Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

The mean­ing of the word "cul­ture" seems ob­vi­ous. In an­thro­pol­o­gy cul­ture is process. It is the roots and routes of our lives. In prac­ti­cal terms cul­ture is the cu­mu­la­tive in­struc­tions hu­mans pass down, learn and ap­ply to sur­vive the var­i­ous en­vi­ron­ments they en­counter in their dai­ly lives.

These phys­i­cal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ments are in flux. To suc­cess­ful­ly en­dure them re­quires an adapt­able and shared in­struc­tion book­let. This is as true to­day as it was for the first peo­ples who crossed from South Amer­i­ca to T&T 7-12,000 years ago. In ide­o­log­i­cal terms cul­ture is the gog­gles through which we view the world. The log­ic and myths that give our world­views co­he­sive­ness and struc­ture through cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions like re­li­gion and com­mon sense.

Cul­ture, then, is a phe­nom­e­non that func­tions on mul­ti­ple lev­els. It can be read like a tex­tu­al man­u­al. It is no­madic, like the places our wan­der­ing minds must trav­el to and from each day. And it is flu­id, like the mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties we switch be­tween, de­pend­ing on the be­hav­iour­al roles we need to per­form.

This var­ied an­thro­po­log­i­cal de­scrip­tion is dif­fer­ent from the main­stream de­f­i­n­i­tion used in pop­u­lar cul­ture and by many politi­cians and busi­ness peo­ple. For those who put cul­ture to work, cul­ture is a bound­ed en­ti­ty, with a check­list of fea­tures, a phe­nom­e­non en­dur­ing and time­less. It is au­then­tic, sta­ble, and ready to be con­sumed.

This old idea of cul­ture as fixed and en­dur­ing, is a colo­nial idea. It is log­ic of hi­er­ar­chal think­ing. And with hind­sight it is easy to see how such an idea was used to clas­si­fy and sub­ju­gate dif­fer­ent peo­ples in­to a racist tax­on­o­my. Nonethe­less, this idea of cul­ture is still an at­trac­tive de­scrip­tion for many. The most ob­vi­ous ex­am­ple of this is when peo­ple talk about cul­ture as tra­di­tion in need of pro­tec­tion.

Yes, we all need a foun­da­tion in our cul­tur­al his­to­ry and it is a rea­son­able as­sump­tion that these tra­di­tions should be record­ed and doc­u­ment­ed. Yet to think that tra­di­tions re­main the same goes against a moun­tain of an­thro­po­log­i­cal ev­i­dence. For ex­am­ple, our re­li­gions, our lan­guages, our cus­toms-none are the same as they were in their orig­i­nal place of cre­ation and de­par­ture.

Ob­vi­ous­ly the point is not to dis­miss the cul­tur­al lessons from the past and who we once were. There is much sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty to be gained from shar­ing in the lives and ways that have gone be­fore us. Not to men­tion the lessons need­ed to live suc­cess­ful­ly in the world come from those gen­er­a­tions be­fore our own. Yet, to hold on to the past, as the way to live in the fu­ture is not on­ly dif­fi­cult in a world of chang­ing en­vi­ron­ments, it isn't sen­si­ble.

A clear ex­am­ple of this prob­lem can be made when we look at the short­falls of our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture. We may have in­her­it­ed a new set of tools and knowl­edge in the tran­si­tion from colony to na­tion; how­ev­er, we al­so in­her­it­ed old po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions, class re­la­tions and po­lit­i­cal tra­di­tions that have not changed great­ly in 50 years.

As every gov­ern­ment has come and gone the mass­es are left dis­ap­point­ed with the many prob­lems we have al­ways had. A set of rules for some and an­oth­er set of rules for the rest; ac­cu­sa­tions and in­ves­ti­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and nepo­tism too nu­mer­ous to re­count; a blame game that nev­er ends. And a po­lit­i­cal class that looks every­where but at it­self and its cul­ture for the root caus­es of our bro­ken sys­tem.

When in pow­er a gov­ern­ment blames the poli­cies of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. When in op­po­si­tion they blame the cur­rent gov­ern­ment. Nei­ther is ever will­ing to ac­cept that the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture it­self is to blame. This po­lit­i­cal tra­di­tion could go on for­ev­er if we let it. The prob­lem then isn't the PNM or the PP or any oth­er lo­cal po­lit­i­cal acronym. The prob­lem is our cul­ture of pol­i­tics it­self and its re­sis­tance to change.

Ac­cord­ing to Marx, so­cial rev­o­lu­tion de­pends on the res­o­lu­tion of con­tra­dic­tions be­tween the fun­da­men­tal class groups. While we are wait­ing to see if he is right there are sim­ple steps that could be tak­en to get us out of our po­lit­i­cal paral­y­sis. It would be nice to think the PM's fir­ing of Vol­ney is a step to­ward this new po­lit­i­cal cul­ture. Yet the dis­tinct feel­ing ex­pressed by Ital­ian po­lit­i­cal philoso­pher An­to­nio Gram­sci re­mains. Our "cri­sis lies in the fact that the old is dy­ing and the new can­not be born."

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine