"The abstract mental idealizations that we call cultures thus develop through social interactions, and are associated with membership of a particular social group -- members of the group are normally expected to typically enact at least some of the cultural traits associated with it."
--Alex Frame from Cultures, Identities and Meanings in Intercultural Encounters
Coming to the end of the quarter, I've been thinking much more about this idea of cultural development and how we identify and negotiate with the culture of graduate school. There's a sense among many students that being graduate students makes us superior, makes us intelligent, makes us worthy of a voice regardless of what is said. There's a sense that academia is a place for expert roles, the heady egos of commanding authorities and intellectual doctrine, a place for adherence and the receipt of dissemination rather than be actors and agents among peers.
If our cultural representations are formed mentally and also simultaneously through social interaction, which of these two opposing agents has the control over flows? Do we receive direction from our teachers as necessary students, or are we merely buying into temporary social constructions that are centralized more around the power and privilege that has been afforded to each participant for playing a role? Are our constructions of each other as students and professors, first years and second years, receptors of knowledge and disseminators of knowledge a willful act of agency or a submission to the authority of those who have the knowledge over those don't? Or are these simply mental idealizations that can be changed?
No comments:
Post a Comment