all these things stem from the system of meanings and methods inherited, adapted, expressed, and handed down.

As someone who studied anthropology at college and went on to graduate school for more of the same, eventually teaching and writing anthropology, participating in conferences, conversations, and committee work, the idea of culture is like an old family friend. But to see it here in the Hall of World Cultures at first gave the feeling of seeing it with fresh eyes. After all, when you swim in these waters it so easily is taken for granted. But when you are a fish out of the water for a moment, then you see it from a little distance and are granted a moment with which to look at it plainly. In this instance at the MSU Museum, what does it mean to show the visitors that culture is diverse in the many channels and forms it takes; that it is adaptive to circumstances that come and go; that it is dynamic in changing moment by moment as a living thing; and that it is symbolic and carries meanings tied to other themes in the society and land and seasons that comprise the context for living?

The collection of meanings, practices, and organizing themes bequeathed by elders and lived out in the current generations is vast and multifarious: vague perceptions, articulated ideas, verbalized patterns and responses to cues, social relationships and structures of status, technologies that put knowledge and sometimes wisdom into functional physical form, and relationships with landscape and seascape by which livelihoods are made and lifetimes are made meaningful. So each of the four declarations, above, offer separate organizing standpoints to look at the vastness of a single culture or to look comparatively across boundaries and over the span of generations.

Thinking about some possible reactions by visitors to the "culture is..." descriptions, the authoritative language could put the reader into the framework of looking up something in an encyclopedia: it is no-nonsense language, leaves little room for doubt of the meaning, and may bear traces of lecturing to the ear of someone ignorant of the scholarly (technical term and) meaning of 'culture'. Furthermore, unless the reader can somehow see what is being pointed out in the display case or by considering personal experiences with living in the society just outside the museum walls, then the explanations will ring empty; not true or urgent. Hopefully, though, at least a few visitors will embrace some of the meanings being expressed and then go out into the light of day outside the museum and start to notice things about the built landscape, social interactions, the natural landscape and people's livelihoods, the many ways that language is used to create meaning, and the ways that a person's mindset colors the world around them.

In conclusion, seeing the label text and artifacts to illustrate "culture is..." here in the MSU Museum, the directness of the explanation (culture is diverse, dynamic, adaptive, and symbolic) and the physical examples of each concept do effectively express the kinds of things that social scientists mean by 'culture'. But since the lens is turned toward 'exotic' other people or historical societies from which artifacts were obtained, it is probably difficult for many visitors to make the mental leap and look in the mirror (turning the lens around to study one's own ways of doing things) to see culture in personal, interpersonal, and society-scale patterns and relationships. In other words, the display at the museum shines a light on the presence and significance of documenting and understanding the structures of people's culture. But it does not go so far as to operationalize the concept for the visitors to examine their own day-in, day-out experiences using this term. And yet, to demonstrate the importance and insight of culture for understanding others AND equally to understand one's own line of family, community, and ideas is a worthwhile step and unifies one's own familiar society with all those unfamiliar people around the world and the societies of other centuries, too. By putting all ways of life onto an even playing field, the common humanity is expressed: exotic is de-exoticized and familiar is de-familiarized.  Each lived experience has meaning and value.