Culture as response

Abstract

To explain cultural diversity, many theories refer to the social construction of reality. In this telling, we frame the world to make it meaningful. In my analysis of what people in Namibia and Germany know about “SARS-Cov-2” and “climate change,” I propose an anti-constructivist alternative. Drawing on the work of the phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels, I argue that experience comes first and exceeds language and the conceptual and symbolic orders we use to describe it. Waldenfels refers to this excess as “the alien” (das Fremde). This alienness calls us and demands a response. Only by responding, do we make the world meaningful. Since the alien is the excess to a particular order it becomes important to explore how orders are applied in situations. To explain this, I draw on recent developments in “4E” cognition that describe the mind-world relation as fourfold intertwined: embedded, embodied, extended, and enacted. Combining Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology and “4E” cognition thus allows it to be shown how knowledge emerges as an enactive response to the demands situations create. I conclude by showing how this opens up new possibilities for addressing the plurality and situatedness of knowledge in anthropology.