Don’t tell me it’s culture

I’m really wary about using culture to explain social phenomena.

It’s not because I don’t believe there are social norms, or trends, or identities. There are. They exist, and have huge influences on how individuals and collectives act.

But it’s because “culture” has a much more permanent connotation than the other terms I’ve listed. Norms change every few decades. Trends every few years. Even identities are starting to be recognized as being fluid.

Culture, though? Always, unchanging, eternal fall back for an explanation when none other rational one will do.

Chinese people are conformists, Tanzanians lazy, Canadians not aggressive enough. Or Chinese hard working, Africans “happy” (what does that even mean?), Canadians multicultural.

Does that make sense? First, how can an entire nation of people have one characteristic? We scoff when horoscopes tell us an Aquarius is friendly. We listen with polite disinterest when we’re told people born in a certain year are bold and arrogant. Yet, we clap our hands and agree when we’re told that 1 billion Indians are naturally good at math.

More importantly, we treat culture as an explanation for socio-economic development. Africans deserve to be poor because they are lazy. South East Asians spend their day sitting around and chatting and dancing, no wonder their economy won’t develop (offended? how is this sentence different than the previous one?). If China’s economy weren’t growing so quickly, people would still be saying that it’s because the Chinese are so “uncultured.”

What we treat as culture in developed countries actually came about because of economic growth and development.

One of my favourite stories is from “Bad Samaritans” by Ha-Joon Chang: the first American and European explorers to visit Japan wrote in their diaries that the Japanese are lazy and always late. They did not know how to work properly and didn’t seem to care about learning. This was Japan 100-200 years ago (I forgot the exact date). Surprised?

Or sounds familiar? Virtually all the people in developing countries are described in the same way in current mainstream Western discourse.

Culture changes. People change. People especially change according to the opportunities and demands placed on them from their external environment. If working hard meant I can have an opportunity for a better life, anybody, regardless of your skin colour, will work hard. If the social welfare system or labour laws in my country are so good that I don’t have to work very hard and worry too much about unemployment, of course I’m going to seem more laid back. Sure, culture and societal consensus at various points in time build institutions. But those institutions sustain cultures also.

Personally, if I have to fall back on culture as an explanation, I can’t help but feel a bit lazy with my thinking.

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Currently reading: “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. The blog is good (although sometimes I find their arguments a bit biased), the book even better.