This Lawrence Hirschfield attack on cross-cultural psychology makes many good points, and several flawed ones http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15685373-12340029 …
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Hirchfield doesn't like the concept of 'culture.' As in "you and I come from different cultures." He attacks it from two angles one stronger than the other.
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The weaker angle is the broader deconstrcutionist project anthropology has waged against the concept since the 1980s. Most cultural groupings are fluid, imaginary, etc. etc. My response to this type of argument amounts to this: so what?
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Look, if you have lived in a foreign country--or even some parts of your own country--you will recognize that the greater part of the people you meet every day will share automatic norms and intuitions that people from wherever you came from do not.
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Cross-cultural psychology devotes itself to measuring and categorizing these sort of intuitions and norms. I have no objection tot hat project, and don't find Hirchfield's very credible. But then comes in his second point, a point which is very convincing
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When it comes time for psychologists to *explain* the cultural variation they have found, how do they do it? As Hirschfeld notes, they mostly chalk up these differences to "culture." But therein is the rub. The argument is inherently circular:pic.twitter.com/8SVeYKGes8
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"Culture" cannot be, simultaneously, both the norms/intuitions that are broadly shared in a given population *and* the reason for WHY they are shared. It's a tautology, This point is correct and powerful.
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Replying to @Scholars_Stage
Recognition of this extremely straightforward and consistent point immediately marks you as a "determinist" to your fellow anthropologists. Genetic, environmental, technological determinism; all are equal to being a fascist in New Age social science.
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Whatever holds open the possibility of me personally theorizing humanity out of its logjam, works
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