Anthropological contributions to the analysis, prevention and resolution of conflict have spanned an impressive range of activities and approaches. Anthropologists close proximity to the worldviews and cultural sensibilities of local people have facilitated, amongst other things, enhanced mediation processes, culturally specific negotiation styles, actor management, greater understanding of socio-political root causes, and the consideration and use of indigenous discourses, interpretations and approaches in the resolution process (c.f. Wolfe and Yang, 1996). In this short article, I would like to speak to a less commonly cited, but no less important, category of anthropological contribution. Applying the term “Intra-Cultural Development”, I would like to make a case for the importance of monitoring and managing the symbolic discourse that individuals use to represent and legitimize themselves as cultural beings.

Anthropologists ability to understand, and, on occasion, to speak, the language of cultural symbolism, of symbolic discourse, has already contributed a great deal to the way in which countless millions of people understand themselves as cultural beings. Mead, for instance, attributes Benedict’s Patterns of Culture to the fact that “today the modern world is on such easy terms with the concept of culture, that the words ‘in our culture’ slip from the lips of educated men and women almost as effortlessly as do the phrases that refer to period and to place...”.

In many ways the Boas/Sapir/Benedict/Mead efforts to promote cultural relativism through their ‘personality writ large’ frame were attempts to build an understanding of cultural relatively into a globally-shared symbolic discourse of the human being. In so doing, their ideas helped to prop individuals up in new ways, to give them interesting representations for their own personalities by linking them to “in our culture” traits and characteristics. In the early-mid 20th century, this was a vastly underdeveloped arena of representation where cultural/racial persecution, superiority and stereotyping were commonplace. The Boas/Sapir/Benedict/Mead cultural relativism was not merely destined to become an example of classical anthropological theory. In providing a sustainable imaginative environment for individuals to seek out and find self representation in their everyday lives, their efforts were also a splendid example of Intra-Cultural Development.

Contemporary writings blending psychological understandings of personality with anthropological perspectives on identity and culture illustrate a greater complexity and volatility in the individual’s search for representations of themselves as cultural beings (c.f. Gregg, 1998). Contemporary theories see our personalities as multi-sited entities, selecting certain cultural symbols at certain times to suit certain social configurations and states of mind. The way we are at the same time traditional and modern, or morally-anchored yet open to change–these ongoing internal oscillations constantly demand appropriate symbolic expression. And so we search intensively within available symbolic discourse for a representation that legitimizes, and gives meaning to, our current, and also explains our overall, state of existence.

So multi-sited, so volatile is the system of identity and representation that building total sustainability into it—preventing periodic collapse—is perhaps impossible. When the system is working the individual is involved in a kind of unending symbolic roulette of reinvention and “play”, going about pairing social and emotional states with “appropriate” symbolic representation. But when the symbolic language becomes unsustainable—the individual cannot find appropriate representation for the upkeep of a legitimized self—it is a “short step… from creative play with social dualities to hostile freezing of stereotypes” (Gregg, 1998: 149).

This, of course, is the moment of potential descent into conflict, and its reverse—re-engaging in creative play—a moment of potential conflict resolution. Sustainable imagined communities ideally equip individuals to be able to respond to any given political, economic, or inter-group situation or event through the provision of a large diverse range of representations for any given configuration of personality-culture that an individual will bring to it. By contrast, unsustainable communities’ underdeveloped and static symbolic discourses will channel, rather than represent, individuals’ actions and states of mind into predetermined (prefabricated) architectures which restrict “creative play” and propagate hostility.

The development of the imaginative landscape of self representation can be paralleled to the development of physical infrastructure and community development in the traditional sense of the term. In both endeavors, the importance of good management, planning and construction are vital. As with its concrete counterparts, intra-cultural development must identify problem areas where little or no infrastructure exists and work to design and build sustainable architectures and environments. These environments will work to diversify and enrich the symbolism available for self-representation, seeing that such symbolism is broadly and equally accessible and representative across the diverse sectors of societies and personalities.

Intra-Cultural Development is in motion across vast areas of interdisciplinary activity. The range of projects which have the potential to improve and develop the quality of our imaginative landscapes is limitless. Hosts of media projects, role-play and dramatic workshops, and educational and experiential programs attempt to directly redress unbalances within the individual-cultural identity representation system. However, anthropologists well versed in symbolic language of individuals and cultures—the bricks and mortar of this intra-cultural development—share a special responsibility to return to a once influential, even leading, role.

Innovative anthropological research into the workings of identity needs to continue to be consolidated and further innovated in order to continue to provide for people rich representations of human diversity. This research must be marketed, popularized and distributed in accessible forms so that individuals can digest and utilize these enriched representations of diverse symbolism and meaning. A long-term project here is to distribute the contemporary ideas of the universality of contextual, improvised, selves—to make it “acceptable”, even “natural”, to be culturally multi-sited, (Koven, 1998), or contradictory, in ones affiliations and choices of symbolic representation.

Areas where intra-cultural development has been deliberately halted, restricted, or seized through media campaigns, misinformation and/or propaganda need immediate pluralization. As a means to achieve this, anti-propaganda campaigns and other applied approaches to restoring diversity in symbolic representation need consolidation, innovation and deployment. Formal training programs and curricula aiming to equip students, a variety of actors and diplomats with the interpretative skills necessary to make their own professional contributions need to continue to be designed and put into action.

These aims cannot be achieved by anthropologists alone, (Moore and Sanders, 1996), but our trade and its tradition dictates action on our behalf. We need to build interdisciplinary networks and terminologies, resources and forums in order for intra-cultural development to be fully realized as an organized cooperative endeavor. Our anthropological tradition of building sustainability into the concepts of humanity and community which we produce is unquestioned. What needs now to be considered are “concrete”, systematic, approaches to the development of imaginative infrastructures and architectures—the development of environments that simply must succeed our current unequally resourced and under-developed landscapes of identity.

References

Benedict, Ruth
1989 Patterns of Culture. Mariner books

Gregg, Gary S.
1998 Culture, Personality, and the Multiplicity of Identity: Evidence from North African Life Narratives. Ethos 26/2: 120-152

Koven, Michele E.J
1998 Two Languages in the Self/ The Self in Two Languages: French-Portuguese Bilinguals' Verbal Enactments and Experiences of Self in Narrative Discourse. Ethos 26/4: 410-455.

Moore, R., and Sanders, A.
1996 The Limits of an Anthropology of Conflict: Loyalist and Republican Paramilitary Organizations in Northern Ireland. In Wolfe, Alvin and Yang, Honggang (eds,) Anthropological Contributions to Conflict Resolution (Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings). University of Georgia Press

Wolfe, Alvin and Yang, Honggang (eds,)
1996 Anthropological Contributions to Conflict Resolution (Southern Anthropological Society Proceedings). University of Georgia Press