“The established mythologies of
cross-cultural comparison came to be viewed as especially suspicious
because they compared what were assumed to be self-contained, stable,
and highly integrated cultures, when the reality was that all local
cultures existed within a single worked system integrated by capitalist
expansion and absorption” (Fox and Gingrich 2002:2).
Although such comparisons might
make Japanese culture more readily intelligible to an American audience,
they are based upon simplistic and totalized representations of both
Japanese and American cultural practices; as comparison enables mutual
recognition (the Not-Us that enable an awareness of the Us, to use
Geertz’s language), it simultaneously flattens both cultural
experiences, stripping away social nuances and individuated people. Much
like an introductory textbook on anthropology, Benedict’s books might
stimulate readers to seek out more cross-cultural interaction, but do so
by reifying simplified and totalized images of cultural types.
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