Global Culture Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket

241 Pages·2000·0.79 MB·English

by  Gordon Mathews

Global Culture/Individual
Identity

Most people still think of themselves as belonging to a particular
culture. Yet today, many of us who live in affluent societies choose
aspects of our lives from a global “cultural supermarket”, whether in
terms of food, the arts, or spirituality and beliefs. So if roots are
becoming simply one more consumer choice, can we still claim to
possess a fundamental cultural identity?
Global Culture/Individual Identity focuses on three groups for whom the
tension between a particular national culture and the global cultural
supermarket is especially acute: Japanese artists, American religious
seekers, and Hong Kong intellectuals before and after the handover to
China. These ethnographic case studies form the basis for a theory of
culture which we can see reflected in our own lives.
Gordon Mathews opens up the complex and debated topics of
globalization, culture, and identity in a clear and lively style. His book
will be illuminating and valuable for social and cultural anthropologists,
their students, and the interested layperson.
Gordon Mathews is associate professor of anthropology at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong. He is also the author of What Makes Life Worth
Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds.

Global Culture/
Individual Identity

Searching for home in the cultural
supermarket

Gordon Mathews

London and New York
First published 2000 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

© 2000 Gordon Mathews
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mathews, Gordon.
Global culture/individual identity: searching for home in the
cultural supermarket/Gordon Mathews.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Group identity. 2. Culture. 3. International relations and
culture. 4. Acculturation. 5. National characteristics.
6. Ethnicity. I. Title.
HM753.M37 2000
306–dc21 99–41333
CIP

ISBN 0-203-45934-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-76758-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-20616-2 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-20615-4 (hbk)
To Yoko

Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments x
1 On the meanings of culture 1
2 What in the world is Japanese? On the cultural
identities of kotoists, calligraphers, bebop pianists,
and punk rockers 30
3 What in the world is American? On the cultural
identities of evangelical Christians, spiritual searchers,
and Tibetan Buddhists 76
4 What in the world is Chinese? On the cultural
identities of Hong Kong intellectuals in the shadow
and wake of 1 July 1997 121
5 Searching for home in the cultural supermarket 166
Notes 198
Select bibliography 214
Index 223
Preface
This book is about cultural identity. Most people today tend to think of
culture as belonging to a particular society: Japanese have Japanese
culture, French have French culture, Americans have American culture,
and so on. But today this has become confusing: we belong to our
particular national culture, but many of us in today’s affluent world also
choose—or at least believe we choose—aspects of our lives from what can
be called “the global cultural supermarket.” You might eat raisin bran for
breakfast, curry for lunch, and sashimi for dinner; you may listen to
opera, jazz, reggae, or juju; you may become a Christian, an atheist, a
Buddhist, or a Sufi.
One result of this is a profound contradiction that many of us in the
affluent, media-connected world live within. We feel that we belong to
our particular national culture, and believe that we must cherish our
culture. But we also consume from the global cultural supermarket, and
believe (albeit in large part falsely) that we can buy, do, be anything in
the world we want—but we can’t have it both ways. We can’t have both
all the world’s cultures to choose from and our own cultural particularity.
If you believe that you can choose aspects of your life and culture from
all the world, then where is your home? Do you have any home left to
come back to? Can home and roots be simply one more consumer
choice?
I focus in this book on three groups for whom the tension between
particular national culture and the global cultural supermarket is
particularly acute: Japanese artists traditional and contemporary,
American religious seekers Christian and Buddhist, and Hong Kong
intellectuals in the shadow and wake of Hong Kong’s return to China.
Japanese traditional artists may claim that their arts represent the essence
of Japaneseness, an essence that their fellow Japanese have lost. Some
Japanese contemporary artists seek a return, through their rock or jazz
or abstract painting, to their Japanese roots. But is the Japaneseness that
Preface ix
the koto player in kimono expresses through her art really the same as the
Japaneseness that the punk rocker with dyed blond hair expresses
through his art? What in the world is Japanese?
Some American Christians believe that the United States is a once-
Christian nation that has lost sight of God’s truth; but many American
religious seekers see religion as a matter of taste: “believe whatever
makes you happy.” Different versions of the United States follow each
of these principles: Is the United States “one nation under God,” a
beacon of truth to the world, or is it a land of “the individual pursuit
of happiness”? What in the world is American?
Some Hong Kong intellectuals see themselves as Hongkongese, an
identity that emerged only in recent decades and that may now be slowly
vanishing under the weight of the Chinese state since the handover on
1 July 1997. Others see themselves as Chinese, and revere the Chinese
identity to which they now claim they have returned. But in the wake
of colonialism in Hong Kong and communism on the mainland, is there
any such Chineseness left to go back to? Or is it no more than a dream?
What in the world is Chinese?
These three groups, and the personal accounts of people within
these groups, are featured in the three central chapters of this book; but
these particular investigations are framed within a larger argument over
the meanings of culture in today’s world, and the meanings of home.
This book is about three particular groups of people, but it is also
about all of us in the mass-mediated, culturally supermarketed world
of today. Who in this world are we? This book will provide no clear
answers to this question; but it will, I hope, stimulate you who read
these words to think about our contemporary quandaries of cultural
identity in a new way.
A brief note on names. Japanese names in this book are written in
Japanese style, with surname first and given name second. Chinese
names are also written with surname first and given name second unless
the person referred to goes by a Western given name, in which case the
surname follows the given name.