Blog 2: Akira Yamamoto- "Culture Spaces in Everyday Life"

Yamamoto, Akira Y. "Culture Space". Culture Spaces in Everyday Life: An Anthropology of Common Sense Knowledge. University of Cansas. Lawrence: Kansas, 1979. 37-44

As a professor of Anthropology and linguistics at the University of Kansas, USA, Akira Yamamoto writes “Culture Spaces in Everyday Life: An Anthropology of Common Sense Knowledge.” in the field of social anthropology. This reading addresses culture theory, specifically the idea of culture space.

He refers to culture space as a conceptual space. It is “the physio-temporal space which functions as a frame with which a certain activity is carried out by persons.” (Yamamoto, 1979: 37)

Through experience, humans learn the codes, rules and theories of how to behave within a cultural space. We are exposed to the signifiers of a cultural space. These signifiers are often acted upon in an unconscious way and we often unaware of our learned cultural behaviours until we are placed in a different culture, with a different set of signifiers. For example Majlinda discussed that in her Albanian culture, it is customary to hug someone when you greet them however when she came to New Zealand she was made aware that it was not. By being in another cultural space she became aware of different learned cultural behaviours.

Lucy discussed the idea that we are alienated to signifiers of our culture and only once we realise that we are alienated to these signifiers, can we choose to be free from them. For example one could say that Auckland has a car culture and that one is alienated to his or her car. One does however have a choice to walk or take public transport- to go against the mainstream culture and to be free of the confinements of a motor vehicle. This made me think about a reading in which Rebecca Solnit describes walking as an act of resistance to mainstream culture, as walking as a “reaction against the speed and alienation of the industrial revolution.” (Solnit, 2001: 267) Solnit seems to look at walking as a choice to free oneself from the signifiers of a culture tied to automobilization and suburbanisation.

It is interesting to think of art institutions as culture space and an artist as being alienated to the signifiers of the culture space in which they practice. I think it is important for an artist to critique and analyse their practice in relation to culture space. Only then can he or she decide whether they are going to make art that reinforces the codes and rules of the culture space or challenges and changes them.

References:

International Center for Scientific Research. CIRS: Paris, 1999.17th April 2008.
http://www.cirs-tm.org/researchers/researchers.php?id=84

Solnit, Rebecca. "The Shape of A Walk". Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London, Verso, 2001: 267 - 275.

Yamamoto, Akira Y. "Culture Space". Culture Spaces in Everyday Life: An Anthropology of Common Sense Knowledge. University of Cansas. Lawrence: Kansas, 1979. 37-44