American Anthropological Association

In the latest issue of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Bonnie Urciuoli considers the various ways culture is treated in discourses of diversity at a liberal arts college.

Looking at the entextualization of culture on three of the college’s webpages, Urciuoli finds that the term is used in at least three different ways: “in promotional discourse, culture is loosely associated with diversity; in describing student organizations, culture is variously associated with race, ethnicity, nationality, language, and gender; for multicultural programs, culture is most tightly associated with racial markedness.” Urciuoli finds an even more complex enregisterment of culture in its use by racially marked students.

Despite the diversity of meaning indicated by these different uses of the term, Urciuoli argues that culture is almost always linked to a notion of institutional benefit. Thus, culture is framed by the neoliberalization of racial markedness, by which socially marked students “bring” cultural diversity to their college or university, and  their diversity is treated as a “utilitarian good” that enhances the quality of the school.

AAA members can access the full article “Talking/Not Talking about Race: The Enregisterments of Culture in Higher Education Discourses” via Anthrosource. 

The treatment of culture in the discourses of higher education is a popular topic across AAA’s 20+ publications; most recently, George Tanaka questioned the continued usefulness of culture as a construct for social analysis in the March 2009 issue of Anthropology & Education Quarterly.