Hazel Markus

[imomus]

Yesterday's discussion of the differences in tone between Japanese and American participants on the Japan Today Pop Vox page led to an interesting reference from Sparkligbeatnic to the work of Hazel Markus, Professor of Cultural Psychology at Stanford University. I watched a video of Markus outlining her interests and summarizing research findings into cultural differences between the American and Japanese senses of selfhood, and found it very much in line with the kind of points I've been making on Click Opera.



I was taking notes as I watched the video, so I thought I'd just turn these notes into today's entry, because I think some very important points are being made here, points that I'd like to be considered in the passionate cultural debates that happen so often in these pages as well as over at Marxy's blog, Neomarxisme. The notes are really for people who don't have the time or the bandwidth to watch the video, but I'd also like a permanent record to refer back to when these issues come up again in the future, as I'm sure they will. (So if you're reading this from the future, hello future!)

Notes taken from a video interview with Hazel Markus

people need other people to become human
to become a person you have to engage in various social meaning systems
that's a social, cultural project

social sciences have been dominated for the last 25 or 30 years by the computer as metaphor for the human:
the idea that most minds are pretty much the same, people are pretty much the same wherever you go
now we're recognizing that people have very different perceptions and orientations.

there's been a shift of emphasis: culture is not what you are but what you do

selfhood: who am i?

american answer: i am an independent autonomous entity made of a set of attributes, preferences, opinions, thoughts, abilities.
the goal of being a person is to try to express these attributes in behaviour, maintain independence, stay unique and different from other people.
the real focus is on myself, my thoughts, my feelings.

japanese: different. I am fundamentally interdependent, from the beginning connected with other people
what I should be doing is paying attention to my relationships with others
trying to keep them in good order, engage other people's sympathy, stay in harmonious interdependence.
i pay attention to your thoughts and feelings about me.
i pay attention to others, their expectations, the standards they're setting.

americans always tell you they're on average better than their peers.
japanese will tell you they're just the same as others, or that their peers are better

stanford students, asked to rate themselves, say 4/1 positive things about themselves. (they might add that they're not as patient as they should be).

japanese are uncomfortable with the question, with paying attention to self.
they say things like: i try to have my own thoughts, but stress harmony with others.
the important thing is to be peaceful, be like other people, maintain harmony.
over 50% of japanese self-descriptions refer to other people.

of course, americans are relational people, but our image, our narrative of ourselves doesn't bring other people into the explanations.
explanations: our frontier history, influence of greek philosophy, the cartesian tradition that says that thinking makes us human,
expressing my thoughts is the essence of what i am.



the us has a huge sprawling legal system that's about protecting individual rights, there are more and more personal rights to be protected all the time.
us advertising: each of us absorbs 300-500 images a day
american magazine ads are about freedom, being unique, choosing, being independent, being different from others.

how is that different from political ideology, hooked up with economic ideology, capitalism, individual, free choice?

it is an ideology. humanity lives according to ideas.
people may think they're unique, but if we all go to the mall buy the same shirt, how will we all be individual?
being unique is our norm, everybody tries to follow that norm.

japanese advertising: freedom, rebellion, being unique and special don't show up in ads much except a few ads directed at younger people.
instead we see in ads scenes of doing your job, doing your duty, doing the proper thing.
instead of one person alone somewhere and out of context, in japan you see people in a work setting, at the office, with other people, co-workers, friends.
it's obvious what they're doing. they're connected, oriented towards each other rather than looking out towards nothing or space.
the emphasis is on being part of the group. it's the way to be a person, a way of being.

jeans commercial: if I as an individual achieve more I deserve to have more.
in america we believe every boy can become president, every girl can become president, if you apply yourself, work hard, push on... americans love that message.
it's a strength, this american idea, but as a social scientist you recognize that it's not the case.
even to maintain the idea of myself as a person, that 'little engine that can', requires a whole host of invisible supportive characters.
in our american way, we keep that interdependence in the background.
we don't recognize the connections that allow us to become the person that we are.

american students tend to do much better when they receive praise. japanese students do better when they get criticism.

for american 9 year olds, the best way to get good performance is to let them choose what game to play, give them choice.
for 9 year old chinese and japanese american students, they get the best performance from a task their mother or a friend chooses for them.

another cultural difference is in the connection between talking and thinking.
we tend to think people who are good thinkers are good talkers
you have an idea and you express it.
in the asian cultural context there's no connection between talking and thinking.
just because you're a good at thinking doesn't mean you're good at talking.
this difference may lie behind the common perception in american universities that asian students are too quiet, too passive.
people coming out of different contexts don't hold the same ideas about the connections between talking and thinking.

Comments

Re: That's all the proof you need!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you read my comment about Michael Moore yesterday, but I could use him as an example of how national identity is a kind of operating system (a platform-independent operating system, ie this is not about race, but about socialisation and attitudes). Michael Moore might seem like a very atypical American in that he's a socialist; socialism is his content, his noun, but adverbially -- in how he acts, his etiquette, his way of being, his habitus (your old friend Bourdieu's term) and style -- he's very typically American. That's one of Moore's strengths: the fact that he's somewhat overweight, wears a baseball cap, eats fast food, and is somewhat brash and argumentative actually puts an acceptably 'American' slant on his socialism.

Acceptable for Americans, that is. Personally I'm perplexed by it. How can this be anything like the content (noun) we call 'socialism', when Moore is, adverbially, a classic American Dream success story: slobby average joe becomes very rich and successful by being brash and individualistic, by 'selling' something he appears to have 100% conviction in, by promoting it with aggression and assertiveness? And if we imagine a Moore who really acts like a socialist, can we really imagine him a success in America? I think not, for the very types of reasons that Marxy is trying to deny exist: broad cultural preferences and habits of mind. The program Moore-as-a-Socialist does not run at present under the American operating system. To port it over to US-OS, you'd have to tinker not just with the program itself, but with the way the whole operating system works. (Code line 745: 'Define 'collectivism' good object. Code line 746: Run 'collectivism'.)

Re: That's all the proof you need!

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting take on Michael Moore. I think you are right.

My problem is not that the Japanese have a different culture and or set of values. I am concerned that the generalization of these values into a holistic "national character" both distorts the reality on the ground and is used by the establishment to essentially excuse less-than-democratic parts of society.

What you describe as "Japanese-ness" seems more like "an idealized Japanese behavior" more than an accurate description of real life. Groupism is encouraged, and most people find it in their self-interest to comply with the moral values taught from above. However, I can't help but feel that their behavior is not a natural extention of post-industrial society, but created through an artificial attempt of institutions to specifically remold parts of society into past patterns.

And there is plenty empirical evidence that "groupism" is no more Japanese than it is anywhere else. Japan has its cowboys as well.

Recently, I have come around to see the danger in politicizing Japanese culture - whether the government uses it as a way to avoid conflict with its populace or Momus sings its praises as an alternate system for capitalist society. And calling the Japanese idealized system "good" is exactly what leads others to offer the criticism derided as "Japan-bashing." If you really want the West to be a society like Japan, you would have to take the good with the bad. If the dialogue is political, there is great reason to discuss drawbacks as well as advantages.

I'd rather just retreat from the politics of it, which I have recently being trying to do. I am still plagued however with the fear that the Japanese political/socioeconomic 1955 System is starting to fail Japanese, judged on its own terms. Gabbing with my hairdresser the other day, he mentioned, "All the best parts of Japan seem to be fading away and just leaving the worst parts."

Re: That's all the proof you need!

[(Anonymous)]

You're drawing the wrong inferences about Moore. You basically say: "He thinks like a socialist, but he acts American in his rags-to-riches individuality, aggressiveness, the way he looks etc." But Moore has only become highly visible because he appeals to prevalent American entertainment values. In other words, he's really not typical at all of most American socialists, he's merely the only type who could make a career in showbiz. Witness, for example, the widespread distaste for Moore in intellectual left-thinking circles. The trouble is that your more typical American socialist simply wouldn't work on the small or large screen: he/she would be too 'European', too blue-state, too intellectual etc. You're wrong in seeing what American entertainment throws up as a reflection of Americans; in fact, entertainment values actively hide the very real diversity of American attitudes and behaviours.

H.

Re: That's all the proof you need!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, you're saying exactly what I was saying about Moore -- except for the last part. And things get complex there. Yes, I agree with you that American entertainment does not reflect the diversity of life on the ground. However, it does reflect American ideology: the ideology that says that 'anyone can become rich, become president, etc'. No matter what people's actual circumstances in America, the 'American Dream' keeps them fixated on the wealthy and on this ideology of 'equality of opportunity'. That's why socialism has very little chance of making any progress in the US. There are objective classes-in-themselves there (Bush is creating a larger and larger class of poor people, for instance), but their ideology of opportunity, as well as things like 'meaningless affirmation', token reparation and symbolic empowerment, prevent them from becoming classes-for-themselves and voting, acting and living in solidarity with the actual interests of others in the same situation.