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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [139], (1) Lines: 0 to 17 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [139], (1) eight Culture as Narrative Nelson Graburn The immense changes leading up to the 1999 establishment of the Nunavut Territory in Canada have challenged Inuit there to redefine themselves and their place in the world. In doing so, Inuit have come to question the ways in which they are uniquely Inuit and by what means they remain Inuit. This chapter focuses on the ways Inuitness (inunguniq, the quality of “being Inuit”) is challenged, changed, fractured, and reinforced in today’s formal and informal institutions.1 It focuses particularly on the ways that the qallunaat are part of shaping and enabling the Inuitness of Inuit. Inuit are concerned—almost hypersensitive—about the survival of “their culture” (Graburn 1998a) and thus very self-consciously engaged in conversations about and pursuing activities aimed at ensuring the perpetuation of their culture. This dramatically changed nature and context of cultural transmission provokes questions about the nature of the Inuit culture being transmitted . Thus this essay problematizes the nature of the culture being transmitted and, of course, the anthropological uses of the concept of culture. If we consider even partially the relevance of MacLuhan’s aphorism that The Medium Is the Message (1967), then we have to consider that the various channels by which this as yet vague information called “culture” is transmitted are as important as the information itself. On the other hand, we could show that MacLuhan was wrong or overemphasized the nature of the channels. The MacLuhanesque approach would then have us believe that “modern” culture—now equated with “global” culture—is that which is transmitted and supported by a huge variety of personal, institutional, and technical mechanisms, totally different from those “local” cultures transmitted and kept in conversation by direct personal oral, visual, and tactile Graburn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [140], (2) Lines: 17 ——— 6.4pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: T [140], (2) channels. If this is so, we have to ask whether “modern” Inuit culture is like a local dialect or a subculture of the modern world-system global culture. Unself-Consciousness and Self-Consciousness of Cultural Transmission In earlier eras the transmission of uniquely Inuit culture occurred by example through intimate child rearing and living, transmission often being between older and younger generations of the same gender. Such mechanisms , typical of most community-based, nonliterate, and “nonmedia” societies, have been well described (Briggs 1970, 1998). For several generations even the most remote Inuit were aware of the existence of qallunaat strangers. They were probably unaware, however, of the family life or intimate culture of the newcomers.2 Many Inuit later confessed to me that at the time of my first sojourns in the Arctic, they still believed that qallunaat were not like them as human beingsbutwereadifferent,perhapsspirituallymorepowerfulkindofentity. Except that Inuit had already become “Christian” and were using imported technologies such as guns, tea, flour, and sometimes cloth clothing, the “choice” of large-scale cultural change was not immediate. Nevertheless, the very knowledge of another way of life and the cultural changes undertaken introduced a heightened self-consciousness among Inuit about their own culture. Qallunaat culture formed a mirror by which Inuit were able to see and compare their own culture. The very self-consciousness about difference may have worked to erode some aspects of Inuit traditional culture. The chapter by Peter Kulchyski in this volume usefully reminds us that “culture” is far from being constituted by an array of traits that can be selected or “saved” at will. His particular example, the “conversation” carried out between Inuit in facial expressions, is learned by very young children and becomes what in modern parlance is part of the individual’s habitus (Bourdieu 1977: 78–87); that is, an acquired, almost subconscious set of behavioral dispositions inculcated by social experiences. Acquired bodily dispositions such as walking, squatting, eating, and so on, sometimes called hexis (Bourdieu 1977: 78–87; 1993: 105), are parts of this tacit “grammar of performance” just as turn taking...

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