Jim Hopkins: Dish the dirt by all means, but call it by its proper name

"Dirt is a cultural construct". That's what the nice lady told Kim Hill on the wireless a week or so back. And she should know. She was, after all, a Professor of Midwifery at one of our many excellent universities, polytechnics, wananga or life-enrichment institutes.

Except she didn't.

The statement is balderdash. The fact that it comes from an eminent acamedic might help to explain the apparent chaos in the birthing department of the health sector of the knowledge economy, but there its merit ends.

Dirt can be called many things. Gunge, gunk, crud, muck, slush, filth, krazamajoobee (which is Azerbaijanii for "Bugger, the camel has poohed in the samovar") and germy germs under the rim are all common terms. But not "cultural construct". Sorry Prof, that ain't one of dirt's names.

When you're making an emergency dash on the Westpac Rescue helicopter, you don't hear the other passengers saying, "Let's find some cultural construct on the Minister of DPB's, Mr D. B. P."

And when you're traipsing through the Warehouse ("Where everyone gets a notional economic concept") you're not deafened by vexed parents asking their offspring, "How did you get those brand new trousers so culturally constructed?"

But this doesn't deter the professors. They love saying things are "a cultural construct".

It sounds terribly deep and meaningful, even if it's not. For instance, what constitutes dirt might be "a cultural construct" but that's as far as it goes. Which isn't very far.

Look, if you smeared a random selection of "dirt" as constructed by, say, 10 different cultures into an open wound then, whatever the construction, you'd still come down with a galloping case of scrotal mange.

So calling something "a cultural construct" doesn't really help. We can label anything a cultural construct; childhood, parenting skills, the status of women, tolerance, wisdom, expertise, sexual harassment, depravity, poverty, identity, myth, take your pick.

But, having done so, we'll be no closer to explaining why it is that humanity's multitude of cultures have found it necessary to "construct" such personal and interpersonal behavioural benchmarks. (Whoops, that's a bit Proffy!!!)

Put simply, once your culture has constructed "dirt", you have a better chance of protecting your kids (provided that's a "cultural construct", of course) and once you've decided what tolerance or identity is, you can behave accordingly.

So "cultural constructs" are the things people invent to make social life bearable, workable and tolerable. And, like inventions, some are better than others.

A triangular wheel will get you where you want to go - provided the route's glacial and downhill, but that doesn't make it as good as a round one. And a "cultural construct" defining soap as "dirt" won't be as healthy as one that doesn't.

Trouble is, in the mouths of the Profs, "cultural construct" all too often becomes either an alibi or a means of forcing the unwelcome on the unwilling.

Thus, if a busful of people from Culture A complain about sitting next to a rancid, festering, crusty member of Culture B, the professorial pundits will blithely intone, "Ahh, but, you see, dirt is a cultural construct".

Translation: Everything is relative and you moaners are just arrogant bigots who need to shake off your prejudices and get with the programme.

And maybe sometimes we do. Although, when the construct involves burning widows on hubby's pyre, or female genital mutilation, or beheading people on telly, we're entitled to say, "no thanks".

A classic example is the Catholic reaction to C4's South Park episode. Unlike protesters with another cultural construct, they fired no shots, killed no one, trashed no embassies, looted no property.

Similar moderation was evident politically. Unlike some of their counterparts, no New Zealand ministers offered million-dollar bounties to anyone who killed those responsible for the offensive cartoon.

You don't need Sociology (or Midwifery) 101 to know which cultural construct you'd rather see staging a demo next door, and you don't need to be a professor to say you believe it is objectively more tolerant to settle religious disputes by means less extreme than blowing up other people's most sacred places. Unless, of course, perhaps we're expected to accept that as "a cultural de-construct".

But we don't have to. It's not compulsory. We can say that calling something "a cultural construct" won't stop us judging its merits.

And if we want to be really cheeky and get right up the relativists' nostrils, we can say that not all cultural constructs are created equal.

Heck, if we're really brave we can even insist that "A is better than B".

Alternatively, if that's too daring, then join the club. Create a new construct. In a relative world, you're perfectly entitled to make up a new one if you feel so inclined.

Which the authors of this seditious pre-Census email obviously do. They may not regard "New Zealander" as "a cultural construct" but the Profs would, that's for sure. Whether they'd approve is another matter, but if everything's relative it doesn't matter.

So it's your decision, of course, but if you want to be an "Other", brother then go for it. If you want to construct anOther culture, then rest assured you've got the green light from the ivory tower.

And, if the Census people complain, just tell them you're treating yourself like dirt.