Myth Definitions and Cultural Shifts: Gatti, Sullivan, Sarlo

Posted on May 3, 2025 in Social sciences

Gatti on Myth as Collective Construction

According to Gatti, myth is a collective construction. Society itself gives certain accounts value, provoking their preeminence and creating an effect of approximation and belonging among those who recognize them as such. Myth provides humans with a unit for processing and comprehending the reality around them. That is, humans cannot only know things directly related to them, but also things that contain added value in the comprehension of beings. This is how humans understand reality in their lives.

Sullivan’s Definitions of Myth

According to Sullivan, there are two definitions of myth:

  1. It is a chain of concepts enjoying high acceptance within a cultural framework (‘culturama’) that allows members of that society to conceptualize and understand a particular topic. Myths are maintained because culture creates them from reality, and they are accepted as natural. One’s perspective makes the world around them seem appropriate.
  2. It is the mode a culture uses to conceptualize its abstract themes. In this sense, myth reassures society on certain issues, becoming a symbol constructed by humans to communicate something.

Example: The Gaucho Symbol in Argentina

For example: Hernández chose the gaucho Martín Fierro as his protagonist to represent Argentina. Behind this choice, there could be several interpretations:

  1. Those who selected Martín Fierro as a symbol were perhaps the most different from the actual gaucho. Their perspective elected a gaucho who, despite having challenged authority and become an outlaw, was ultimately redeemed and accepted submission to the system.
  2. Others might select the gaucho Juan Moreira (from Gutiérrez’s work), who was combative and unruly. One can see the differences between both figures and the intentionality of the time; Moreira was never chosen as a national representative.

Beatriz Sarlo on Cultural Transformations

Identified Changes in Culture

According to Beatriz Sarlo, changes in culture include:

  • Shifting patterns of beliefs, knowledge, and loyalties.
  • Hybridization of popular culture with media culture.
  • The rise of individualism.

Factors Driving Cultural Change

Factors contributing to these changes are:

  1. The influence of capitalism.
  2. The influence of the media and its impact on changing modes of performance.
  3. The influence of cultural industries tending towards the homogenization of subcultures.
  4. The loss of authority of traditional models: including the church, dominant sectors previously connected to the grassroots, old-style intellectuals, paternalistic politicians, semi-feudal warlords, and patrons (‘patrones’).
  5. The diminished role of the school which, even if it didn’t teach how to fight symbolic domination, previously offered the possibility to reclaim the tools of popular culture on different, more varied, and modern terms than those of everyday experience and traditional knowledge.

Effects of Changes on Popular Culture

Effects generated by these changes in popular culture:

  1. Loss of cultural legitimacy for the monopoly held by traditional elite sectors.
  2. The breakdown of traditions had a liberating and democratizing effect, despite respect for archaic cultural traits.
  3. Modification of traditional values, transforming traditional popular identities.
  4. Homogenization of culture through media impact, presenting society members as equals who can consume “equally”.
  5. Loss of territoriality for cultural communities.
  6. Deterritorialization of sectors that previously had a significant effect in generating links and serving as areas for partnership and experience building.
  7. Transformation of youth culture into the dynamic face of both popular and unpopular cultures.

Limitations of Popular Cultures

Limitations of popular cultures include:

  1. Economic inequality that prevents desires from being fulfilled.
  2. Unequal access to symbolic goods.

Responses from Established Culture to Changes

Two opposing responses emerge from the established (‘legal’) culture towards these changes in cultures and subcultures:

  • A) Legitimists: Former supporters who mistrust the present and attempt to restore ancient culture, prioritizing the legitimacy of literature (‘the letter’) and high art.
  • B) Market Neopopulists: Those who deal with creating new cultural artifacts, explaining new subcultures through media changes, and accepting only the legitimacy of culture produced by the interweaving of experience with visual art.

The Question of Cultural Purity

Can popular culture be totally pure? No, uncontaminated cultures do not exist.