cultural theory – Page 10

The Four Cultures of Science Fiction

As a genre, sci-fi is par excellence concerned with culture. What would it be like to visit an alien world? How would its inhabitants operate, and how would they differ from us?

In a way it’s a kind of theoretical anthropology. Think of Ursula Le Guin’s inquiry into a culture of hermaphrodites in The Left Hand of Darkness, or of Iain M. Banks’s series of novels in which he explores the political permutations of a culture that has abolished scarcity – a culture provocatively named ‘the Culture’. Continue reading The Four Cultures of Science Fiction

The Dark Side of Cultural Theory

Nick Naylor: Right there, looking into Joey’s eyes, it all came back in a rush. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop foreman, the oil driller, the land mine developer, the baby seal poacher…
Polly Bailey: Baby seal poacher?
Bobby Jay Bliss: Even *I* think that’s kind of cruel.

— Thank You For Smoking (2005)

Grid-group cultural theory proposes that there’s a constant and endless argument going on about ‘the facts of the matter’. We look at the evidence that suits our cultural biases – moreover we create the evidence to fit our take on the world. Continue reading The Dark Side of Cultural Theory

How to be a Fatalist

Of the four worldviews of grid-group cultural theory, the one cultural theorists themselves most often exclude from the discussion is fatalism. They do this by claiming it is ‘passive’ (Michael Thompson), or ‘isolate’ (Mary Douglas), and by claiming fatalism opts out of policy debates, or is excluded by the others by definition. This betrays a real bias and a failure of imagination on the part of researchers.

Continue reading to find out about fatalist activism and the fatal nation. Continue reading How to be a Fatalist

New Book on Grid-Group Cultural Theory

Michael Thompson has a new book out on his version of grid-group cultural theory (for reasons to be explored here one day, he has five social solidarities instead of the ‘four cultures’ described on this site). It’s called Organisation and Disorganisation. And thanks to Huw for pointing this out.

From the blurb:

We may believe that our perspective is the right one and that any interaction with opposing views is a messy and unwelcome contradiction. But why should egalitarians engage with individualists, or hierachists with egalitarians?

Using a range of examples and analogies, the author shows how the best outcomes depend upon an essential argumentative process, which encourages subversions that are constructive whilst discouraging those that are not. In this way each approach gets more of what it wants and less of what it doesn’t want.

There’ll be a review here when a copy arrives, but in the meantime you can hear Michael speaking about it both at the RSA and on the BBC (with philosopher John Gray).