SUMMARY: This post expands beyond the concrete/production aspects of culture to include abstract and linguistic aspects that deal with our legacy of “cultural capital” that we invest into next generations. It suggests how “redemptive purpose” relates to cultural capital, and overviews perspectives for identifying each.
Elements of “Cultural Capital” and Its Transmission
In the last post, I mentioned a number of aspects within a culture. I’d like to categorize and re-list those. They include two layers - those that are more often:
- Concrete and visible - artifacts (products, physical items), places, behaviors, and organizations.
- Abstract and invisible - vision, values, philosophy, theology, and spirituality.
To these, we need to add language - which is a highly important factor to the transmission of culture. Typically, a coherent cultural system is contained within a specific language. Once aspects of that culture are translated into another language, some things are inevitably altered in the process. Sometimes this distortion is due to the lack of relevant or accurate vocabulary. For instance, the family of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, which sought in the late 1800s to revive biblical Hebrew into a modern language, had to create Hebrew words for newspaper, telegram, and tomato. Or, distortion could be due to very specific ways the new host’s language is inherently biased toward processing information. Our inability to translate concepts exactly between languages is part of the power of what happened at the Tower of Babel. Differences in language help ensure that the diverse range of cultures remain intact and we do not all homogenize into one generic humaniculture - and cultural diversity seems to be part of what God intended. (Sidenote: I’m trained as a linguist and I focused on the role of “discourse analysis” in understanding cross-cultural communication problems. Someday I’ll put up a “bonus post” on logic and language, and then link it here.)
Concrete, abstract, and linguistic layers of culture all together form “cultural capital” - the complex system of interconnected elements that are invested into next generations of that culture’s members. Cultural capital is invested in next generations explicitly through teaching and implicitly through role-modeling. It is also transferred by teaching the next generation the language of that culture, or - in the case of subcultures - the “slang” or “lingo” of the “tribe.”
Points of Integration for a Tribe or Culture
Every culture possesses and invests its capital, whether that culture is based on natural group characteristics or virtual group characteristics.
- Primary cultural integration points for “natural tribes” include such inherent and unchangeable characteristics as: race, gender, generation, family or tribe of origin, and country of origin. Think of inherent characteristics as those set by God’s choices in His providence.
- Primary cultural integration points for “virtual tribes” include such affinity and chosen characteristics as values, lifestyles, what other groups or philosophies the tribe opposes. Think of affinity characteristics as those things outside themselves that hold such appeal that a person chooses to adopt them as his or her own.
Each culture integrates itself around a unique mix of these two kinds of characteristics - natural and virtual. For instance, when the punk subculture began in the mid-1970s in the UK, its appeal was primarily to young adults. So, it had a specific age-group or generational appeal. In its origins, punk is seen as a pessimistic or nihilistic counterpart to the idealist and optimistic hippy movement. Punk strongly valued a do-it-yourself mentality, and perhaps for this reason, there seems to have been a higher percentage of women actively involved in the punk music scene than in many other subcultural scenes.
These days, it seems that everyone belongs to one “affinity tribe” or another. We create or join some kind of “virtual family of volition” or “family of choice” with which to live life. This may be anything from a residential community of non-blood-related comrades who feel like kin, to a decentralized network of friends who keep in touch by electronic means. It can be a “style tribe” like Glam Rock or an “activity tribe” like Role-Playing Game groups. (More in a later post on how subcultures and virtual tribes form.)
The increased influence of virtual tribes helps us understand why traditional approaches to transferring culture are not as effective - the next generations are not always interested in carrying on the old ways, especially when the old ways do not allow for the realities of the new world as it is emerging. So, if that’s the case, how do we see what is being passed on, and through what specific routes, and what is being phased out? I’d suggest that these are handy skills for missional disciples to learn and apply. We need them in order to connect with relevance to positive aspects of another culture’s profile while we stand in resistance to its anti-biblical aspects. We won’t know which is which unless we intentionally learn how to discern cultural capital.
Researching “Cultural Capital” and “Redemptive Purpose”
To discover what concrete, abstract, and language elements are in a culture’s current “capital,” we can take a research “snapshot” of it, interview cultural informants on why what we perceive is or is not important to it, and then analyze and interpret what we observed. (A technical term for this kind of investigation is a synchronic analysis - with time, at one point in time.) If you’re interested in what to look for in your research, you can use this book as a guide: Create a Culture: A Complete Framework for Students to Use in Creating an Original Culture by Carol Nordgaarden. It’s written for middle-school students (about grades 5 through 8 in the U.S. system, or ages 11 through 14), so you can get your kids involved, too.
But what else would we see if we captured a “videotape” of a culture over time, conducted similar interviews periodically, and analyzed our data (i.e., did a diachronic analysis - through time)? With a more historical bent to our analysis, we can more easily perceive patterns of both visible and invisible aspects of culture that are being passed on to next generations, as well as those that morph and evolve into something else, those that go from a major emphasis to a minor one or vice versa, and those that become extinct. We can also discern how patterns of relationships with other cultures and groups maintain themselves or change over time - how offenses lead to long-term enmities or how friendships or needs lead to alliances.
A long-term analysis is also crucial for understanding how the abstract elements in culture (e.g., values, information processing modes, theology) become concrete, and vice versa. For instance, in our own era, we must now consider how the constant presence of emerging forms of technology, virtual networks, and instantaneous communications exert pressure on the very ways we perceive and process information. These results of concrete products affect our values, our visions of what futures are possible and preferable, etc.
A long-term analysis is also crucial for understanding a culture’s “redemptive purpose” - which is the unique “spiritual capital” that God has implanted in a specific culture so they can help people from other races, places, and cultural spaces learn wisdom from the particular circumstances their tribe has endured. I suspect that each country and culture and tribe and organization has some pieces of wisdom to offer, and that if that culture is influenced by Kingdom Culture, the constructive lessons learned will be amplified through God’s grace and the Gospel.
For instance, we in Western countries could gain much insight on the affects of modern-day servitude by studying the system of apartheid, how it was instituted, how it was dismantled, and what lasting influences it has left where it was enforced. We can learn a lot about the value of being industrious from the punk subculture, and about important practices of environmental stewardship from those who identify themselves as being eco-spiritual. And we can learn immensely valuable practices of communal discernment and decision-making from various Native American tribes. It doesn’t mean their entire framework has to resonate with a biblical one, but there needs to be some point of relevance between the two. And if we can learn to listen and discern what is pro-biblical within other cultures, we are halfway to finding “spiritual spackle” to fill in gaps in our own paradigms and cultures.
If you’re interested in more details about how to identify an organization’s or culture’s redemptive purpose, look into the emerging discipline of appreciative inquiry. This approach to communal discernment focuses on identifying what is positive and constructive in a business or organization, and amplifying it - not on identifying its flaws and problem-solving them. (In my opinion, ministries need to use evaluations of systems integrity plus appreciative inquiry in order to both avoid/remove toxicity and promote health. Same with cultures.)
Perspectives on “Cultural Capital” and “Redemptive Purpose”
In the 1990s, several authors studied the sorts of cultural heritage and equivalents of redemptive purposes that resident in people groups and races. In my studies back then on the formation of cultures and subcultures, I gained some intriguing perspective from Joel Kotkin’s 1992 book, Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy - then apparently considered ground-breaking. Thomas Sowell was another author who challenged my assumptions on cultures in such books as Race and Culture: A World View (1995) and Migrations and Culture: A World View (1997). What they presented could be misconstrued as stereotyping, and yet, it does seem as if specific abilities, passions, or ways of social organization are “in the cultural genes” of particular people groups.
- Why is it that certain nationalities excel at entrepreneuring businesses that succeed, even when they immigrate to other countries? And why otherwise has this pattern has persisted for century after century?
- Why do other nationalities excel at industrialization?
- Why do some societies produce gifted novelists and playwrights - generation after generation after generation?
Such cultural personalities and destinies are not in the physical genes of a people group, but are values, skills, and perspectives transferred culturally from one generation to the next through the teachings and experiences of everyday life.
Authors like John Dawson Healing America’s Wounds (1994) wrote from a Kingdom perspective about a similar concept of “redemptive gift” that each people group and nation could offer to the world. Twenty years earlier, the amazing, interdisciplinary anthropologist-theologian professor Arthur Custance wrote in Noah’s Three Sons: Human History in Three Dimensions (1975) about the unique cultural contributions of entire civilizations left by the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Also, in some theological circles these days, we hear the question of “what gift does this person or group carry?” Or we might hear of a community discussion on its “spiritual destiny.”
I’m currently using the term “redemptive purpose” to describe the providential history and experiences leading to the unique contribute each person, group, congregation, tribe, community, or culture can make to human civilization and to Kingdom Culture when that purpose is redeemed for God’s ultimate purposes. So, think of redemptive purpose as a “virtuous virus.”
For me, the specific redemptive purpose for a covenanted group of disciples is what calls forth its members’ passion. It stirs people’s hearts, brings them tears of sorrow and joy. It motivates their projects, both within the community of disciples and toward those who are not yet disciples. This redemptive purpose is demonstrated in the beginnings of a gathering’s “spiritual DNA,” and manifests itself over time.
It is bigger than any single leader, single team, or single generation. Its perpetuation depends on all of them together, not any one of them alone. Redemptive purpose is far more a vision that is already carried and embodied, than a vision which is cast and moved toward. All that is said and done sends messages that pass around this purpose to congregants old and new, infecting them with renewed motivation and momentum, which they pass on in turn to the next generations. It can be identified, but it cannot be isolated from either the community in which the gathering is embedded, or the Kingdom community of churches in which it is related.
