Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T20:36:52.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rethinking Culture: The Social Lineage Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2011

ALAN PATTEN
ALAN PATTEN*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
Alan Patten is Professor of Politics, Princeton University, Corwin Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 ([email protected]).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Persuaded by the critique of cultural essentialism, many critics believe that there is no defensible way of identifying distinct cultures, or of distinguishing cultural loss from cultural change, that is compatible with the normative agenda of multiculturalism. This article challenges this widely shared belief by developing a concept of culture that can withstand the critique of essentialism and support the positive claims of multiculturalists. Culture, in the view developed here, is what people share when they have shared subjection to a common formative context. A division of the world, or of particular societies, into distinct cultures is a recognition that distinct processes of socialization operate on different groups of people. Because culture in this view is the precipitate of a common social lineage, the view is called the “social lineage account” of culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 105 , Issue 4 , November 2011 , pp. 735 - 749
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Appiah, K. Anthony. 1996. “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.” In Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, eds. Appiah, K. Anthony and Gutmann, Amy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 30–105.Google Scholar
Appiah, K. Anthony. 2005. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Barry, Brian. 2001. Culture and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Barry, Brian. 2002. “Second Thoughts—And Some First Thoughts Revived.” In Multiculturalism Reconsidered, ed. Kelly, Paul. Cambridge: Polity, 204–38.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. 2002. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carens, Joseph. 2000. Culture, Citizenship, and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, James. 1988. “Identity in Mashpee.” In The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 277–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Donald. [1986] 2006. “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs” In The Essential Davidson, eds. Ludwig, Kirk and Lepore, Ernest. New York: Oxford University Press, 251–65.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Hardimon, Michael O. 2003. “The Ordinary Concept of Race.” Journal of Philosophy 100 (9): 437–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 1999. “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture.” In Racism, ed. Harris, Leonard. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. 2007. “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (4): 293–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluckhohn, Clyde. 1950. Mirror for Man. London: George G. Harrap.Google Scholar
Kuper, Adam. 1999. Culture: The Anthropologists' Account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, Community, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kymlicka, Will. 2001. Politics in the Vernacular. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laitin, David. 2007. Nations, States, and Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallon, Ron. 2007. “Human Categories beyond Non-essentialism.” Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (2): 146–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Andrew. 2007. “Multiculturalism and the Critique of Essentialism.” In Multiculturalism and Political Theory, eds. Laden, Anthony Simon and Owen, David. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 221–43.Google Scholar
Mayr, Ernst. 1942. Systematics and the Origins of Species: From the Viewpoint of a Zoologist. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Okin, Susan Moller. 1999. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Anne. 2007. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1976. The Myth of the Framework. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. 1994. “Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective.” In Ethics in the Public Domain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 170–91.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Samuel. 2007. “Immigration and the Significance of Culture.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35 (2): 93–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, Paul, and Hagendoorn, Louk. 2007. When Ways of Life Collide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott. 2000. Philosophy of Biology. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Song, Sarah. 2007. Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 1992. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition,” ed. Gutmann, A.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 25–73.Google Scholar
Terborgh, John. 2002 “Vanishing Points.” New York Review of Books, December 19.Google Scholar
Terborgh, John. 2003. “Reply.” New York Review of Books, April 10.Google Scholar
Tully, James. 1995. Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 1992. “Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative.” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 25: 751–94.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 2004. “Tribalism and the Myth of the Framework: Some Popperian Thoughts on the Politics of Cultural Recognition.” In Karl Popper: Critical Appraisals, eds. Catton, Philip and Macdonald, Graham. New York: Routledge, 203–30.Google Scholar
Weber, Eugen. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedeen, Lisa. 2002. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 713–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, Douglas W., and Shepard, Glenn Jr. 2003. “Vanishing Cultures.” New York Review of Books, April 10.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.