How to change a culture

Yesterday morning Redeemer University College was privileged to host, along with the Work Research Foundation, Prof. James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC) and The Center on Religion and Democracy at the university. Hunter is best known for his book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, which brought a 19th-century German phenomenon, Kulturkampf, into the English language. Thursday evening he had spoken in the legislative dining room at Queen's Park on how "To Change the World," which he had delivered some years earlier at a Trinity Forum gathering. Yesterday's gathering was an informal discussion of the speech and the ideas therein.

Hunter's thesis is as follows: There is a widespread notion that cultures consist of values held by individuals and the choices they make based on those values. Therefore, if one wishes to change a culture, one must do so by changing individuals one by one, working from the bottom up. However, this conception ignores history. Those who have succeeded in changing a culture have done so from positions of prominence and power. They have done so by means of strategically positioned organizations and networking among those possessing culturally-formative power. Hunter argues for five propositions: (1) "Culture is a resource and as such, a form of power"; (2) culture is deliberately produced; (3) "cultural production is stratified in a rigid structure of 'center' and 'periphery'"; (4) cultural change comes from the top down and hardly ever from the bottom up; and (5) "world-changing is most intense when the networks of elites and the institutions they lead overlap."

This speech made a deep impression on Michael Van Pelt and Gideon Strauss, both of the Work Research Foundation, and they have been attempting to use the insights contained therein in their own efforts. Yet there would appear to be a central difficulty in Hunter's argument, at least if one takes it as a timeless and rigid position, representing the author's final say on the matter. Granted that Harvard and Yale would seem to be possess more cultural formative power than Redeemer University College. Granted that a degree from the first two institutions would give the graduate more access to the centres of influence in North America than a degree from the latter. Does that mean that my colleagues and I are just spinning our wheels off at the margins while the real thing is happening south of the border in Cambridge and New Haven?

I asked Hunter this very question, because he seemed to have changed his tune to a large extent in his remarks to us, and evidently to the gathered audience the previous evening. It soon emerged that Hunter's speech had been explicitly tailored to the Trinity Forum audience, which included a number of influential people -- those with the means to effect the sort of top-down change he was envisioning. It was by no means intended to deprecate the work of others in their capacities as mothers and fathers, sunday school teachers, labour union representatives, &c. Hunter's answer to my question was, no, the rest of us are not spinning our wheels. Everyone in the Body of Christ has a role to play in bringing healing to the larger culture. In fact, it may that those who minister to the poor and despised of this world are more evidently doing the work of God's kingdom than those caught up in a Nietzchean will to power. In this context Hunter spoke of servant-leadership, something I stress to my own students, particularly in the introductory political science courses.

A couple of personal notes. First, I learned that Hunter is a graduate of Gordon College, of which two of my sisters, a brother-in-law and a niece are graduates. In fact, he recognized my brother-in-law's name when I mentioned it. Second, after the discussion was over, I was invited to lunch by three young gentlemen, who had taken time from their summer activities to attend this event. As I had been suffering sorely from a lack of youthful company since the end of the academic year, I was happy to accept their invitation to spend some time with them. (Read Mr. Joustra's reflections on Hunter and his ideas.)

Hunter's presence at the University of Virginia is rather ironic, as it was founded as a militantly secular institution by Thomas Jefferson, whose Monticello plantation overlooks the campus from the heights above. Yet the IASC has moved from the margins to the centre of the university's life and has gathered together a number of traditionally religious scholars -- Christians, Jews and Muslims alike -- who are interested in the interplay between religion and culture. Hunter is obviously having some success in living out his own advice. In the meantime, the rest of us are attempting, with God's help, to do our respective parts in changing the culture.