Editing culture?

The last few years have seen a lot of public debate on traditional roles. Some examples are the now infamous ‘Alangizi’ (matrons who prepare young women for marriage), traditional ceremonies and dressing (such as the woman who was half nude/ topless at a pageant, in the name of traditional culture), corporal punishment, and local languages as a medium of education. In all these discussion, people talk of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’, but I suspect they do not all mean the same thing. Perhaps if we could define these terms, we may make some headway in these debates. Then we will also answer the question, do we have the power or the right to change tradition and culture?

We will borrow a definition of culture from Oliver Barclay:

Culture may be defined as the overall beliefs, priorities and values of the community that are expressed in its institutions and its practices. In the sense that I have chosen, the term culture can be Marxist, Muslim, secular, or Christian. There is a Western or Asian culture, or a city or rural culture.*

The first thing that this brings to light is that we have several cultures in Zambia, not one culture. There may be common elements in the tribal cultures, common denominators, but otherwise there is more than one culture in a nation with 72 tribes. But the picture gets more complicated. There are rural and urban cultures. I know we usually say the urban (us!) are Westernised, but since we have an urban, technology based lifestyle, this pattern of behaviour can be called a culture as well. 

To avoid any confusion, we will say that urban and rural have a common heritage (i.e. common roots) but slightly different cultures (patterns of behaviour in work, socialising, etc). So our heritage and our culture are different. But even modern village life is not what it was a hundred years ago – if a villager could time travel they would find a cultural shift of some kind when they go to the year 1914. Add to that other facts such as changes in diet over the years (I am told maize was introduced around the year 1880) and economic models such as use of money and passports. Culture, just like life is dynamic. Even if the change is slow over a century. Even now, within a generation, some of the slang used on Facebook baffles me – language changing in the space of twenty years.

The next point is that culture is not perfect. Like people, who are a mixture of good and bad (our great dignity and high calling, and our inclination to greed and pride) culture is also a mixture. I quote again:

All culture is a mixture of good and evil: good because all God’s gifts of creation are good, and man is still made in the image of God, and not one has reached the same depths of depravity as the devil; but evil because no one is an angel, no one is perfect in this life. The structures of society, and even the best aspects of our culture, are imperfect.*

There are things to be encouraged and things to be discouraged and even replaced. Culture is not perfect, no more than the people who practice it, whether Zambian, Asian, or Western.

The conclusion is we must consciously decide what to encourage and what to discourage. Culture is shifting sand, even if it shifts slowly over the generations. But then, we must ask, what standard are we going to use? We can imitate good things from other cultures, but we must not make them a standard, because they are equally a mixture of good and bad. Cultural snobs are in the wrong, whatever advantages or advances they may have in their society. There must be a standard to assess all cultures, not just comparing one culture to another. For the humanist the standard is probably utility, or pragmatics. For the secular thinker, the standard may be a matter of agreement or convenience. For the Christian, the wisdom of the Creator must set the pace for human life to flourish. The Creator sets the outline and provides the impetus for human life to reach the order and beauty and satisfaction it was originally designed for.

The biggest mistake we can make in this regard is to deify culture. We must not promote new things simply because of their newness or old things just because they are ancient. The value is not intrinsic in its novelty or age, but rather in how constructive or destructive it is for society. The more our social bonds are built on what is right, the better our society will be. That is something worth passing on to the next generation.

*[Quote from ‘Developing a Christian Mind’ by Oliver Barclay. Available at Bookworld shops]