Posts tagged cultural worlds

Food for thought when one is tempted to skip over the more boring sections of, say, the Book of Numbers.

cultural worlds, language, lists

Nate:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order—not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. ... We also have completely practical lists—the shopping list, the will, the menu—that are also cultural achievements in their own right. ...

The list doesn’t destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists.

John McWhorter is a tack-sharp writer who is always provocative, and rarely more so than in this piece, which argues that language death is not such a bad thing. As Lamin Sanneh and others have shown, Christian mission has been the main engine of language preservation, and I don't think that we can be quite as sanguine as McWhorter about languages dying out. Such diversity is arguably a crucial part of fulfilling the human call to "be fruitful and multiply." McWhorter mentions the Babel story dismissively as a literal depiction of the source of linguistic diversity (although it is remarkable that historical linguistics has failed to find any common source for language's wide and wild variety), but an equally important message of that story is that when "the whole earth had one language and one speech," the result was totalitarian ambition and rebellion against the divine mandate to fill the earth (with all the cultural diversity that would entail). Still, well worth reading.

cultural worlds, globalization, language

Andy:

At the end of the day, language death is, ironically, a symptom of people coming together. Globalization means hitherto isolated peoples migrating and sharing space. For them to do so and still maintain distinct languages across generations happens only amidst unusually tenacious self-isolation—such as that of the Amish—or brutal segregation. (Jews did not speak Yiddish in order to revel in their diversity but because they lived in an apartheid society.) Crucially, it is black Americans, the Americans whose English is most distinct from that of the mainstream, who are the ones most likely to live separately from whites geographically and spiritually.

The alternative, it would seem, is indigenous groups left to live in isolation—complete with the maltreatment of women and lack of access to modern medicine and technology typical of such societies. Few could countenance this as morally justified, and attempts to find some happy medium in such cases are frustrated by the simple fact that such peoples, upon exposure to the West, tend to seek membership in it.

As we assess our linguistic future as a species, a basic question remains. Would it be inherently evil if there were not 6,000 spoken languages but one?

I recall having a strong sense of Lego nomenclature as well, though I'm hazy on the details. I should go out to the storage bins in the garage to root around and see if the touch of plastic can retrieve any specific terms. Meanwhile, Language Log's Geoff Pullum sums up this delightful article well: "It's about the deep-seatedness of children's need to have names for all the things they deal with — and the lack of any necessity for there to be pre-existing names in the language they happen to have learned."

children, cultural worlds, families, language, names, play, words

Nate:

Then, when another seven-year-old came round for tea after school one day, I overheard the two of them, busy in the spaceship construction yard that used to be our living room, get into a linguistic thicket.

“Can you see any clippy bits?” my son asked his friend. The friend was flummoxed. “Do you mean handy bits?” he asked, pointing.

“Yes,” replied my boy. “Clippy bits.”

Of course! This language of Lego isn’t just something our family has invented; every Lego-building family must have its own vocabulary. And the words they use (mostly invented by the children, not the adults) are likely to be different every time. But how different? And what sort of words?

A fascinating look at the birth and life of policies and institutions, and of their surprising multigenerational effects.

africa, colonialism, cultural worlds, government, horizons of the possible, nigeria, taxes

Nate:

In colonial Nigeria in the last years of the 19th century, a strange quirk of history led the British rulers to draw an arbitrary boundary line along the 7?10? N line of latitude, separating the population into two separate administrative districts.

Below the line, the colonial government raised money by levying taxes on imported alcohol and other goods that came through Southern Protectorate’s sea ports. Above the line, the administrators of the landlocked Northern Protectorate had no sea ports, and instead raised money through direct taxes. In the areas near the border, this took the form of a simple poll tax, where tax officials collected from each citizen the equivalent of between $4 and $20 in today’s dollars.

Could this seemingly minor difference—created over a century ago by a long-defunct colonial administration, and long ago erased by subsequent administrative divisions—possibly still matter today?

Yes, it could, according to Daniel Berger, a PhD student in politics at NYU.  Berger’s paper, Taxes, Institutions and Local Governance: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Colonial Nigeria, finds that the “simple act of having to collect taxes caused governments to be forced to build the capacity which can now provide basic government services.” As a result, governance today is “significantly better” in areas just above the line than in those just below it.

This is from a study published in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. How do I love a journal with a title like that? Let me count the ways ...

canada, cultural worlds, europe, germany, gestures, numbers

Nate:

Nicoladis and colleagues studied one and two-hand counting gestures and cultural differences between Germans and French and English Canadians. While the majority of Germans use their thumb to begin to sequentially count, the majority of Canadians, both French and English, use their index finger as the numerical kick-off point when counting with their hands.

However, Nicoladis noted that some French Canadians also displayed anomalous differences from their Canadian or even their German counterparts.

“They show a lot more variation in what they are willing to use in terms of gestures, suggesting there might be some influence from the European French manner of gesturing (whose gestures are identical to the Germans’), or possibly other cultures too,” she said. “This association suggests that there are some cultural artifacts left over from these older French gestures and that they have been replaced because of the cultural contact with English Canadians.”

A funny letter from Mumbai about observing everyday Indian fashion. There's a nice bit about distinguishing saris, but aspects of the male wardrobe bear the brunt of the critique. I find myself concurring but wonder why it's so: perhaps because their outfits are more western-yet-not-quite-western? Or a cultural openness to the exotic feminine but not the exotic masculine? If I had to describe my combined impressions of Bollywood actresses in a word it would be "stunning"; for the actors, the word would probably be "goofy." Clearly there's a lot going on there in terms of my own sense of gender, culture, taste, and prejudice.

asia, clothing, cultural worlds, fashion, gender, india, taste

Nate:

Most Indian men, at least those I see about town on the street, dress in what I call the “dude uniform”: a light-colored button-down long-sleeve shirt, slacks, and black sandals. As far as uniforms go, it’s pretty functional, working equally well for home and office, and requiring little in maintenance.

Younger guys, however, replace the sensible slacks with over-the-top denim: emulating their favorite Bollywood stars, they buy jeans that are dyed, streaked, distressed, and bedecked with clasps, latches, snaps, and pockets. Most of the time the pants are flared, giving them a bit of a disco feel.

On top, they wear a variety of shirts that make European clubwear appear dignified. Most are made of synthetic materials; gold lamé and neon orange are popular at the moment. Solid one-inch-wide black and orange vertical stripes were big in Fall 2008, but 2009 seems to favor a trompe l’oeil sweater-vest-over-T-shirt garment, usually in pastels. As far as I can tell, it’s the guys scraping by who wear the flashiest clothes. Too far down the socio-economic ladder and your duds turn to rags. Too far up and they become the dude uniform. Somewhere in between, though, is ‘70s gold.

Michael Pollan asked readers to submit their favorite dietary rules and rules of thumb; of the 2,500 responses he received, he selected his top 20 for an interactive feature. The whole list is great, but the other one that stuck out for its similar emphasis on the importance of not just the food but the culture we create around it in our daily eating was this: "You don't get fat on food you pray over."

cultural worlds, food and drink

Nate:

“When drinking tea, just drink tea.” I find this Zen teaching useful, given my inclination toward information in the morning, when I’m also trying to eat breakfast, get the dog out, start the fire and organize my day. I believe that it’s so much better for our bodies when we are present to our food. Perhaps a bit of mindfulness goes a long way first thing in the morning. (Of course, some time ago, I came across a humorous anecdote about a hapless Zen student whose teacher taught him the aphorism and then was discovered by the same student, drinking tea and reading the paper. When confronted, the teacher said, “When drinking tea and reading the paper, just drink tea and read the paper!”)

—Michelle Poirot