What struck me as I was reading the first article, “Cultural Globalization and Language Education,” was how directly fashion connected to much of what Kumaravedivelu was saying. The author seemed to want very much to assert a non-essentialist view of culture, particularly in saying that every culture is affected and changed by a variety of other cultures, and this intermingling has been taking place since the first civilizations. Perhaps because of the author’s earlier mention of fasion as a component of culture, I immediately connected this discussion of cultural mish-mash to the cross-cultural influences of clothing. For example, women in America are still wearing Romanesque sandals, toga-like dresses, tiered skirts that were first worn in Mesopotamia, and espadrilles, which were designed in ancient Persia (if I remember correctly). Those are just a few metaphoric examples of the significant impact that other cultures can have on one’s own. [And to be fair, I will mention that I recently saw a program on the BBC about certain Japanese fashions taking after the ancient Roman chiton, a type of female garment.] There were other ways in which I thought fashion complemented Kumaravedivelu’s point of view, such as the use of style by micro-cultures to self-identify, but I don’t want to belabor the point.
The second article, “TESOL and Culture,” was not as enjoyable to read, largely because I found the review of literature at the beginning to be quite vague. For example, the author, Atkinson, mentioned the use of terms like identity by TESOL scholars to refer to culture in recent years, but he doesn’t ever explain what this identity theory is. Another example is when Atkinson states that one author under review criticizes ESL teachers for causing their students to rhetorically construct their identities, but doesn’t define that concept for the reader. Perhaps more experienced TESOL students understand these references and terms better than I, but as a novice, it would have been helpful to me to get more information on these ideas. I also disliked the summary of Foucault’s argument that knowledge-power discourses render society inequitable, since lawyers have tremendous legal power and doctors have the same for medicine. Does Foucault suggest, then, that we should all have equal knowledge-power in these areas? Or is this just an over-simplification of his point? Further discussion of the discourse theory suggests that the latter might be the case, as in its broadening to the point that some people are brought up more advantageously than others, but again, as a novice, I can’t be sure.
I did notice some similarities between the two articles. For example, they both agreed on the problem of Orientalism, a concept that was no surprise to me. They also both seem to come from non-essentialist points of view, as they go into great detail about the fluid nature of cultures and about the effects of “other” cultures. In the last article, I most liked the discussion of Strauss and Quinn’s theory that culture comes from an individual’s experiences. I definitely agree with this, because everyone we meet has a slightly different culture from our own, the substance of which has been influenced by their upbringing, their education, their friendships, etc. An individual’s culture might be more similar to that of one friend than another, but I believe that each individual’s culture is at least slightly different from any others’. I think the author of this article agrees, since he made Individuality the first principle of culture.
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