he term is used as a shorthand way of referring, as we shall see, to bundles of complicated cognitive and perceptual processes, and it is a series of short (cognitive) steps from shorthand to metonymy to reification. But we should be on guard, particularly since by reifying culture it is easy to overlook intracultural diversity

Culture is homogenous. This presumes that a (local) culture is free of internal paradoxes and contradictions such that (a) it provides clear and unambiguous behavioural “instructions” to individuals –a program for how to act –or (b) once grasped or learned by an outsider, it can be characterized in relatively straightforward ways (“the Dobuans are paranoid”). A homogenous view of culture makes the second inadequate idea easier to sustain, namely that