The difference that makes a difference

[imomus]

Today's thought: Cultural difference is culturally constructed, but that doesn't mean it's not real. Out of an enormous mass of differences between people, some differences are "differences that make a difference". That is, these differences (and whether they're objectively measurable or not is irrelevant) play out in a specific culture in such a way as to make a real difference to the lived experiences of people in that culture, sometimes an overwhelming and determinant difference.

Today I just want to paste stuff related to this thought, pro and contra.

"My central concern is to try to show that cultural difference is itself a cultural construct. This may seem to be jejune and question begging. But the point is that to perceive there being a cultural difference between two social entities presupposes that there is a criterion by means of which the perceiver judges that, according to the criterion, there is or is not a cultural difference. This criterion varies according to the purposes, contexts, situations, desires, histories, or in other words to the factors that do not lie within those entities whose differences are being examined. It is not the case that cultural difference is objective in the sense of differences in height or weight among individuals are objective. The factors that turn normal or physical differences into cultural ones are themselves cultural... That cultural difference is a cultural construct, nonetheless, does not mean that it is not real."

Soraj Hongladarom, Cultural Difference As A Cultural Construct (Department of Philosophy, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)

"Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers."

In Asia, the Eyes Have It (Associated Press report on this project.)

"There is rather more in our interpretation of faces that is hard-wired than we generally like to think. It seems to be part of the received wisdom of aspects of cultural studies that beauty is a cultural artefact. Indeed, that must almost inevitably be an article of faith of some currents of cultural studies, since it implies that our perception of physical beauty and the importance we attach to it is open to change and can therefore be contested. If we wish to free women in particular from the tyranny of the fashion industries, then we have a greater chance of doing so if our preference for the images projected by those industries is culturally constructed than if it is hard-wired. However, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are presenting evidence which they claim supports their contention that our cultural preferences are not as culturally determined as they appear to be.

"Judith Langlois of the University of Texas in Austin conducted experiments in which she first had adults rate photographs of faces for their attractiveness. She then showed the same photographs to six-month-old infants and discovered that they spent more time looking at those faces rated as attractive by the adults. Similar results were obtained with two-month-old babies. Interestingly, it seems that the more 'average' a face is, the more attractive it will be assessed as. Computer software can be used to average a large number of photographs and the resultant composite is very frequently judged to be highly attractive. Langlois suggests that human beings are born 'cognitive averagers' and that this innate tendency accounts for our notions of physical beauty. Certainly, cultural influences do have a role to play, as is evident from reports of early cross-racial encounters, the Japanese for example reporting that they found the dog-eyes of Western women disturbing and Westerners reporting that the Orientals' slit-eyes were unattractive. Indeed, Langlois's research does not undermine the notion of cultural influences, since the infants are in most cases likely to be performing their cognitive averaging across a single racial type."

Mick Underwood, Non-Verbal Communication; Facial Expressions

"The Implicit Association Test is designed to examine which words and concepts are strongly paired in people's minds. For example, "lightning" is associated with "thunder," rather than with "horses," just as "salt" is associated with "pepper," "day" with "night." The reason Banaji and Greenwald still find it difficult to associate black faces with pleasant words, they believe, is the same reason it is harder to associate lightning with horses than with thunder. Connecting concepts that the mind perceives as incompatible simply takes extra time. The time difference can be quantified and, the creators of the test argue, is an objective measure of people's implicit attitudes. For years, Banaji had told students that ugly prejudices were not just in other people but inside themselves. As Banaji stared at her results, the cliche felt viscerally true."

The Washington Post on the Implicit Associations Test.

When it comes to our immediate and subliminal reactions, anyway, culture and language seem to think us. The fact that language's divisions of reality are arbitrary does not make them any less obligatory:

"We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees."

B.L. Whorf, "Language, Thought and Reality" Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press (1956)

The difference that makes a difference is arbitrary, a construct... and real.

Related links:

The Specular Self

Ebony and Ivory

Introduction to Cultural Psychology by Hazel Markus of Stanford (WGBH/Annenberg "Discovering Psychology" series video)

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the way, I think that Introduction to Cultural Psychology video is a great little film, one that covers a lot of important ground. But the rather antiquated presentation style (those lovely monophonic synth flourishes at the beginning and end!) and above all the cultural relativism of its message ("different cultures hold different things to be real, right and true" and "we are both shaped by and shape culture") could make it seem like something plucked from a time capsule buried during the Clintonian era of globalisation. This was, after all, made before Bush 2 and before 9/11. The dominant metaphor has changed from cultural relativism to culture clash, the struggle between "civilization" and "barbarism".

Such rhetoric would suggest that a kind of moral absolutism has replaced cultural relativism, but I don't think that's the case. I don't believe Bush and Blair really believe that one way of doing things, one God, etc is "objectively right" and the others are wrong. Rather, I think they pitch this rhetoric at a conservative public, and privately subscribe to cultural relativism... but with the proviso that might makes right. The current struggle to prevent the mullahs getting the bomb in Iran is based on the idea that the bomb will make the mullahs right, because it's all that makes the West right, finally.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's worth saying that this Western belief is precisely why Iran is pushing so hard to get the bomb. The West invaded Iraq because it didn't have the bomb, and hasn't invaded North Korea because it does. This behaviour makes one thing quite clear to everybody: get the bomb, and quick, or else.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

When I was going to university in Japan 5 years ago, I used to write essays about Japanese society that had the same underlying themes as the ones that Marxy writes these days, or even his master's thesis: Japanese people are "brainwashed" to behave the way they do (I made the word 「洗脳」 famous with my classmates and other students); why are Japanese people so stubborn and resist Western/American capitalist influence; why are "universal" values disregarded in Japan; etc. Now I can picture myself continuing to think the same way, taking these ideas to graduate/PhD level and ending up speaking exactly like Marxy does these days. So yes, Marxy: you sound like I did five years ago...

The thing is, Japan causes this inner turmoil to (self-depracating) Western people but in the end all of these idées reçus don't last. You just need to relax and realise that there is Japan, there is the West, there are other places, and it's all good.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's all good to you, but is it all good to the people marking your master's thesis? I ask myself two things:

1. What counts for more with thesis markers, displaying an awareness of cultural relativism and avoiding ethnocentrism, or having a strong argument and sticking to it?

2. Might not Marxy's position be devil's advocacy, designed to bring him into conflict with the market systems that prevail in Japan, because conflict adds a certain element of drama, a certain thrill to what might otherwise be a very dull subject? I mean, "It's all good" is three words. Big words, admittedly, like "I love you", but hardly very explanatory.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Something else about Neomarxisme -- and this is where Marxy vests his claim to (one very limited part of) Marxism: he thinks that culturalist explanations are over-ridden by economistic ones. Economic explanations, he thinks, have a "universalism" which over-rides the different perceptions of different cultures. The Japanese way of controlling media markets is simply economic bullying that would happen anywhere we let it, rather than being a Japanese way of doing things. I disagree; just because money can be converted into other money, and just because money compels certain logics like the profit motive, it doesn't mean that all money all over the world is following the same logic, or that this logic transcends the cultural practices of each culture.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Marxy has, in one of those little snippets he gives away about his life, said that he had an upper-middle class upbringing and therefore quite an easy life I assume.

Now, let me play the neomarxiste devil's advocate here: to be writing a master's thesis is in itself very upper-middle class thing to do. In other hand, Marxy is always saying out loud on his blog "I feel for the Japanese people, they have to work hard, bow to their bosses, lose their individuality! (etc)". When he says these things, he reminds me of people like Joe Strummer or Che Guevara, rich boys who feel the pain of everyone then they feel nothing (from a Dinosaur Jr. song).

I mean, if you want to feel the pain of the Japanese working class, be one them. But wait a minute, you can't become Japanese, right? Maybe this is why he's there because if he was in America he'd have to do something, not only write a thesis about it.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

The other day he was talking about "Japanese production logics". I wasn't even aware that such concept existed, the idea that there's a corporative generalmobilmachung driving 100% of the Japanese economy and its people. There are deviations to every rule, but as we know, Marxy doesn't acknowledge the existence of marginal things.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's also the classic scenario by which you stage a harmless attack on a system (in the name, of course, of the disempowered, no matter how strawy and unconvincing your portrait of them is) as a way to learn its techniques... and join right in with the exploitation. I've seen record company execs in the UK with busts of Lenin on their desks. "Oh, yes, he was a great publicist," they say.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

And corporations are not even that logic anyway.

Actually, Karatani Kojin has talked about a total mobilisation in Japan but that was in the Showa 30's/1960's, not contemporary Japan.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your portrait of Bush Jr. The more I read and the more I listen, the more I believe that they actually see the world in stark black and white terms. If you imagine them in those terms, a lot of contradictory (and stupid) actions become perfectly logical. Rumsfeld and Rice may be slight exceptions to the inner circle's black/white viewpoints, but their viewpoints obviously don't take other opinions seriously into account. Blair is a different story.

Another interesting thing about the beauty perception tests: people guess correctly what other cultures will find attractive, even when the individual finds that cultural type unattractive. That is, people who were NOT attracted to a particular ethnic type would still be able to guess along with that cultural majority in determining 'beautiful.'

Lastly, ways of seeing can rather quickly be changed, but it takes a willing change in mindset. As someone who used to teach people how to draw, I realized that the most important thing was to get them to change how they saw. For the most part, people look at the world in a codified way that is similar to langauge - abstractions, dualism, and simplifications. As an artist, you have to unlearn all that. And once you learn how to draw, you need to unlearn all of that in order to create something unique (which, yes, is a Western obsession (for the last 500 yrs at least)).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

As an artist, you have to unlearn all that.

I appreciate your caveat about uniqueness (and by extension the cult of the "individual genius" who "breaks the mold"), but I wonder if this idea isn't close to the Year Zero idea I talked about yesterday. I was critical of the idea that suburban Americans who moved to San Francisco had "unlearned" their upbringing, their values, quite as much as they claimed they had. I don't think there can be "year zeroes", although I do think there can be incremental shifts sideways.

One thing I notice about "unlearning" one set of codes is that it's often just replacing it with another. For instance, I was reading someone's blog last night, and they were talking about reading Stephen Fry's book on how to write poetry. Now, I like Stephen Fry, but I wonder what that book says. I'm sure it also tells its readers to "unlearn" one stereotypical way of using language... only to replace it with another that's potentially just as stereotypical.

[byzantinefaith.livejournal.com]

He certainly can't become one of them. So what can he do? He has, allegedly, stumbled upon a discovery. He has perceived things that others have not. This he has done through his upper-middle class upbringing, which was not of his choosing. Arguably, he might say, a Japanese worker would not (does not? cannot?) notice what he has noticed, exactly because of their different standpoints.

So what now?

He may be misguided, useless or even detrimental, but he is definitely understandable. And there is something to be said about encouraging debates and sparking discussions.

"It's all good" comes with a certain cushy feel to it.

[(Anonymous)]

This Marxy guy sounds like an asshole. You should use all web opportunities to demonstrate your unwavering hostility and announce the fact that he's five years behind you.

William

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we'd better take him out quick, while we still can. Because, around the same time as Iran rolls out its first nuclear missiles, he's going to be sitting in shades in Shinjuku running "Marxy's Jimusho"!

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Well, I should be a little bit more specific when I say "unlearn." It's simply convienant short hand for something that takes some time to write or talk about.

Let's say I'm teaching someone how to draw, and I sit a tea cup in front of them. When I ask them to draw what they see, they tend to draw a graphic representation of the symbol 'cup,' and it doesn't bare any resemblance to the cup in front of them. It takes learning to break out of the habit of seeing, for lack of a better description, words instead of what is in front of you. It takes awhile to see in terms of relations and lines and forms and shapes and negative space.

HOWEVER, and here's where the second 'unlearning' comes in, once you've learned the various rules for drawing (and there are of course many different systems) you tend to parrot a particular system. Or in your terms, you adopt the cultural difference that you just learned. As you know, in the art world (which is deliberately cosmopolitan, but despite its claims, Western and very upper class) novelty is everything, and most try to find a niche where their art is a (supposedly) unique point of view. It's all a hopeless pursuit, but I like it, since it brings in points of view that weren't in the art world (specifically) before.

(I think) the 'unleanrning' is the attempt to escape the cultural differences you are locked into. Historically, that escape comes precisely through adopting alien or foreign cultural differences, so yeah, it is about replacing one system with another system, but the hope is that the new system isn't AS stereotypical as the old.

An example from last decade is Murakami's Superflat school. As someone who likes anime and manga, when Murakami first came out, I didn't see anything particularly new, but I loved seeing what I already loved in the art world. But my art friends who knew nothing about anime and manga were blown away. I liked the work, but didn't see it as novel, and saw his work as steroetypical, but the art world didn't.

I guess I should look for a more appropriate word than 'unlearn.' I think you know what I mean, but the word's connotations of the male individual genius are misleading. I guess I would say that 'unlearning' is an attempt to abandon the map of language in hopes of recreating it in a more meaningful way, or a way to escape its dominating and prescriptive consequences.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

sheesh, what's with the marxy bashing?

Especially since of late you two tend to agree more and more on an and/and basis. The primary difference between the two of you lately is that you are generally pleased with the status quo, because of the cultural factors you imagine create it, and he is displeased with the status quo because of the economic and industrial factors that create it.

He's too comparative, you're too forgiving.

As for his populist stance... if you think that most Japanese people have the opportunities that white men on a lark do, you don't understand the jet program or the monbushou scholarships.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

sorry for the imbalance of that sentence...

"e is displeased with the status quo because of the economic and industrial factors that [he imagines] create it"

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

so you disagree that japanese men work a lot? or just that people "above" the working class should feel for them?

[dzima.livejournal.com]

It's Marxy barbecue day today! You're invited to join us!

[dzima.livejournal.com]

That's a bit of a catch: I just find that his "solidarity" is slightly ironic and patronising because this working class whom he claims to identify with (but he doesn't belong to) is financing his career. He's not going to voluntarily downgrade himself on the class system, is he?

Statistically proven: for every three 過労死, there's one Marxy out in the world.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

if you think that most Japanese people have the opportunities that white men on a lark do, you don't understand the jet program or the monbushou scholarships

JET teachers and Monbusho students are very different, there's no point comparing them. Even within Monbusho students there are differences, undergradute students are overwhelmingly from poor countries (mostly Asian ones); the graduate students demographic is a bit more evenly spread out, maybe 60% from poor, 40% from rich countries. A majority of people from those rich countries hail from universities that have agreements with Japanese unis so that can get a ticket to Japan pretty easily. Nonetheless, a student from Bangladesh has to struggle pretty hard to get the same scholarship.

Maybe in the end JET and Monbusho are similar indeed, they both prove that white men live on a lark in Japan...

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

well, I think the phrase "solidarity" originates from your keyboard, not his.

I'm a spoilt-rotten JET. A lot of my coworkers are spoilt-rotten JETs. It's an insulated world, as is Grad School, or the Art World... or Japanese youth.
His identifying with the working class is more about pointing out their self-enabled exploitation (as he and I both take it), and the market that takes advantage. You don't need to work in a sweatshop to to be against them.

[nato-dakke.livejournal.com]

or maybe you're right, he's only pandering so he can watch the hits from the salarymen roll in.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

A very informative and entertaining debate took place between a proponent of universalism (Paul Ekman, whose "Pictures of Facial Affect" you've linked here) and relativism (James Russell, a less dogmatic, less threatening kind of guy) the pages of Psychological Bulletin (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7501742&dopt=Citationin), in the mid 1990's. As far as academia goes, this makes for gripping reading, and there's probably no better way to get a first hand look at the type of discussion that takes place between the people for whom this debate is a serious decades-long concern. Unfortunately the papers in question may not be easily obtainable online without some sort of subscription.

A couple of years ago there seemed to be an interesting new fight starting up between two MIT linguists, the famous universalist Steven Pinker, and a young, beautiful neo-Whorfian, Lea Boroditsky (http://psychology.stanford.edu/~lera/) (correction, she's back at Stanford, guess she may have been overpowered by the likes of Pinker and Chomsky). Haven't been following that lately, but it might be worth a look too.

[dr-deadmeat.livejournal.com]

Certainly, cultural influences do have a role to play, as is evident from reports of early cross-racial encounters, the Japanese for example reporting that they found the dog-eyes of Western women disturbing and Westerners reporting that the Orientals' slit-eyes were unattractive. Indeed, Langlois's research does not undermine the notion of cultural influences, since the infants are in most cases likely to be performing their cognitive averaging across a single racial type.

Funny you mention this; some research was published this weekend that looked at European and Japanese responses to faces; people were asked to assess 'attractiveness' and 'healthiness' of varied facies... those that rated hightest were 'Eurasian' or mixed-race faces - so actually the 'averaging' is increasingly a cross-cultural phenomenon.