ARCHIVE ENTRY DATE: #1 August 23, 20011
TOPIC: What is Culture – What is my culture?
TITLE: (be sure to NAME the OBJECT or ITEM you describe):
A Minnesotan Abroad
SOURCE:
Personal observation and experience
RELATION TO TEXT: RR p. 5 culture as meaning, cultural “differences”
COMMENTARY:
If cultures have “differences” (RR p.5) you simply have to have a collection of “distinctions,” or different features that can be compared. This should be easy; as an anthropologist I have spent a lot of time living “elsewhere” – mostly in China, where I have worked and lived for many years (on and off totally about eight out of the past thirty years). This may be a professional habit, but I usually think of myself as “different” - an outsider - even when I can easily be classed as an insider. In China, for example, over the past ten years I have been working at the same institutions, going to the same conferences with the same people, and doing the same sort of work, so that other people think of me as an “expert” to consult about everything from how to hire Chinese university students to where to send your kids to school. At the same time, I am always firmly rooted in the idea of being an outsider working in China. In California, even though I’ve been here since 1998, people often comment, joke, and sometimes complain about my “different” Midwestern ways – especially when I am silent, ironic, too practical, too frugal, fuss-averse. I think, then, that my culture must be more specific than “American.” I think I am “Minnesotan.” What defines a Minnesotan? No, I don’t do the “Fargo” accent, but I used to call that fizzy stuff in a can “pop.” Here are a few more features I would acknowledge: hard-working, no-fuss farmer’s daughter type secretly awed and amazed by the city lights, the mountains, and a glimpse of the ocean (not admitting that you are thrilled about these things is definitely part of the gig). I like snow and hot sun in equal measure, and I can calmly handle tornados and weather forty degrees below zero. I was startled upon my first encounter with fresh garlic at nineteen (how embarrassing!), the avocado at twenty. I catch myself imagining that I am the original “plain vanilla,” simple and boring, while the world out there is everything I want to learn - complex and exotic. “Minnesotan abroad” suggests a parallel with Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, and from that you may know that I mean to present my assumptions about myself and the world with a good dose of self-mockery – after all, I am an academic, too, and we academics are a very self-critical crew! But if I have to pick a “culture” to which I belong, I’ll pick the “place” where I grew up, where I go “home” sometimes for Christmas or family reunions, even though I am a guest when I go there.
September 16 Note
It would be interesting to write a related entry using the concept of political anatomy to discuss the Minneapolis "skyways," the indoor up in the air "sidewalks" that have become legendary for their alternate neighborhood status. They are also, of course, an important installation to promote consumption. Here is an introduction:
http://www.minneapolis.org/page/skyways-minneapolis.jsp
provided by Meet Minneapolis, and organization "contracted by the City of Minneapolis to sell the city and its surrounding areas as a convention site and visitor destination."
September 16 Note
It would be interesting to write a related entry using the concept of political anatomy to discuss the Minneapolis "skyways," the indoor up in the air "sidewalks" that have become legendary for their alternate neighborhood status. They are also, of course, an important installation to promote consumption. Here is an introduction:
http://www.minneapolis.org/page/skyways-minneapolis.jsp
provided by Meet Minneapolis, and organization "contracted by the City of Minneapolis to sell the city and its surrounding areas as a convention site and visitor destination."
