Your Culture is Bigger than You

Dear Korean,

I was hoping that you might respond to this review I did of Gish Jen's book on Asian and Western subjectivity. The review is 90 percent summary and expresses a few reservations about the cross-cultural psychologists that Jen relies on to make her generalizations about culture.

I'd be curious to see whether you find this research to be credible. There's no questions that it conforms almost exactly to the "thin and monochromatic" views of the differences between East and West adopted by Westerners, including Malcolm Gladwell, with the (perhaps?) meaningful difference that most of the cross-cultural researchers are Asians from Asia, and that Gish Jen is herself an avowedly Asian American novelist fixated on the question of East and West. While many Asian Americans and other politicized types take strong exception to the generalizations about Asians contained in this body of research, most regular Asians and Asian Americans I ask about seem to more or less agree that the overall schema fits into the pattern of their own experience.

Wesley Yang

If you are wondering because the name of the questioner sounds familiar--yes, it's that Wesley Yang, who wrote the article titled Paper Tigers for the New York Magazine, which elicited a strongly critical response from me. Let me first say this: it takes a remarkable strength of character to have been blasted in a way that Mr. Yang did, and come back for seconds. I am flattered that he is asking for my take; I can only hope I don't disappoint.

Mr. Yang's question is how I feel about the cross-cultural research involving Asian culture. But I see a second, underlying question: in trying to understand Asian culture, how are we to treat our own experience as Asian Americans? The second question, in particular, is important and timely. I just got done blasting non-Asians for trying to essentialize Asia through "cultural explanations." Then what about Asian Americans? How are we to approach our own culture? What do we make of the fact that Gish Jen attempts to explain her father's life through these studies? What are we supposed to think if those studies seems to explain our lives as well?

First question first: how do I feel about research regarding culture? Contrary to what Mr. Yang may think, I am open to them. I will accept the conclusion of the research (with the residual amount of skepticism consistent with the scientific method) if the research is conducted rigorously. The reason for this is simple: clearly, culture affects behavior. As a blogger who writes about Korean culture, it would be strange if I did not recognize this. Accordingly, a rigorously conducted study may well reveal the nexus at which culture translates to behavior. (Of course, normal caveats apply--after all, many studies end up being quite wrong.)

This proposition is so self-evident that it is almost not worth saying out loud. The real question, whose answer is not as self-evident, is: how much do these studies explain? How much do those studies explain the national culture? How much do those studies explain the reality that unfolds before our eyes? And how much do those studies inform our own experience as Asian Americans?

These questions are part and parcel of a larger and more fundamental question: how are we supposed to understand and explain culture? Once we have a solid grasp on this fundamental issue, the rest falls into place.

(More after the jump.)

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.




How are we supposed to explain culture? We must begin by making ourselves humble before the magnitude of the task in front of us. Culture is a very large thing. It is a product of interactions among millions of people. We cannot even conclusively explain why a single person takes a certain action. Yet we breezily explain why millions of people take a certain action on the basis of "culture." This makes no sense.

Explaining culture is like explaining the ocean to someone who has never seen it. It may be possible to explain the ocean in just a few phrases. It is a body of water. It is big, and covers 70 percent of the Earth. It is blue; it is fun to play in; a lot of fish live there. But these few sentences never do justice to the true character of the ocean. The ocean is so vast, and contains so many multitudes, that it can either disprove or severely qualify any proposition one may put forth about the ocean. The ocean may be cold. Yet it has numerous hot volcanoes. The seawater may be salty, but there are many parts at which the seawater is hardly so. The ocean is at times calm and beautiful. At other times, the ocean is turbulent and terrifying.

The ocean is so vast, that it is greater than any one creature's experience. The ocean experienced by a vacationer is not the same ocean experienced by a grizzled mariner. The ocean experienced by a dolphin is not the same ocean experienced by a salmon. In fact, one can spend one's whole life explaining just a single aspect of the ocean that one experienced--and the ocean in that explanation will sound nothing like the ocean experienced by another.

The same for culture. Give me any proposition about Korean culture, and I will find you multiple examples of counter-propositions involving different circumstances and different people. Take, for example, the accepted wisdom that Confucianism makes Koreans deferential to the older people. Confucianism makes Koreans so hierarchical, the accepted wisdom goes, that even the difference of a year in age requires deference from the younger person. The younger person would use a special manner of speech (honorifics) for the older person, and subsume their opinions and preferences to the older person.

But the Book of Manners [예기, 禮記]--one of the most significant Confucian tomes--explicitly provides that someone should be older than you by at least ten years before you accord him as an elder. (And even in such a case, you accord him as an older brother; one should be at least twenty years older than you before you treat him like a father.) Classical Korean literature frequently cites this passage, and traditionally, Koreans have strictly adhered to this rule. For example, one of the most classic Korean literature regarding friendship is the story of Oseong and Haneum [오성과 한음], based on the childhood antics of Yi Hang-bok [이항복] and Yi Deok-hyeong [이덕형]. Notably, Yi Hang-bok was five years older than Yi Deok-hyeong. Yet in the stories about their friendship, there is hardly any indication that they saw each other as anything other than equals.

To be sure, the accepted wisdom may still be true. After all, it is not a product of some fevered imagination--the accepted wisdom came from some corner of reality. But with additional information, we can properly contextualize the accepted wisdom. Does my counterexample about the Book of Manners and Oseong and Haneum disprove that Confucianism emphasizes age-based hierarchy? No. But it does give an idea about how much Confucianism emphasizes age-based hierarchy. Knowing more about Confucianism and traditional Korean culture make the understanding of Korean culture much more sophisticated, nuanced and dynamic. And talking about Korean culture--or any national culture, for that matter--while only being equipped with surface-level knowledge, without being aware of its counter-currents, will always result in propositions that are untrue, incomplete or significantly misleading because they erase meaningful nuances. Worse, it will subject other people who are perceived to be within that culture to those untrue, incomplete or significantly misleading propositions.

To reiterate: culture is larger than any one data point, any one proposition, any one person's experience. From this, we can derive the answer to the previous questions. How much do these cultural studies explain? Answer: if they are correct (a big assumption,) they illuminate one corner of the ocean. In fact, if those studies were properly conducted, they clearly state the limitations of their conclusions. Take those limitations seriously: they are the lines that demarcate the validity of the study's conclusions. What if the conclusions of the studies seem to explain everything about your life as an Asian American? Then that means you happen to be in that corner that those studies illuminate. That does not mean those studies are invalid, nor does it mean your experiences are not genuine. But it does mean that neither those studies nor your life experience will be universally applicable within your culture, because nothing is.

One data point does not explain the world. For that matter, not even a thousand data points explain the world. (And it is highly unlikely that you will even get to collect a thousand data points.) So avoid the temptation to explain more than what you know. Even the Asian American culture, a subset of both Asian culture and American culture, is greater than your own experience as an Asian American. Resist the hubris-filled temptation to find some grand unifying theory of culture, or speak of "typical" Asian cultural artifact (like "typical Korean father," for example.)

This may sound like some kind of relativistic nihilism. But it is not; rather, it is an exhortation to acknowledge that the world is a big place with innumerable moving parts, and one had better know how those parts work before talking about how the world works. Do you want to unearth the mysterious nexus between culture and behavior? By all means, go for it. Do you want to explain your life story in the context of cultural studies? Be my guest. But do be aware of how much you are seeking to explain, and know that no human is ever privy to the full wonders of the universe.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.