LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
4.4 Misunderstanding of Culture
and now survive either as historical memories or as undigested elements in dominant culture (WilliamsI980: 10).
When the term or word culture is used broadly. it encompasses more or less the whole of human life. When objectified. it refers to the area or aspect of human life highlighted by the adjective. The term business culture, drug culture. moral culture, political culture.
academic culture, religious culture or essential culture refer to the body of beliefs and practices regulating a specific group of people. including the ways in which these are conceptualized. demarcated. structured and regulated. Such terms as gay. youth. mass.
and working class culture refer to the ways in which other people understand particular groups of human beings. their place in the society in which they belong. and the manner in which the group itself regulates its internal and external relations. Folk or popular culture refers to the beliefs and practices of ordinary men and women or to culture as it is actually lived. High culture refers to the great creative achievement of the talented minds of society (Bhikhu 200: 143).
Afrocentric approach. In Church circles. African people also feel that Christianity is used to marginalize their cultures and cultural practices. They actually feel that their cultural practices are being demonized in the name of the Christian faith simply because they do not march to the "Western way"' of doing things. Hence. the need of contextual theology in the Christian circles at large. Contextual theology is a theology that will meet and reach different people as they are and where they are with the same gospel of Christ. It is a theology that will answer the people's questions in their specific culture.
The debate is confusing to many because of its many sides. So many voices are heard: so many confident, but diverse assertions about culture and its importance are being made;
so many issues that bewilder and cause unce11ainty amongst many people are raised. This also applies to the Christian Church in South Africa.
In the Church. it is helpful to remember. as was highlighted in the discussion above. that the challenge between the Christian faith and culture is by no means a new issue. [t is helpful also to recall that the repeated struggle of Christianity with the issue or challenge of culture have yielded no single answer. but only a series of answers which. together with faith. represent phases of the strategy of the militant church in the world (Niebuhr 1951:2). The question of culture has certainly contributed to the understanding of different people as well as to the serious misunderstanding of some Christian groups.
Bhikhu brings this issue of misunderstanding of culture to clarity by discussing the three major theorists of cultural diversity. namely Vico. Montesquieu and Herder. The three are praised. not only by Bhikhu. but by many other authors of culture and cultural diversity as the pioneers of a new tradition of thought. They are credited with breaking away from the long and enormously powerful tradition of moral monism and laying the foundation for a pluralistic alternative.
He says that in all the positives they have contributed in the study of cultural diversity.
they also got things wrong from time to time (Bhikhu 2000:77). These mistakes are by no means unique or only limited to them. for they tend to reoccur in many of today" s
discussions about culture. There are seven common mistakes that were committed by Vico, Motesquieu and Herder which are still happening or continuing in our time. These are:
4.4.1 Fallacy of Cultural Holism
To take culture to be an integrated and organic whole. and ignored its internal diversity and tensions.
4.4.2 Fallacy of Cultural Distinctness
To assume that cultures are self-contained units. which have distinct spirits. ethos or organizing principles. and could easily be individuated and distinguished from each other.
4.4.3 Fallacy of Cultural Positivist, Historical or End-of-history
This fallacy happens when we tend to take a static view of culture. While appreciating that culture is the product of a long historic process. we start to think that from now forward it must be preserved more or less intact. This was true of Herder who insisted on preserving the authenticity of the current German culture. Vico and Montesquieu also thought that the culture of their age represented the highest form of human achievement and marked the end of history.
4.4.4 Fallacy of Cultural Enthnicisations
We tend to see each culture as a unique and organic expression of the spirit. soul. and national character. level of mental development or deepest yearnings and instincts of the relevant community. We have homogenized both the culture and the community. taken a quasi- anthropomorphic view of the latter. and found it difficult to explain how the community requires a particular character in the first instance or why a culture changes over time; why it is internally contested; why cultures share some of their important features in common.
4.4.5 Fallacy of Cultural Closure
This is when many of us decide to take a highly conservative attitude to culture. Since culture is assumed to be an integrated whole. even the smallest changes in it are deemed to be fraught with unpredictable consequences. Reforms are. therefore, either to be avoided or undertaken with the greatest of care.
4.4.6 Fallacy of Cultural Determination
This involves seeing culture as a kind of self-acting collective agent. which dictates.
requires or expresses itself in a particular body of beliefs and practices and follows its own internal laws and logic. For many. each culture has a dominant spirit or organizing principle. which constitutes and disposes its more or less passive members to act in certain ways. ot surprisingly. these kinds of theories and culture exist only in limited or narrow spaces of freedom.
4.4.7 Fallacy of Cultural Anatomy
Many people disassociate culture from the wider political and economic structures of society. Quite often. references to the role of social and economic factors are only made in passing. Since every culture represents a particular way of looking at the world and structuring human relations, it tends to legitimize and sustain a particular kind of social order. As a system of power, it is interlocked with other systems of power, and can never be politically or economically neutral. Far from being a transparent and univocal system of meaning, claiming the spontaneous allegiance of its members. every culture is subject to contestation. Its dominant meaning tends to reflect the balance of power between its different groups. By ignoring the politics and economics of culture, many misunderstand the process of its creation and consolidation and the basis of its power.