Culture as mud wrestling

Anthropologist Lee Cronk on culture:

As part of my continuing effort to find an improved metaphor for the role of culture in human affairs, I place tongue in cheek and offer the following: Culture is to human social interaction as mud is to mudwrestling. The metaphor of wrestling conveys the idea that social interaction is in many ways a contest or struggle between people with competing goals. But wrestling of the non-muddy variety does not do the metaphorical job.

The mud is needed to stand for culture in order that the analogy may more fully convey the nature of human social interactions as they take place in cultural contexts. Just as mud drastically changes the nature of the contest when it is introduced into a wrestling match, so does culture drastically change the nature of social interaction in humans compared to non-humans.

Just as mud-wrestlers are coated in mud, people are coated in culture: It shapes who they are and how they interact with others in profound ways, which of course is an old lesson to anthropologists. Like mud, culture can get in your eyes, leading you to do things that may not be in your own best interests. Just as mud-wrestlers may use the mud itself in their contest—flinging it, wallowing in it, using it to blind their opponents—so do people use culture as a tool in social interaction. Just as one wrestler covered in mud is likely to muddy others in the ring, so do culture traits cling to people and move from one to another through social contact.

The mud-wrestling analogy also inspires some interesting questions about culture. For instance, how deep is the mud? That is, to what extent does culture limit and guide human actions? Are we up to our necks in mud, able to move only in culturally prescribed ways, or is the mud down around our ankles, causing us to slip now and then but not influencing our basic strategies in meaningful ways? Or is it somewhere in between?

As apt as the mud-culture metaphor may be, the wrestling part of the metaphor needs some modification because it makes it appear that all social interaction consists of contests in which only one person may win. That of course, is not the case. A better image might be an n-person mud melee, in which cooperation and coalitions (tag teams?) are possible.

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