Culture Watch: Fraternity

Culture Watch: The Fraternity

        The most observable aspect of any culture is the communication and interaction between its members. Some cultures are not as established or cultivated as others and have quite vague boundaries as to what is part of the particular culture and who are members of it. Example of this is a group of young men engage in a certain activity creating a subculture. Some might argue its actuality as a culture, but it still meets the definition of a culture: “A historically shared system of symbolic resources through which we make our world meaningful and that is manifested in observable behavior”(Covarrubias, 2014). Granted, this particular culture might not be the only way the members make their world meaningful, but it’s still a large part of their identity and existence. To examine a culture, the observer or researcher often puts the subjects under pressure to enhance their culture and to live up to the expectations of the researcher. On the other hand examining a culture where the researcher is “an insider” an objective approach might be challenging to achieve. This research tries to balance between these two borders, using the advantage of being able to observe a culture without the subjects being aware of it, however morally questionable, and trying to separate itself from the culture and looking at it with a fresh vision. An etic approach, such as Hymes’ (1972) SPEAKING framework is useful in examining a particular culture and will be used in this study. SPEAKING is an acronym for Setting and Scene, Participants, End, Act topic and Act sequence, Key, Instrumentality, Norms, and Genre. The culture examined here is group of young men interacting with the medium of video games. Recurring themes in the interactions were macho competitiveness, friendly hostility, and extensive trash talk with salty humor followed by affection and sense of belonging.

        The scene and setting (Hymes, 1972) is getting together to someone’s house (in this case same house each time) and playing a video game, EA Sports’ FIFA 14 in particular. On one occasion the video game was the main event of the day and the reason for gathering, but for other times it was a byproduct of being together and a transition to other events. The game is played on a regular basis and has developed into somewhat routine. Notably, only two people engaged in the game at the same time while others might either be engaged in spectating or doing other things, but for the two playing it was the only thing that existed, almost a special event. A sense of familiarity was upon arrival of each participant and in a ritualistic manner everyone knew what ensued soon after arrival, already warming up the thrashing of each other as soon as sat on their seats. In a strange manner great friends greeted each other with loving names, such as wanker or cunt, to show their belonging to the group and affection to each other.