Reading the Country of the Blue

How do we perceive culture, especially one that is different from our own? According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, such a process is conditioned by a series of signs signifying cultural practices that in themselves become invested with meaning. Acting as symbols, the signs derive their significance from their ability to be read from within and without the culture. As they filter through our consciousness, the symbols become subject to the influences of our own cultural conditioning, and their meanings develop in a complex system involving that which we know and that which is foreign, the “other” 89 . It follows that our reading of other cultures, regardless of the form or medium it takes, is a “manufactured” process of pre-conceived notions, stereotypes, and the experiences we confront in our exposure to the similarities and differences existing between our own and other cultures.