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“Three Ways of Looking at Culture: Social Class, Dialogues & Borders, Camps & Refugees” Symposiu... more “Three Ways of Looking at Culture:
Social Class, Dialogues & Borders, Camps & Refugees”

Symposium Abstract:

(1) Background

Culture has supplanted class as a determinant of health with an essentialist approach. Global migrants challenge established notions of borders while refugee camps create their own culture with new forms of mental/social suffering.

(2) Foci

This symposium employs three ways of looking at culture through class, dialogues/borders, and camps/refugees, culminating in the creation of undifferentiated refugees in a “Refugee Culture.”

(3) Propositions

(a) “The Still Hidden Injuries of Class”

To examine changing definitions of culture, social class is revisited as a critical factor in mental health, largely supplanted by the notion of culture. Beyond ignoring social determinants of health, this approach minimizes economic and social impacts of class.

(b) “Borders, Dialogues, & Culture”

To criticize definitions of culture as essentialist, based on a “cultural-deficit approach,” and offer Bakhtin’s approach to culture as dialogue and interface that identifies “interactional breakdowns.” To review Nail's deployment of “border” as separator and theory of culture/ migration/belonging, with economic/political/social impacts for psychiatric care.

To frame forced migration as a process of dislocation, forced immobility, and revocation of agency. Refugee camps level class/personal history/individuality, manufacturing undifferentiated “refugees” and “Refugee Culture.” The refugee submits to sociopolitical demands to integrate/assimilate Western systems of knowing and doing, silencing needs/status/agency. Refugee Culture breeds its own brand of psychological/psychiatric states.

(4) Outcomes

Culture emerges as a dialogue/interface, with interactional breakdowns as generators of boundaries and culture. Nail’s border theory views history through movement rather than sedentary communities, seeing humans in motion/liminal rather than in essentialist/static terms.

(5) Implications/Discussion

Nail calls for “limology” – the study of motion/liminality.

To avoid seeing migrants as threats, assaults on borders/sovereignty.

To abandon essentialist and deficit models of culture to see race/class, borders/camps as emerging from “interactional breakdowns” that generate static categories in the face of undifferentiated camp experiences.

Symposium Learning Objectives:

Learning Objective #1:
Explore clinical, research and policy implications of re-visioning class and culture as dialogues and borders.
Learning Objective #2:
Formulate refugee mental health in the context of a manufactured refugee culture.

Symposium Citations/References:
Matusov, E., Smith, M., Albuquerque Candela, M, and Lilu, K. (2007). “Culture has no internal territory”: Culture as dialogue. In: Jaan Valsiner and Alberto Rosa, eds., The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 460-483.

McPherson, M. (2010) “I integrate, therefore I am”: Contesting the normalizing discourse of integrationism through conversations with refugee women. Journal of Refugee Studies, 23: 546–570.

Nail, T. (2016). Theory of the Border. 2016. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Sennett, R. and Cobb, J. (1972/2008). The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Knopf. (Re-issued New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008)
under-serviced areas (social class).

Presenter #2 Abstract:

Title of Paper:
“Dialogues, Borders, and Culture”

Abstract:

Background

With shifting definitions of culture towards essentialist and static categories and to avoid the fragmentation of identity politics, other views of culture may be explored.

(2) Focus

Mikhail Bakhtin’s “dialogical” approach is one alternative. Bakhtin argued that “the realm of culture has no internal territory,” being “entirely distributed along the boundaries” such that “boundaries pass everywhere” creating a “systematic unity of culture.” This revolutionary approach implies that it's not cultural differences that create “interactional breakdowns” but rather that such “interactional breakdowns constitute boundaries and create cultures” (Matusov, et al., 2007). Culture is thus interactive, face to face, and dialogic.

(3) Propositions

“Culture as a boundary.” To demonstrate definitions of culture as essentialist, based on a cultural-deficit approach, and offer Bakhtin’s dialogic approach to culture as interface, identifying “interactional breakdowns.”

“Theory of the border.” To review Nail’s (2016) deployment of “border” as separator and as a way to think about culture and migration, identity and belonging with economic and political impacts for psychiatric care.

(4) Outcomes

To avoid essentialist definitions of culture, we should jettison notions like ethnicity.

While culture supplants social class as a determinant of health, with unproductive consequences, Bakhtin’s dialogic argument posits “interactional breakdowns” as generators of boundaries and hence culture. Nail’s border theory offers another way to imagine history and geography through movement rather than sedentary communities, seeing human existence in motion and liminality rather than through essentialist and static definitions. Nail calls for “limology” – the study of people in motion and liminality (Di Nicola, 1997).

(5) Implications

To abandon essentialist/deficit models of culture and to see race/class, borders/culture as emerging from “interactional breakdowns” in dialogues that create static, unrealistic categories.

Essentialist approaches to culture lead to unilateral world views while the dialogic approach promotes collaboration/dialogue.

To avoid seeing migrants as threats, assaults on borders/national sovereignty.

Presenter #2 Learning Objectives:

Learning Objective #1:
Investigate culture as a dialogue with its interactional breakdowns and the border as a new theory of culture and migration.
Learning Objective #2:
Recognize the clinical, research and policy implications of re-visioning culture for social and cultural psychiatry as dialogues and borders.

Citations/References:
Di Nicola, V. (1997). A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co.

Matusov, E., Smith, M., Albuquerque Candela, M., and Lilu, K. (2007). “Culture has no internal territory”: Culture as dialogue. In: J. Valsiner and A. Rosa, eds., The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 460-483.

Nail, T. (2016). Theory of the Border. 2016. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.