Sport, physical education and country towns

Diverse enough?

Abstract

Is it possible for culture to be anything other than diverse? As with 'hybridity', a term so much in vogue in contemporary social science, 'cultural diversity' seems mildly tautological. Applied either to communities of people or individual identities, 'hybrldiry' assumes a pre-existing purity which, certainly in western countries, seems fanciful. Likewise, 'cultural diversity' gestures towards or, perhaps more accurately, away from communities of people which, presumably, are culturally monolithic. But could such a group of people ever exist? Of course, it all depends on how you define 'culture' and, as COmmentators such as Williams (1958 & 1981) and Bagleton (2000) have shown, this is far from a straightforward matter, particularly in a historical moment where 'culture' can mean a way of life (as in 'cafe culture'), a work of art (as in 'high culture') or an episode of The Simpsons (as in 'popular culture'). Perhaps one way of bringing these various meanings together is to think in terms of the things people do. That is, culture is a matter of social practice. In the case of The Sirnpsons, then, we might say that its cultural significance derives from the socially located ways in which the program is made, watched, advertised, consumed, and talked about. In this sense, it is hard to imagine any community of people (as opposed to robots!) not 'doing' their lives in diverse ways. Indeed, are we not told  from the moment of our births that we are each 'special' 'individuals', and that it is this particularity which makes us human?