[Sci-tech-public] Fischer Essay on Culture Concept

[Debbie Meinbresse]

>Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:16:10 -0500
>From: "Cultural Anthropology" <culanth at rpi.edu>
>
>ANTHROPOLOGIST ARGUES FOR EXPERIMENTAL UNDERSTANDING OF "CULTURE"
><http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/can.2007.22.1.1>http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/can.2007.22.1.1
>
>MIT Professor of Anthropology and Science and 
>Technology Studies Michael Fischer has published 
>an essay in the current issue of Cultural 
>Anthropology that provides new perspective on 
>the history of the concept of "culture," 
>emphasizing how cultural analysis has been 
>linked to social reform in different periods.
>
>Titled "Culture and Cultural Analysis as 
>Experimental Systems," the essay traces the 
>growth of cultural analysis from the nineteenth 
>century through the present, showing how the 
>concept of culture has evolved and enabled 
>cultural analysis to operate as an "experimental 
>system" that both codifies knowledge, and 
>creates fundamentally new insight. In casting 
>cultural analysis as an "experimental system," 
>Fischer suggests similarities between cultural 
>analysis and the natural sciences, highlighting 
>how both create new knowledge though structured 
>engagements between established theory and 
>empirical data that cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of such theory.
>
>Fischer also highlights the importance of 
>recognizing "culture" as an analytic tool rather 
>than as a variable that can be blamed for social 
>problems, or used to explain "the clash of 
>civilizations." "Culture," Fischer argues, is 
>"where meaning is woven and renewed," by 
>professional cultural analysts as well as by the 
>people they study. The continuing challenge of 
>cultural analysis, Fischer argues, "is to 
>develop translation and mediation tools for 
>helping make visible differences of interests, 
>access, power, needs, desires, and philosophical 
>perspective. In particular, as we begin to face 
>new kinds of ethical dilemmas stemming from 
>developments in biotechnologies, expansive 
>information and image databases, and ecological 
>interactions, we are challenged to develop 
>differentiated cultural analyses that can help 
>articulate new social institutions for an evolving civil society."
>
>Over the last twenty years, Cultural 
>Anthropology has published a number of essays 
>that historicize and critically engage the 
>culture concept. See, for example, Akhil Gupta 
>and James Ferguson's "Beyond "Culture": Space, 
>Identity, and the Politics of Difference" 
>(1992), Anna Tsing's "From the Margins" (1994), 
>Robert Brightman's "Forget Culture: Replacement, 
>Transcendence, Relexification" (1995), and 
>Richard Handler's "Raymond Williams, George 
>Stocking, and Fin-de-Siècle U.S. Anthropology" 
>(1998). For a list of essays in Cultural 
>Anthropology on the theory and practice of 
>cultural analysis, see 
><http://culanth.org/?q=node/24>http://culanth.org/?q=node/24.
>
>Cultural Anthropology essays can be accessed 
>electronically through AnthroSource, 
><http://www.anthrosource.net/>http://www.anthrosource.net/, 
>which is available through most research 
>libraries and to all members of the American 
>Anthropological Association. Journalists may 
>request PDFs from Cultural Anthropology's 
>editorial office: <mailto:culanth at rpi.edu>culanth at rpi.edu.
>
>--
>Mike Fortun and Kim Fortun
>Editors
>
>Casey O'Donnell
>Editorial Assistant
>
>Jacki Swearingen
>Managing Editor
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