The importance of cultural context

There is a myth in the world that important things can be studied in the abstract. For example, there is a prevalent myth in the scientific world that scientific subjects like physics or mathematics or molecular biology can be studied in a “pure” form, unaffected by culture. The field of economics has been laboring for decades to build complex models that largely ignore culture. Our foreign policy in recent years has been pursued largely in ignorance of cultural effects.

I would argue that no human endeavor is free of cultural effects, not even pure science. Culture has significant effects in steering scientific research toward some areas and away from others – science is as driven by fads and prejudices and dominant “schools” of thought as any other human activity. Religion is certainly all about culture. And politics is all about culture, as is economics, which is why we are having such difficulty in exporting our political and economic systems to some other parts of the world.

Of course cultures are not synonymous with nationalities or ethnic groups. Families have unique cultures. Companies and corporations have unique cultures. Religions have unique cultures. All sorts of human groupings – teams, play groups, bridge clubs, army platoons, etc. – have cultural aspects. Newcomers to these groups have to learn “the way things are done” before they are fully accepted and integrated. Any married couple knows that the two sides of the family have cultural differences – for example a story that might be funny to one side of the family may be offensive to the other side, and woe betide the couple that doesn’t learn this quickly.

Indeed, I expect that most of the difficulties in cross-religion and cross-nationality marriages come from differing cultural expectations – on the proper roles of men and women, on the way to raise children, on the manner in which money is handled, on the acceptable ways to express closeness or anger, and thousands of other cultural aspects, most of them unspoken and even invisible to those within the culture – its just “the way things are done”.

So my argument is that the study of culture is fundamental to the study of just about anything else, and an awareness of these important cultural influences is central to understanding just about anything that matters, from science to economics to religion to politics to history to literature. To ignore the cultural influences that shape these enterprises is to miss the most important driving and shaping forces.