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Propriospect and the Acquisition of Culture
Author(s) -
WOLCOTT HARRY F.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
anthropology and education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1548-1492
pISSN - 0161-7761
DOI - 10.1525/aeq.1991.22.3.05x1052l
Subject(s) - sociology , term (time) , personality , point (geometry) , epistemology , social science , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , physics , geometry , mathematics , quantum mechanics
Returning to some unfinished business from the “old” culture‐and‐personality days, the author notes that although no one really acquires culture, we employ no widely recognized term to point to the unique constellation of cultural competencies that an individual does actually achieve in the course of a lifetime. Grappling with this issue years ago, Ward Goodenough suggested the term propriospect, which he defined as the totality of the private, subjective view of the world and its contents that each human develops out of personal experience. Tracing the historical roots of several related ideas and concepts, the author suggests that we need, and can make good use of, a term like propriospect, both in doing and in teaching anthropology, with the added caution that no one really “acquires” propriospect, either.