How Culture is Remade: A Review of a Review

I thought I'd put up some thoughts on culture by way of a review I just read of Andy Crouch's book Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. The review is by John Seel, writing for the journal of The Trinity Forum, a website I haven't finished exploring but which looks interesting and relevant.

Let's start with a quote I like from Crouch's book:

If we want to transform culture, what we actually have to do is to get into the midst of the human cultural project and create some new cultural goods that reshape the way people imagine and experience their world.

Seel agrees with this, but uses it to introduce a running criticism of the book, which is that Crouch seems to overemphasize the material aspect of culture. (He also notes that this is primarily a problem with the book alone, not with Crouch's thought as a whole.) He quotes Ken Myers' definition that "Culture is the cultivation of created nature" to point to the immaterial nature of culture, and that items that have become cultural artifacts (everything from iPods to specialty lattes) have a certain meaning even without, well, meaning to. The responsibility of those who create such artifacts, as well as of anyone who wishes to influence culture, is to understand the cultural background and meaning of each cultural "thing".

Seel spends a lot of time making up for Crouch's overemphasis on the "thingness" of cultural artifacts. So to make up for Seel's own emphasis, I'll balance the two by saying that those who wish to remake culture must be experts at both: at understanding the deeper significance of cultural things, and at making really good things.

For example: It's one thing to wish to inject a sense of respect for a Higher Power in, say, the American poetry scene; it's quite another to write a really good poem, as a poem (not just in content). You may go so far as to start your own poetry journal where every poem is about the baby Jesus or the life of St. Jadwiga, but to be good culturally (again we're not talking about content) is that it displays works that actually work as poems. And given the state of our culture, it may not be the time to dedicate the next edition of your journal to saints of medieval European royal families. We might start out to better effect with one brilliant, worldview-changing poem that takes place on the R-train in Brooklyn.*

Having made up for Seel's overemphasis, I am now free to say I like formulations like the following, on the necessity to understand the meaning of cultural items:

cultural artifacts ... require discernment both in their making and using. If we are to avoid the worldliness of being “squeezed into the world’s mold” (Romans 12:2), then we must understand its contemporary contours and develop disciplines of cognitive and embodied resistance.

The Cultural Elites

Seel's sharpest disagreement with Crouch concerns the channels throug which cultural influence occurs. In short, Crouch sees culture influenced from the bottom up, and Seel from the top down. Crouch's view, as Seel describes it, is that we simply create new items of culture, but cannot dictate how they will be accepted. The missing element that Seel supplies is that there are factors that do influence how cultural contributions will be accepted, and these factors can be manipulated.

"The actor on the stage of cultural change is institutions, not individuals," according to Randall Collins as saying. (See, conservatives are learning from Gramsci!) Seel agrees with this idea, calling those running such institutions the cultural elites:

If this is the case, then cultural change does not happen according to the rules of market exchange, as Andy [Crouch] suggests, but on the basis of institutional access. Thus, cultural change does not happen from the bottom-up via mass markets, but top-down via gatekeeping elites. The tactical implications are enormous. For if a particular social group is not a part of the cultural gatekeeping conversation, then they are not a part of the conversation that shapes culture.

I think Seel is mostly right, even if he runs a slight risk of overemphasis again here. In a free market, as in a free society, there is free will even though there are also myriad subtle influencing factors upon the exercise of that free will. (Collectively called "propaganda" in society; "advertising" in the market.)

A theory of culture must acknowledge the role of cultural elites, as Seel says (indeed, if you hope to change culture, becoming a cultural elite yourself is one great way to do it). But it need not minimize the role of market-like patterns of cultural exchange that Crouch emphasizes. If you make a good product (Crouch) and advertize it well (Seel), you are taking one solid step toward redefining people's worldview, and therefore culture.


Becoming an Influencer of Culture

Seel's last point is about scale: Influence on a small scale is just as legitimate for its scope, and works the same way, as influence on a large scale. "In fact, it is only at the local level or at the smaller scale that a person can explore his or her abilities and be effectively apprenticed in becoming a winsome contributor to culture making. It is faithfulness in small places and little things that equips one to be faithful in bigger arenas and larger things."

This is true. And very well-known among conservatives. Too well known, perhaps. Considering Seel's points about the need to be among the elite in order to influence culture, it is surprising he does not seek to emphasize the stepping-stone nature of the small scale. In my experience, conservatives are too willing to put in a little local effort and "leave it in God's hands". But I don't see a lot of national coordination for cultural influence; most national-level efforts are for "process" struggles like elections, despite the fact that who people vote for are only symptoms of their worldview -- a worldview which could be changed more directly and effectively by coordinated efforts to influence culture and change hearts and minds. As another contributor to the Trinity Forum writes: "the most important need is not on Pennsylvania Avenue but in the hearts and minds of the governed. "


* This is also why I was very underimpressed by the movie Thérèse as a cultural artifact. Why should Catholic movies have to rely for success on desperate campaigns to mobilize Catholic movie-goers? Why can't they earn success from simply being good movies? I think Passion of the Christ was successful for this reason: it was good cinema, which tends to include a deep sense of challenge to one's perception of reality. (This makes a great potential venue for remaking culture: people expect good cinema to be challenging. Yes, there will always be successful mindless movies, but even many who enjoy these also appreciate the respect to their intellects shown by movies like The Matrix and Dark Knight.)