2
Cultural Consciousness I

Magic Consciousness and Emotions in Health

Chapter 2 begins with a brief review of how culture has been conceptualized in different fields, providing a structure for Chapters 2 to 5. By examining and reflecting on the primordial and existential elements of culture, we will examine how Magic Consciousness as a cultural consciousness shape individuals’ instinctual understanding and interpretation of health behaviors. By noting that emotion is inseparable to Magic Consciousness, we will explore how such emotions can become motivating factors in influencing individuals’ health practices.

I. What is Culture?

Scholars from different disciplines have different ways to think and talk about culture. Some see culture as a relatively fixed or stable set of beliefs, values, and behavior patterns, often demarcated by national or ethnic boundaries (Hofstede 2001; Ting-Toomey 2012). Others see culture as a continual process of renewal and of integrating new information from outside forces (e.g., climate change, overexploitation of natural resources, and invading cultures) and also from indigenous experiences (Kramer 2019; Kramer & Liu 2015; Streeck 2002). In this Chapter, we will review four of the primary ways scholars have conceptualized culture: (a) culture as ethnicity and race, (b) culture as speech communities, (c) culture as worldviews, and (d) culture as a living process.

A. Culture as Ethnic and Racial Group

Ethnic group, race, and nation are three distinct concepts that often share a single core that implicates a shared culture. According to Fenton (2013), race is defined by a group of persons connected by common descent or origin; in contrast, a nation involves an aggregate of people closely associated with each other by common descent, language, or history as to form a distinct race of people usually organized as a separate political state, occupying a definite territory. Ethnic group pertains to a race or nation, having common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics shared by a specific group within a larger system. Although laypeople may think of race or ethnic categories as biological categories that involve distinctive phenotype or unique traits (e.g., Caucasians are white; Hispanic people have dark hair; Asians have brown eyes; or indigenous people are vulnerable to diabetes), researchers are increasingly wary of imposing racial or ethnic categories, a social construct, to examine genetic variations because such an approach overemphasizes the influences of genetic components and can overexaggerate the salience of race (Paradies et al. 2007). Some researchers cautioned that genetic variations between populations are issues framed through political and commercial motivations, which can lead to the conflation of race, ethnicity, and nationality with biological differences as well as discrimination of certain groups (Kahn 2014; Lee 2015). Nevertheless, in this book, we recognize that they tend to overlap so much that they are almost interchangeable designations in much of the literature prior to the 1980s.

The word ethnic derives from the Greek ethnikos, meaning heathen. Later in Middle English (i.e., the form of English spoken after the Norman conquest until the late 15th century), “ethnic” came to mean a person who was not a Christian (“Ethnic,” 2016). Today these connotations remain, but more commonly, ethnic identity is related to one’s origin by birth or descent and/or membership in a subgroup as contrasted with a person of the so-called “mainstream” majority of present nationality. For instance, in the United States, “ethnic” cuisine often means non-Western food. In terms of music, it tends to mean non-English lyrics.

Ethnic tends to mean someone other – someone not descendent from the majority cultural tradition within designated boundaries (Fenton, 2013). The word ethnic has become increasingly problematic as it fragments populations into groups. Such fragmentations typically involve notions of mainstream power and privilege: what is “normal” as opposed to foreign or exotic. Hence, identification of mainstream versus subgroups often involves inequality of opportunity. Such categorical designations constitute structural distinctions often related to race, language, and religion.

In more enlightened societies, ethnic diversity may not have the negative connotations of “heathen” Other, but instead may be celebrated. Under such sociocultural tolerance, each tradition may be recognized as providing unique and valuable cultural knowledge, fashions, beliefs, practices, styles, and solutions that enrich society. All cultures face a relatively common set of challenges such as child-rearing, building shelter, procuring sustenance, organizing work, passing on knowledge to the next generation, coping with aging, and so forth. The more essential a need (e.g., shelters, food, or healthcare), the more likely people are willing to tolerate differences. A starving man will not pass up an American hamburger just because he prefers sushi.

Diversity in any ecosystem enables that system to cope with stresses. Monocultural systems are very vulnerable to failure because they have only one solution to a problem (Kramer, 2003). The Irish starved because they had been forced to replace their traditional agriculture made up of a variety of plants with just the potato. Consequently, when that one food source failed, they were in trouble (Brown, 2019). Similarly, ethnic diversity provides an expanded repertoire of solutions to problems people face in daily life. It also presents a multiplicity of cuisines, clothing fashions, philosophies, spiritual systems, sports, and entertainments, pedagogical practices, and so forth that people can select from, combine in various ways, and enjoy.

Streeck (2002) critiqued the conceptualization of cultures as distinctive entities or categories of people is “a product of late 19th-century anthropology and its contexts, colonialism” (p. 301). Additionally, Streeck (2002) notes that we tend to “assume discreteness and distinctions where in reality there are only fuzzy boundaries, [and] we inadvertently homogenize the entities that we call cultures; we abstract from history, notably histories of migration, as well as its effects, such as cultural borrowing and hybridization” (p. 301). Ethnic ways offer various lifestyles, including dietary regimes that modern science is studying for solutions to illness and infirmity. Being open to diversity is a strategy that enables us to expand our repertoire of solutions. Rather than ethnocentrically rejecting solutions from other cultures, increasingly in our global world of information exchange, people are seeking out and testing solutions no matter their geographical or ethnic origins. Because we all face illness, accidents, aging, and death, such aspects of the human condition transcend ethnic, racial, and even national boundaries. But cultural and linguistic barriers exist. When conflicting values become salient, simple adoption of foreign ways is difficult.

Cultural distance (i.e., how similar one culture is to another) influences how much a specific practice is adopted unchanged. The closer two cultures are, the more likely the solutions will be transferred with little alteration. The more distant cultures are, the more likely solutions (e.g., yoga or cancer treatment) will take on an accent so to speak, meaning a modality or way of doing it that is more acceptable and functional for local populations and their norms, beliefs, values, motives, and expectations. Although people may strive to preserve “authentic” styles and practices, the ways health maintenance and healthcare are practiced still varies from place to place. As modern medical practices spread and fuse with local practices, healthcare, and health maintenance mix global with local tendencies. Such differences include what people prefer in terms of food and what foods are available. Such differences include gender norms so that exercise classes in one culture may include both sexes but in other cultures are strictly unisex. Such differences include the level of participation and access of spiritual leaders with medical practitioners. Such differences include the participation of family members in medical interventions, including information sharing. These and many other differences are rooted in cultural traditions that are shaped by sociocultural histories and geopolitical environments. The fusional product is a glocal (i.e., global + local) set of normative practices, motives, and expectations guided by local values, beliefs, and access. Even within a country, there are differences between rural and urban healthcare cultures. Thus, all healthcare has an accent. Rural American health practices are limited by economic and other factors that make them different from urban American healthcare.

Rather than seeing culture as the “natural order of things,” cultural scholars increasingly recognize that cultural difference is “a product of human agency” that involves “the contested and shifting nature of cultural identities and cultural borders” (Streeck, 2002, pp. 301–302). This emerging approach allows scholars to move away from a static, passive understanding of culture and cultural groups imposed by dominant groups and instead examine culture as dynamic activities to be performed and negotiated between cultural participants.

B. Culture as Speech...