I do certainly believe it is. You can profitably read Kahn, Political Theology. 4 New Chapters, and Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil.

That is an interesting idea. I think, it would be worthwhile to actualize Georges Sorel's way of thinking - and easy, given that around the year 1900, myth was something like a "dispositif" within political thinking. Considering more modern theories, I agree with Pier: Assmann would be a must-read.

Yes and, there are no modern myth per se. All myth are narratives about a way of hero. It is the essence  of any narration and human language is entangled with it in their structures and vocabulary. More, it determinate the limits of moral customs (tried by hero). The ability to tell stories differs us of others animals, even if they have customs and culture.

I love your question, thank you Julio.

Jola

This idea has been taken up in part by some media studies researchers - the only one that comes immediately to mind is Jack Lule;s 2002 book  "Daily News, Eternal Stories." He argues that the print media tell stories using various "meta-myths" like "The Good Mother" and "The Flood." 

Great question! The focus on "function" of myth is somehow misleading: it suggests that their is a "rational" point of view beyond myth - which I doubt. "function" is based on the scientific myth that the world is a machine or a body. The focus should be on language and narration instead, on the politics and poetics of myth. The difference between religious and profane diminishes; their origin is both in language.

Jolanta - there are also many myths on modern heros and events. At least we in Finland have about the WW II.

There are also scientific myths - as Werner points - on modernity. E.g. contradiction between "superstitious Middle Ages" and "rational Modernity" (for example medieval belief in flat earth is such a myth). Another influential modern myth is the cultural evolution theory - especially when it deals with "axial age" and periods before that. Thid type of modern myths is "urban legends" which are composed as narratives for some political (or other) purposes. We have a lot of them - especially on immigrants.

One interesting perspective on myths is a relative new sub-discipline of "Geomythology." It studies various myts as stories on geological events. For example, last theory on the Flood is that it was caused by a comet impact east from Madagascar. Exodus events have for a long time been explained by a vulcano. Delphoi oracle was literally in gas when she gave her oracles since in that time there were small vertical cracs in the ground thet let the earth gas evaporate through them.

@Werner Krauss - I'm interested in your comment about the "function" of myth. I would argue that Malinowski's view of myth as a means of navigating social reality and explaining social relations and historical origins does still have partial explanatory power, but I would also agree on your emphasis on the importance of language and narration of myth. I would still say that that is a matter of "function" though - the political or poetic use of myth functions to explain or illuminate a the view of a person (or group of people). In other words, myth functioning as an explanation. Am I mis-reading what you mean?

Alison, yes, "myth as a means of navigating social reality" is beautifully put. Means is maybe slightly different from function; in terms of functionalism, myth is used to explain society; in terms of speech act theory (for example), myth is seen as agency, as performance - as a means to navigate. Myths provide choice and opportunity in a system of meanings; it gives back agency to the speaker, while "function" tends to reduce the speaker to a puppet on a (cultural) string. Does this make sense?

It does, thank you! I wonder if anyone has published analyses of myths using speech act theory? It's an approach I haven't come across before, very interesting!

Thinking about what you've said, I think myth-providing-agency ties in with a book I read some time ago by Bruce Lincoln; he explores how myths have been developed and used by political actors (and which may be of interest to Julio, in fact) - for example, the Nazi development of the Aryan myth as a means of legitimating racial supremacy. Myth in that analysis is important due to its chosen application, rather than its explicit content. Lincoln is an anthropologist I think, so this analysis wasn't developed in a framework of speech act theory (or anything similar) as I recall.  I may spend a happy post-lunch hour googling this!

Politics by definition are based on fabrications, distortions, omissions, and outright lies. So yes, myth-making and politics are one and the same.

Dahrendorf has an answer on this topic. First he is building a theorethical construct to compair a society where the norms are fixed because of the the strong effect of myths ( Amba)with the most modern ( America )He argues that anthropologists rarely ask where the norms come from. In my, simplified  words he just tells that the norms have their origin in myths ( in societies where they are relative constant ), more exactly there are blind spots in explaining where the norms come from. These can be  visualized by the myths.

One can go even further. Modern society and its rules  and norms are based on Myths.

Freud simply explains that our Institutions are an effect from the doings of Ödipus.

Thank you all for your really interesting answers. I agree with most of them. The importance of myth in human life is a fundamental theme and has been studied by many authors that have a profound vision. It is very difficult to present adequately such a theme in so few words. Even though, I want to make a clearer statement about the question.

First of all, I want to say that myth is a live experience and not a static structure. Each person and each society experiences myth, in a very specific way. Either personally or collectively our actions and our imagination are working with myth. In traditional societies, as well as in modern ones, from a personal point of view, we create myths in childhood, in adolescence, and in adulthood: our lives move around them. Jung has demonstrated that.

With human history we have the same: all societies have created their myths and use them in very specific forms, as Joseph Campbell has shown. When I refer to functions, I am speaking of something creative, an experience that is unique, from a personal or an anthropological point of view. Not something static, as Jean Duvignaud has demonstrated when he criticizes Lévi-Strauss. I’m sure that the main focus of psychology and of ethnography should be centered in the particular, the different, the unique and, from there, part to find common patterns, not the other way.

For people who believe, I mean, those who have a deep religious experience, myth is something alive and ever present in their lives.

I agree with Werner and Alison, we, human beings need narratives, as much as we need to breathe and eat. The first human expression of narrative is myth, that’s why language and myth are so deeply interwoven since the beginnings, as Cassirer demonstrated long ago. As Paul Ricoeur has explained, human beings live in time and narratives are the human expression of our experience of time, of life and of action.

The human mind is mythic-poetic, it creates myths as a normal function of our symbolic thinking. That’s one of the reasons there are modern myths, like in literature: Faustus; in cinema: Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; or in science: the Big Bang Theory. In that sense, Rollo May’s book, The Cry for Myth explores the importance of myth in contemporary American life.

Ernst Cassirer, Gilbert Durand, have demonstrated that myth cannot be understood from a pure rational point of view, it is much more complex and has its own logic, which goes beyond rationalist, functionalist and structural explanations. Myth is embedded in the deep mental layers of human mind. That’s why it is so powerful. Mythical patterns use rhythm, sound, phantasy, images to get into those deep layers of the human mind.

You said "The first human expression of narrative is myth, that’s why language and myth are so deeply interwoven since the beginning"

I agree in the correlation "myth-languaje-narrative" but not in the relation of causality, at least in the order you explained:

It seems to me that the human mind, as well as other animal minds, has been developed to adapt the actions of the body to the environment, wich is a sequence of events along the line of time; that is why all our teory of mind is based in histories, that is , sequences of singular memoriced events. This first structure is a condition of posibility for the languaje, that since the very beguining of his existance must have been simple sequencesof narrative as:

"Lion! Run!" (that exists in monkeys (Seyfarth, Chenney 1992), presumably also in early human)

"Hit rock-- get edge" (Suposed comunication for transmision of knowledge, that must have happened at some point in history).

All this "stories" are live, in the sense that they can be told and checked at the same moment. But in the moment these come to be asociated to non present events, when the narrative is about a time line longer than the present conversation, they become instruments of persuasion mediated by the "broken telephon" effect and the intention to get some behaviour from others, that brings up the important concept of lie.

Lie and mith should be analiced as equivalents for political anthropology analisys, and are subsequent narratives of more basic ones as explained up.

What do you think?

Very interresting, Rafael, athough my readings suggest a turning point in political affairs. It is associated to the increasing number of group members. From this point on, wherever this was, i agree in handeling lie and myth as equivalents.

Yes , maybe all is a problem of definitions. When you lie toone individual, youre a lier, when you do with two or more, youre a politician... 

Hello Julio, thanks for a great question!

As a structuralist metaphysician, two points bear witness up front: 1) Structuralism, properly conceived and practiced, can never be 'static', for what is logically static is but descriptive, labeling a categorization from patterns of evidence available. A true structuralist typology is never merely classificatory but rather dynamic and explanatory. Thus the two workers most critical of static notions were Bourdieu and Piaget, both devoted structuralists; 2) parallel to the 'spirit' of law, myth is the 'spirit' of culture; both varieties have dual realities, a formative grounding beneath the surface of normal cognition and phenomenology, and a surface empirical cognizance that is the real expression of the grounding nature. As a natural and logical consequence, myth requires a structural method of analysis if we are to understand how culture is generated and why it expresses as it does.

What is 'social' and what is 'political' are equally cultural and equally created by, and manifesting of, myth. The political side speaks to the organizing characteristics of social life, which in turn reflects norms and values of conduct and interaction. The political myths evolve from and in terms of the social. But because of their importance for the consistency and perpetuation of culture, the political expressions of myth are the best introduction to the social expressions. Thus the myths of law and religion - the primary organizing categories of society - provide the basis for nomenclature to describe the mythic character aback any culture.

We find upon further examination of traditional and modern cultures that norms and values define how law and religion enable and constrain tradition and policy over time. The best available typology is the honor-dignity binary i which the honor-based values of respect, trust and merited worth express in law and religion in a manner as to reflect a primary concern over social cohesion and avoidance of social disruption, features of essentially all traditional cultures.

Modern cultures tend to be (or be in the process of becoming) dignity-based in which values and norms reflect faith, acceptance and inherent worth, leading to a relaxed view of individuals gaining power and authority side by side leadership elements (the Enlightenment philosophy).

This is not to be doctrinaire. Both major cultural types recognize each of the traits of the other; the distinction lies in a drift potential toward one pole or the  other, This is born out in too much empirical data to require burdensome proofs. Both types recognize and respect honor and dignity but conceive of them slightly differently. By nature we humans are by definition born honor-based and we require to proactively rethink natural presumptions in order to pass through to dignity-based notions.

As a consequence of all of this, every jot and title of culture is run through with mythic influence even when we can hardly hope to articulate precisely how myth exerts the power it evidently does. One way that structuralism helps us to get a handle on the mechanism is to attend closely to doctrines that substantiate law and religion. Thus on the dignity-based side just as an example, we have a few legal notions such as, 'a nation of laws, not of men', a reverence for 'due process', a doctrine of 'innocent until proven guilty', and so on. Each of these is a mythic expression par excellence. From these we reverse engineer back to concepts of dignity and honor that make such myths what they are, and these originating elements are then by definition the ultimate mythic substrates for society. 

While this is necessarily brief and truncated, I hope it offers a flavor for the approach, one that very much supports your lead observations. You may read more of these ideas in many of the papers available from my RG page, from titles that will readily identify topics of interest your your study.

Charles

I would like to say, on my behalf, about Rafael García Velasco’s comment: first of all, I am not finding a causal link between language, myth and narrative. My point of view is not a biological one, concerning the steps of human evolution. It is a social and cultural perspective: in social and cultural life there are no laws of causality, it is more complex. We cannot understand culture using the methods of natural science (Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Geertz). Our explanations of historical events occur within an historical and cultural framework of which we are a part. In second place, I refer to modern humans: homo sapiens, specifically to the Upper Paleolithic, a time in which, as Leroi-Gourhan, has discovered, graphic expression and verbal expression are contemporary and interdependent developments of symbolic thought. I´ll rephrase: the first long and structured narratives –in Spanish: metarelatos- that were transmitted by oral tradition were mythical narratives.

I consider different notions of culture. Understanding culture is always something to try. The Framework one is in makes a pure empric approach impossible. But for me Raphaels seqenzation of individual experiences including language, myths and narratives is absolutely compatible to the methods listed above. Culture isn"t  any more linked to " societys", "mankind", etc. Individuals getting more and more in the focus.

Concerning culture Raphael and Julio are very close. Charles is far away from all. He is looking for an universal code. The danger is to put cultures in orders. Therefore it is essential to serperate the attempt to understand from the model of positivistic repräsentation. ( like the above citet authors ) 

This turn of the discussion brings us to a very interesting bridge to cross:

In human life there is always a biological explanation for many cultural events, and a cultural explanation of many biological traits. It is looking with a blind eye to try to explain something about humans discarding one of them.

The complexities of the biological causalities (that can be extraordinarely intricate) are not more or less "complex" than the cultural ones, they just complement each other, usually in a very elegant way. And theories of mind, culture or evolution can and must use both points of view to deserve to be called valid. 

Asking for both biological and cultural causation for biosocial phenomena is essentially like asking for explanations of nature AND nurture, which is now the normative approach in methodology, and thus one that Rafael justifiably supports.

But the moment we entertain such a composite view of causation, whether simultaneously or sequentially, we enter into the world of metaphysics, for to discuss these two avenues presupposes that each bears essential relations at some point(s) with the other. 

The paradigmatic approach first elaborated by Aristotle and recently by Peirce and Whitehead presumes two intercallating binaries. It gives the same graduated continuum of comparative properties as did the old eight-fold I Ching. Given that all of phenomenal reality is the product of two intercallating binaries (north-south poles and positive-negative charges) this simple paradigmatic method has obvious advantages out of the hatch.

Such an approach is also necessarily structuralist, for which the best short introduction is Piaget's book of the same name. What the method does NOT do, nor presuppose, is a universalist vantage. What it DOES do is provide the justifications for generalities when these correctly express a method having achieved identification with empirical analysands.

Admittedly, it isn't the 'done thing to do' for academics these days to resort to metaphysics, but then for such ignorance it is their loss. But being ignorant of relevant methodologies should make one less sure of oneself and more inclined to learn from those who are acquainted with methodological studies.

A new entrant into methodological study is Design Engineering. One of these few scholars who devotes his career to its methodology has taken to citing my papers in methodology. There might just be a reason for this. I won't say who or where since the academic style guide declares that as 'self-advertising', but you can always directly ask me. 

If understanding physics is to 'put the universe in orders' then I guess sound methodology will assuredly put culture 'in orders' as well. But then, that is actually what most scholarship is ultimately about. Putting matters 'in orders' -- in order to better examine and understand them, not as a fait accompli for the sake of mere classification.

Now we agree: for human beings all cultural experiences and productions have a natural basis and all the natural foundations of human life are lived by the means of a cultural approach, historically created and socially shared.

That is a big true fact Julio, but : The distinction "Natural-not natural" is a way of separing the biological from the cultural explanations of a species reality, so its use is not recomended if you really want to go into the two eye vision.

In this sense I would even go further: It seems to me that it is important not only to count on the culture as a "natural" thing, a way of relationship of the individual and the group with the environment; but also to see the culture as a widespread natural trait not exclusive of humans, as Jane goodal stated for chimps, (where by the way the active politics with lies and long term meticulously cultivated factions are a fact).

Is a debate that still has many lines to be written in other species, from worms to cetaceans. I post a very interesting article on the issue by Laland, Kevin N y Janik, Vincent 

When you really get this perspective, the view of the culture is never the same anymore. As an anthropologist and former animal doctor student, I came to fall on this way of approach to the long history of human evolution, and I am engaged in discovering the complicated traits of the human mind departing from the apparently simpler equivalents in the rest of the tree of life, eliminating the frontier of the species. After all, in a strict sense we are all old faraway cousins.

I’m sorry but there is no symbolic though in any species of animals, not even chimpanzees. There is no distinction in animals between the use of signals and the signification relationship existing between signals and signs and the meaning transmitted by their use (Panofsky). There is no possibility of communicating past events or the capability of organizing, symbolically, events in terms of time: past, present, future. No capability of planning future events and no capability of transmitting acquired knowledge by the means of any sign system. Culture is only a human phenomenon, yes; definitely there has been a qualitative leap in evolution. It is totally misleading to think that any species of animals has culture. Culture is a complex articulation of symbolic systems (Geertz; Lévi-Strauss) that is unique to the human species: homo sapiens.

Julio,

but what if the separation of humans from animals, of nature from culture is just a myth of modernity? What about the myriads of mythical animals instructing humans in myths? And what about the human - non-human nexus as researched by Donna Haraway (companion species) or Anna Tsing (complex non-human social organizations)? Neither nature nor culture, but a lot of traffic in-between -:)

I would like to remind all, though, of a fundamental, in my opinion, principle concerning myths. That, in simple words, every myth has a historical root, in other words it derived from a real event. Of course, the difficulty is to identify and study that event -- certainly historical studies could be very helpful.

Hi Andreas

Your 'fundamental' point is correct but only in regards of the limitation you yourself mention, namely, the historical roots. Rather, it should have been accepted as a limitation but it wasn't, because your view of myth is entirely too narrow. 

I don't mean to seem harsh, but just consider what you have actually said to us here. The most we may credit your report is to state a truism: myth can only but *interpret* history for recording and passing on the lessons received. So far so good. Cosmology myths not infrequently have this grounding. The Biblical floods most probably have this provenance (and similar floods in other scriptures).

But do you seriously mean to indicate that this is ALL there is to myth? Really?

Myth expresses through culture: dance, pictorial and other metaphors upon reality, pedagogical modalities, proverbs and saws and more. These many categories recall to mind a familiar refrain from the peanut galleries: whatever is mythic is false because artistically (or otherwise) falsified. This used to be the view more than just for colloquial expressions.

Anthropologist began in the last century redefining matters toward what is today a foregone conclusion: myth takes a form that outlines an ideal that reality will rarely attain to. It is from this modern view that ideas like 'due process' are not mere policy statements but are in fact mythic, for these go to the ideals of a culture, and we know from even current experience how little of it is achievable in reality.

The myth that delivers the lesson of honor need not rely on history, but if history offers a model, so be it, as in Greek examples from Homeric times and before. Religion offers doctrines that myth expresses which are nonetheless difficult to locate in any historical cause-effect association. And why should it? What religion stresses beyond cosmology is ethics and transformations from bad to good dispositions which are universal rather than historical, or are in some sense historical only because universal.

If your point was that we should give more room in academe to the study of the historical roots of myth, I can only express shock that you would in this event presume that all these other areas are comparatively better comprehended when clearly the very reverse is the case!

If I have miscomprehended your effort, forgive me, but correct me by stating yourself so that I can read you without misreading. With respect and regards,

Charles

Werner´s point of departure is quite interesting, and  a crítical point for this discussion, because the focus of human researches interested in human life is mediated by the unavoidable fact that both are from the same species.

The Anthropology method shows a few about trying to break-of every part of your nature that makes you a biased observer of your target society, and if you talk about all-human-kind-applicable categories you have to literaly break-of being human:

I give you an example: 

"Non human animals have been observed rearing consciounsly a creature of their own (conscious of not being their offspring) (  Lion, Sebastien et. al. Life History, Habitat Saturation, and the Evolution of Fecundity and Survival. Evolution. Vol 64 No 6 (2010)) and also inter species adoption is frequent" (Hollan, Jennifer. Unlikely friendships, 2011). This is a behavior that would be considered a complex, symbolic and of course "cultural matter" (that would not even be in doubt) if we where talking about the different customs about infant abandon or sale, customary in South west asia in comparisson with north american demand on ill child adoptions.

But if we see it from an animal point of view we would find this particular human behaviour as just one, among mutch others in the animal world, of the very same kind. 

This is why I think that human categorization of culture cannot be used to figure out if humans and other species share it, (in the same way that an intelligence test for harvard applicant students would not be valid on a Nuer village investigation) but instead, we need to depart from a very triky to find definition of culture that is valid to clasify us all.

There is no barriers among species, we are just products of more or less time since the last time whe were the same biological design.

 you follow this path? Is there a definition of culture that reliably responds to this premises? Im interested in your view of that.

Suppose, Rafael, that we label 'bio-social' those behaviors that are influenced, whether coterminous or sequential, with both instinctual and consciously self-aware volitional grounds. Let us also agree that these two prongs are 'paradigmatic', meaning that they coexist through varying degrees of relative expression that imply two things: 1) that there are never instances in which either is entirely absent, and 2) that in reality what we actually observe will very frequently be asymmetrical expressions such that the predominating expression so overpowers the other that we phenomenologically observe only the one here, the other there (ie different circumstances.

In short, then, we allow that the very definition of an instinct presupposes the actual or potential utilization by the individual in/for social interactions, but where claims of self-awareness of the social adaptivity would clearly be teleological, even granted the first principle above-stated.

Now biologists and ethologists may well dispute the specifics and implications of my introductory conditionals, but they are introduced as extremities to illustrate a point in the use of words to designate given behaviors, with the caveat that a philosopher typically must deal with both, that is, with the modality and the word usage issues thus generated. The conditionals open up a way of utilizing words more appropriately for avoiding misapplications and the inferences taken, wrongly, from such uses.

One of the ubiquitous risks of misuse of words comes when a metaphorical extension of a word leads to an inappropriate attribution of qualities in both the original and extended idea. And please don't accuse me of flying high on my petards, because it happens to be some in my own peer group who are the worst offenders, as when it is claimed that the universe is 'conscious' merely because we can empirically assert reactivity and similar properties. We define the term by the distinction between sleep and wakefulness, and a metaphor that escapes entirely from this point of departure is apt to be a false application and risks false attributions.

The parallel in the present instance is the extension of culture as a human understands the concept, to other species. How far are we allowing a metaphor depart from the human reference? It is a germane question and need not raise the issue of why we grant the human the referent vantage. We invented the word, so let's give the humans a little room here, please.

At issue is the distinction between self-awareness of an activity as bringing some influence upon a conspecific, versus one that is self-aware merely of the activity as a select and demarcated affair, meaning it bears particular conscious status. Thus otters, bears and other tool-using animals consciously aware that their behavior has a (teaching) influence on conspecifics, versus behavior such as dances or chemotaxic releases that, however influencing the social unit, are hardly 'self-aware'.

We cannot reasonably qualify the latter as an element of 'culture' and the former may qualify as the furthers possible extension, whereat we use the term 'cultural' rather than 'culture' to indicate the metaphoric status rather than grant the full meaning of the term as the referent would take it.

That leaves us with behaviors that might possibly warrant the full measure of the term 'culture'. These best I can do here is to cite, as an example of the least effective, but effective all the same, entrant into full 'culture', namely the use of wounded animals as fodder for the exercise of the play instinct into that of the kill instinct as with cats Lorenz and Leyhausen, 1973). Despite the preponderance of the instinctual element, I feel there is sufficient self-awareness going on of the purposefulness of education in rearing to qualify this as a genuine artifact of a 'culture', and not merely a 'cultural artifact'. The distinction is small but really rather vital all the same. Being derived from metaphysical postulates I believe we can reasonably avoid the 'word-splitting' pejoratives.

When we get to chimps and whales there is evidently far more, even abundant, evidence for full culture. Another way of stating the problems involved comes from another category that qualifies words by a reference of self-awareness, that stickly but ubiquitous matter of 'racism'. Many liberals have taken to allowing the term to cover much of what used to be (and still is professionally, as by the Dict. of Contin, Philos.) as prejudice, defining racism, as with prejudice by the facts on the ground distinct from the self-awareness in the thought process culminating in the use of the term. Even as cogent a thinker as Barzun made this mistake in his own book-length discussion of racism, by that title.

We simply cannot, as scholars, treat words merely as tools, but rather as modalities that take on accountability in their consequences, beyond the brute communication. Thus to apply consciousness to the universe, however seemingly innocent, is hardly innocent in what its use teaches imitators to tolerate. It is, as some might say, an example of the 'slippery slope'. The same matter attends the over-extended metaphorical use of 'racism' to those unaware of the use and effect even when affiliated with a group that in fact empirically achieves discrimination that happens, unwittingly to bear disproportionately on a racial component.

Thus the term 'institutional racism' threatens to label whole groups as racist who had no awareness of an issue, prejudicial or otherwise. The locution, as it is, nonetheless has relevance and communicates a special note, BUT only if the caveat is put up front that no intent is being made to assert self-awareness. Many technical uses do or risk falling into one degree or another of this sort of problem, where 'culture' is a very frequent offender.

Thus to say or imply that what are predominantly instinctual behaviors of cross-species adoption are matters of 'culture' has no warrant in this methodology of nomenclature. I would not even allow them in the quasi 'cultural' framework, though this is a personal opinion given that I am not a professional ethologist but rather a metaphysician who as such must necessarily be critically mindful of these distinctions in every single detail of his work.

Rafael: I agree with Charles. Categories should be used precisely. That’s the only possibility that enables us to describe the events we study with certain precision; either in natural or in social sciences we render our knowledge by the means of language. In science, as in any other field of human activity (art, religion, etc.) we are not relating with reality itself, but only through the linguistic or symbolic (image in the visual arts) translation we produce. The mental image has to be transformed into a socially accepted system of codification (language), so it can be understood and communicated. As Gadamer puts it: the linguistic character of our experience, precedes everything that can be recognized, named and treated as an entity. Or as Cassirer demonstrates: we cannot relate directly with the world, but only by the means of language, myth, religion, art, science. This is what culture is: and we, modern human beings, are the only ones who have culture. Using the concept to describe activities and neurobiological processes of other animal species is an exaggeration of the metaphoric qualities, meanings and limits of the concept: culture. You are walking over the line that separates science from New Age beliefs and the boundaries are blurring. This is the last answer I’ll give about this specific aspect of the discussion, there’s no point in going further in your kind of argumentation.

Ok, sorry. Would you just for a general purpose and to end this spin-off the discussion: dare to give a reliable definition of culture please?

What I will be suggesting at the Tenth Whitehead Conference in June runs pretty much as follows.

"Culture is the totality of acts and usages that suggest or reveal to a current or future audience what the actor(s) believe constitutes a meaningful expression of, or addition to, a shared heritage with respect to one or more constituent traditions."

Analytic overview:

1) "Culture is the collective totality of acts and usages..."

By "collective totality" is meant a full accounting more than a record of acts and usages, the latter suggesting a confirmed tradition of stipulated processes, whereas what is cultural can be novel and not necessarily on that account an accepted element of any given tradition.

By "acts and usages" is meant is meant the exclusive collected acts, motions or behaviors that would lead an audience to infer a cultural usage. "Exclusive" means in that context what proceeds *between* motivation and the result of the process (in metaphysics, however, process, as Peirce, Whitehead, myself and others might prefer to say, includes all of the above, an inclusive term). Usage, in distinction to acts, implies a common theme or motivation and a commonly accepted view that such express or adds to, the fabric of culture. The inclusion of both is technically advisable if only because an act can portend or prefigure culture at a time when an audience might not realize it as such.

2) "...that suggest or reveal to a current or future audience..."

What is commonly accepted as relevant to culture is largely what is 'suggested' to/by an audience; what is commonly taken as significant to a culture is what an audience might 'reveal'. The distinction between current and future audiences is again required by the understanding that acts can be culture by an all-wise observer prior to common acceptance as such.

3) "...what the actor(s) believe constitutes a meaningful expression of, or addition to..."

Any social referent of critique or assessment presumes self-awareness of the actors that what they do has relevance and/or significance to their place in society and the influence upon that society for what they do. As such we presume 'meaning' that expresses or otherwise contributes to that culture.

As with so-called 'contributions to knowledge' by scholars, a record or assessment of culture may, if it persuades a significant contingent to a belief-reliance posture regarding the content of culture, present both as an expression of, as well as addition to, culture. Thus the Enlightenment was a cultural reality pretty much out of the hatch if only because the philosophs expressed self-awareness of the relevance and significance to culture of their aggregate contributions, while the evident opposition of status-quo elements confirmed that relevance and would at length reveal its significance.

Most academics like to think of every publishes article as a 'contribution', which is an unfortunate usage because few of those ever rise to a true contribution but stand rather as contributions of effort and motivation only.

4 "... a shared heritage with respect to one or more constituent traditions."

In metaphysical methodology, convoluted or involved words and concepts require to be evaluated in terms of a community of congeners usually termed 'synonyms. Thus were we to attempt a formal definition of 'authority' we would ask, for example, what three terms would together sufficiently characterize the meaning such that fewer terms would be clearly insufficient and more terms evidently superfluous? That definiiton, in the correct archetypal recursive paradigm, would reveal the following: Will (Peircean firstness), Power (Secondess) and Obligation (thirdness).

This offers a DYNAMIC typological reference frame that afford perfectly remarkable accuracy and nuance. In the matter of culture, we identify a society of actors (firstness), Customs (secondness, defined as self-aware motivations of meaningful behavior influencing others), and 'tradition' at thirdness. Culture is thus the fourthness amalgam of these elements.

Culture thus presupposes one or more traditions, each of which presupposes wide acceptance of the cultural relevance-significance of such usages.

This cannot be claimed as a be-all or end-all explication but is a reasonable step toward that goal for being grounded in the best available analytic methodology available (for the few who are aware of it, which is but a handful given that the philosophical community from which this methodology arose has not bothered itself to communicate this to other disciplines, nor even to demonstrate an awareness of its vitality and merits to its own membership. Sounds like something is wrong in River City).

May I take this opportunity to show a scholar's appreciation for Rafael's service to scholarship in rendering a perfect expression of professionalism and stewardship. The future could prove him right for all any of us know, but he was swayed to a reasonable doubt in portions of his thought that were perhaps relegated to a back burner, giving expressed consent to a current agreement of select opinion. It is a rare and welcome sight, good sir. I hope to sit at your feet but fear I may not always be up to the task.

Charles,

great contribution, thanks! Here just some considerations that maybe are already covered by your definition:

Where is the difference between "culture" and "cultures"; who is the one to identify what belongs to this or that culture; "customs" and "traditions" are first and foremost political terms used to mark claims - symbolic or territorial - over land and people (in anthropology they are used with great caution - see the "invented tradition" discussion, for example). And finally, who is the one to identify what belongs to a culture and what does not belong? Also a highly politically question that easily lead to conflict (see discussion about heritage). Myths often contain these incredible tensions and are used to handle them - for whatever purposes.

Well, these are just some questions that "spontaneously" come to my mind (maybe a typical anthropological reflex). Are they covered / answered by your philosophical definition? Or do they not fit at all the purpose of the debate here?

Thank you Werner

Were I a college instructor I should give ten pulled fingernails for a student with your scholarly skepticism born of evident learning and judicious temperament. :)

Let me address your points in order presented:

As to "culture" v. "cultures": since cultures are defined by the acts and usages of the people(s) concerned, the distinctions between cultures begin with the distinctions in the peoples themselves, and to possess a culture, as with a trait, is to largely define oneself from others. People have a natural disposition to define themselves culturally from, for example, outsiders. How many traditional groups named themselves eponymously with words denoting their status as against barbarians, i.e., outsiders?

Any definition states at a minimum what it is uniquely that is defined, which is to say, what it uniquely is, in the sense for example that a fingerprint is unique. And this must effectively convey at least tacitly what the 'in-itself" trait is in contradistinction to others by that consideration out of the definition domain. What I offered for the "in itself" uniqueness is the self-awareness of acts having become for reasons of relevance to society some one or more usages in custom, generalized often though not necessarily into tradition, implying a bedrock heritage.

When it comes to identifying one culture as against another, a definition must acknowledge a degree of flexibility that definition is normally not accustomed to grant, for for reasons that are not only reasonable but indeed obvious. For people are people, no? We expect a great degree of overlap. But what we also expect is that people in groups do, as experience and professional study attest, develop, typically unwittingly, usages that by common observation from outsiders as well as insiders, are distinct and so comparatively different. Thus little need be said in a definition of culture about the distinctions from other cultures v. from "not-culture"

The part of this question dealing with agency and purpose in definition pretty much follows from what has been said, with a wrinkle or two. As we are speaking of what is self-aware, a significant group or subgroup within a society will be on its way to defining for itself a culture in the act of doing what this self-awareness implies if social influence and a likelihood of durability therein. But as outsiders are also self-aware of their own culture, how can they not become aware of klikenesses and dissimilarities in others?

The self-aware component thus presupposes a capability of memberships in and between cultures to make reasonable assessments that may in hands of those specially gifted in a talent for such, an actual and agreed upon definition. It need not really matter who elaborates as long as the facts are in order, Were this not the case, how cold we give any weight whatever to 'conventional wisdom' on the one hand, or to scholarly judgment on the other? In typological matters of a metaphysical provenance, this 'conventional and skilled' subset is covered in Peirce's Thirdness, otherwise labeled "Interpretant", which nicely reflects the intent.

"Culture" and "Traditions" as branding devices of political origin: This is a chimera and deserves to be settled in a manner that commits the notion to the dustbins of poor, shoddy and disabused scholarship. It is "Orientalism" at its worst. It is much ado by scholars wanting to cut a figure. And it is entirely too common in academe. It is embarrassing, it causes consternation, encourages confabulation of unrelated ideas and confusion among similar ideas most in need of critical distinctions. I would tell you what I really think but outside of these pages...

I am uncomfortable having to say that the truth is so simple as to make a crusading venture so over-the-top efforts to bend words to private agendas. But the basic issue, Werner, is this, and please do not bother me with what "authority" said this or that. They can debate me in public and see who is who. This is a matter of fundamentals, fundamentals being principles NOT to be screwed with at least not without supreme evidence in support. Culture and tradition as I have described them are pretty much as every culture and tradition has thought of themselves even when incapable of fine articulation that philosophy is instructed to provide (and which gives rise to the saw that a philosopher only restates what is already known - a little simplistic, but which reflects the point).

As to the one or more qualified to say what does or does not belong to this or that culture, I hope that the answer has become evident in what precedes. It is not a matter of, "How dare an outsider remark on what is ours!" - a very uncharitabl;e honor-based disposition of the us v. them frame of mind, but rather of a dignity-based impartial, ethical understanding and acceptance that people can observe for themselves, and both people and professionals can compare and collect mutual observations and reach an agreement. After all, what professionals suggest must find the people as the ultimate arbiters. 

Your question reminds me somewhat of folks who elect to make a words serve their ideological mindset. When I suggest that they consult a dictionary, they chirp back innocently (but mendaciously) that the definition is just the opinion of dullard academics, etc. When I offer the observation that the dictionary is credible not because who complied them but because who compiled them did it scholarly, as a collection of received, observed, and statistically verifiable, field work, in short, a record of peoples' usage habits. my interlocutors just get all the madder with me, at which point I inform them my opinion of fools and remind them that further evidence of such will not be graced by my presence.

When you are right and dealing with nonsense you must be strict, direct and forceful or you lose the respect of the honor-based cohort. Or, when honor-based war is made with the dignity-based, the dignity-based are as apt to feel guilty at fighting fire with fire, and so are their own worst enemies in battle. Revel (How Democracies Perish) said precisely the same of American responses to Soviet incursions throughout the Cold War era (not that we were angelic).

If this all sounds terribly nasty and unacceptable in civil dialogue I recommend the several Supreme Court decisions upholding a National Labor Relations ruling that a shop steward need not be civil in defending the employee to management. What would ordinarily stand as insubordination is recognized by the Court as often necessary to get the concentration of those unaccustomed to concerning themselves over lower minions.

Ditto here, and it is the fact that the university style guide all but forbids such an approach that a few ego-driven scholars find it easy to reinvent wheels and words free of accountability. That needs to end. I at least have no stomach for it. I want the truth, preferably analytically derived, and that is all I want, but that includes the element of offence that most truths are likely to cause some members of the audience. Thus the stewardship admonition that truth not be delivered from the working end of a shotgun. Apart from that, the academic allergy to giving offense has led to whole categories of truth being left in the dark. Not good. Not acceptable. Not scholarly. Not philosophically valid. Not professional. Tell us what you really, think, Mr. Herrman!

And that is what I really think.

And I really thank you, Werner.

Charles, now I know what you think. Thanks!

Humor (but not glibness) is one of the universal solvents. I try to maintain it even despite irony and satire and it appears you do as well. I only hope that I reasonably stated the matters well enough that you can rearticulate them for yourself to your profit. Otherwise I risk having been bombastic as much or more than instructive. Three cheers for anthropology, sociology and political science (oh, and a tad respect for metaphysics)!.

There are a couple of classical good books:

Clifford Geertz, The interpretation of cultures, Basic Books, New York, 1973, and those following: Local Knowledge (1983) and Available Light (2000).

Terry Eagleton, The Idea of culture, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 2000.

Eagleton presents a lot of definitions.

My latest book: Comunicación y cultura will be published in march. It will be available at: www.libros.unam

Best,

Julio

Thanks Mr. Herrman, I didn´t expected such a display of explanations.

With your permission, I copy this definition and its analytic overview, in the hope it will help me to blaze my trail through the delicate ( and sometimes not well understood, even by myself) knowledge fields I am trying to explore.

Best wishes to all!

Thank you Rafael, I am pleased to offer this to anyone who may find it helpful. Again, it does not claim to be the ultimate but does reasonably well illustrate a methodological approach to a definition of a difficult word. For your benefit in particular, note that my use of the term 'actor(s)' applies to animals as well wherever the criteria fit.

In addition to the sources offered by Julio, non-anthro majors/professionals might also find interesting the views of Marvin Harris (Cultural Materialism) and Leslie White (Concept of Culture). 

I want also to add something to what I wrote in response to the excellent talking points offered by Werner. I refer in particular to his locution - "customs" and "traditions" are first and foremost political terms used to mark claims - symbolic or territorial - over land and people -- which I interpreted to mean (on a literal rendering) the application of words like 'culture' to carry implications or agendas or prejudices that do not properly belong to the word, for "culture" is of itself categorically apolitical, amoral, and etc. To turn it into the service of agendas is thus taboo as I fervently indicated above.

By the same token, however, this does NOT mean that we cannot speak of politics and culture in the same breath, the same sentence. In point of fact, we should, for armed with an adequate conception of culture we really do require to better comprehend how our politics reflect culture and how they can modify the same. Ditto with religion. And in doing these things we also require a methodology fit for the discussions, and that would be the honor-dignity binary.

It was long a disapproved practice for anthropologists to enter the moral, religious or political arenas that interlarded the cultures they studied, probably on the thesis that, as just mentioned, culture is innocent to agendas for it but describes traits and qualities of fact sets. But it came to be, all the same, that progressive folks did enter the fray, hoping to learn more about how agendas and cultures interact, and what factors would offer the chance for better outcomes versus worse outcomes.

This bridges the difference with sociology but does not on that account render the effort meaningless or outlandish. Indeed, I would claim it must be a modality in all cultural investigation. The real ethical limits are transgressed when the conclusions are not funneled through correct channels when efforts are made to educate governments as to profitable ways to deal with their cultures.

An earlier (1991) but excellent introduction to the general topic is the edited collection of articles by Bret Williams (The Politics of Culture).

I didn’t mean to be rude, though, I know when a line of argumentation comes to a dead end. I think it’s time to meditate about our ideas. And, yes, we should never lose our sense of humor.

Our main theme was myth and during 25,000 years animals must have been, by far, the main source of inspiration for myth; the marvelous Upper Paleolithic art is the best argument. And, as Leroi-Gourham and other more recent authors as D. Bruce Dikson (1990) and Víctor M. Fernández Martínez (2007) put it: it is quite probable that those images are the visual manifestation of a complex religious system; an idea with which I fully agree.

Animal symbolism has its deep roots in hunter-gatherer traditions. Early modern humans lived in a world dominated by animals and, in many cases, contemporary hunting-gathering societies inhabiting secluded wild environments have the same experience. Animals are admired for their physical abilities, superior in many ways to those of the human species. They can run faster, they are stronger than men; they are dangerous, their weapons are part of their bodies, they are more efficient hunters than humans. Others are vital to human beings, because they represent the main source of their diet, or their physical characteristics and abilities are easy to be associated with spiritual or supernatural properties, like that of the eagles that can fly very high and are able to see everything that occurs below.

Being mythic imagination an innate property of the human mind, most of the animal powers and capabilities have been attributed to a supernatural cause that occurred in in the original mythical time, when gods gave form to everything. In this sense, animal symbolism has traditionally been a substantial part of mythologies, all over the world.

The discovery and generalization of agriculture, though it changed the social structure and the central symbolism of mythology towards the plant’s growing cycle symbolism, it did not rule out animal symbolism from their mythic traditions. Domesticated or wild, animals were still –as it is right now- a fundamental part of human life. Their symbolic function changed and became associated, in many cases, with fertility or natural factors directly influential in agriculture, like water, rain, sun, earth and the origin of seeds. Animal symbolism can be, thus, linked to one or several of these factors. For example, snakes can be associated to earth, rain, thunder and lightning in the mythologies of Mesoamerica, northwestern Mexico and the Southwest; deer to fertility and to the origin of maize, frogs, toads, tadpoles and turtles to water sources and rain; sea snails to fertility and rain.

Animal symbolism is still essential to religion, in Christianism the Holy Spirit is represented as a dove; a cow and a donkey gave their warmth to the newborn Jesus; in Islam, the Prophet Mahomed was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem by the means of a heavenly animal, the Bourak, sent by the Archangel Gabriel. Hinduism is full of episodes and references to mythical animals.

We share the world with millions of species animals and plants. But we are the worst predator. We have devastated the world ecology. We do not need a new mythology, as much as we need to save the blue planet!

Best,

Julio

Well said, Julio, thanks.

Charles: I should be the one to thank you for all the attention you have given to the question and for the profound ideas you have contributed to enlighten it. We still have many things to share.

Best,

Julio