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1994
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(1994): Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance, S. 291-309
Abstract: Few theorists concerned to understand human behavior would deny that the capacity to be influenced by the specific culture of a given social group is an important part of what it is to be human. As Clyde Kluckhohn argued in his "layman's introduction" to anthropology, Mirror for Man, "to be human is to be cultured. There is culture in general and then there are the specific cultures such as Russian, American, British, Hottentot, Inca. The general abstract notion serves to remind us that we cannot explain acts solely in terms of the biological properties of the people concerned, their individual past experience, and the immediate situation."' Moreover, as Kluckhohn suggests in this passage, if being human involves being cultured, there must then be a crucial connection between culture and agency. An important consequence of this connection is that much of our behavior can be intelligible only by reference to generally approved cultural practices. For example, only by reference to participation in a marriage ceremony can we coherently account for what happens when two people appear together to pronounce certain expressions of their language and exchange circular pieces of a yellow metal. Further, every culture develops intricate patterns of normative expectations about emotion, thought, and action that help to structure each person's formative experiences. The motivation of people who marry, for instance, will be partly influenced by such patterns of cultural approval. Recognizing the link between culture and agency clearly reveals that cultures powerfully shape even the most fundamental desires and purposes that influence human action
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