culture unbond.pdf

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Introduction: political uses and abuses of the culture concept

The key concept of culture has recently been undergoing critical reassessment, and in

some cases replacement, by cultural theorists in a number of fields. In anthropology,

for example, there are some who describe themselves as postculturalists, who are

troubled by the use of cultural relativism to defend abhorrent practices. As Shweder

(2000, page 162) says, ` they think the word culture' is used in bad faith to defend

authoritarian social arrangements and to allow despots to literally get away with

murder.'' Benhabib (2002) cites many examples of courts in the USA taking intoconsideration cultural pluralism in issues such as the definition of rape, justifications

for murder, and the rights of men to control their families in ways that contravene their

wives' and children's rights as citizens. She points to successful cases of what has been

termed cultural defence', in criminal cases often involving the protection of family

honour, prompting the question ``is multiculturalism bad for women?'' Some geogra-

phers have also expressed concern. Nash (2003, page 638) describes the major challenge

to cultural geographers as one of critical engagement with the definition of cultural

difference because ``the notion of respect for cultural difference can be recruited to

reactionary projects and ideas of multiculturalism can be deployed in racist ways in theservice of neo-liberalism.'' Abu-Lughod (1991) and Shurmer-Smith (2002, page 3) have

argued that the concept of culture is too elusive and all encompassing to be of use and

that it can be politically dangerous.

The problem, we will argue, is not inherent in all concepts of culture but in the specific

political uses to which particular concepts of culture have been put. Furthermore, we

believe that to abandon and replace the concept of culture would be irresponsible,

especially now as the idea of culture is increasingly deployed in a wide range of academic

fields that had previously ignored or slighted the cultural dimensions of their research. As

the boundaries between abstract notions of culture and other abstract concepts suchas nature, the economy, and politics become unsettled, now, perhaps more than ever,

culture needs to be rethought. More importantly, it is necessary to reconsider the idea

of culture because it is increasingly mobilised by political leaders, international funding

Culture unbound

James S Duncan, Nancy G DuncanDepartment of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN,England; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] 19 February 2003; in revised form 30 October 2003

Environment and Planning A 2004, volume 36, pages 391 ^ 403

Abstract. The key concept of culture has recently been undergoing critical reassessment, and in somecases replacement, by cultural theorists in a number of fields. Some commentators have argued thatthe concept of culture is too elusive and all encompassing to be of use and that it can be politicallydangerous. We will argue instead that the problem is not inherent in all concepts of culture, but in thespecific political uses to which particular concepts of culture have been put. We think there is a needto rethink the concept of culture. In fact, cultural coherence in the face of heterogeneity and porousboundaries, complexity, and complicity across far-reaching networks are some of the most challengingand intriguing issues in cultural theory today. Thus we explore alternative conceptions of culture thatmight hold some promise for cultural geography. Our view is that no one conception holds theanswer. Rather, cultural geographers need to develop a critically eclectic mix of culture theories and

allow sufficient time for these to be empirically grounded.

DOI:10.1068/a3654
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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organisations, journalists, judges, managers in business, policy advisors, and others, in

what Eagleton (2000) called `culture wars'wars that depend on culturalist explanations

and justifications. The concept of culture is increasingly mobilised in struggles againstwhat is seen as the globalisation of Western cultures. Empowering movements of cultural

self-consciousness and the fashioning of locally or regionally based cultural identities have

become politically significant in many places (Radcliffe, 2003). Sahlins (2000, page 197)

says, ` For ages people have been speaking culture without knowing itthey were just

living it. Yet now it has become an objectified valueand the object too of a life and

death struggle.'' Just as the concept of culture is becoming embattled within traditionally

cultural fields, the term is increasingly used, often uncritically, in other fields and outside

academia.

Culturalist explanations and proposals for the promotion of cultural change whichposit such dangerously simplistic concepts as `development-prone' and `development-

resistant cultures' (Harrison, 2000) are increasingly deployed by government agencies in

many countries, NGOs, and various international development organisations including

the World Bank and US Agency for International Development. The ideas that cultural

factors are responsible for poverty and that political policies can change cultures

have been popularised by Putnam (1993), Fukuyama (1992; 1995), and Harrison

and Huntington (2000). Although heavily criticised by academics, such ethnocentric and

neoliberal theories as social capital, cultural developmentalism, cultures of poverty,

and the moral superiority of the West are gaining a wide readership outside of theacademy.

Conflicts over citizenship, rights of noncitizens, rights to cultural difference, and

integration of immigrants rage in the USA and Europe (Hansen and Weil, 1999).

Nationalist, anti-immigrant movements and assimilationist regimes in Europe increas-

ingly base their arguments on culture-based conceptions of citizenship (Feldblum,

1999). The concept of culture is mobilised not only in various movements for cultural

rights and recognition and in cultural defence in US, Canadian, Swiss, and other

courts (Benhabib, 2002), but also in public debates over the neutrality of the state

concerning cultural and religious practices. This was exemplified in the `foulard affair'in 1989 in France, in which the government was criticised for choosing to defend

Muslim girls' rights not to wear religious clothing. The government's argument was

that Muslim culture was patriarchical (see Benhabib, 2002, pages 94 ^ 100; Feldblum,

1999, pages 129 ^ 145). Among the most extreme political abuses of the concept of

culture is, of course, ethnic cleansing, in which ethnic groups claim essentialised or

allegedly primordial cultures that are linked to territory. There can be no doubt that

the idea of culture is `intensely relevant' in the world of today (Eagleton, 2000) or, as

Benhabib (2002, page 1) puts it, the idea of culture is an arena of surprisingly intense

political controversy.Given that the concept of culture pervades popular, official, and academic explana-

tion today, cultural theorists need to rework the concept rather than avoid it. Replacing

it will not make it go away. Placing the term in scare quotes, as is often done

(Abu-Lughod, 1991; Clifford, 1986; Shurmer-Smith, 2002) signals an unconfronted

ambivalence and merely displaces problems onto other concepts. Shurmer-Smith

(2002) says culture is not a thing; she prefers to use the concept in its adjectival

form. We sympathise with the idea that culture is often a modifying variable, an aspect

(the cultural dimension) of another phenomenon; however, we reject any implication of

a static ontology in which reality is made up only of discrete, internally homogeneoussubstances. Abstract ideas, meanings, and intangible processes of meaning-making are

just as real as material things. They interact with and through objects, becoming

material culture. We assume Shurmer-Smith would agree with this, and therefore

392 J S Duncan, N G Duncan


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Culture refers to loosely structured clusters of practices based on values and meanings that

are shared, but also contested. These practices are interrelated and can produce sometimes

wide-ranging or long-term effects. Cultures are emergent and collective, but only looselycoordinated and internally fractured. They involve a multitude of human actions guided in

a very broad, general sense by the (sometimes enabling, sometimes oppressive) presence of

the past in the form of institutions, rules and regulations, the built environment, structured

inequalities, structures of power, accepted ways of acting, interpreting, and challenging

these ways of relating (see Harre and Bhaskar, 2001). In short, the definition of culture

should be, and should remain, broad and empirically unspecified.

Some theorists worry that the idea of culture (especially discrete cultures) implies

holism, homogeneity, and totalisation. But we want to stress the point that there is no

reason to assume that cultures are the sort of entities that are clearly bounded orhomogeneous. Rather than worrying overly about the concept of culture implying clear

boundaries, homogeneity, stability, or closure, we reject the idea that any of these qualities

are necessary to the notion of culture or cultures. What is important to understand

empirically is how cultural stabilities and unities are produced out of complexity and

conflict. We want to know how people in the wider world conceive of the coherence of

cultures, of belonging to cultures, of the imagined relation of cultures to territories, and to

learn more about the sociopolitical constitution of boundedness. Why are cultures as

exclusionary forces desired, imagined, and practised in the face of internal heterogeneity,

and despite porous, shifting boundaries and strong transcultural connections?Uneasiness with the idea of homogeneous, essentialised cultures has led to sugges-

tions for the replacement of the concept with others such as ideology, hegemony,

discourse, habitus, and governmentality (Abu-Lughod, 1991; Barnett, 2001; Bennett,

1998; Bourdieu, 1977; Mitchell, 1995). All of these are valuable concepts. However, it

may be more useful to see these as included within a wider concept of culture. Theories

and concepts do not give substantive answers to questions. There is no substitute for

empirical research. Therefore, concepts need to be sufficiently general and open-ended

to allow one to investigate them empirically. This may be especially true of complex,

unbounded, and internally heterogeneous phenomena such as cultures. Furthermore, ifcultural theorists hope to intervene in culture wars then it would be useful if there was

a similarity in scope between the terms used and those employed in the wider world

that need to be clarified or challenged.

Barnett (2001), following Bennett (1998), has suggested that the concept of culture be

reconceptualised through Foucault's (1978) notion of governmentality, discipline, and tech-

nologies of the self. Citing Bennett's definition of culture as cultural policy, forms of

regulation, and the inculcation of values and beliefs by state agencies and civil institutions

such as schools, he replaces more expansive notions of culture with the idea of culture as a

set of practices that are involved in managing and regulating social conduct in the interestsof liberal government. According to this view, culture is `inherently governmental', as

opposed to what Barnett (2001, page 19) calls ``its historic conceptualization as a realm

beyond state control''. Barnett, again following Bennett, believes that defining culture

instrumentally in terms of governmentality avoids difficult questions of social psychology.

But is this an advantage? Such questions, it would seem, are too important to avoid.

In his recent book on culture and democracy, Barnett (2003) focuses on radio,

television, and other media technologies as paradigmatic forms through which culture

is deployed. His analysis of the media is extremely useful in answering the kinds of

questions we raise here about mediation and diffuse responsibility when it comes to theissue of how cultures are maintained as coherent and distinguishable. Although he

describes these media as multiple, dispersed, and less-tightly regulating technologies

for cultural inculcation than schools and other state institutions, his view of culture is



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nevertheless still highly instrumental and narrow in defining culture purely in political

terms. Although we agree that culture is not a realm separate from politics or the

economy [on these inherent interconnections see Gibson-Graham (1996) and Ray andSayer (1999)], we see no reason to restrict the definition of culture to government

manipulation, publicly mediated channels of debate, or even self-regulation technologies

(Barnett, 2001, page 12). Again, there is much of value in the notion of governmentality,

but there should be no need for such a limited, instrumental definition of culture that

would equate the two.

The same is true of Mitchell's (1995) notion of culture as ideology. Either it is

unnecessarily reductive or, on the other hand, if he intends to stretch ideology to

include everything normally thought of as culture then such an expanded definition

of ideology would be overly instrumental or functionalist. Clearly not all aspects of aculture serve dominant interests. (Who or what logic could ensure this?) Some aspects

of cultures are clearly opposed to dominant interests; others are relatively neutral in

political terms. The same goes for hegemony, a useful concept clearly but one which

can never encompass all of culture.

The exhaustive and mutually exclusive distinction often drawn between culture and

nature implies a definition of culture that has been shown to be untenable by social

and natural scientists and philosophers of science. Examples in geography include

Anderson (2001), Braun and Castree (2001), and Whatmore (2002). Braun and Castree

(2001, page xi) state, ``There has been a veritable explosion of geographical researchthat seeks to denaturalize nature.'' They point out that this literature moves the debate

beyond asking what culture does to nature, asking instead, ` Who constructs what

kinds of nature(s) to what ends and with what social and ecological effects?'' (page xi).

There are almost daily reports of new reproductive technologies and the material

reconstitution of nature at the atomic level by a proliferation of new, genetically

modified organisms. Furthermore, as Anderson (1997) points out in her discussion of

the history of domestication, such genetic modification is not an entirely new phenom-

enon. Marxist formulations of work, surplus value, and second nature (see Smith, 1990)

have long argued that nature is social. These destabilisations are joined by more recentwork that further unsettles the conventional culture/nature distinction, including

Haraway's (1991; 1997) cyborgs, Latour's (1987; 1999) heterogeneous networks of human

and nonhuman actants, hybrids, and quasi-objects, Whatmore's (1999) ` fluid socio-

material networkings'', and Wilson's (1998) work on neural geographies, in which it is

argued that culture is embodied. At one time many geographers had thought that these

issues were of concern only to those working within the border zone between human

culture and nature. But thanks to authors such as those mentioned above, it is increas-

ingly clear that this border zone is everywhere. Any refinements on the notion of culture

should thus acknowledge the hybridity of culture/nature.

Toward a theory of cultural complexity

Like Shurmer-Smith, Mitchell (1995, page 104) says that culture is not a thing; it has no

ontological status. But he goes on to say that the idea of culture has been deployed by

social actors ``as a means of attempting to order, control and define `others'''. In saying

this, however, we believe he in fact grants culture an ontological status. Elsewhere he

says that culture, which he places in quotations marks, is never a thing, ` but it is rather a

struggled-over set of social relations, structures shot through with structures of power,

structures of dominance and subordination'' (2000, page xv). We agree that culture existsin large part because people sharing ideas, beliefs, and values, acting on these in asso-

ciation with other people and phenomena in the world, and believing they `have' a culture,

bring it into existence through their collective practices and taken for granted assumptions.

Culture unbound 395


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Although we think that there is far more to culture than people believing they have a

culture or using the idea of culture to order and control others, we are basically in

agreement with Mitchell that cultures are relational, contested, and sometimes deployedby being defined in dangerously essentialist terms.

Through their practices and (more and less structured, more or less contested)

sociopolitical, economic relations, people realise or create culture as a set of sedi-

mented practices. Culture is an unintended but relatively coherent and continuous

outcome, and condition, of collective action. As Brightman (1995, page 519) says:

` it may be argued that people exhibit qualitatively distinguishable constellations of

cultural forms, identifiable zones of sameness and difference. Coextensive distribu-

tions of traits or elements thus specify cultures and boundaries between them. ... In

each case, intracultural sameness and intercultural difference exceed intraculturaldifference and intercultural sameness, and this becomes the justification for

discriminating discrete cultures.''

It is this cultural coherence as it is recognised by people who produce it through their

practices as well as by academics and other cultural commentators that we wish to focus

on here, while fully acknowledging the inherent fluidity, heterogeneity, complexity, and

fragmentation of cultures.

Benhabib (2002) proposes a normative model of democracy which permits max-

imum cultural contestation within the public sphere. She bases her ideas on what she

sees as the contested nature of culture. Without commenting here on the possibility ofher ideal model of democracy (given what we see as the difficulty of overcoming

structural dimensions of power), we will, nevertheless, argue that the concept of culture

which underlies her model captures the inherent instability of cultures. She thinks of

cultures as ``complex human practices of signification and representation of organiza-

tion and attribution which are inherently riven by conflicting narratives.'' She further

states (2002, page ix):

` Cultures are formed through complex dialogues with other cultures. In most

cultures that have attained some degree of internal differentiation, the dialogue

with the other(s) is internal rather than extrinsic to the culture itself.''By rejecting the idea of pure cultures, she believes that cultural explanations can be

critical and subversive rather than merely conservative of traditional values. Given her goal

of cultural inclusion and the expansion of democratic dialogue, she sees hybridisation,

boundary crossing, blurring, and shifting as well as continuity and distinctiveness as

central features of cultures. Although her valorisation of heterogeneity and hybridity is

politically motivated and we agree with her position on this, it is coherence, separateness,

and distinctiveness as central features of cultures that we believe need to be empirically

investigated in order to understand the mobilisation of culture and culturalist explanation

in political practice.

Explaining the coherence of cultures: a network approach

In our quest for a sufficiently complex, internally heterogeneous notion of cultural coher-

ence, we are attracted to the idea of a nonlinear-network approach to cultural complexity

that decentres human actors. Plant (1996, page 214), for example, writes:

` Cultures are parallel-distributed processes, functioning without some transcendent

guide or the governing role of their agencies. There is no privileged scale: global and

molecular cultures act through the middle ground of states, societies, members

and things. There is nothing exclusively human about it: cultures emerge fromcomplex interactions of media, organisms, weather patterns, ecosystems, thought

patterns, cities, discourses, fashions, populations, brains, markets, dance nights,

and bacterial exchanges ... you live in cultures and cultures live in you.''



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Cultures not only are heterogeneous networks, but they would appear also to fit the

scientific description of complex phenomena (Byrne, 1998). Cultural phenomena are

complex in the sense that nonlinear (interacting) cultural variables are nonadditive,contingent, and emergent. The relation among the factors changes their causal properties.

Bifurcation in the sense of small changes producing new trajectories and therefore often

vastly different, unpredictable outcomes is a pervasive characteristic of cultures. Unlike

most other nonindividualistic theories that we find useful (for example, symbolic inter-

actionism and structuration theory), complexity theory introduces the idea that individuals

or singular events can cause major changes in the course of the history of a society.

Descriptions are thus more about trajectories than about states; structure, stability, and

networks of power are understood as contingent processes and open-ended projects.

In reference to the relation between events and continuity, Thrift (2000, page 217)makes the point that ``Events must take place within networks of power which have

been constructed precisely to ensure iterability.'' We agree, although we would prefer to

leave both intentions and unintended outcomes of interaction effects open to empirical

investigation in any particular case. Couldry (2000, page 93) argues that complexity

theory is of limited use in social science analysis unless one is able to employ enormous

data sets and powerful computers. However, even smaller scale qualitative research

and theorisation may benefit from being situated within the framework of complexity

theory. Metatheoretical frameworks need not be tailored to, or restricted by, the

expertise of individual researchers. This is similar to the idea that it is inappropriateto overemphasise the autonomy of human agency simply because one's research is

principally ethnographic, or, for that matter, to overemphasise the influence of cultural

or economic factors simply because one happens to be a cultural theorist or an economist.

The complexity and spatial scale of transnational cultures is such that social scientists

might best see their research as contributing to larger, wide-ranging research projects,

intersecting increasingly with biological and environmental sciences as well. Collaborative

research will undoubtedly become a growing trend in social and cultural research. This is

not to say that everyone should work in research teams, but it is productive to seek out

connections between one's own research projects and those of others in methodologicallyand intellectually distant corners of the academy.

Cultures can be thought of in terms of processes and flows, or as webs or networks

of human and nonhuman interaction. If change, process, fluidity, heterogeneity, and

transformation are our basic starting ontological assumptions then what becomes

remarkable are those things that are relatively stable and coherent such as organisa-

tions and institutions that become entrenched over time and which generally hold their

shape and content through time and across space. These are what need to be explained.

How is coherence accomplished? Of course, assuming that cultures are always chang-

ing does not mean that we know how to articulate this dynamism. Our challenge isthus to explain how structuring as a dynamic happens. Cultural geographers need

methods to study and words to describe how fluid and heterogeneous phenomena

such as cultures achieve and maintain recognisable degrees of coherence over time

and across space without legitimising their exclusivity.

Sewell (1999, page 47) points out that the idea of culture as a system of meaning is

often opposed to the notion of culture as a set of practices. The blame for this, he

argues, can be laid primarily at the door of symbolic-system proponents such as

Parsons and his student Geertz, who select symbols with high degrees of coherence

and generalise from these, thereby producing synchronic types of analysis that system-atically underplay fragmentation, eschew the diachronic, and downplay process (Geertz,

1973; Parsons, 1949). Sewell (page 47), however, argues that system and practice are not

antithetical. He sees culture as having:

Culture unbound 397


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` no existence apart from the succession of practices that instantiate, reproduce, or

transform it ... .The important theoretical question is not whether culture should be

conceptualised as practice or system of symbols and meanings, but how to concep-tualise the articulation of system and practice. Although culture exists only in and

through practices, it retains a systemic quality. Although people may interpret

and use cultural symbols differently, they understand that it is only through collective

meanings, generalisation of values, including collective oppositions that thingsget done.''

The issue of stability and coherence over space is an interesting problem that

also clearly needs to be addressed from a geographical point of view. In this regard,

Thrift (2000) is attracted to actor-network theory for its greater emphasis on spatial

distribution. In his analysis of circuits of power, Clegg (1988, page 241) says:

`the stabilization and fixing of rules of meaning and membership, and techniques ofproduction and discipline, in an organization field which is capable of extensive

reproduction over space and time are the central issues.''

The question of continuity over space and how it is achieved despite the inherent

unboundedness and historical dynamism of cultures is a key issue in the quest to under-

stand the coherence of cultures. The world history of migration of people, goods, and ideas

around the globe, transculturation and the increasing strength of transnational networks

which contribute to the instability of the spatial dynamics of cultures, and the internal

heterogeneity of even the most spatially isolated cultures are the background upon which

any theory of cultural stability and coherence must be set. It would be useful to introducemore spatial complexity and spatial dynamism into the study of culture in terms of

countering popular associations of culture with territorythe sacred blood ^ culture ^

nation-state nexus. Actor-network theory, with its objective of tracing complex alliances

and entanglements across space and through time, may provide a useful framework.

In searching for ways to bring practices into a relational perspective, Whatmore

(1999; 2002) draws upon the work of Latour (1993), Serres (Serres and Latour, 1995),

and others on actor-network theory as well as on Thrift's (1996) formulation of

nonrepresentational theory to argue for an expansion of the notion of agency and

the reconceptualisation of the relation between human intentionality and agency orjoint action. Whatmore (1999, page 26) describes agency as ` a relational achievement,

involving the creative presence of organic beings, technological devices and discursive

codes, as well as people, in the fabric of everyday living.'' She decentres the analysis of

agency from the human, offering what she terms a `materialist semiotics' with the

capacity, as she puts it:

` to extend the register of semiotics beyond its traditional concern with signification as

linguistic ordering, to all kinds of ... `message bearers' and material processes of

inscription, such as technical devices, instruments and graphics, and bodily capacities,

habits and skills.''Although network theory has appeal, there are certain problems that have been

encountered by those who have attempted to employ it. These have been acknowledged

in a recent issue of Society and Space entitled `After networks'' (Hetherington and

Law, 2000). The writers, including Whatmore and Thorne (2000) and Thrift (2000),

share the view that the flat metaphor of networks has trouble showing differential

positioning and inequalities in terms of structured access to resources. We would

perhaps go further to say that, although chaotic, deterritorialised, nonlinear, non-

hierarchical theories may be attractive normatively and may even tell us something

fundamental about the essential dynamism of the world, they should be seen as onlybeginning points. We must go on to ask about how all this flux gets shaped. It is like

acknowledging that everyone is utterly unique. At one level this is true. Radical alterity

has logical appeal, as do strong versions of antifoundationalism, but these are



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ultimately paralysing perspectives. It is more useful to us in our academic research to

know about specificity rather than singularity. It is more helpful to explore similarities

and differences that do not take the singular human being as a unit of analysis. Theidea is to understand more thoroughly how structuring and stabilising happens so that

one can illuminate structured inequality, exclusion, spatial unevenness, differential

access, and hierarchy. We acknowledge that power is diffuse (or rhizomatic), but

we are interested, given this, in explaining how centres of power nevertheless get

established. Latour's centres of calculation, which are so very geographical in their

implications, do not appear to have been explored as systematically by geographers

as one might expect.

It is widely accepted that meaning is central to the definition of culture. The

challenge raised by actor-network theory is how to retain this focus on meaning whilebroadening the concept of agency to include the nonhuman. Answers may lie in the

way that culture as meaning is produced out of human and nonhuman associations

and relations. We take a central insight of materialist semiotics that objects participate

in meaning-making as transporters in ever-extending networks, even though they do

not do so through intentionality.

Sewell's model of cultures as systems of understanding, but not of agreement or

shared values, goes some way towards conceptualising cultures as structured, yet in no

way homogeneous. Unfortunately, he has relatively little to say about how such a

system works. Hannerz (1992) offers some direction in this regard. First, he arguesthat contemporary cultures are not characterised by broadly shared meanings, but by

structured difference. He sees cultures as having three interrelated dimensions. The

first he calls ``ideas and modes of thought''. These he sees as the entire array of ideas

and ways of thinking which people in a social group carry together. He does not imply,

however, that these are shared, simply that cultural meanings are more or less avail-

able. The second he calls ``forms of externalisation''. These are the various ways that

meaning is made public through institutions of various sorts and the media. The third

is ``social distribution'', the ways in which the collective cultural inventory of meanings

and external forms is spread over a population.The point is that any individual will have easy access only to some meanings

circulating in society. As Bourdieu (1977) has said of cultural capital, some of these

meanings are objectified in cultural productions, institutionalised or embodied in other

individual humans who practice and perform these cultural meanings. Hannerz (1992,

page 44) says, ``contemporary complex societies systematically build non-sharing into

their cultures.'' Cultural coherence is possible because institutions such as the media

externalise certain meanings massively, circulating them widely throughout a culture.

This creates asymmetries as some meanings are more widely available than others. Not

only do different groups in society have different resources to externalise meanings, butalso, as Couldry (2000, page 102) points out, spatial separation of groups within society

reduces situations where mutual incomprehensibility would become obvious. He con-

cludes, ``Cultural ordereven when it seems to be presentcarries with it a hidden

degree of differentiation and disorder, which is spatially reproduced and spatially

disguised.'' Culture as systems of meaning always instantiated in practices becomes

located institutionally, incorporated in bodies and objects, and embedded into networks

that are geographically located and distributed. These systems of meaning are located as

concentrations or constellations where networks are densely interconnected. Cultural

meanings are deployed strategically to exclude, both internally and, as Hannerzexplains, externally. The very idea of having and sharing culture, of course, reinforces

these processes that create the constellations of meanings which people think of as

`my culture', `your culture'.

Culture unbound 399


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Embodiment of culture

The issue of the embodiment of culture and subjectivities has been hinted at in our

discussion of nonrepresentational theory and complexity. Brains and other biologicalprocesses which are mentioned above in Plant's (1996) description of decentred, non-

linear networks are important components of a complex theory of culture. Connolly

(2002) makes the point that embodiment of cultures at the level of brains is not fully

appreciated in most culture theory because of overintellectualist understandings of

thought. Just as cultural theory does not usually include a consideration of embodi-

ment, (but see Geurts, 2002), much of the large and growing literature on the body

does not address the age old mind ^ body question. The philosophical literature

that does is really about the brain rather than about the body as a whole. Authors

such as Connolly (2002) and Wilson (1998) make an effective case for looking atneuroscience to understand all the complex interrelations between the brain, the whole

body, and culture. Clearly, phenomena such as affective memory (some scientists

speak of an emotional brain) and visceral-level reactions are both biological and

cultural.

Biological substrates of emotions involve many organs and biological processes,

including the endocrines and other glands, neurochemical processes, muscle responses,

skin conductivity, the cortex, amygdala, cerebral blood flows, and autonomic nervous-

system patterns. They include not just the brain, but other bodily systems with complex

individual histories of constitutive connections to the physical and cultural environ-ment outside the body. There is a kind of `layering in' of culture, as Connolly (2002)

puts it. The natural/cultural processes by which this `layering in' actually happens are

becoming clearer and clearer as neuropsychological research advances. This research is

beginning to explore the idea that this `layering in' is unstable and mobile within the

brain. Re-remembering is being shown to be even more creative and productive (and

social) than previous models of stored memories had suggested. If one takes as an

example the production of gender, it might be possible to see how an empirical under-

standing of the combining (and recombining) of cultural and physiological processes

will help to denaturalise gender, showing how it is neither socially constructed nornatural, but is truly a product of culture/nature.

Emotions, such as long-term attachments to particular places (for example, ideas of

home and belonging or patriotism) or specific emotional events (for example, responses

to sudden displacement resulting from forced migration), have bodily manifestations

that are translated through culturally imbued affective systems. This cultural translation

process is creative, performative, social, and relational in character. It includes cultural

explanations (such as Freudian interpretation, which underpins much of Western

popular psychology) that produce rationalisations and justifications that can arise

only in specific cultural and historical contexts, ones in which small differences inscientific thinking have produced huge cultural effects.

The `cultural turn' in geography and other social sciences has been charged

over and over again with overemphasising the `discursive' while neglecting the mate-

rial or nonrepresentational. However, as these dimensions are not mutually exclusive,

they are most profitably considered in their reciprocal formation. If we are truly

to take materiality seriously then we must overcome polarising constructions

and explore the mutually constitutive intersections between the affective, cognitive,

psychological, neurophysiological, biochemical, cultural, political, nonhuman, and

partly human.



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Conclusion

We have suggested in this paper that there is a need for a theory of culture that

explains how powerful centres, exclusionary structures, and cultural coherence areformed out of flux. An important goal for cultural geography might be to work towards

a theory of culture that allows one to trace complicity across complex cultural/natural

networks and to explore further the moral implications of such a nonindividualistic

theory of agency (Kutz, 2000). The challenge will be to document how people share

responsibility through heterogeneous networks of organised, structured relations, insti-

tutions, and other resources and to see how joint responsibility comes with joint action.

This, we realise, will require a lot of empirical research.

Most people, in effect, hide within untraceable networks, whereas more publicly

visible actors are often scapegoated. Of course, because of structural hierarchy, somepowerful individuals can avail themselves of structures in ways such that they are more

likely than others to have a truly significant impact on a course of events. These actors

may or may not be publicly visible. It is a tricky business to assign responsibility,

especially diffuse, mediated, decentred responsibility. On the other hand, as complexity

theory posits, sometimes small differences, such as actions on the part of seemingly

uninfluential as well as more obviously powerful individuals and institutions within

networks composed of human and nonhuman elements can be responsible for large-

scale outcomes (the proverbial straws that break the backs of camels, and butterflies

that change weather patterns).In this paper we have suggested that any definition of culture should be sufficiently

broad to compete with more essentialistic and deterministic models that are increasingly

being mobilised by political leaders, managers, journalists, judges, policy advisors, and

policymakers and by academics in fields that have begun to employ a notion of culture

only recently. In reflecting upon the future of cultural geography, we hope to see more

consideration of the complicity across complexly (contingently) structured networks,

not flat but multidimensional networks with centres where power is jointly accom-

plished. Once the individual and intentionality have been decentred, we hope that

cultural geographers will be able to begin to explain from this changed perspectivehow centring happens, how cultures become coherent, how cultures are imagined and

practiced, and how powerful institutions and individuals participate in the shaping of

cultures. We have pointed toward alternative conceptions of culture that might hold

some promise, believing that no one conception holds the answer. Rather, we believe

there is a need to develop a very broad ` pluralistic epistemology'' (Thrift, 2000,

page 221), a critically eclectic mix of grounded culture theories developed through

long-term, in-depth collaborative empirical study.

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