What is Culture - Warren

Name of author, name of essay/chapter reporting on: Michael Warren, What is Culture?

Your articulation of their thesis (i.e. in your own words):

Warren expresses his frustration with the overuse of the word “culture” and sets out to detail the history of the word and the most accurate description of it possible. He starts by stressing the importance of seeing culture as something ever-changing and continuously growing, not as a finished product, and also emphasizes how hard it is to clearly define separations between two cultures due to the confusion over what really defines any single culture. In turn, he emphasizes the fact that culture is created by people and the things that people create – likewise, it affects all of us, forming us as much as we form it. It affects judgments that we see as “personal,” even when we’ve only made them because of what society tells us is the right decision.

Before delving into the history of “culture,” Warren makes it clear that culture is directly tied to the ideas of society and economy – they all work together to shape each other and evolve alongside the others. Then he analyzes the history of the word culture itself and how it grew from meaning simply the growth and tending of crops and animals to include the growth and tending of human faculties – Warren encourages us to think of culture as a work of human hands, and to ask what humans are at work (and why) when we hear the word “culture.” Warren continues through the evolution of culture – at different times, it means “civilization,” “refined,” “nature,” and finally, “the individual” and inner, spiritual development.

Finally, Warren gives us a definition of culture (the one that he uses): “the signifying system through which a social order is communicated, reproduces, experienced and explored.” He helps us to look at this complexly by saying that although it is a signifying order, that order is shaped by how it signifies things – if a mostly-consumerist society’s culture is very advertisement-heavy, that may leak over into politics and economics.

At least three links (websites, blogs, articles, music) or images that illustrate the ideas of the article:

1. While I was reading this excerpt by Warren, all I could think of was the culture of celebrities today. They manufacture their own culture, of wealth and power and freedom, but their culture bonds with society to manufacture them, to tell them that they can have all the freedom, wealth, and power that they want with no consequences. This often leads to abuse of that, because the culture today in Hollywood is so accepting of bad behavior, almost seeming to encourage it and reward it, with scandalous news stories getting much more attention than news of, say, charity sponsorships do. One such case recently of celebrity culture getting to someone’s head is what Billy Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day did yesterday – he had a meltdown onstage, screaming at the management of the venue Green Day was playing at before storming offstage. He has since sought treatment for substance abuse. This is such a good example of how celebrity culture and society affects people – most typical 40-year-olds are not abusing drugs or treating other people with so much contempt that they stop whatever they are doing because of a perceived slight and pitch a hissy fit. 
2. What Warren said about the origins of the word “culture” and all the different meanings it has held was absolutely fascinating to me, and what he said about how when we hear the word “culture” we should think “What humans’ hands are at work here, how, why?” I immediately thought of cultured pearls. Cultured pearls, according to Wikipedia, are pearls created by a pearl farmer under controlled conditions. In other words, they are man-made, hand-made pearls. I really like the idea of culture as a pearl – beautiful, and it would have come into being anyway, but with a little help from humans, it can be made extra beautiful. Of course, this analogy doesn’t exactly work out – culture is just as broken as the rest of our existence – but I still like to think of it like that. 
3. When Warren gave an example of how society, economics, and culture can all work together and affect each other by mentioning how America's consumerist society can spread to politics, I was reminded immediately of political ads such as this one. It's not so much the content of this short video, but the way it is made - it's essentially trying to sell Romney to the viewer. It picks one positive issue about Romney to focus on, just as a car ad would pick the fast acceleration or admirable safety rating of its newest SUV. It throws in gratuitous shots of Romeny with his family, Romney out being "the people's man" - even when it has nothing to do with the issue being addressed. This ad exists because our culture has grown and expanded to include our society's obsession with advertising and consuming, precisely as Warren says.

At least two discussion questions that will help your reader develop the ideas of the article (i.e., keep us talking):

1. Have you noticed any “cultures” in your day-to-day life that you think probably don’t fit the definition that Warren gives us? If so, what are they, and why don’t they fit?
2. If all cultures are affected by economics and society, and all cultures are created by people, then why aren’t all cultures completely different or completely the same? Aren’t we all people? Don’t we all live in societies and use the same basic rules of economics? Or maybe since every person is different, every culture is totally unique in every way?