Jag har just startat en kulturblogg. Jag är nämligen Kuratorskonventets kultursekreterare. Kuratorskonventet är Uppsalas studentnationers samarbetsorgan, och kultursekreterarens uppgift är att lyfta fram den kulturverksamhet som bedrivs på nationerna. Typ. Ett första steg är att jag regelbundet skriver om olika gruppers evenemang och målgruppen är både kulturintresserade studenter och dito ”vanligt folk”.
Som masterstudent i sociologi är jag kluven till begreppet ”kultur”. I det här fallet handlar det främst om teatergrupper, körer och orkestrar. Kultur som konst alltså. Inom akademien finns det ungefär hundra miljarder definitioner av kulturbegreppet och knappast någon konsensus. I somras, när jag var på konferens i Pisa, träffade jag en professor emeritus från University of Essex i England. Han heter Ken Plummer och är en mycket sympatisk man. Jag hittade en intervju han har gjort med en annan sociolog, Howard Becker, som verkar vara en skön lirare. Han var jazzmusiker innan han blev akademiker och har skrivit massa om art as collective action och sånt. I slutet av intervjun pratar Plummer och Becker om kultur på ett sätt som faller mig i smaken:
Becker: Cultural studies is a phenomenon of academic politics, much more than an intellectual movement. I have a very simple view of culture. There's really two sources for me. One is William Graham Sumner talking about folkways and mores. When you get a lot of people together and they all have pretty much the same difficulty and they talk to each other, they're very likely to arrive at a solution in common, and begin to treat that as the way we do it. That's culture. That's part of it. The other part is Redfield's definition, which is one of the 153 definitions that Kroeber, Kluckohn, and Parsons agreed on or whatever. Redfield's is "shared understandings made manifest in act and artifact," I like that. It's an interesting remark and you don't need to add anything to it. Culture to me is, hey, this is the way we do it and I know it, I know that you know it and I know that you know that I know it. So I can act that way with pretty good assurance that when I do, you'll say how right he's doing X, that's the way we do it.
Plummer: And that's missing from another common definition, which I think is "designs for living." It doesn't have that notion of "sharedness" about it.
Becker: Well, the "sharedness" is what makes it work.
Plummer: It is crucial.
Becker: "Sharedness" is what says I can go ahead and act this way knowing that everybody else is going to fall in line. It'll fit. We don't have to sit down and every day begin from the beginning. What sounds shall we use today when we talk? And what shall we have them mean? I can speak to you as I am, and feel more or less that you'll know what I'm talking about. More or less is the qualification.
Plummer: Yes, but then you have academic cultures, which do the same thing. So if you say cultural studies, you can only understand that if you're a member of that group, but that's a subculture.
Becker: My real problem with cultural studies is, and I haven't really done a deep study of this because I have lots to do, is that it struck me as they're not very empirical.
Plummer: Well they're not. I think you're right. But they are empirical in the sense that they take a film or they take one cultural artifact and then they give it multiple meanings.
Becker: There's a tremendous amount that they assert that they don't know to be true. If I say to them I don't believe you, the answer to that is, well you should believe because look, here is the evidence. There isn't any evidence; it's just their interpretations. You see, if you say here is the film, it means this, the first question is, to who does it mean that? And does it mean really that to those people? I just don't take this stuff too seriously because it's mostly, you know, jerkoff fantasies.
Plummer: Howard Becker. Thank you.
(Från Ken Plummer and Howard S. Becker. “Continuity and Change in Howard S. Becker's Work: An Interview with Howard S. Becker” Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 21-39. Published by: University of California Press.)
