If culture means a set of shared rules of conduct (mores) and common exposure to certain ideas (if this second category is not superfluous), then cultures exist in many, or perhaps any, groups of individuals. If culture is nothing else than national culture, one of the two words is superfluous, just like “cultural culture” or “national nation” would be. Culture is often a black box or contains anything and everything associated with the concept of mankind or human: according to Britannica, it “includes language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, and ceremonies, among other elements.”
I am less interested here in the narrow sense of culture as “the humanities,” as opposed to its broad meanings described above. (For the distinction between culture in its narrow and wide sense, see Marc Fumaroli’s 1999 book, L’État culturel. Essai sur une religion moderne [The Cultural State: Essay on a Modern Religion].) In its broad sense, culture is difficult to identify. “You know it when you see it,” suggests Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush. The description of a culture is typically very far from a set of necessary or sufficient conditions for being, say, British or English. Bush writes (“There Is Such a Thing as British Culture,” October 8, 2024):
I’m not going to pretend that this list is exhaustive, but there is a distinct set of British cultural mores, among them understatement, a commitment to scatological humour and an obsession with class, that have a heavy influence on most British cultural output.
I take culture to mean the interindividual influences within a human group characterized by a geographic location, political obedience, or other criteria—“the Catholics,” “the Jews,” “the socialist culture,” “the artistic community,” the 140,000 world members of the Academy of Model Aeronautics, and so on. Some features or results of interindividual influences are what gives the group its distinctive characteristics. Culture influences the individuals, but without the individuals and their interactions, there would be no culture at all. In a sense, each individual is his own culture; extreme eccentrics are not the only case in point. At least in complex, free societies, no two individuals have exactly the same mosaic of “cultural” characteristics; everyone participates in many cultures.
For a moment, the Financial Times columnist seemed to reach for universalist values with an individualist flavor:
Suggesting that understatement, crude humour or an obsession with class are important to sustaining the health of a nation is obviously ridiculous. In terms of community cohesion, national prosperity and the rest, what really matters to the UK is liberalism, religious tolerance, respect for people’s individual choices and their own bodily autonomy. So in a sense, who cares if those values lose their distinctively British accent?
The columnist might have continued by reflecting on the meaning of “the health of a nation” (a naked anthropomorphic concept), “community cohesion,” “liberalism,” and “individual choices,” and on whether these concepts are compatible. But his question was purely rhetorical, for what really matters is what the state does to maintain a culture—with the BBC, for example:
And in a globalised economy … small and medium-sized countries like the UK and South Africa are not going to be able to maintain their own distinctive cultures without a degree of public subsidy.
This is what successive governments in France have recognised with their support for French language film and television. All British governments owe a great debt to the forward thinking of the Conservative administration of the 1920s in establishing the BBC licence fee. If you care about preserving a distinctive British or English culture, and not just a generic “this could be any liberal democracy” brand of liberalism, the BBC is the only game in town. …
There is no obvious way to produce or sustain a shared national culture or identity that doesn’t run through the public service broadcasters in general and the BBC in particular.
Is the Financial Times columnist saying that a British (or English?) “culture” requires taxpayer coercion for its financing and government propaganda for its content? Is culture the means to encourage obedience to the edicts of national politicians? Or is it simply a matter of financing the cultural preferences of some at the cost of others?
Interestingly, and apparently unbeknownst to Bush, some related questions were raised in the 1920s when the BBC was created as a broadcasting monopoly, a monopoly that lasted until 1954 for television and 1972 for radio. The BBC is still largely financed by compulsory “annual television licensing fees, which are paid by those who own TV sets or watch live television transmissions on such devices as computers” (Britannica).
Ronald Coase, the 1991 economics Nobel laureate, wrote an interesting book on these issues: British Broadcasting: A Study in Monopoly (New York: Routledge, 2013 [1950 for the original edition]). He explained how the BBC got its broadcasting monopoly stealthily, and that this monopoly became unquestionable for several decades. It was mainly a tool for the government to spread the “culture” of the state or its main clientèles. Coase wrote:
Though the programme policy of the Corporation gave the lower social classes what they ought to have, it gave the educated classes what they wanted.
In 1951, he also wrote in The Owl: A Quarterly Journal of International Thought:
The view that public operation alone is desirable is only likely to be accepted by a Socialist: the widespread support for the present publicly-operated broadcasting system is but another instance of the acceptance of Socialist views not only in the Labour Party but also in the Conservative and Liberal Parties.
The BBC is not as dangerous as when it was a monopoly but, from what I hear, it has continued doing what government intervention does best: strengthening the politically dominant “culture”—that is, the culture preferred by the most politically important constituencies.
READER COMMENTS
Roger McKinney
Oct 23 2024 at 10:28am
Huntington shows in Culture Matters that religion causes the most important aspects of culture. Helmut Schoeck wrote the same in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior.
For Schoeck, envy and the response to it has dominated all societies from prehistory. Envy builds institutions that kill innovation and economic development. Only Christianity managed to suppress envy enough to allow for innovation and economic growth..
Craig
Oct 23 2024 at 1:18pm
“I take culture to mean the interindividual influences within a human group characterized by a geographic location, political obedience, or other criteria”
Perhaps the economists can defer to the anthropologists every once in a while? One of the problems with the liberal arts is that economics, sociology, anthropology…..law as well struggle with attempting to make objective definitions for that which is inherently subjective to which I ALSO like to respond with Justice Stewart’s definition of obscenity, ie ‘I know it when I see it’ which is what I think FT might be alluding to with ‘you know it when you see it’?
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 23 2024 at 7:50pm
Craig: Compared to the other social “sciences,” or at least most of them, economics has two advantages: (1) it takes subjectivism seriously, that is, it starts for what individuals know or see or feel; and (2) it gives objective definitions in the sense that they are analytically useful. Whatever Joe or Jane thinks of culture, the definition that matters for economics is one that allows the construction of a logical and testable theory. (This is not saying that I am sure that the one or two I use in my post rise to that level.)
Mactoul
Oct 23 2024 at 11:56pm
Yet sociology could inform economics that people differ in their will to power and the structure of organizations is such that inevitably a ruling element emerges–this element while numerically a minority gives distinctive color to the organization itself.
Methodological individualism per se doesn’t require or imply egalitarianism –human differences should be recognized. Assumptions of an equality of power, implicit in contractarian theories misrepresent and mislead.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 24 2024 at 11:33am
Mactoul: One needs to distinguish clearly between material and formal equality, and to define “power” clearly.
The Nietzchean-Hegelian theory of the “will to power” is explained and partly criticized by Francis Fukuyama: see my Regulation review of his work, which provides further criticism.
The ideal of a free society is that (despite perhaps prisoners’ dilemmas) all individuals have an interest in free exchange instead of trying to rule over each other. One easy exposé of this normative idea can be found in Buchanan’s Why I, Too, Am not a Conservative (you can read my review in Regulation, but it’s a poor substitute for the book).
Coincidentally, there is an interesting story in today’s WSJ that can be interpreted as the clash of the will to power of Narenda Modi, who wants power over the Sikhs, and the will to power of the Sikh tribal leaders, who want power over members of their tribe. We see how absurd and destructive of individual opportunities the will to power is.
Mactoul
Oct 25 2024 at 12:25am
Fundamentally, an alternative to social contract is provided by the proposition that State emerges from complementarity of the ruling and the ruled elements.
Inevitably some people take more interest in public affairs than others. Some people are more willing to put in an effort in public affairs. You can see it in the smallest level, say HOA or housing society. The society needs such people.
Jose Pablo
Oct 27 2024 at 1:45pm
Inevitably some people take more interest in stealing than others. Some people are more willing to put in an effort to steal. You can see it in the smallest level, say HOA (indeed!!). The society needs those parasites.
Mactoul
Oct 24 2024 at 12:34am
The FT columnist is merely subsidy-mongering for BBC. The statement
amounts to a denial of British culture itself.
Orwell wrote a classic essay England Your England which is far worth your time to critique in the spirit of methodological individualism.
Orwell is strong on the organic concept of nation which you may find regrettable in such a liberal writer.
Jon Murphy
Oct 24 2024 at 11:39am
I don’t understand how the quoted statement amounts to a denial of British culture.
Mactoul
Oct 24 2024 at 11:57pm
Is there anything specifically British in these quoted values. Compare Orwell’s essay England Your England.
Jon Murphy
Oct 25 2024 at 6:46am
Yes. The whole list.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 26 2024 at 12:00pm
Mactoul: The bit you re-quote from Bush appears to be a rhetorical paraphrase of the argument that he immediately dismisses.
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 26 2024 at 12:49pm
Mactoul: England Your England is an interesting essay. We must not forget that Orwell defined himself as a socialist but thought that pretty much everything that happens under socialist governments is not real socialism and is abhorrent. As far as I can see, he had no coherent theory of society and state. He seemed to believe that humble people were the most representative of English culture, perhaps like the Prols in 1984.
Monte
Oct 24 2024 at 11:47am
The dominant WASP culture that may have existed at one time here in the U.S. has evolved into a rich tapestry of cultural influences. Our BBC counterparts (NPR & PBS) are partially funded by and sympathetic to government, but “cultural identity” has never been a priority. Unlike the BBC, which has a clear mandate to maintain a cohesive national identity through its programming, NPR and PBS operate within a more fragmented cultural landscape. Rather than a preoccupation with culture, our media are more concerned with journalistic integrity…😒
Monte
Oct 24 2024 at 12:22pm
“We cannot ever be simply an instrument of government. We are not a government body — we are corporation through charter . . . Although we want to share detail, there is also a need to safeguard decision-making and independence,” Closs Stephens says. “It’s the government’s right to question the BBC. It is my duty to draw a line . . . There are major institutions which if we weaken them, [it] weakens the fabric of what the state is.” In response, the culture ministry said it was “right that we engage constructively with [the BBC] to ensure it upholds the highest standards expected by the public”.
“We cannot be an instrument of government”: BBC chair asks ministers to back off
Pierre Lemieux
Oct 26 2024 at 1:08pm
Monte: Thanks for reminding me of this FP piece on Closs Stephens and the BBC. I quickly read it when it appeared and just re-read it. It does illustrate how the BBC is much less threatening than when it had a monopoly. (How some individual liberty could have survived despite a broadcasting monopoly is an interesting question, even more in France.) The mushy-granny ideology of Closs Stephens is apparent in her statement:
We are not living in an individualist age, except if individualism is taken in the socialist sense of having my claims coercively satisfied by everybody else. She is trying to fight socialist individualism by having more socialism (the “societal good”)!
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