Tradition and Change

[Benning Boy]

In short, yes. He is however also alluding to the question of why these things are worth preserving, which is that they are a vehicle of that which we call 'culture', the definition of which keeps eluding us, but which we seem so lost without.

Amongst those who study such things, there are a bazillion definitions of culture. However, the one I have found most useful in my own studies and work goes something like this:

Culture is socially shared and transmitted knowledge, both existential and normative, as expressed in act and artifact.

Put another way:

Culture is socially shared and transmitted knowledge about what is or ought to be as seen in the things people do and the things they make.

So, kilts are both something made, artifacts, and things acted with, that is they are worn. The only socially shared and transmitted knowledge I have of kilts and kilt wearing I received here. Ideas about proper highland dress have not been handed down to me by a supercilious Laird.Therefore, I'm not really a direct participant in highland kilt wearing culture. Instead I wear kilts by choice as part of a North American -- and increasingly international-- sub culture. My ideas about what a kilt is and why and how it should be worn were socially transmitted to me here by the rabble. We are a subculture, although an influential one, with broken links to the original kilt wearing culture. ( Here we could get all enthused about debating Shannon's theory of communications systems, relating to the socially shared and transmitted business, but let's not.)

I find the original claim, post #1, to be faulty, revealing confusion of facts. Starting over, presenting claims built on a working definition of culture, being sure the cultural facts squared with reality, would make the basic concepts more discussable.


Ding dong Derrida is just another danged distraction, an obstacle to open discourse.