How Not to Study Australian Culture

Culture is difficult to study because it is very difficult to define. Essentially, culture is the commonality that a significant number of individuals in one group share with each other, but don't share with individuals from another group. It may be an actual set of behaviours, or it may be a certain sets of beliefs that may or may not be true. Defining what is common and what is different depends upon which two groups are being compared. For example, informality is a useful cultural characteristic when comparing Australians with Asians. It is not useful when comparing Australians with New Zealanders. Consequently, it would be useful to define Australians on informal grounds when talking to Asians, but it would be useless when talking to New Zealanders.

Not only does it change according to which groups are being compared, there is also a difference between a myth of a culture and the reality of a culture. For example, getting familiar with hello kitty, love hotels, izakayas, karaoke bars, and Japanese pornography provides better insights into the modern Japanese way of life than reading a book about an old Shinto temple or geishas. Paradoxically; however, a Shinto temple and geishas are more likely to be used to define Japanese culture by both foreigners and the Japanese alike. The two traditional cultural expressions can be used to differentiate Japanese people from other nationalities, and they are generally seen as positive. Because they are both unique and positive, they are used to define Japan even though they are alien to the life of the average Japanese person. The question for the cultural studies student is whether to consider the myths of the culture or its realities. In their own way, both are valid.

The transient and subjective nature of culture makes it very unsuited to current methodologies in universities. One methodology favoured in university is the survey. Personally, I think the survey is better to justify a view rather than to form one.  For example, in China I met a German man who was doing a PhD on how communication strategies need to be tailored to like-minded cultures. He was doing surveys to define various cultural values. I asked him to define the difference between China and western cultures. He replied that the surveys were showing that China puts the group first, whereas westerners put the individual first. I then asked him if he had seen many individuals in China put themselves first. With that a penny dropped, and he went quiet for a few seconds. Tentatively he said that he had, but he then qualified himself by saying that the Chinese felt that relationships were very important. I replied that he was now talking about a different topic. With that he didn't want to talk anymore.

China is not a group-first society. It is a third-world society in which the majority of individuals are struggling to attain a better life. To obtain a better life, individuals work together in various family or social groups that help them achieve their individual goals.

Even though China is not a group-first society in practice, in myth it is a group first society, and in surveys myths dominate over the reality. What people say they will do, and what they actually do, are not always the same. I can quite easily give 100 common examples of Chinese people putting themselves before the group, but I also know that almost all Chinese believe China is a group first society.

Even though it is not based in behavioural fact, the myth of China being a group-first society is an insight into China's aspirations and values. In that regard, the widespread belief in the myth can be interpreted as a fact in itself. It is also a useful myth to know because it can be used to influence behaviour. For example, whenever I've wanted to exert compliance on a Chinese student, be they a professor or 19-year-old first year, I've often evoked the myth that in Chinese culture, individuals put the group first. With an individualistic westerner evoking the Chinese myth, the Chinese tend to be quite motivated to act in way that ensures that myth can be maintained as factual. Unlike the PhD man, I didn't need a survey to find out the myth. Furthermore, because I didn't rely on a survey, I knew how the myth could be effectively used.

Aside from the surveys, I am also sceptical about universities using the written word of other scholars to justify an opinion. The problem with the written word is that when people write they try to manipulate. A good example can be found in ABC news reports following the Bali Bombings. Maxine McKew, a presenter for the ABC, commenced a news bulletin with the sentence:

"Australian Muslims are being warned to be vigilant following the Bali attack."

From a journalistic point of view, the sentence is dubious because it is a passive construction, and journalists are told not to write in the passive. The main problem with a passive construction is that it can be used to eliminate the actor of a clause and therefore deliberately misdirect readers. For example, instead of writing , "The XYZ is warning Muslims to be vigilant" , the passive sentence is " Australian Muslims are being warned by the XYZ to be vigilant." The "by the XYZ " can then be cut out, and no source needs to be attributed to the warning. In reality, the warnings may only exist in the journalist's mind.

Ms McKew's news piece flowed into a piece by Thea Dikeos that further built upon McKew's initial misdirection. Among many other ambiguous passages was the sentence:

 " But the difficulty for any government will be how to manage the fear and anger now emerging following the Bali bombing." (complete transcript below)

The sentence used a linguistic trick known as nominalisation to cut out both the goal and the actor. The verb "fear" and the adjective "anger" were transformed into nouns. In the process, Dikeos didn't need to state who was in fear, or who was angry. Was it Muslims in fear of a revenge attack? Was in Australians in fear of a terrorist attack? Was it left-wingers in fear that a Liberal government could get elected? Who was angry? Muslims? Australians? Left-wingers? The meat of the newspiece didn't explain. It was deliberate misdirection. It was about stirring up the red ants and the greent ants so they would fight, which would then allow the ABC to give commentary. Any fear or anger on one side could be attributed to the other, and vice versa, which in turn compounded it. Media consumers would be subjected to an emotional roller coaster, form strong opinions, take sides, and keep coming back for more.

There is nothing new about journalists using sneaky tricks to manipulate people. It is just part of their job to play with people's emotions and rustle up fear. In theory, academics are meant to be above such tricks. In reality, they are not. Due to the peer review system, academics are under more pressure to conform their peers, than inform their peers. To achieve conformity, they use manipulative writing, and it works. For example, when I was doing a master degree, I attended a meeting of media professors in a Sydney bar. The discussion topic was something like "what is the role of the media in a climate of fear and uncertainty?" All the academics were in agreement that Australia was in fear, and that fear had been cultivated by the Australian prime minister. I then asked the scholar that proposed the question whether it was a myth whether we were living in fear. I definately couldn't see any sign that Australians were in fear. In the bar around us, the atmosphere was very relaxed, and in the spring air outside the bar was very relaxed. The scholar replied that she was working with Muslims in western Sydney and they were in fear. While that may have been the case, the discussion question was based on the idea that the average Australian was living in a fear of a terrorist attack, and it was the government, as well as the commercial media, that had cultivated that fear. Muslims living in fear, and the reasons for that fear, was a different topic entirely.

The culmination of the academic's fear campaign was a fantasy world in which Australia had become a Nazi state, and scholars were the last hope for freedom loving Australians. In 2007, this fantasy led to Robert Manne, the man voted Australia's leading intellectual, being lampooned by The Australian newspaper. In response to Manne writing a letter to the paper saying that debate was under threat, The Australian wrote in an editorial:

"There is no better way to start the day than with a good chuckle. Happily, there was Robert Manne in the letters pages of The Australian yesterday to give us one...Manne says debate is "presently under threat", which would be why people were too terrified to march in their hundreds of thousands against the war in Iraq. You hardly ever hear a word against the Government's Work Choices legislation either, do you? David Marr can never get a word in...Pity we won't be able to hear through the mouth gag he is forced to wear, both hands tied behind his back to prevent him from writing books, essays, columns and, now, letters to The Australian."

The misguided survey results of the German Phd student as well, as the fantasies of Australian academics, show the problem with researchers disconnecting themselves from the real world, and relying too much upon the written world. The Phd student should have relied upon his experiences in China, not his survey results of Chinese people. Likewise, the Australian scholars reading about why Australia was on the verge of totalitarianism really should have questioned the writing styles in the books they were reading, then put them down and looked at the world around them. Just because something is written by an "expert", and has attained consensus amongst other "experts" doesn't make it true.

In order to identify what went wrong, the researchers should have also been more aware of the influence of myths. Just as myths governed the perceptions of the people they were studying, they also governed their own judgements. Instead of changing their myths to suit the facts, they were changing the facts to suit their myths. Much of this occured due to bad writing that was deliberately sloppy, and deceitful. I agree with many of the comments made by George Orwell in 1946 when he used examples of academic writing that deliberately deceived people from the true meaning. In his influential essay, "Politics and the English Language" Orwell said,

"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

 

 

Transcript of news report of the Bali Bombings by the government-funded ABC

 

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