Response to Martinez and Branson

Dr. Martinez seeks to equip the reader with cultural tools to better enable the reader to interact with cultures. These tools are specifically dialogical, or two-way—re-reading history, telling stories, and being a multicultural church all seek to both speak and to listen. Historically we have seen the damage that can happen when we as a church lack the tools or fail to use them, for example when missionaries seek to “civilize” cultures or conversely when syncretism has eroded the church in particular contexts. My wife and I attend a mostly African-American church and I have noticed a few times when, because our different cultures have different views of social relations, self, world and so on I risk offending or being offended when no offence is intended. There are a range of responses that I have not yet learned: am I supposed to laugh at that or take it seriously? How do I express appreciation, or thankfulness? These things are fairly basic, yet while we live in the same neighborhood and same country and speak a roughly equivalent language I stumble sometimes. I am learning.

Dr. Branson’s concept of Praxis is illustrative here. As I have engaged with this community I move back and fourth between observation, experimentation, and returning to observation to further modify my concepts. I observe that I seem to have accidentally missed a social cue here and mildly offended a sister. This prompts me to consider the situation more closely, and to subsequently re-engage the community with some new thoughts and categories.

Branson describes the relationship between society, culture, community and individual well. Society is the most macro, with many cultures living and interacting together within a society. Branson’s addition of community I find particularly helpful because it provides a bridge between the individual to a concrete group of other individuals and not just a large, generic collection of people such as a culture. It is at the level of community that I belong to other, particular people. I may inhabit many cultures partially, but this does not include any relationship to particular persons. It may be possible to inhabit more than one community, though Branson’s rigorous criteria for community make that less likely. What is important, however, is that at the community level I, Daniel McWhirter, come into contact with a collective group that has particular faces. Daniel McWhirter as participant in consumer culture, or the culture of academic humanities does not have any necessary relationship with other distinct individuals. What defines my involvement in culture is not who I am related to. However, on the level of community, there is no way to define my involvement apart from other particular people and groups of people (e.g. particular families, circles of friends). The addition of communities to our framework for understanding social structures helps to ground the individual in a concrete group rather than the impersonal sea of culture, which is faceless.