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Culture, and What We

Can Learn from Artists
. . . and the Homeless Search...

 April 16, 2020  by Alma Gottlieb 

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Books by Alma
What is “culture”? Gottlieb
Early generations of anthropologists offered
all sorts of de!nitions. No matter what their
speci!cs, the various de!nitions inevitably
shared one feature: “culture” is identi!able.
Above all, it encompasses a set of beliefs
and behaviors that, together, are premised
on an enduring set of values.

Or something like that.

And, as such, culture (it was thought) offers

a source of stability. It occupies broad
swaths of time and space: associated with a
delimited place, and occupying long patches
of history. For these reasons, culture makes
for a certain level of predictability in the
lives of community members.

Source here.

Or does it?

Starting in the 1960s, anthropologists

started questioning those assumptions.
Marxists pointed out that ever since, oh, the
advent of capitalism, or feudalism, or
agriculture (pick your favorite starting
point), “culture” has been perpetuated by
the ruling class. Once the poor get fed up
enough, they protest; eventually, they
revolt. Then, suddenly, what passed for an
enduring model of “culture” turns into a set
of values to be challenged, and “culture” —
or, one particular version of it — doesn’t
seem so reliable or inevitable.

This “Occupy Everything” poster featured on

Day 14 of the Occupy Wall Street movement
of 2011 summed up a great deal of diverse
social justice perspectives that sheltered
under the umbrella of the global social
movement. Source here.

Around the same time, feminists began

pointing out that “culture” has been
perpetuated by men-in-power. Once women
get fed up enough, they protest; eventually,
they revolt. See above.

One can repeat similar arguments focusing

on many other oppressed groups: racialized
minorities, religious minorities, ethnic
minorities, citizenship minorities, language
minorities . . .

Nor is oppression the only reason for

change. “Culture” also mutates when people
from different backgrounds meet up, live
near each other, work with each other, eat
each other’s foods, dance with each other at
street fairs, marry each other, have children
with each other.

This ethnic-restaurant map of Queens, NY–

an area of 109 square miles/52 square
kilometers–hints at the extent to which
large numbers of people from diverse
cultural backgrounds (21,000 of whom live in
every square mile) encounter each other
daily.
Source here.

You get the point. “Culture” turns out to be

way less permanent, less bounded, less
intractable than early anthropologists
claimed.

Recent Posts

What
 Anthropology
Teaches Us about
COVID, Part 3: A
Few Thoughts
about Culture, and
What We Can
Learn from Artists
. . . and the
Homeless
What
Unlikely neighbors enjoy dancing together at
Anthropology
a street fair in the Mountain View section of Teaches Us about
Anchorage, Alaska — which is currently COVID-19, Part 2:
America’s most ethnically diverse An Optimist’s
neighborhood. Source here. Scenario
What
Not that the idea of culture is worthless. Anthropology
Teaches Us about
Contra some serious critics (Lila Abu-Lughod
COVID-19, Part
famously urged anthropologists to “write
1-Early Thoughts
against culture“), I still !nd plenty of value
Writing about
in the notion. That’s because I see a lot of
Coffee
space between worthless and intractable.
The Blueberry
Culture can be malleable, adaptable, Wars
dynamic, while still remaining rooted in
s o m e t h i n g . And, although the values that
buttress culture c a n change, while they are
active, they are powerful. They lie behind Archives
many (perhaps, for the privileged few, most)
of our decisions. April 2020
March 2020
Still, in pop culture, the current generation February 2020
of anthropologists’ critiques of what culture August 2019
is, and isn’t, hasn’t taken hold. Instead, in June 2019
texts ranging from newspaper articles to March 2019
corporations’ reports, we easily read February 2019
disturbingly essentializing claims about “the July 2018
Chinese” and “the French” and “the May 2018
April 2018
January 2018
December 2017
Muslims” as if all Chinese people, all French November 2017
people, and all Muslims were easily October 2017
interchangeable, eagerly sharing all values August 2017
and forever speaking with one voice. July 2017
May 2017
Or we read simplistic assertions about March 2017
“corporate culture” in the halls of this or February 2017
that company, as if all employees endorsed January 2017
and enacted daily the corporation’s stated December 2016
idealistic goals. November 2016
October 2016
Along comes COVID-19.
July 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
June 2015
April 2015
The maddening “organism at the edge of March 2015
life” (as virologist E. P. Rybicki describes February 2015
viruses) that is far too dangerous to January 2015
appear this beautiful

Of course, the most poignant takeaway of Meta

COVID-19 is the tragic demise of its most
vulnerable targets. Site Admin
But alongside the wrenching announcement Log out
Entries feed
of the day’s latest mortality statistics, as a
Comments feed
cultural anthropologist, I !nd myself
WordPress.org
fascinated to read “culture” changing before
our eyes — weekly, daily, even hourly. What
we took as immutable practices grounded in
deep-seated values are turning out to be far
more pliable than most of us imagined.

Take the case of exercise. For the !rst few

days of their local “lockdown,” people who
got their workout in gyms despaired. How
could they stay !t with health clubs closed?

Enter human ingenuity. Gyms have !gured

out ways to run “live” classes online. The
acronym du jour — WFH for work from home
— is expanded by some clubs to WFHBT:
work from home better together.
Buttressing that conceptual adaption is a
simple technical one. Don’t have weights at
home? How about using any heavy-ish
household item you have lying around that
you can hold? Say, pasta sauce jars, six-
packs . . . or suitcases.
Coach Andrew Samuels of New York’s Mile
High Run Club models creativity in
suggesting the “suitcase squat.” Source
here.

In such cases, people substitute one space

for another. The exercise formerly done in
the gym is now done in one’s living room.

But for some urbanites, studios may prove

way too tiny to offer space for exercise.
City-dwelling coaches are undaunted. Some
suggest !nding new purpose in a balcony.
Coach Marni W. of New York’s Mile High
Run Club demonstrates lunges on her tiny
balcony. Source here.

For !tness enthusiasts, daily habits of

organizing one’s life around outings to the
gym morph into organizing one’s life around
coaches’ new online classes. That may entail
switching work and sleep schedules to
accommodate new class times. But the
stable source, here, remains the
commitment to “!tness,” no matter where,
when, and how. That part of local culture
and its underlying values remains stable.
But, for a stronger challenge to “culture,”
let’s look at a different physical practice
common to most of us: that of ordinary
walking. For those who learn to walk
competently some time in the second year
of life, walking becomes a rote activity by
the third year. As adults, we rarely
contemplate our gait, pace, or stride. No
matter where in the world we live, we have a
sense of exactly how much distance we
should put between us and the next person
in order to avoid being judged creepy or
reported as criminal. In a New York City
subway, that space might be just an inch or
two; in rural Sweden, it might be quite a few
feet.

Whatever the interpersonal space bubble

that feels “natural” to us while out in the
world, we must all now confront our
unconscious body awareness as we
constantly re-calibrate distance. Keeping six
feet from the nearest person may now
require crossing the street to avoid being
too close to the person approaching you on a
narrow sidewalk.

Previously, such an action might have

seemed, at best, rude; in some contexts, it
could have been deemed racist. (As a short
!lm by Cydney Cort called “Passing” once
suggested, even speeding up while walking
on the same side of the sidewalk can be
motivated by racialized fear). Now, n o t
crossing the street to avoid someone
approaching you might be assessed as
thoughtless, sel!sh, even potentially
murderous.

Normally, producing such a 180-degree turn

in what constitutes proper etiquette doesn’t
happen overnight. Anthropologists and
sociologists from Erving Goffman on have
chronicled the deep-seated values that lie
behind bodily practices as basic as walking
styles. Those values tend to make somatic
habits relatively resistant to quick or
arbitrary changes.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu termed

such practices, habitus. He spent much of
his celebrated career studying how we
experience and embody entrenched
assumptions about the world and our place in
it, and how these assumptions shape
everything from architectural styles to taste
in dinnerware.

But with COVID-19, much of what

heretofore passed for habitus has suddenly
become its evil twin. An attempt at a
friendly hug might as well be a curse.

If maintaining a span of two meters from

the nearest human may require doing a sort
of dance down the sidewalk, suddenly, we
are all turning into novice choreographers,
performing an awkward solo tango across
the street. What was heretofore a routine
somatic movement becomes a basis for
uncomfortable improvisation.

Perhaps the professional dancer, actor, and

jazz musician can teach us a thing or two. All
these artists learn the art of improvisation
as part of their training. It may seem odd to
think of improvisation as something to be
learned. But improvisation is actually a
discipline that students practice in dance,
theater, and music classes. Ironically, it
turns out that the art of improvisation is,
indeed, a teachable skill, and the rest of us
non-artists are suddenly being required to
master it. If you’ve got an artist friend or
relative, ask them for some tips.
Gwendolyn Baum is one of many dancers
now offering online classes — including how
to plan for a dance audition. Source here.

Artists are now designing striking face

masks, teaching us to !nd beauty in even
this new health requirement while enjoining
others to do the same.
 Abiquiú, NM-based artist, Suzie Fowler-
Tutt, showing off her hand-sewn face
mask color-coordinated with her hair
adornments. Source here.

Powerful new works of art, such as this one

by performance artist, Miles Greenberg,
may speak to how many people feel these
days — alone, awkward, defenseless,
shackled.
 Art from Isolation: Miles Gr…

This short but moving work of performance

art by Miles Greenberg is part of a COVID-
19-themed series for Document Journal.
Source and video here.

But artists no longer have a monopoly on

improvising new ways to cope with
unprecedented challenges. Many who never
considered themselves especially creative
are !nding themselves inventing new ways
to cope with challenges and celebrate what
remains noteworthy.

Neighborhoods are now organizing weekly

shout-outs to thank those who risk their
own health daily to care for the sick.
Every Friday night at 7 pm, residents up and
down the street of this suburban
neighborhood in RI stand outside their
houses to clap, bellow, and bang their
gratitude for local health care workers.
Source here.

And those whose jobs put them daily in

harm’s way are, themselves, !guring out the
life-saving art of improvisation. In the U.S.,
thanks to an infuriating two months of
inattention to the looming pandemic on the
part of the Trump administration, medical
professionals at risk of infection because of
inadequate supplies are actually making their
own masks.

In the U.S., lack of preparation for COVID-19

by the Trump administration propels hospital
workers to sew masks. Unsurprisingly, this is
feminized labor. Source here.

Workers in plenty of private businesses are

also digging deep to !nd new modalities.

Distilleries that otherwise produce vodka

have found a new use for excess alcohol:
they are re-purposing that newly-hyper-
valued substance into one of the rarest
commodities of the day, sanitizing wipes.

Source with video clip here.

Inside supermarkets, managers are getting

creative about indicating six-foot intervals
delimiting where people should wait on the
checkout line.
Photos: Alma Gottlieb

Meanwhile, gig-economy musicians position

themselves outside those supermarkets,
where they entertain customers awaiting
their turn to enter at safely-spaced
intervals.

Photos: Alma Gottlieb.

With all this creativity occurring in the

economy, I !nd all the more reason for us to
take another look at the homeless.

And, no, I don’t mean because they are

especially vulnerable. They are, but we
already know that. We’ve known that for a
long time. Too many books have been
written about their vulnerability, with not
nearly enough done to address it. Here, I’d
like to point out something we rarely think
about when we consider the situation of
those who live on the streets.

By necessity, the homeless are masters of

improvisation. From whatever tragedies led
to their plight, they must scrounge anew for
food and safe spaces daily. As if that
weren’t enough, they must often manage
these demanding tasks while being
stigmatized, mocked, even arrested or
assaulted. Although the homeless are more
frequently the object of derision than
admiration, their life skills in the face of
almost unimaginable obstacles are
extraordinary. Along with artists, they, too,
could teach the rest of us some important
life lessons.

As an anthropologist who researches the

lives of homeless people in Leipzig,
Germany, Luisa Schneider writes in a new
poem:

while you wait it out at home

part of an expanding digital universe

connected to those you love

millions of us

have no doors to close behind us

or doors behind which

violence waits

or loneliness

or emptiness

or fear

(Source here.)

Even as many in the middle class (and

beyond) are now coming to appreciate for
the !rst time the low-paid workers who
(often, invisibly) make their privileged world
work — producing payroll checks, bagging
groceries, cooking restaurant meals, packing
and delivering packages, cleaning houses,
teaching children — the one group that
remains invisible for their life skills is the
homeless. When this COVID-19 state of
emergency !nally passes, might this
moment of global re"ection produce new
policies of compassion for helping the
homeless to !nd new living quarters, while
also helping them adapt their formidable
survival skills to new careers?

What levels of grit and ingenuity are

required to amass and transport daily this
collection of necessary life goods as an
impoverished, homeless urban nomad across
the streets of NYC? Source here.

At the biomedical level, the most urgent

lesson of this COVID-19 moment, of course,
remains: isolate, isolate, isolate. For
understanding the epidemiological challenges
of this infectious disease emergency, we can
turn to readable digests and thoughtful
analyses of the week’s scienti!c COVID-19
!ndings such as this one, by the brilliant
infectious disease specialist, Dr. Bill
Rodriguez.
But that biomedical level has its counterpart
in sociological factors — inevitably, given
that humans are, above all, a social species.

The new catch-phrase guiding our lives is

“social distancing.” For some, the required
new habits of isolation are causing great
loneliness and worse. For others, the phrase
couldn’t be more of a misnomer, as people
with access to advanced technology forge
ingenious ways to stay in touch with those
they hold near and dear. In the global North,
Zoom is making geeks of technophobes.

I do not mean to underplay the suffering

that the most vulnerable are enduring. Of
course, that group includes not just the
homeless but also the incarcerated and the
medically compromised — the elderly, and
those with the now-famous list of
“underlying medical conditions” that,
especially, stress the heart (diabetes,
cancer, obesity, serious organ issues) as well
as the lungs (asthma and respiratory
conditions).

But it also includes the sociologically most

vulnerable — the poor. And, in most parts of
the world, that means, especially — for
historical reasons having everything to do
with the past half-millenium of European
colonial expansion — people of color. Maps
plotting those !ve groups — the homeless,
the incarcerated, the medically vulnerable,
the poor, and Black and Brown populations —
are disturbingly close to isomorphic.

In a future post, I will explore these sorts of

social vulnerabilities in this COVID-19
moment. Here, I want to end on a different
note.

COVID-19 is forcing us to do no less than not

only reinvent ourselves as individuals, but
reinvent components of who we are as
communities. For those who fear change but
recognize the suddenly urgent need to
embrace it, artists and the homeless alike
offer powerful models of inspiration.

The transformations now occurring at every

level of society will offer anthropologists
research topics for years to come — starting
with reëvaluating some unexpected bene!ts
of what we might have formerly dismissed
as fragility, and what we mean by “culture.”

Source here.

SShhaarree tthhiiss::

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  Anthropology, Covid-19, Creative thinking,
Cultural Anthropology, Culture, Current Issues,
Homeless

 Anthropology, COVID-19

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