In the last video, I told you a story about my own culture shock in Brazil. I want to follow-up that story by telling you about my subsequent experiences, and introducing you to the concept of the habitus or habitus used by the French anthropologist, Pierre Bourdieu. When I later began to drive in Brazil, I never use the expression that guy wants to die in relation to a pedestrian. But I did learn to drive like a Brazilian at that time, so much so that it became part of my normal routines. I was acquiring Brazilian culture by interacting with Brazilians, including other drivers. In Rio, in San Paolo at the time, 1970s and 1980s, people would refer to the lane markers on the road as mere suggestions. Incidentally I've heard that the government is been cracking down on driving so that the situation in Brazil is changing. But, in Rio and Sao Paulo back in the 70s and 80s, rather than staying in their lane, drivers would fit as many cars side by side on the road as they could, regardless of the lane markers. Over time this came to seem to me a natural and even maybe a rational way of doing things. When in the 1980s, I had been away for a year in Brazil, I returned to visit my wife. We were living in Texas and I was driving on Enfield Road in Austin, Texas where the lanes are quite wide. As I approached a stoplight, I saw two cars side by side. As I recall, one was a pick up truck, and the other a large American sedan, perhaps a Cadillac. Despite their size, there was plenty of room for me to get little Nissan between them. So I pulled right up, straddling the lane marker. I immediately heard the windows in each vehicle rolling down. And the drivers, both adult men, beginning almost simultaneously to yell at me, what did I think I was doing! The words were not ones used in polite company, I'm afraid. I there and then had the realization of just how much I had come to embody Brazilian culture. While I had grown up in the United States, I felt myself at that point to be a Brazilian. I embodied Brazilianess. Yes, embodied. The culture was in my body. It was part of my natural behavior and responses. My socially acquired ways of acting in the world. The ancient Romans used the expression, habit is second nature. So many of our habits are acquired as part of the culture in which we are immersed. Pierre Bourdieu used the term habitus or habitus to describe this and other kinds of embodied culture. It is not only a matter of ways of acting like paying attention to versus ignoring the lanemarkers. It also, has to do with tastes of all sorts, what we like and what we dislike food, clothes, music, books, movies, hair style and so forth. When living with indigenous tribes in Brazil I was often asked about the way people do things where I came from. One day, two indigenous men asked me whether I had ever eaten snake. Well, it occured to me that maybe they were thinking of offering me some snake meat. Maybe snake meat was a delicacy in that community. So, I thought back on the matter and remember that I'd once eat rattle snake at a restaurant just outside the Phoenix. I found it quite tasty actually so I responded to the two man, yes, I had eaten snake. To my surprise they both doubled over in gestures of laughter and disgust as if to say, that's the most nauseating thing I've ever heard. As part of culture, taste and food and other items can and does differ from group to group. When you look around you at the teams of which you are part, try to identify some of the habits, and likes and dislikes that are typical of the group. In the next video, we'll take a closer look at one of the components of the habitus associated with teams, the words they use to communicate with one another.
