Coordination and the Need for Culture

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a tension which appears to exist between two elements of Sally Haslanger’s view in ‘Cognition as a Social Skill’. The first element is a form of anti-individualism which views the cognitive and agential powers of mature human agents as the products of enculturation. The second is the suggestion that humans need culture in part because shared cultural resources facilitate coordination. The tension arises from the individualistic way in which coordination is often understood. I elaborate on this claim, before suggesting alternative ways of understanding coordination which may avoid the tension. One of the non-individualist approaches to coordination and culture draws on the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, which suggests a need to pay greater attention to the metaphysics of groups. Finally, I turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology critique, arguing that it reveals the particular importance, for critical projects, of attending to the cultural bases for solidarity.

KEYWORDS:

• coordination
• culture
• individualism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgments

Work on this paper was supported in part by a bursary from the Royal Institute of Philosophy. I would like to thank Senthuran Bhuvanendra, Catherine Dale, and Mike Martin for their helpful comments on this material.

Notes

1 Throughout I assume that the question, ‘Why do we need culture?’ has to be heard in the right way. From this perspective, answering that we need culture to play some role simply because we don’t have instincts that play it is not satisfactory. It seems to me a reasonable guiding assumption for social enquiry [cf. Geertz 1973: 45–6], and compatible with commitment to the theory of natural selection, that ‘Why have culture rather than instincts for X?’ is an intelligible and important question.

2 A serious worry is that this points towards cultural nationalism. I don’t believe it does, but there is insufficient space to make the case here.