What is it? You might be able to figure out, just from the picture what it is part of but I am going to make a claim about it that you will probably disagree with. That is twinkle twinkle little star.
What I would call your attention to is that the drum in the picture is twinkle twinkle only in the presence of the rest of the mechanism. It is, with those extra components, a faithful and sturdy representation of that song. However, with a different (or damaged) music box it might be a different song or just dissent notes.
By itself the music box isn't a much more interesting a case of interdependent identity then the gazelle, but it makes for a clear example of the much more interesting case of inter-social identity.
American culture focuses on the individual to a greater degree than many cultures. This leads to a blindness to the context sensitive nature of behavior. Some famous experiments about this show just how wildly behavior can change based on social context.
Who and what you are depends on what you interact with way more then most people are comfortable with.
2 comments:
I think part of what we have going on in American culture and also more globally, is a whole lot of gazelles saying "wait, I don't want to be prey!" A whole lot of dissatisfaction with social identities and their inequities. And not a whole lot of other available options for identity other than saying "I AM GAZELLE! My inherent gazelle-ness has value in a way that is completely separate from hunter-prey relations!" The irony of this stance, of course, is that it leaves hunter-prey relations unexamined, and the gazelles, presumably, still being eaten.
P.S. Thank you, this was a great segue from reading Facebook into working on my dissertation.
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