文化概念の再構想

――心理学・経済学との対話を通して――

抄録

  This paper presents the background of the discussion at the 2008 annual conference of the Waseda Association of Cultural Anthropology. The purpose of the conference was to form a trialogue among cultural anthropology, cultural psychology, and cultural economics through discussion on the concept of culture.

  Although “culture” has been identified as a key concept in these fields, there have been limited exchanges among them at least in Japan. The speakers from these three fields discussed the pros and cons of the concept of culture, and how they would be able to collaborate with each other and to intervene in the “culture wars” raging in the United States, Europe, and other regions in the world.

In cultural anthropology, the culture concept has been critically reexamined since the 1980s. Some scholars argue that the concept of culture suggests boundedness, homogeneity, and stability, and thus, as with the concept of race, it inevitably implies the distinction between the “self” and the “other”.

In fact, “cultural racism” has been growing in many regions in the world. For example, over the last two decades, the right wing parties in Europe have developed a rhetoric of exclusion in which immigrants from developing countries are interpreted as posing a threat to the national unity of the host countries because of their cultural differences.

  While the critical and self-reflexive discussion on the culture concept has been taking place in cultural anthropology, there has been growing interest in culture in psychology and economics. Both mainstream psychology and economics had oftentimes presumed the universality of human mind and behavior. Cultural psychology and cultural economics, however, are willing to take into account the cultural diversity of human experiences.

  The self-reflexive discussion on the culture concept is no doubt important. Cultural anthropology, however, should go beyond its reclusive attitude, and strive to collaborate with cultural psychology, cultural economics, and other fields that focus on culture. Those who severely criticize the culture concept claim that cultural anthropology should abolish the concept and replace it with other concepts such as practice, hegemony, and discourse. On the contrary, we argue that we should reimagine the culture concept to collaborate with other fields and to engage critical issues in the world.