Cultural Purity and the Refute of the Inevitable Momentum

In the introduction to "The Pure Products Go Crazy," James Clifford offers a poem by William Carlos Williams about a housekeeper of his named Elsie. This girl is of mixed blood, with a divided common ancestry, and no real collective roots to trace. Williams begins to make the observation that this is the direction that the world is moving in, as Clifford puts it-"an inevitable momentum." Clifford believes in that, "in an interconnected world, one is always to varying degrees, 'inauthentic.'" In making this statement, Clifford is perhaps only partially accurate. In the western hemisphere, where Williams was located, perhaps it can be said directly that the influence of modern society has attributed to the lack of general ancestry, as one culture after another has blended with the next. Perhaps it can be said as well that, as Clifford puts it, "there seem no distant places left on the planet where the presence of 'modern' products, media, and power cannot be felt" (Clifford, 14). The intention of this paper is to contend first that there is essentially such a thing as "pure" culture, and contrary to Clifford's bel

Voodoo is a religious philosophy; that's about as near as you can come to a simple definition of a way of life which is bewilderingly complex. It is the Haitian peasant's heritage from the past and his faith in the future. It is drumming and singing and dancing; communion with the ancient gods of Africa, and communication with the dead. It is older than Haiti, perhaps older than Christianity, and so deeply rooted in the consciousness of the people peasant that if he deprived of it and given no substitute he would be left dangling in space. (Cave, 171)

First, we'll take a look at what exactly is characteristic of culture when it becomes impure. "...The loss of local traditions, in an entropic modernity-a vision common among prophets of cultural homogenization," is the most important aspect of cultural dispersion. In Clifford's essay, Williams believes that although culture as a whole has been relatively eradicated by modernity, "something is still being given off in isolate specks" (Clifford, 5). These specks however are not wholly what they appear to be; Williams believes that these isolate specks are simply remnants of past cultures still visible. It will be show throughout this discussion that these "specks" are not remnants at all, but mirrors of cultures that still exist today. As stated previously, we will be discussing two examples of these cultures in Bali and Haiti.

If then the loss of cultural traditions is the most important condition of cultural endurance, than it is these certain cultural practices previously mentioned that have helped the people of Bali and Haiti to remain pure as a whole. The question to address then is, what are these practices? Why have they helped these cultures to remain pure? For the Balinese it has been the practice of Cockfighting, and for the Haitians it has been their religion itself, Voodoo, that while being practiced have helped attribute to the lasting of their respective cultures.

ief, that there are "pure" unblended cultures that remain (while not altogether untouched by foreign influence), natural within themselves. It will be argued as well that the influence of modern society does not necessarily lead to a loss of cultural soundness itself, but rather that a presence of certain cultural practices within the respective cultures has attributed to the lasting "purity" of certain cultures. In this case, we will be discussing the cultures that exist in Haiti and Bali.

You cannot ascend the status ladder by winning cockfights; you cannot, as an individual, really ascend it at all. Nor can you descend it that way. All you can do is enjoy and savor, or suffer and withstand, the concocted senesta8nkt of drastic and momentary movement along an aesthetic semblance of that ladder, a kind of behind-the-mirror status jump, which has the look of mobility without the jump. [What cockfighting the accomplishes] is to render the ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible. (Geertz, 172)

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Approximate Word count = 2838
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)