Collegium Notes on “Culture”

The focus of “The Collegium” is on the concept and issue of “Culture.” A brief history of the academic concern for the term “culture” is in order. According to the Encyclopedia we have at our London program (but which title I neglected to write down) “the scientific use of the term was established by Sir E.B.Tylor in the late 19th Century. The concept of culture has proved so useful that it has spread to the other social sciences, to the humanities, and to the biological sciences.” I particularly like this quotation because it suggests that the term culture can be useful to students from virtually any of our majors as we undertake this course in “Culture.”

Our first course concern about Culture recognizes the particular importance of the Pepperdine University Mission. Pepperdine “does not profess to be a church or a religious body, but recognizes its role as an educational institution, albeit one with a distinctive and unique heritage and mission.” This course focuses first on the relationship of Christianity and Culture. T.S. Eliot argues that “if Christianity goes, the whole of culture goes.” Eliot also says that “we should recognize our relationship and mutual dependence upon each other.” Although this is an inquiry based class, there is strong reason to believe that Christians and non-Christians alike will gain respect for the formative influence of Christianity.

Our second course concern is about “Cultural Literacy.” E.D. Hirsch, Jr., author of a book by that title, has defined culture as, “the sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted though language, material objects, ritual, institutions, and art, from one generation to the next.” Hirsch goes on to say that “Culture also refers to refined music, art, and literature; one who is well versed in these subjects is considered “cultured”. Sociologist and anthropologist Jon Johnston identifies the subject areas that are ordinarily considered as a part of culture as: social organization; religion; political structures; economic organization; material culture. Milton Singer has some criticism of such a list adding, “even Tylor, whose theory of culture has so often been criticized for being too intellectualistic, left room in his omnibus concept, and in his writings, not only for science and language, but also for all ‘arts of life,’ ‘the arts of pleasure,’ religion, all forms of social organization, history, and mythology, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

These definitions and considerations indicate the far ranging subjects that might be considered in our study of Culture. We will be particularly concerned about what educated people in our culture are presumed to know. We will also be particularly interested in the distinction between “high culture” and “popular culture.”

With regard to the distinction between high culture and popular culture we will want our students considering the following characterizations of the presumed differences: Do you agree...

--with Browne that the “accomplishments of mass art are less than those of ‘higher’ forms?
--with Chambers that popular culture is more visceral and less abstract?
--with Chambers that popular culture is “not appropriated through the apparatus of contemplation, but...through ‘distracted reception?’”
--with Gans that “higher cultures may be better than the lower ones because they may be able to provide greater and perhaps more lasting aesthetic gratification”?
--with Gans that “the higher cultures may also be more comprehensive; because their publics are better educated, these cultures can cover more spheres of life and encompass more ideas and symbols”?
--with Gans “that if people seek aesthetic gratification and that if their cultural choices express their own values and taste standards, they are equally valid and desirable whether the culture is high or low”?
--with the Frankfurt School that popular culture is an example of “cultural decay”?
--with the Popular Culture Studies that popular culture is a “breakthrough of the voice of the common man”?
--with Fluck that popular culture reflects the “experiences of its recipients” although it may have “many narrow and deforming limits”?

Thus the second course emphasis is primarily concerned with “what educated people know” and secondarily the relationship of high culture and popular culture. The third course concern is about the “Two Cultures.” Christopher Lucas describes the issue in his history of education. Lucas argues,

In all probability it was the publication of C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in 1960 that inaugurated the current phase of a controversy going back to the ancient Greeks. In Two Cultures he argued that the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century was a sort of technological coup d’etat which marked the beginning of the rise of applied science and wrought a cultural revolution. In its aftermath, according to Snow, Western culture has become increasingly polarized between proponents of the humanities, which deal with human nature, and advocates of the sciences and technology, which deal with physical nature. The antagonism between scientists and literary humanists has allegedly grown to the point where they share no common ground, where “a gulf of mutual incomprehension” encourages each party to retreat into intellectual provincialism and a contented specialization...There is ample reason to believe that such a simple dichotomy between two kinds of education is misleading, but it represents a very old distinction, dating back at least as far as Aristotle. The fourth major course concern is about the relationship of “Multi-cultural Literacy” and Culture. For example, in their book, Multi-Cultural Literacy, Rick Simonson and Scott Walker react to the Hirsch book cited above. They say, We do take issue with Hirsch’s...definitions of what (or whose) culture should be taught. We are alarmed by the number of people who are so enthusiastically in agreement with the Hirsch/Bloom argument for educational reform that they fail to discern its overridingly static, and so shallow, definition of culture. They go on to say, “Much of the Hirsch/Bloom world view is outdated...America’s historians have enjoyed thinking of the country as a melting pot into which all ethnic populations thoroughly mixed. This may have been a faulty notion in the first place, and it is certainly no longer true.” Their book includes their own list of what they think literate Americans should know.

There are certainly countless profitable ways of studying Culture. But there certainly is a rationale for our choices. In our setting as a Christian University we will consider the truthfulness of Eliot’s arguments about the relationship of Christianity and the aspects of Culture that we are able to consider with each of our course experiences. Recognizing the role of universities to conserve knowledge, we will look at the issue of what literate Americans should know, and the relationship of high culture and popular culture. Given that we are a university course inquiring about culture, we will consider the major thesis about university cultures, that there is a dichotomy between the arts and sciences. That a university has a role in creating new knowledge, and in being self critical, we will consider the issues of pluralism and multi-cultural literacy as both a reality check on biases and for cultural enrichment.

These four issues will be brought up each semester that The Collegium is taught. The first time a student takes The Collegium the readings, discussion group discussions, and assignments will emphasize the Eliot essay; the second time a student takes The Collegium the readings, discussion group discussions, and assignments will emphasize the Hirsch book and the issue of high and popular culture; the third time a student takes The Collegium the readings, discussion group discussions, and assignments will emphasize the C.P. Snow book and the two cultures; the fourth and final time a student may take the course the readings, discussion group discussions, and assignments will emphasize the issue of multi-cultural literacy.

My final thought is that while I am hopeful that in all its manifestations and under all its professors, that the general influence will be that we find ourselves somehow more “cultured,” I am reminded of Aristotle’s dictum that we study virtue, not so much to understand it, but rather to become more virtuous.

michael d. gose