CULTURAL

ANTHROPOLOGY
The Science

of Custom

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CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
The Science of Custom
FELIX M. KEESING

j
\')(b

Profeyor of Anthropology, Stanford University

WITH jILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR

0'7 @
,

RINEHART &

~OMPANY,

INC., NEW YORK

vi

Foreword

In format, the text is organized to answer a series of problems on

which cultural anthropology is focused. Each problem area is stated. After
it is analyzed a critical discussion follows to make clear how the particular
conclusion has been reached by anthropologists. The key anthropological
thinkers on that particular problem are referred to, and case illustrations
are given, particularly classic or critical cases from anthropological literature. Any instructor using the text, or any reader for that matter, can then
supplement these special cases by additional ones from personal experience
or from collateral reading. Question and answer sequences, exercises, diagrams, and illustrations are freely introduced to help organize thought. For
each problem, collateral references are suggested in the text and at the end
of each chapter for further study if desired. A glossary of technical terms is
available as an appendix, as well as a bibliography covering all references
made in the text to the anthropOlogical literature. Because this is designed
as a text in English, bibliographic references from the rich anthropolOgical
literature in other languages have been minimized.
For use in an elementary course in cultural anthropology, several chapters are mature, and an instructor may want to limit reading assignments to
selected propositions and paragraphS. This is so with Chapter VI, which
reviews in summary fashion the major theories and concepts which have
developed in relation to culture, society, and personality. Nevertheless, in
the writer's opinion, these materials are vital to anyone who wants to come
to grips with the ideas of the discipline, and the keen student will find them
of central interest. Three other chapters could also be handled in a truncated
way in an elementary or shorter course: III, "Culture and Biological
Heritage," IV, "The Growth of Culture," XVI, "Cultural Stability and
I
Change."
Consideration was given to introdu'cing a separate chapter on "Culture
and Personality" (or "Ethnopsychologyt' as it is sometimes called). This
relatively new field is now a major specialty for a small but growing number
of 6ultural anthropologists. It'seemed best, however, to intr~duce the main
theoretical and illustrative materials on this topic in Chapter VI when discussing modern systems of thought regarding group and individual behavior
-see especially Problems 29, 30, and 31. Further relevant materials are
found in Chapters II (Problem 7, definition of personality), III (Problems
12, 13, animal and human learning and interaction, evaluation of psychOlogical tests), X (Problem 46, the' cycle of individual life ), XII (Problems
59, 60, conformity, normality, and abnormality), and XVI (Problem 82,
the individual and change).
The text attempts to break new ground by presenting systematically
in a series of carefully worded propositions the contributions of cultural
anthropology at this stage to scientific knowledge. These statements are
designed to bring out areas of agreement, usually explicit but sometimes

Foreword

vii

implicit, in the intellectual operations of the discipline. Similar statements

of sorts are scattered through many texts, but only in rare cases do anthropologists recognize any clear-cut formulation in standardized wording, e.g.,
as in a well-known definition of "acculturation" (contact between cultures)
developed by a professional committee in 1936 (see Index). Here and there
in the text a proposition covers an area of thought still in dispute, in which
case this is made clear in the accompanying analysis. Necessarily, considering the wide sweep of problems covered, the discussions have at times to
be cut off rather starkly; but in every case references are included which can
carry the interested student further into the important literature.
This work is in important respects a "family" affair in that the writer's
wife, Marie M. Keesing, helped extensively with the creative as well as the
editing phases of the. text, and his two sons, one an advanced graduate student and one a university senior at the time, worked through it in critical
detail. Drs. George D. Spindler and Louise Spindler gave the first draft an
over-all careful reading, with great profit to the final text. Sections in later
draft were also read, and useful suggestions made, by other Stanford colleagues, Drs. Bernard J. Siegel, Bert A. Gerow, and Alan R. Beals. I wish
to thank the entire College Department of Rinehart and Company for careful and competent editorial assistance.
F.M.K.
Stanford University, California
February, 1958

Contents

FOREWORD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WHAT IS CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY?

Problem

1 Anthropology as a Field of Knowledge

xxiii

Why study it? What are its distinctive contributions to a scientific understanding of man and
his customs?

Problem

2 Cultural Anthropology

How is it defined? What fields of study does it

~over?

I
. Problem

3 /Cultural Anthropology as a "Science"

lIn what sense can it be called scientific? What

are its research methods? What are its applicaItionS?
I

Problem

4:

The Historical Background

How has cultural anthropology developed within
the larger setting of the history of knowledge?

Contents

x
II

CULTURE AND PEOPLE: SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

16

5 . Anthropological Use ot the Term "Culture"

17

Problem

What is the meaning of this central concept with

which anthropologists approach behavior and
custom?

Problem

6 The Relation of Culture to "Society"

29

What does the anthropologist mean by "society"?

Problem

Problem

7 . Anthropological Use ot the Terms

"Personality" and "Character"

32

8 The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such

Concepts

35

What scientific operations go into their' definition? In what sense do they generalize behavior?

Problem

9 "Civilized" and "Nonliterate" Traditions

44

What is the scientific distinction between these

types .of custom?

Problem 10 . Cultural Perspectives and

Objectivity

~cientific

46

How does "ethnocentrism" distort the comparative study of custom? What does the anthropologist mean when he says that each system of
custom should be studied in its own terms? - .

III CULTURE AND BIOLOGICAL HERITAGE

49

I
Problem 11 . Human Characteristics in Biological
Perspective
In what ways is man like other animals in his
bodily characteristics and behavior? In what
ways is he unique?

50

Contents

xi

Problem 12 . The Distinctiveness of Cultural Behavior

56

How do other animals compare with man in

regard to learning, innovation, sharing, and storing experience? Do they show at least the beginnings of culture?

Problem 13 . The Relation of Constitution to Culture

59

What is the relation between biological-psychological characteristics and cultural behavior?

How far can "psychological" capacity be probed
and measured by tests, in view of the fact that
the latter are cultural constructs?

Problem 14 . Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

64

What relation exists between constitutional differences such as those of race, body form, and
sex, and differences in cultural behavior?

IV

THE GROWTH OF CULTURE

80

Problem 15 . Available Evidence on the Distant Past

81

What types of information are in hand to show

man's early cultural history?

Problem 16 . iThe
Main Levels of Cultural Growth
,

84

IHow do archaeologists divide the stream of

Ihistory into periods?

Problem 17 . Man as Food Gatherer

87

What is known of the origin and early development of culture?

Problem 18 ., The Genesis of the Food-Producing

Revolution
How did the special traditions associated with
"civilization" take form?

94

Contents

xii

Problem 19 . The World-Wide Consequences of the

Food-Producing Revolution

97

What are the central features of this first great

technological revolution, and what variations
occurred as its elements spread?

Problem 20 . The Machine Age in Cultural

Perspective

103

Why do anthropologists often speak of this as a

"second great technological revolution"?

CULTURE IN SPACE

107

Problem 21 . The Earth as a Human Habitat

107

What are its main zones of human occupation

and use?

Problem 22 . The Relation of Habitat to Culture

110

How far does the physical environment shape

culture, and vice versa?

Problem 23 The Geographic Distribution

of Culture

115 .

How does culture look when stuoied spatially,

or regionally? What is a "culture area"? Can culture history be reconstructed by tracing resemblances in custom occurring in different parts of
the world?

Problem 24

Cultures in the "Ethnological

Present"
What are the characteristic features in Africa?
in the Pacific Islands? in the Americas? in Asia
and Europe?

122

xiii

Contents

VI

THEORIES RELATING TO CULTURE, SOCIETY,

AND PERSONALITY

138

Problem 25 . Cultural and Social Evolutionism

139

Can great laws of cultural growth, or "progress,"

be isolated? What criticisms were brought
against nineteenth-century evolutionist thinkers
in the social sciences?

Problem 26 . Historicalism

145

What were the assumptions of early twentiethcentury anthropologists who favored what was
called a "historical" approach? How valid is the
"historical" method today?

Problem 27 . DifJusionism

148

How effectively can study of the geographic

spread and distribution of specific customs open
the way to knowledge of culture history and
process?

Problem 28 . Functionalism

150

Why should stress have been laid by theorists

~ince the 1920's upon understanding the "function" which each element of behavior has within
the
total culture of which it is a part?
I

Problem 29 . Con/igurationalism
I

155

Why the stress since the 1930's on treatment of

cultures as more or less unique and integrated
~holes'! What conceptual and methodological
,Problems does such an approach pose?

Problem 30

The Relation of Culture to the Individual

What has led many anthropologists to turn in
recent years to a concern with personality, char-

162

Contents

xiv

acter, learning, and other "psychological" phenomena?

Problem 31 . Interpersonal Relations, or Interaction

between Individuals

175

What has led some anthropologists, working particularly with sociologists, to seek understandings of behavior by making this a focus for
theory and research?

Problem 32 The Rapprochement of Philosophy and

Anthropology

178

What common interests have brought together

in recent years scholars from these two fields?
What, notably, is emerging from collaborative
studies of "values," and from examination of
"cultural relativism"?

VII

UNIVERSALS AND ASPECTS OF CULTURE

188

Problem 33 . The Universal Patterning of Culture

188

What are constants in culture, amid all its differences, and how can such constants be accountedfor?

/VIII

MATERIAL CuLTURE

197

Problem 34 . Foods and Food Customs of Man

198

What is the range of human foods, drinks, and

narcotics? How does food enter into the larger
contexts 'of custom?

Problem 35

Clothing and Personal Adornment

What are the main clothing types? What are the
symbolic and other functions of dress and adornment?

"-

202

xv

Contents
Problem 36 . Housing and Community Settings

204

What are the main varieties of houses, house

furnishings, and community settings worked out
by man? What are the symbolic and other functions of housing and of architectural embellishment?

209

Problem 37 . Travel and Transportation

What are the major inventions worked out to
increase human mobility?

Problem 38 . Tools, Weapons, and Machines

212

How has man put his tool-using potentialities to

work?

Problem 39 . Ceramics, Textiles, and Metallurgy

214

What are the histories, the central features, of

these important crafts?
'
/

IX

ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION

, Problem 40 . Economic Behavior in the Total Perspective

of Culture

221

222

How does the anthropologist approach the study

of economic systems? What is the relation bet}'veen his material and studies made by economists?
-

Problem 41

Systems of Production

225

What do cross-cultural perspectives reveal as

~egards such matters as division of labor, ecobomic leadership, and work habits?
I

Problem 42 . Systems of Exchange

What is the range of custom as regards transfer
of goods between groups and between indi-

230

xvi

Contents
viduals? How universal are commerce, money,
and related usages?

Problem 43 . Property Concepts

233

What customs surround rights in goods in different societies? "ownership" and use of real and
personal property? inheritance?

Problem 44 . Systems of Consumption

236

What distributive mechanisms get goods and

services into the hands of consumers? What
differences show between everyday goods and
prestige goods? How is wealth used to consummate wider social purposes?

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

242

Problem 45 . The Anthropological Approach to Social

Organization

243

What concepts and research techniques are used?

What is the basic relation between population
characteristics and culture?

Problem 46 . Age and Gene~ation, or the Cycle oj

Individual Life, as Organizing Faciors

247

What do cross-cultural- perspectives show?

Problem 47 . Sex as an Organizing Factor

251

What statuses and roles do males and females

have in different societies? How is the consorting of the two sexes regulated?

Problem 48 . Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

How is marriage defined, and how universal is it?
What is the range of custom surrounding the
marriage tie?

255

xvii

Contents
Problem 49 . The Significance of the Concept of
"Family"

265

How is it 'defined in different societies? What

alternative forms can family life take, and what
are their strengths and weaknesses, including
those of our own family system?

Problem 50 . Kinship

271

How do ties by "blood," marriage, and adoption

enter into social relationships?

Problem 51 . Descent or Ancestry as a Principle of Social

Continuity

274

What different forms can organization based on

this principle take?

Problem 52 . Voluntary, or Interest Associations

280

What weighting is given in hufuan societies to

groups based on friendship, common interest,
and other elective principles of association?

. Problem 53 . Hierarchical or Rank-Order Principles

281

How universal are class, caste, and other organizations based on superordination and subordination? How is leadership worked out in
different societies?

I
XI

)
POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

287

Problem 54 . 1nthrOPO[ogical Perspectives on Political

(Jrganization

287

What is the relation of the anthropologist's approach to that of the political scientist? What are
the character and the range of political life, seen
cross-culturally?

xviii

Contents
Problem 55 . The Emergence of the Modern State

292

What do anthropological perspectives show?

Problem 56 . War and Peace

295

Is war a cultural universal? What have been the

functions of war in human societies, and how
far are they still operative?

Problem 57 . Localism, Nationalism, and International

Organization

297

How has man moved toward greater political

integration?

XII

SOCIAL CONTROL

302

Problem 58 . Anthropological Approaches to Sopial

Control

302

How has this behavioral field been dealt with in

anthropological studies? What is the distinctiveness of morality, ethics, and law?

Problem 59 . The Forces of _Social Conformity

309~

What factors operate _to produce 0gedience to

behavioral norms, rules,_laws?

Problem 60 . "Crime" and the Criminal

313

How far are they a matter of constitutional predisposition, or of cultural definition?

I

Problem 61 . The Responses of Society to Breaches of

Rules
How are rule breakers apprehended and dealt
with in different cultural contexts? What is the
significance of "punishment"?

"

315

XIII

WORLD VIEW: KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF

321

Problem 62 . The Ideational Dimensions of Culture

321

What is common to the thought worlds of man?

What insights has anthropology as regards
knowledge, philosophy, religion?

Problem 63 . Religion

323

In what sense is it a universal aspect of culture?

What can be said about the origins and functions
of religion?

Problem 64 . Magic, and Its Relation to Religion

331

What are the distinguishing characteristics of

magic? How far does civilized man practice
magic?

Problem 65 . Religious Systems

335

What are the characteristic features of myths

and other religious beliefs? What are the main
types of religious organization and ritual? How
do new religious systems arise?

XIV

ART AND PLAY

i
Problem 66

1Jhe Relation between Play and Art

342
342

What are their common characteristics as fields

,df recreation and self-expression, and what dif"

ferences
mark them off?
i

Problem 67 . The Aesthetic Aspect of Culture

How do cross-cultural perspectives clarify this
facet of behavior?

346

Contents

xx
Problem 68 . Classification of the Arts

351

To what extent can universal categories be

established?

Problem 69 . The Major Arts

352

What are the characteristic features and varieties

of the graphic and plastic arts, music, the dance,
drama and ceremony, oratory, folklore and
literature?

XV

LANGUAGE

364

Problem 70 . The Nature and Significance of Human

Communication

365

How do speech and other signal-and-meaning

systems enable humans to communiCate? What
is known of the origin and development of
language?

Problem 71 . The Analysis of Language

367

How do linguists classify the constituent elements of a langUage?

I

Problem 72

The Distribution and Dynamics of Language

370

What are the historic relations among languages

over the earth? How do languages grow and
change?

Problem 73

The Field of Metalinguistics

What is the relation between a people's language
and their "view of the world" as expressed in
their culture?

375'

Contents

xxi

Problem 74 . Writing and Other Extensions of Speech

377

What forms does writing take, and what is their

history? What gains come from mechanical and
other extensions of the spoken word?

XVI

STABILITY AND CHANGE

381

Problem 75 . Cultural Dynamics as a Field of Study

381

Why is the study of how cultures change of

central significance to anthropological theory?

384

Problem 76 . Stability and Change in Culture

What kinds of "constructs" or "models" can
be worked out to organize thought on these tendencies in behavior?

Problem 77 . Innovation

392

What understandings come from studying the

creation and adoption of new cultural elements?

Problem 78 . Growth, Loss, and Reformulation

396

How do cultural elements spread, build up, get

~xtinguished, and undergo reformulation?

Problem 79

Intervention

402

What happens where outside agencies exercise

power or suasion to accelerate, hold back, or
otherwise manipulate change?

Problem 80 . ;Disintegration and Reintegration

~ow

far is social disorganization an inevitable

accompaniment of change? What forces tend to
make for reorganization and stabilization?

404

Contents

xxii
Problem 81 . Rates of Change

408

How rapidly are people likely to change their

systems of custom? Are there any categories of
culture which appear to be special lodgments of
conservatism, and any particularly responsive to
change?

Problem 82 The Individual and Change

413

How does the individual fare in situations of

change? Are there personality types particularly
influential in producing or resisting change, or in
other ways characteristic of dynamic situations?

XVII

WHAT IS AHEAD?

419

Problem 83 . Applied Anthropology

419

In what ways can the knowledge and research

methods of the cultural anthropologist be put to
practical use?

_422

Problem 84 . Future Cultural Perspectives

Can the anthropologist see any longer-term
trends which might be made a basis for tentative
predictions?

I
GLOSSARY

426

REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHY

433

INDEX,

459

Illustrations

The Fields of Anthropology

Eighteenth-Century Ideas of Apes and Men

12

Menomini Indian Grave Marker

Ainu Bear Ceremony

20
21

Acculturation: the Basic Model

28

Form and Function: An Artifact from Paleolithic Caves

29

Cultural Norm: An Example

41

Cultural Mode: An Example

41

Skull Proportions of Chimpanzee and Man

52

Evolution of the Human Body

53

Head Deformation: Cultural Values Can Shape Bodily Characters

61

Mustache Lifters: Bodily Characters Can Shape Cultural Invention

61

Early Man: Development and Distribution

65

Distribution of Principal J{acial Types

I

69

Character Gradients or 9lines

70

Cave Drawing of Bison Ijierced by Weapons

82

Basic Stone-Working Techniques

83

Basic Tools

'

j,

88

Typical Artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic

91

Cave Engraving of a Mammoth

93

Giant Stone Images of Easter Island

99

Early Centers of Civilization

101

Maior Habitat Zones

109
xxiii

xxiv

Illustrations

Cultural Alternatives in the Same Habitat

111

Alternative Solutions to a Problem

114

The Horse Motif in American Indian Cultures

119
123

Culture Areas of Africa

Early Migrations in the Southwest Pacific
The Peopling of the Pacific

126
127

Principal Culture Areas of North America

131

The Evolutionary Interpretation of Culture

140
147
151
158
173
199
204
206
208
211
217
231
239
252

Parallelism: The Pyramid Form

Kula Exchanges in Southeast New Guinea
Some Theoretical Emphases in the Modern Study of a Culture
Learning and Habit
Bushman Filter Pump, Kalahari Desert, Africa
Tectiform Paintings in Upper Paleolithic Caves
Variation in House Types, Northern Philippine Mountains
Arch Forms
Marshallese Navigation Chart
Basketry Techniques
Ceremonial Display of Yams, Trobriand Islands
Marine Resources
Age and Sex in Early H ebrew

S~ciety

Exchange of Goods at Marriage, Yap Islands, Micronesia

The Kariera Marriage C!ass System

256
259
260

Endogamy and Exogamy

261

Alternative Family Alignments

266

Unilineal Descent

275'-

Bilateral Descent

27.6

Danc~ of the Arrow Order of the Zuni Great Fire Fraternity

307

A Magic "Lock" in a Garden, Yap Island, Micronesia

313

The "Sorcerer" of Trois Freres Cave

:325

Religion and Magic

332

I Cross-Cousin Marriage ,

Illustrations

xxv

Animism and Animatism

338

The "Venus" of Willendorf: An Upper Paleolithic Figurine

344

Some Conventionalized Bird Designs on Hopi Pottery

347

A New Ireland Carving

349

African Negro Sculpture

353

Australian Aborigine X-Ray Drawings

354

Some Iroquois "False Face" Masks

355

Rhythm and Music

358

Language Families of Eurasia

372

Forms of Writing

378

Stimulus Diffusion: The Cherokee Indian Syllabary

396

Change in Form and Function: A New Guinea Ceremonial Ax

399

"Bullet-Proof" Ghost Shirt

407

Planned Culture Change: A Community Center in the Palau Islands

421

I,
I

CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
The Science

of Custom
/

/'

What Is Cultural
Anthropology?

anthropology is the facet of anthropology

("man-study") which describes and seeks general understandings about
human "customs" or "cultural behavior." Physical anthropology, the other
facet of the science, deals with the biological or organic characteristics of
man.
The cultural anthropologist examines, in sharpened scientific fashion,
a series of questions which have challenged human curiosity from paleolithic
cave to urban skyscraper. Why do humans behave the way they do? How
did the customs of my own group develop? What makes us different from
peoples around us whose customs represent in each case another "view of
the world"? How much is common to "human nature"? Is life wholly capricious, a stream of events outside man's control, or can he influence the
directions of his destiny? Phrased in more scientific terms, these questions
take such shape as these: How did human culture develop and differentiate?
What universals or constants exist amid diversity in behavior? What is the
nature of a cultural system? Are cultural processes subject to prediction
and control?
Anthropology will he seen here as one of the oldest fields of human
study. It is also geograp~ically far-flung, having active groups of scholars
and interested laymen in virtually every country throughout the world. The
science has differentiated into a number of subsciences, or specialized
subject-matter areas. Wh6re in earlier days its links were mainly with the
biological sciences and humanities, additional strong ties have developed
with the social sciences these took their modern forms.
CULTURAL

as
"i

Problem 1 . Anthropology as a Field of Knowledge

Why study it? What are its distinctive contributions to a scientific
understanding ~f man and his customs?

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

"Anthropology" derives from the Greek words anthropos, "man" and

logos, often translated "study," i.e., "man-study." Haddon (1910) 1 traces
the term to Greek and Roman writers, including Aristotle, who uses it in
the sense of a man who "talks about himself." Haddon also cites an early
English book by an anonymous author in 1655, titled Anthropologie Abstracted, which speaks of the subject as "the history of human nature," and
again "the idea of Humane nature reflected in briefe philosophicall and
anatomical collections."
Many scholars besides anthropologists, obviously, are concerned with
"man-study." More precise delineation can best be made by asking: What
do anthropologists do that is different? What particular tasks have the
anthropologists undertaken in the historical division of labor among stud~nts
of man?
Some broad propositions will bring the anthropological approach into
clearer focus:

1. It has stressed study of the likenesses and the differences among

men, that is, a comparative viewpoint.
2. Where practically all other students of man concentrate upon
"civilized" peoples, particularly of the modem West, study of the range
of human differences has led anthropologists to concentrate markedly upon
investigations of the many so-called "primitive" or nonliterate peoples scattered over remoter regions of the earth. Contemporary anthropologists, however, are applying their theory and their research methods increasingly to
their home communities and customs, and to the "great traditions" of
civilization generally.
3. To understand likenesses and differences among modern men, research has been carried far back of writt~n history (some 5,000 years) to
uncover to the fullest extent possible th{l origins and preliterate development of man and his customs. .
4. The anthropological viewpoin~, in dealing with these broadest p~r
spectives of space and time, describes man in both his physical (biological)
characteristics and 4is cultural and social characteristics.
5. From this total or holistic viewpoint, anthropologists seek generalizations about man and his behavior, seen in all their dimensions. Here they
collaborate in numerous ways with the various other scholarly groups (biologists, psychOlogists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, ~stor
ians, stlldents of literature, and others) who study man in terms of their own
special'interests, and who, as indicated, have confined their research:almost
1 Here and in subsequent references the work cited can be identified by looking
up in the bibliography the name of the author and the year in which publication occurred.

[1] Anthropology as a Field of Knowledge

wholly to peoples in the literate tr~ditions, especially modern Western societies. Anthropologists feed materials to such scholars, and in turn draw
upon their knowledge.
The anthropologist Warner has, for example, studied and reported
both on a tribe of Australian Aborigines, the Murngin, and on a midwestern
American community, "Jonesville" (Rockford, Illinois). The Murngin
live in tiny mobile camp groups of a few families, and forage after wild
products in terrain where Jonesville people would soon die of starvation
(Warner, 1937). Jonesville people occupy a small city, the life of which
would be almost wholly incomprehensible to the Murngin; it is not only the
hub for surrounding farm people but also part of the vast national and international milieu of modern civilization, which has reached the Murngin
only recently (Warner and others, 1949).
The Murngin minimize technological activities, having only light
equipment that a man and woman can carry, and some caches of ceremonial
objects at sacred spots. But they have elaborated their marriage and kinship
systems to a point far more complex than those found in Jonesville. The
Murngin religion, too, with its elaborate totemic and other interpretations of
the world and of man, and its long-drawn cycles of initiation into adulthood
and other rituals, would appear to an independent observer to be by and
large much more complicated than the religious life in Jonesville. Yet both
Murngin and Jonesville people have systems of child training. They have
leaders, organize work, play games, enjoy music, laughand talk, and otherwise share many elements of common "human nature." In their respective
zones of the earth, these two peoples and their fellows have developed in
each case a rounded way of life and view of the world which (at least until
novelty intrudes) is valued as best and right.
The comparative and holistic (total) view of man, which is the interest
of anthropology, makes it~in some respects a synthesizing field of knowledge.
The discipline, as indica(ed here, has a unique character in being so farroving. Its studies will be ~een as falling partly within the biological sciences,
though this aspect will riot be stressed in this text .. Partly, anthropology
aligns with the so-called Ihumanities, as in telling the long-term history of
man and showing the range of his art, his religion, his philosophy and ethics,
his language, and other facets of custom. It is also, in part, one of the core
social sciences, or behavioral sciences, working particularly closely with
psychology and sociology in seeking generalizations on human behavior.
Some have called it an I overarching, integrating, or synthesizing type of
study. At least some of its broader perspectives and viewpoints are found by
many thinking people to give a total look at man which no other single field
of knowledge can provide.

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

Problem 2 . Cultural Anthropology

How is it defined? What fields of study does it cover?
Anthropology falls, from its very scope, into a series of fields, sometimes referred to as subsciences. Each has its own research methods, its
own cadre of specially trained professionals, and its devoted following of
amateur scholars.
A first very broad division is made by anthropologists into "physical
anthropology" and "cultural anthropology." This can be traced in the diagram, the distinction clearly being that the first field focuses on man as a
physical organism, the second on "culture" in the sense of his learned behavior, or customs.
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This subscience, sometimes called somatology, deals with man as

a biological animal: his origins and subhuman relations; early man; and
the development of modern man, with stress upon racial and other differentiation. Anthropologists devote considerable attention to :the problem of
relating the biological characteristiscs of man to his cultural activities.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This, in turn, breaks down into several major historic fields, or subsciences, three of which have been recognized for well over a hundred years:

Prehistory, or Prehistoric Archaeology. Archaeology, the "study of

I
the very old," deals with man's prehistory in the sense of what can be
known of culture and society apart _from written records, i.e., by unearth- .
ing tools, living sites, and other evidences of man's way .of life in the more
I distant past.
I
_
Linguistics, or Linguistic Anthropology. Anthrqpologists, forced to
learn the languages of peoples whose customs they wished to study, have
The Fields of Anthropology
PHYSICAL

ANTH~OPOLO~Y

ETHNOLOGY "
CULTURAL.
__...,
(
ANTHROPOLOGY ~ ETHNOLOGY _
fTH NOGRAPHV

ANTHROPOLOGY

LINGUISTICS
PREHISTORIC
ARCHAEOLOGY

SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY

[2] Cultural Anthropology

5
made one zone of concentration tl?e scientific analysis of language itself. In
doing so they have cooperated closely with linguistic specialists dealing
with "civilized" languages.
Ethnology. Derived from the Greek word ethnos, "people," this
sub science concentrates on the later or modern systems of "custom," or
behavior, found among peoples over the earth.
Scientific labels of this kind are subject to some variation. In
Europe, for example, many scholars use the term "anthropology" as
equivalent to "physical anthropology" (the standard term in the United
States). Hence a European museum may classify its exhibits on man into
halls of "anthropology," "archaeology," and "ethnology." More significant,
however, is the fact that ethnology has tended in both American and European usage to subdivide, as follows:
Ethnography: the description of custom, or of a specific culture, that
is, a local way of life, e.g., the "ethnography" of the Blackfoot Indians, or
of the Hawaiians.
Ethnology: in a narrowed sense the analysis of the likenesses and
differences among cultures: the historic development of a culture, the relations between cultures. The stress here is on the historical approach in the
sense of dealing with unique data in time and space.
Social Anthropology: the development of scientific generalizations
about a culture, or about culture, society, and personality in a more universal sense.

The last of these three labels represents a fresh twentieth-century

trend in anthropology. Use of the term "social anthropology" developed in
Europe, particularly in England about 1908-1910, to distinguish the "scientific" study 9f "comparative human behavior" which interested some of
the anthropologists, mainly on university staffs, from the older collecting
and museum-display type of ethnology. In the United States it has often
been used interchangeably with "ethnology." But most anthropologists now
follow the distinction justlreferred to, as will be done here. Ethnology, with
ethnography, therefore, emphasizes the factual description and historical
analysis of cultures, and ~s well illustrated by a visit to a museum dealing
with varied human customs. Social anthropology emphasizes a generalizing approach to human behavior, characteristic of the social or behavioral
sciences, with the focus
particular problems relating to "culture, society,
and personality."
I
In sum, and for the' purposes of this text, anthropology will be treated
as having today five professionally recognized fields: physical anthropology,
prehistoric archaeology, linguistics, ethnology (with ethnography), and
social anthropology. The major emphasis in this volume will be on the last

qn

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

two, with the other three treated to the extent necessary to make fully clear
their contributions to an understanding of culture.

Problem 3 . Cultural Anthropology as a "Science"

In what sense can it be called scientific? What are its research methods?
What are its applications?
Science is defined in a variety of ways. Some scholars treat it widely
as a method of approach to experience, others more narrowly as a body of
organized and demonstrated knowledge.
The scientific method is frequently referred to as a mood of objective
observation and description. Man here asks primarily the factual questions "What?" "When?" "Where?" "How?" He leaves to other moodsthose of the philosopher, the man of religion, the artist, the humanitarian
-such more evaluative questions as "Why?" (in the sense of ultimate
meanings), "Which is best?" "How can it be helpful?" (Science does, of
course, provide an expanding body of knowledge to enrich these other approaches. The scientist is also entitled, if he wishes, to follow up such
questions personally. He does not decorate his table witli scientific illustrations from botany books, or give an intelligence test t~ a prospective
dance partner.)
This very broad view of science includes as "scientific" what has been
called historical or descriptive science. The emphasis here is upon documenting unique data of experience in time and in space. History would be
included, and even some phases of what are conventionally "humanistic"
studies, e.g., literary criticism, philology.
A narrower view of science, however, would admit only those types
of study which are directed toward significant problems and controlled observation (including experiment) in -which the concern is to uncover gen:
/ eralizations relating to regularities, or "laws," on which predictions can be
based. As some speak ont, this is "generalizing," "explanatory," "norma:
tive," "natural," science""7"or just "science."
- /
Of the anthropological fields, archaeology, linguistics, and ethnology
lean, on the whole, toward the first type, and this gives them rather close I
affiliations with historical and descriptive studies in the humanities. Physi- I
cal anthropology and social anthropology lean toward the latter type, and'"
fit into the '.'biological sciences" and "social sciences," respectively.
I
The scientific respectability of a field of study claiming to be a science
is largely determined by the methods of research which it employs, or, <as
it is sometimes put, the "operations" through which it formulates its problems and findings. Anthropological analyses of culture are based abov~ all
on a kind of observation in depth, usually spoken of as "participant-

[3] Cultural Anthropology as a "Science"

observation." OnIy as the anthropologist "lives" his way into a system of

custom over time can he come to know, and so be able to report explicitly,
a total context of behavior.
The anthropological research worker, choosing the place and people
for his "field work" according to his taste or problem, sets up residence
for weeks or months--even possibly years in all, as so often he returns
again and again. Most typically he deals with a tribe or community of a
few hundred persons, so that his observations are likely to be intensive and
personal rather than extensive and selectively sampled. He participates in
the everyday life of the group; learns its language as fully as possible; joins
in family activity, food getting, festivals, funerals; asks questions and listens
to gossip; gets to know his best "informants" intimately. He establishes
classes of behavior particularly from linguistic terms used by the people,
and within them he explores the range and frequency of the actual behaviors. Step by step his "field notes" accumulate the case materials out of
which he constructs generalized statements on behavior patterns, and from
which in turn ~e feels he can predict how the people will think and act.
His sampling in a quantitative sense tends to occur over long time periods
rather than across a population at anyone time, as with so much other
social science research. To make his record objective, he strains to remove
his personal biases as an observer, including a frequent temptation to become a sentimental champion of his primitives. To such participant-observation, a growing number of anthropologists now apd systematic gathering of life histories of individuals, more formal questionnaires, and standard
tests such as the inkblot-like Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception
Tests. Such observation in depth means that few anthropologists become
specialists in more than two or three cultures in their whole careers. In
turn, comparative or "cross-cultural" studies rest upon detailed behavioral
materials made explicit by such methods.
Anthropology, like ether sciences, has "applied" aspects. Science has
two facets, one so-calle~ pure or basic, the other applied. Most anthropological work falls into t~e first type, with the science itself supplying the
problems out of its own lunfinished business. But applied anthropology has
been expanding rapidly in recent years. Here the problem concerned is supplied by some outside practical or utilitarian need, though the anthropologist brings to it his familiar scientific methods. A remarkably high
percentage of American; and British anthropologists worked during World
War II in the various I'military and civilian research, intelligence, and
administrative agencies./ Anthropologists work today with government administrators at home and overseas, with the military services, with educators,
businessmen, social workers, psychiatrists, medical men, the international
agencies, and numbers of other groups, as will be seen later. The most
extensively applied field is social anthropology, especially where predictions

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

of human behavior are called for, Currently rapid advances in basic theory
relating to cultural dynamics (stability, change, and resistance to change)
go notably hand in hand with practical application (Chapters XVI, XVII).
SOME TYPICAL QUESTIONS

The analysis to this point may be supplemented by presenting, in

question-and-answer form, some samples of queries raised when these matters are discussed in groups:

Q. What is the relation of physical anthropology to other biological sciences?

A. Physical anthropologists are sometimes on the staffs of anatomy departments in medical schools. They also work especially closely with
geneticists [on processes of human breeding] and with zoologists and
paleontologists [on relations of man to other animals].
Q. Isn't archaeological work also done in university classics departments?
A. Yes. Students of classic Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, India, and
other centers of early civilization in the Old World locate and excavate
the cities, tombs, and other surviving evidences which can supplement
written documents. Here "prehistory," as a major concern of anthropologists, merges with what students of these areas call "ancient history." Archaeology in this time zone is often labeled "classical archaeology" by contrast with "prehistoric archaeology." ,
Q. Aren't cultural anthropology and sociology the same?
A. No, though they study many common problems. Sociologists have used
anthropological materials quite freely when they want to deal with
human social behavior in its widest perspectives of custom oyer the
earth. The anthropologists may also take over materials from sociology
in dealing with social group cha~acteristics, ,especially in modern Western societies. But the two academic disciplines have grown up, on the~ .
/
whole, quite separately, and handle different types of problems, using
markedly different research methods. T-he' area of closest relation is between social anthropology and sociology, both being strongly concerned with scientific generalization on group behavior. But both subjects have, each in its own different way, at least equally close relations,
with psychology. What such core social science disciplines share' is a
nucleus of common problems, relating to human behavior; but- each/'
science approaches these problems in its own distinctive and selective
manner. Nevertheless, much collaboration goes on, and the subjects are
even adn;tinistratively combined in some universities-especially anthropology and sociology.
Q. Can human behavior ever be really predicted in a way analogous to
the laws of the physical sciences?

[4] The Historical Background

A. All anthropologists and other students of behavior agree that the physical sciences are much more "exact" than the social sciences. Humans
cannot be made the subject of such precise manipulation or controlled
experiment as can, say, chemical elements. A human action has far too
many variables, physical, cultural, social, and so forth, entering into
it for the behavioral scientist to spell out detailed "laws" of behavior.
On the other hand, life isn't just a set of random and accidental events.
Actions, as will be seen, tend to fall into "patterns," "modes," "regularities." It is usually easy to know, for instance, whether a man eating
dinner is an American or a Britisher by watching the way he handles
his knife and fork during the meat course. A surprising number of such
regularities will be noted in human behavior which, in terms of frequency, lend themselves to reasonably reliable prediction. The behavioral sciences, though perhaps barely past their infancy in development to date, are pushing hard on the problem of tracing and recording
patterns or systems from the flux of individual actions and motivations.
The anthropologist can perhaps derive some comfort from the fact that
even the physicist is less sure today than he used to be about the complete accuracy of many of his observation techniques and his ability
to predict other than in terms of statistical frequencies: the private life,
so to speak, of an individual atom doesn't always follow exactly predictable law~!
/

Problem 4 . The Historical Background

How has cultural anthropology developed within the larger setting of
the history of science?
Scientific knowledge of man is, on the whole, amazingly recent. Yet
speculations about man, his origins, his differences in custom, appear to be
as old as human thought!' "Explanations," sometimes plausible, often fantastic, appear in the myt~s and other folk tales of every group. A people's
view of the world can count man as godlike or lowly;- a product of sudden
creation or a 10ng-drawA becoming. The plight of a scientist might well
be pictured if, say, he tri~d to tell a people who devoutly believe themselves
descended from gods ~hat their origin really goes back to simple one-celled
organis~ns. .
'
SCIentIfic knowledge of thIS latter kmd, however, has not been forthcoming in quantity until almost within the lifetime of very elderly people
still alive today. Even the "scientists" of classic Greece and other zones
of earlier civilization caught only glimpses of what was to become systematic knowledge of humans and their behavior. Linnaeus, the great natural history systematizer of the eighteenth century, was led by orthodox be-

i.

10

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

liefs of his time to include in his classification of man not only Homo sapiens
("thinking man"), but also Homo ferus ("wild man"), and Homo monstrosus ("man monster"). The "wild man from Borneo" and his kind have
barely disappeared from the sideshows.
Thinkers in the classic civilizations anticipated to some extent the
later scientific viewpoints on man and custom. Some Greek writers left
fairly clear "ethnographic" descriptions of peoples in the known world of
the time. Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), for example, contrasts the customs of
the Egyptians, Persians, and others with those of his own countrymen.
Strabo, writing about A.D. 17, gave accounts of the rulers of India, its caste
system, and other aspects of life in that then distant country. Greek scholars
sometimes used the "savage" of far places as a foil in discussions of their
own culture, much as did Rousseau, Locke, and other later writers.
Greek mythology included a picture of man descending from godlike
predecessors by way of successive Golden, Silver, Heroic, and Iron Ages.
This idea was revised by some of the classic thinkers into a cyclic rise and
fall of the basic elements of existence. But Plato, Aristotle, and other more
scientifically oriented scholars caught the essential framework of modern
ideas in seeing early mail as living "in the wild," and then,a step-by-step
invention of the elements of "civilization." Aristotle traces, I in his Politics,
the shift from a small living unit of kinsmen to village and city types of
society. He also gives a vivid cross-cultural vignette:
Men's modes of life differ widely. The least hard-working are the nomadic
shepherds, for they live an idle life getting their subsistence without labor from
tame animals; as their flocks have to wander from one pasturage to another,
the shepherds are obliged to follow them, cultivating, as one might say, a living _
farm. Others live by various kinds of hunting, s}'ch as brigands, some . . .
by fishing, still others live on birds _and wild beasts. But the greater number of
men obtain a living from the cultivated products of: the soil.

,hese Greek thinkers had a dominant interest in values, and their analyses~ _
of "the good, the true, and the beautiful" foreshadowed many problems
now absorbing social anthropologists in probing the interrelations of culture, society, and personality.
Classic China at this same period also had its creative thinkers. Confucius (551-479 B.C.), analyzing the customs of his contemporaries, constructed his picture of an ideal society. Moh Tih and his followers, disput- "
ing the Confucian idealism, claimed that customs originated to serve
practic~l purposes, and that their meanings can be understoo? only in terms
of the needs they meet-a viewpoint which duplicates almost exactly a
modern theoretical approach called "functionalism" (Problem 28). The
Chuang Tze, an early work attributed to the scholar of that name, speaks
of life as developing from simple germlike organisms through sea and then
I

[4] The Historical Background

11

land creatures to man, and so glimpses the essential principle of organic

evolution which escaped even the most acute Greek thinkers.
Classic Rome, while it contributed richly to government and jurisprudence, produced few incipiently scientific thinkers. A remarkable work
by Lucretius (c. 96-55 B.C.), called De Rerum Natura, stands out as an
exception. This speculates upon man's development from wild forest creature to civilized citizen, sees him as passing from stone to metal technology,
and offers explanations of the origins of the use of fire, clothing, religion,
and other elements of culture. The Greek, Chinese, and Roman sources are
cited as examples only from the world of early thought. Passages could
likewise be found here and there from other literatures anticipating this or
that problem of modern "man-science": e.g., Mesopotamian and Egyptian
lore, the Vedic hymns and other classics of early India. Always, however,
thinkers in these times tended to have their ideas shot through with myth
and with supernaturalism. As with the scientists of later times, objective
study of things proved to be easier, and progressed faster, than objective
study of men.
These early creative ideas withered away again and again. This occurred partly because of political or military suppression, combined with
the sweep of barbarian invasions, and partly because each fresh stream of
thought tended to freeze into hard systems of scholasticism and theology.
Most familiar here to the student will be the story of knowledge in the
Western tradition: the Byzantine empire, the Christian scholarship of the
Middle Ages, and the Persian, Arabian, Moorish and 'Other Islamic centers
of knowledge. Fortunately, when the Mongol hordes poured out of central
Asia from the thirteenth century A.D., overwhelming many of these groups,
the western European peoples were ready to carry forward the heritage of
scientific and humanistic ideas.
The Renaissance cradled the mood of modern science, as well as of
humanism, with its emphasis upon the rediscovered classics. With Copernicus and Galileo resear~hing the stars, and Leonardo da Vinci and others
working on technological problems, some studies inevitably focused on man
himself. Vesalius dissectkd the human body, Harvey_traced blood circulation, More constructed his Utopian culture and society, to cite some
familiar examples. At Hie same time the revival of classical learning conjoined with Christian t~eology to give scholarly traditions a strongly humanistic slant.
'
A tremendous imp~tus to the incipient anthropology of the time came
from the voyages of :quropean "discoverers." New peoples different in
physique and custom ~ere brought to light progressively in Asia, Africa,
America, and, eventually, the remoter Pacific Islands. At the same time
mythical lands and strange creatures pictured in current mythologies and
travelers' tales were relegated to limbo. These exciting extensions of knowl-

12

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

Eighteenth-Century Ideas of Apes and Men.

Illustration in Hoppius (1760) of one of
four types of supposed "anthropomorpha,"
the others being the imaginary beings Satyrus, Lucifer, and Tryglodyta. This illustration is adapted from a painting by Edwards
(1757) of the "man of the woods," and is
thought to be based mainly on the orangutan.

edge did not fit into the accepted categories of thought about man. The
way was opened to fresh speculations, and, in due course, to deliberate
scientific investigation of their place in the human scheme. Comparative
studies led in turn to a more conscious examination by Western peoples of
their own ways and ideas. Shakespeare's Caliban, Locke's Indian, Defoe's
man Friday, and Rousseau's man of nature were symbols'for social and
philosophic analysis as well as for literature. Such opening up of continents
and seas, by now almost completed, gave a special fillip t9 the natural sciences, and cleared the way to systematic treatment of the phenomena of
life as a whole, man included.
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries comprise a period of
scientific compilation and classification of known data relating to man. The
first field of anthropology to take systematic form was physical anthro-_
pology. The pioneer "naturalists" of the perio? classified man as one of
the animal species. As such, he was compared with apes and other animals,
and also classed into "races',' by m~asurements made upon both living~
persons and skeletons. For example, a German anthropologist of the UniNersity of G6ttingen, Blumenbach, became: lamous for 'his collection of~ skulls from over the worl~. From 1848 on, fossilized rerp.ains of early man
were discovered. But the detailed history of physical anthropology is not
a concern in this text.
By the late eighteenth century an impressive amount of reasonably
reliable information had accumulated about the customs of "savagf;" or ""barbaric" peoples, i.e., peoples who were more or less different from
"civilized" Westerners. The Jesuit missionaries, to cite one instance, left
voluminous records dealing with the Indian tribes of eastern and central
North America in the seventeenth century. Western scholars began to systematize such materials, and in doing so were led to compare the different
bodies of custom and to speculate on the origin and development of culI

(4] The Historical Background

13

ture and society in general. MucJ:l of the pioneering work here was done
by social philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau.
Fairly early in the nineteenth century, scientific societies were formed in
Europe and the United States for the study of "ethnology." Museum displays were opened and scientific publication series started. Groups or individuals were even brought from overseas countries for display at the royal
courts and at public fairs and expositions. Interest in anthropology spread
in turn to almost every country in the world, by way of government agencies,
scientific societies, museums, and interested scholars and laymen.
Soon after the mid-century, anthropological journals usually had separate sections or book listings for writings in "physical anthropology" (or
just "anthropology"); "ethnology" (for those interested in reports on differing customs); "linguistics" (for those interested in language); and "archaeology." The ethnology section was likely to be subdivided in turn into such
headings as "religion," "the arts," "economic life," "social organization."
The great age of the earth and of man became recognized and scientifically accepted by the 1840's. Until then, archaeologists had to fit such
known sites as the Stonehenge ruin, as well as various crudely shaped stone
tools which were coming to light through road building and other excavation, into a timetable which placed creation of the earth in comparatively
recent times. A widely accepted dating, worked out by Dr. John Lightfoot
of Cambridge University in 1654, placed this event on October 23, 4004
B.C. at 9 A.M. Now geologists and others recognized the vast age of the
earth. They also gave it a time clock, including the/sequence of glacial
periods ("Ice Ages") approximately covering the period of man's early
development. A Danish government scientific commission had already
(1836) established from shell-mound research a sequence of Stone, Bronze,
and Iron Age materials. A drought of 1853-1854 lowered the level in
Swiss lakes to reveal the piles and other remains of lake villages of the
Neolithic, or New Stone Age. In dealing with tools of the Paleolithic, or
Old Stone Age, and with! fossilized skeletal materials, anthropologists were
daring to go back a milli9n years or more.
Perhaps inevitably, ~n view of the profound impress of the theory of
organic evoluti<:m upon tJ:le scientific world, later nineteenth-century thinking relating to culture ana society became monopolized by analogous theories of social or cultural' evolution. These theories built easily upon earlier
ideas in which information on non-Western peoples was used to explain
"progress" from the eafly or primitive savage to the educated man of
Europe (Problem 25). [The assumption was made that the behaviors of
the nineteenth-century intellectuals (themselves) represented the top rung
of the evolutionary ladder, so that to the extent that customs of other peoples differed from these behaviors they represented survivals from earlier
stages of "barbarism" and, beyond that, of "savagery." This tempting but

14

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

oversimplified approach to the total story of cultural growth and differentiation was rejected by anthropologists around the beginning of the twentieth century. But it still lingers in contemporary thought.
Exercise

What are the common ideas or stereotypes current today regarding socalled primitives or savages, and also regarding the early levels of man's
cultural life?
Scientific "field work" became increasingly a preoccupation of professional anthropologists. In 1879 the United States government established
a "Bureau of American Ethnology," which still exists iiiS one of its official
scientific research bodies. This was created from the Geological Survey,
primarily to provide technical information on American Indian groups
which could be used in assimilating them peacefully into the American
milieu. Establishment of this body is one of the landmarks in the development of a professional group of full-time scientists, calling themselves
anthropologists, and doing, in the jargon of the science, "field work." The
anthropological record could no longer rest upon travelers' chance observations, or the asides of officials, missionaries, merchants, am~ others.
In the early twentieth century, most professional anthropologists still
f'h~~ career attachments to museums or scientific societies, or else in government scientific agencies at home or in overseas territories. Their associations with universities tended to be limited to those with museums, such
as Oxford and Cambridge in England, Harvard and Pennsylvania in the
un:it~a~States,
and corresponding centers in other countries. These facts
, ""r
explain why, in contrast to so many other biological and social sciences,
anthropology is a comparative newcomer in most universities and colleges. The development of social anthropology particularly marks the recent
spectacular expansion of anthropology into the social or behavioral science_
programs of universities. This has occurred not only in the United States
put also in European coun~ries and their overseas offshoots, in Latin Amer-_
ica, and in Japan, India, and other Asian countries. . .

Review
I

This preliminary examination of the scope and history of cultural an-,'

thropology reveals it as having a far-roving mandate in studying human
behavior. No one anthropologist, indeed, can be a specialist in more than
a few of the regions, time zones, and problems with which it deals. When
it is noted that even such a major country as the United States had by 1956
only about 800 trained and recognized professional anthropologists, it will
be seen that personnel is spread very thinly indeed.

15

Collateral References

A number of technical terms have been introduced in the discussion

to this point, including the key word "culture" itself. In the chapter which
follows, the principal concepts used in anthropological analysis will be
clarified.

Collateral References
For other general reviews of the fields of anthropology see standard encyclopedia articles, also the opening sections of most textbooks listed in the
Reference Bibliography, e.g., Beals, R. L. and Roijer, R., An Introduction to
Anthropology (1953); Rerskovits, M. J., Cultural Anthropology (1955). A
concise statement on "The Scope and Aims of Anthropology" is presented by
Linton (1945a in Reference Bibliography, II). For a historical footnote on the
origin of the name "social anthropology," see Radcliffe-Brown (1952b). Scientific method as relating to anthropology is notably discussed by Boas in
several influential papers (1940), by Redfield (1948), and by Kroeber (1952).
The relations of anthropology to the humanities are reviewed by Benedict
(1948) and Redfield (1953). Various fields of applied anthropology are summarized by specialists in a Kroeber-edited volume (1953) and in the Yearbook of
Anthropology (1955), edited in abbreviated form by Thomas under the title
Current Anthropology (1956).
Book-length histories of anthropology are Haddon (rev. ed. 1924), and
Penniman (rev. ed. 1952); see also a briefer survey by Gillin (1948). Lowie
(1937) offers an important history and critique of ethnblogy; an earlier book
by Radin (1933) also covers much of the same ground. Representative statements from Greek, Roman, and other classic sources are presented in translation by Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G., A Documentary History of Primitivism
(New York, 1935). Surveys of the current position of anthropology in various
countries are found in the Yearbook of Anthropology and in an International
Directory of Anthropological Institutions (1953), both published by the WennerGren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York.

II

Culture and People:

Some Basic Concepts

THE BEHAVIORAL science analyst faces the difficult task

of giving popularly used words an exact technical meaning. He has to make,
so to speak, the kitchen knives of everyday language into the precision instruments of a surgeon. The only alternative would be to invent an independent vocabulary of technical terms such as has happened so extensively in the natural sciences-and the strong tendency in the behavioral
sciences has been to minimize this. The purpose of this chapter is to make
clear in a preliminary fashion the basic terms, or concepts, which cultural
anthropologists use in their studies of behavior.
Anthropology, approaching the study of man in tot~l1 fashion, deals
with a basic set of categories, separately and in their interrelationships. In
some respects the terms are obvious enough; in others they need preliminary
explanation:
Habitat, or physical environment: the external
world within which
1
men carryon their lives.
Constitution: the totality of biolpgical-psychological characteristics, of the individual, and collectively of groups, and also most broadly of
"l1uman nature" in an organic sense.
~,
Culture: the totality, of learned, socially transmi~ed behavior, or
"custom." More specifically, a culture, in the sense of a localized and more
or less different and unique system of behavior, e.g., Eskimo culture, Cherokee Indian culture.
Society: the aggregation of individuals in organized populations~ or "groups. Human societies are organized primarily by sharing cultural be
I
havlOr. I
Personality: characteristics of the individual particularly as a con-
sequence of learning and training in a particular sociocultural milieu. A
personality implies the characteristic wholeness of a human being which
we have in mind when we refer to him as a "person."
f

16

[5] Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

17

Character: the distinctive consistencies or characteristic features of

culture and personality in a given group.

The first of these categories, the habitat, has obvious importance for
a study of cultural behavior. Humans live of necessity within a natural setting
in which temperature, climate, topography, availability of particular resources, and other existing conditions influence their way of life. They have
also shaped the habitat into a "secondary environment" which is culturally
defined: making houses, roads, refrigerators and heating systems, and a
vast array of other materials. Anthropologists usually refer to any object
which a given people makes as an artifact (man-made thing), to the sum
total of such artifacts as their material culture, and to the manufacturing
processes as their technology. In analyzing the interrelations of habitat and
culture, anthropology works closely with the earth sciences such as geography, botany, and zoology. A special section will be devoted to this topic
(Chapter V).
An understanding of the second category, the constitution, or biological-psychological characteristics which mark man as an organism, focuses attention on the "bodies and minds," as we say, of individuals.
Though we may speak of members of a certain population or group as
sharing a common pattern of action, it is in realistic fact each individual
member who learns and acts out that behavior. Obviously the problem
exists here of unraveling what characteristics of an indivJdual are "inborn,"
or hereditary (as with genetic shaping of bodily structures and drives, or
biological differences between males and females) and what are cultural
and social. This, too, will require a special section (Chapter III). As
already indicated, the anthropologist here works closely with other sciences
special~zing on biological and psychological stUdy of the human individual.
The concepts of culture, society, personality, and character, however,
are perhaps less obvious, and so basic that it will be well to grasp their
technical use in anthrop610gy from the beginning. At the same time, certain related concepts use~ in the first chapter, such as "civilized," "primitive," "nonliterate," "barbaric," "savage," can be clarified.

i
;

Problem 5 . Anthr,opological Use of the Term

"Culture"
What is the meaninJ'of this central concept with which anthropologists
approach behavior and ~ustom?
Nineteenth-century anthropologists, casting around for a term to cover
all of human custom, fixed upon the term "culture." From anthropology
the concept has spread to other social sciences so that such collateral stu-

18

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

dents of human behavior as the psychologist and sociologist use it today in

this sense.
Some confusion arises between this technical use of the term "culture"
and a more popular usage. We may be accustomed to saying: "He is a cultured person," or "She has culture." We mean that the individual is accomplished in the arts or social graces. Culture is often used, too, in this
sense by writers in the humanities. The scientific use, once mastered, approaches more fully the original meaning of the word, which is derived
from the Latin verb colere ("to cultivate or instruct") and the noun cultus
("cultivation or training"). Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior, that is, the totality of man's learned, accumulated experience which
is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior acquired through social
learning.
This seems simple and matter of fact enough. Actually there are numerous problems connected with the scientific use or "operation" of this
term, as with so many other scientific concepts. The major ones will appear as the story of cultural study is unfolded. Some hints of them may
be gained by sampling some of the definitions of culture given by various
theorists:
That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
-Tylor (1871)
The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes and habitual behavior patterns shared
and transmitted by the members of a particular society.-Linton (1940)
[All the] historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational,
irrational, and non-rational, which exist at any given time as potential -guides
for the behavior of men.-Kluckhohn,and Kelly (11945)
The mass of learned and transmitted I1)otor reactions, habits, techniques, ideas;'" -.
and values-and the behavior they induce.-Kroeber (1948)
/ The man-made part of the' environment.-H~rskovits (195;)

Kroeber and Kluckhohn' (1952) .have uncovered over one hundred and
sixty different delineations of the term "culture" by anthropologists and
others.
'
An initial difficulty in the study of culture is that for the most part,'
we are not ~n the habit of an~lyzing deliberately the customs which -shape
our b~havidr. It is a tenet of cultural anthropology that culture tends to be
unconscious. This comes out most clearly, perhaps, in the phase of learned,
cultural behavior we call language. We are trained to the special set of
speech and other signals, and to their meanings, which is our "native
tongue," without being particularly conscious that it has a grammar:, or
repetitive regularities of structure. We learn grammar painfully and self-

[5} Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

19

consciously in school, or in tackling a "foreign" language-and forget it

easily, without impairing our speech habits. It is significant that the first
anthropological theorist to bring out clearly the unconscious patterning
of cultural behavior was Edward Sapir, a specialist in linguistics (in the
late 1920's).
It is no accident that anthropologists were the first social scientists
to develop clearly the concept of "culture." Dealing as they did with customs over the world which often were in startling contrast to their own,
they developed habits of viewing human behavior objectively, self-consciously. The beginner in anthropology can share this advantage, in being presented with differences in custom. By getting into the habit of looking at "patterns of culture" (the title of Ruth Benedict's widely known
book) among American Indians, African tribesmen, and other overseas
peoples, it becomes possible to bring into consciousness our own culture.
It could be said here that some students, having this experience for the
first time, find it quite new and even shocking. But, like taking a cold
shower, it feels tine after a while, and certainly makes for intellectual vigor.
Ahead of theoretical discussion, some "experiments" may easily be
devised to give awareness of the characteristics of culture and of ways in
which it can be studied. In the cases chosen here, the experiments will be
reported ih the form of a typical class dialogue between instructor and
students.

/
EXAMPLE

1.

A MENOMINI INDIAN GRAVE MARKER

(Questioner.) Here is an item of culture, such as you might see in a

museum or by visiting the people from whom it comes. What would
you say it is?
AA. (Answers.) A land marker. . . . Something used in a religious ceremony. . . The sign on a house to show the owner. . . . A totem
post. . . .
Q. What led you to make such identifications? You were obviously inferring from previdus knowledge.
A. Why are those matks in red paint?
A. It must be somethipg out of the ordinary.
Q. Would you think it is, or was, something important to the people?
A . Yes. They wouldn't have gone to such trouble if it were just something to use and t~tow away.
Q. Have a guess as to/some of those markings.
AA. First I'd like to n<;>te that the sharpened end has been in the ground.
It must be a marker to tell something. . . . Isn't that an animal? It
looks to me like a bear. Why is it upside down? . The man might
have been dead . . . . Was it a grave marker?
Q.

20

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

OLD STYLE
GRAVE

Menomini
Indian
Grave
Marker. An old style log
grave is shown, with the
marker and an offering of tobacco. The new style grave
below, built like a house, has
offerings put on a small shelf
in front. Besides tobacco,
cakes and other items which
the dead might like may be
placed there.

,
MODERN "PAGAN"
GRAVE

Q.

Yes. Do you think the people were agriculturalists?

No. I think they were mainly hunters. Perhaps that's'the totem of the
owner-or the person who was buried.
Q. You've been reading some anthropology, evidently. They hunted, but
had minor gardening. Why should there be six crosses?
A. He may have been ani important person to have so many.
Q. Good guess. Among this peopl~, a funeral ceremony involved summoning the spirits of at leasUour dead people to act as attendants on ~
a four-day journey to the spirit land. They were summoned by persons who had killed them in fighting. I'd say he may have been a chief.
-,
_ :
Q. Yes, he was. What kinds of values do you think people in this culture
put a premium on? What made a person important?
AA. I'd say being a brave warrior. . . . And being a good hunter. . . .
They had very definite beliefs about the dead. . . . They counted
that men were related to animals. . . .
"
You
will
note
that
our
discussion
centered
first
on
ethnographic
deQ.
scription of the object. Then we began to dig deeper. We saw that it:
is part of a pattern, though subject to variation: ~umber of crosses,
for example, or the type of animal totem. We -l"di' asked: What does
this do, or, to put it more technically, what is its function in this culture? We also glanced at its relation to the dominant values, premises,

A.

i.

[5] Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

21

goals, of this culture, or, as some say in technical language, the

configurations that give the culture its integration or total character.
We didn't ask some other possible questions: for example, What is its
origin (we would have to go to myth and folklore for what the people had to say on this, and to archaeology, if it were a less perishable
object, to see what could be scientifically traced); or again, What is
its distribution, among neighboring peoples and otherwise?
EXAMPLE

2.

A CEREMONIAL ARROW USED IN THE AINU "BEAR FEAST"

Q.

What's this?
AA. An arrow . . . . A dart. . . .
Q. You're doing a dangerous thing, reading something from our culture
into an item from another culture.
A. But I can't think of anything it could be but a projectile because it
has that sort of form.
Q. O.K. Look at this point. What could it kill?
AA. It couldn't kill a large animal. . . . Perhaps it was used for birds .
. . . Did it have poison on it? (No, the tip is clean.)
A. That ornamentation and piece of red cloth indicate that it was not
an ordinary arrow. Perhaps it was shot in a ceremony, just to wound,
as in a bullfight.
Q. You're warm. Would a person take the troubl~/to carve an arrow
Ainu Bear Ceremony. From a Japanese Print.

22

A.

A.
A.
Q.

A.

Q.
A.
Q.

A.
Q.

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

unless it was something important-or, as we could say, had symbolic meaning? What would you guess about the people's livelihood
or economic base?
I'd say they were hunters. If it was to kill or wound an animal in a
ceremony it must have been very important to them-perhaps their
main food. Were they Eskimos?
Not in my opinion. Eskimos use bone and ivory, and have hardly any
wood.
But couldn't that be why it was important? Wood was valuable.
You're off on an interesting discussion of habitat-culture relations,
but actually it's a red herring.
The black-and-white designs on the arrow are geometric and rather
conventionalized. Did they do much wood carving?
If you looked up this people in the Encyclopaedia Britannica you'd
see a picture showing that they made similar designs on their ceremonial clothing. Actually these people are in north Japan.
They must be the Ainu. They hunted bears.
Yes. The outstanding public ritual of the Ainu is the so-called "Bear
Feast." These ceremonial arrows were shot into the bear which was
the centerpiece of this religious ceremony. The bear would probably
have been reared for such an occasion from a cub, .~nd an understanding of the long-drawn-out killing and feasting would take us
into a world of meanings and values far different from our own.
Didn't they think it cruel?
I'm afraid what people think is "cruel," and also what is "good" and
"right," vary widely from culture to culture. The Ainu would doubtless be amazed and resentful if you were to question his ethics_here. If an Ainu came to 'an American community he would be correspondingly shocked and repelleCI by some. of our everyday actions:
for example, the idea of men and women dancing in pairs closely
embraced.
-

EXAMPLE

Q.
A.
Q.

3.

A CANDLESTICK AND CANDLE

Here is something from our own culture.

A candle.
Yes. You recognized its form immediately. What is its function in "-.
our culture?
A. It gives light.
Q. Well, that's its immediate use. What is its meaning, and especially its
function in terms of the wider concerns of our life?
AA. We don't use it much for ordinary lighting now. . . . It's used on ti}e
dinner table as a decoration. . . . That's a red candle; it's one of the

[5] Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

Q.
A.

Q.
A.
Q.

A.
Q.

A.

Q.
A.
Q.

23

symbols for Christmas. If .it had been yellow, I'd take it to be a

Halloween or Thanksgiving candle. . . .
What else?
It's used in church. Especially the Catholic churches burn candles.
I guess to understand that, we'd have to make a study of the Christian
religion and its origins.
Can function change and form remain?
Of course. Candles once were used for lighting everywhere.
Not exactly everywhere. Watch out that your statement is scientifically
exact. Just where candles were used and not used would be a matter
of studying the diffusion of this particular item of culture after its
invention. At any given time it would have a specific distribution
among cultures over the earth.
Can form change while function remains the same?
We're going to have to discuss what we mean by "form." Obviously
it has in it elements of 'regularity, of pattern, of structure, like the
materials and shape of this candle and its holder. What do you think
about the answer to your ques!ion?
Well, at any rate, candles can be made in many shapes and sizes, and
the stores are always coming out with new forms.
Do you see church candles changing as much as, say, those given as
gifts for Christmas?
No. I guess religion is a pretty conservative part pf any culture.
You've offered there a good if broad hypothesis on cultural stability
such as a student in social anthropology might develop as a problem
area in research by testing its accuracy and reliability in different cultures under dynamic conditions. The circumstances under which people change, or resist change, in their cultural behavior is one of the
interests of social anthropologists today.
I

EXAMPLE

Q.

4.

AN AFTERNOON TEA

SO far we've beenj talking primarily about material objects, or, as

anthropologists call them, "artifacts." Let's try briefly an analysis of
an action sequence/in which a group of people is engaged. Give me a
brief formal description of what we call in our culture an "afternoon
tea."
, ,
AA. It is helCl between /lunch and dinner. . . '. Tea is poured into cups
for each person. l . . There are usually cookies, and other light
food. . . . SometImes it is very elaborate, with decorations and lots
of food. Specially chosen people pour the tea. There may be important
guests . . . .
Q.. All right. We can all bring to mind a pretty clear picture of the main

24

AA.
Q.
AA.

Q.
AA.

Q.

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

elements: people together in the afternoon, distribution of tea and

food for those who want it. How would we go about digging into
its significance?
(Rather prolonged silence.)
Are the people there because they are hungry?
(Laughter.) Often they're ladies dieting . . . . The food may be
largely for show. . . . Men often think tea's a sissy drink. . . It's
a kind of social occasion. . . .
What about the people who are there?
Some put in an appearance because it's the thing to do . . . . They
are friends of the hostess. . . . They may want to show off their
clothes . . . .
I think I sense a kind of giggly amusement among you. That often
happens when we start analyzing our own culture for the first time
in an objective, scientific way. We find that our customs are snarled
up in emotional tensions, and these affects tend to show when we
start probing. But an Eskimo anthropologist, if there were one, would
look at our afternoon tea ceremony or our death usages quite dispassionately. If I were to be asking you what our customs and attitudes are about death and funerals you would undoubtedly show
some other, and perhaps individually varying, types of affective accompaniment. By the way, would it help in this case to ask who was
not invited to tea?
In some cases it certainly would! In WashingtoIl, D. C., the people
who were not invited to one of the big political or diplomatic teas
would certainly take it as an indication that they were officially nobodies.
How would you put this scientifically?
f
(After some hesitation.) I'd say that one of ,the functions of such an
important tea was to define social status.
I was going to say that it is a kind of public display of social relations.
It certainly could be that. In such a case"the Eskimo anthropologist
might have a special eye out to see if any individuaf or individuals get
special service, such as the first cup, or is otherwise the center of
attention. Anything else?
When some of my friends get together for tea, all the news and gossip
of the neighborhood go the rounds.
Good. . .i.
(Interrupting.) In my home town, the minister probably drinks more
tea than anyone else; he can't exactly refuse when visiting around.
What about the origins and backgrounds of tea drinking?
The tea ceremony of Japan. . . . The China trade. . . . The Bos-:
ton tea party. . . . The advertisements to "taste tea and see." .
I

A.

Q.
A.
A.

Q/

A.
Q.
A.
Q.
AA.

[5] Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

Q.

25

So you see, all these same essential problems of cultural analysis are
there: questions of origins and history, of distribution, of the contribution the item makes to cultural integration, of form and function, of
stability and change. The Eskimo anthropologist might perhaps begin his report on the afternoon tea custom something like this: "A
widely prevalent ceremony, that of tea drinking in the afternoon, is
one of the behavioral patterns connected particularly with social
integration and status recognition. . . ."

The context of custom to which the general concept of culture is applied should be apparent enough from these examples. It is also clear that
in each case a particular customary tradition, that is, a culture, was being
dealt with. Out of such materials a series of general propositions may be
drawn relating to "culture," to "a culture," and to the constituent elements
of cultural behavior. These can challenge our thought at this stage, and
will be what much of the analysis in later chapters will be about. In the
case of each proposition, reference will be made to the examples above
to show what is meant.
Culture is concerned with actions, ideas, and artifacts which individuals in the tradition concerned learn, share, and value. Mainly it is
delineated in the form of generalized statements about behavior. The
minimal significant elements or components of custom which can be isolated within cultural behavior are called by some anthropologists traits of
culture. The putting of an animal totem on a gravestick is a trait of Menomini culture, pouring tea into a cup is one shared by both Westerners and
Asians. Isolating such units of custom is basic to all cultural analysis. Those
using the term "trait" may in turn call a group of associated elements a
trait-cpmplex, e.g., the Ainu bear feast, an afternoon tea. Others have
preferred to speak of such an organized system of group behavior as an
institution. These terms will be discussed more fully later.
Culture can be studied as a historical phenomenon. Its elements originate through innovation, spread through diffusion, and otherwise have a
specific chronological st6ry, e.g., the association of. candles with religion.
More widely, questions boncerning the origin, growth, and differentiation
of culture throughout hu;man history can be faced, as in Chapter IV.
Culture can be studied as a regional phenomenon. Its elements have,
at anyone time, a given geographic or locality distribution, e.g., the regional
spread of ceremonial tea drinking. Here, the wider viewpoint involves
cultural phenomena throhghout the whole world, as discussed in Chapter V.
Culture tends to be patterned. It involves repeating similar approved
behavior, so that it has a recognizable form or structure. To the extent that
individuals fit their behavior over time to the approved pattern, the culture
remains stable, e.g., the number of crosses on a gravestick appropriate to

26

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

an important person. Moreover, underlying all cultures, we have already

noted, is a general or universal patterning, as expressed in categories such
as economic activity, religion, art, and language. The patterning of culture
will be a major theme of the text as a whole.
Elements of culture have a function. They do something, have meaning, for the people concerned, within the total context of their culture, e.g.,
afternoon tea and social status. To understand any element of culture both
form and function must be explored. Important anthropological theory
will be seen as gathering around the concept of function (Problem 28).
A culture, looked at as a whole, tends to be integrated. It has what
were called configurations, or more or less consistent premises, values,
goals, which give it unity, e.g., the meanings of the Ainu bear feast. Study
of the integrating factors of culture is a major concern of contemporary
social anthropology (Problem 29).
A culture is subject to change, and indeed always tends to be more
or less on the move. Individual behaviors vary, innovations occur, even
basic configurations may change, e.g., modifications in form and function
of candles. A special chapter (XVI) deals with stability and change.
The concept of "a culture" is most valid to the extent that the local
way of life is a well-defined, homogeneous, and stable one. In. their traditional settings the Menomini Indians and the Ainu of Japan had very distinctive "cultures" in this sense. These peoples had well-defined cultural
solutions worked out over "generations to meet virtually levery problem
which might arise, i.e., their cultures were highly patterned, or structured,
in terms of regularities of behavior which were learned and transmitted
from generation to generation.
The same is true to a point in our own cultural traditions, as witness
candles and afternoon teas. We wear clothes, eat Ithree main meals a day,
sleep in beds, play games according to rules. Y~t Western "civilization"
sprawls out in many cultural variations,.shaped by differences in language,
nationality, religion, class, occupation, and otper factors. Ip later .discussidn of "national character" the question will bl( raised as to how far what
is thought of as the Americ:;J,n, English, French, or any-other comparable
way of life has enough unity to be called "a culture." Anthropologists, it
can be said here, do recognize a distinctive American culture, with mimbers of basic elements of action and value which are shared by all persons
trained to this tradition. But even when we talk of an American culture.as
a whole it is al,so clear that it encompasses many varying traditions, e.g.,
New England, the deep South, the rural Midwest, "Cafe Society," the Pennsylvania Dutch. American culture is also undergoing many rapid changes.
Th~ scientific "operations," as they were called earlier, which go 1Oto
measuring and otherwise defining "culture" under such diversified an1
dynamic conditions are necessarily more complex. Instead of "a culture'~

"

[5] Anthropological Use of the Term "Culture"

27

with clear-cut patterns, we are here dealing with "a culture" in the sense
of a broadly common or continuing tradition but with less sharp and consistent patterning and with multiple internal variations. Some anthropologists have called any clearly distinguishable set of subpatterns within a
culture a subculture. Others have recently been using, as a more general
term to cover any significant and organized body of cultural behavior, the
concept of a cultural system.
By a "system" is meant here a group of interrelated elements treated
as a whole. System theory, it can be noted, is currently one of the most important unifying areas of thought in science, and in knowledge more generally, entering into such diversified fields as mathematics, physics, biology,
the behavioral sciences, and philosophy. The system that is American culture, for example, has within it numerous more specific cultural systems
which may become significant for study according to the problems under
investigation, e.g., a given community, a factory, Hollywood. American
culture, too, is one of a considerable number of cultural systems comprehended within the larger cultural milieu of "Western culture," or "Western
civilization," and still more generally within what we shall see Redfield calling the "great traditions" (Problem 32).
Among the most distinctive cultural systems, to use this nimble concept further, are the highly structured types of learned behavior associated
with language (signal-meaning systems, especially speech), political affiliation (as with citizenship or nationality), and religion/(involving focal
beliefs and values). As we examine them later, we shall see that these facets
or aspects of culture have their own very distinctive distributions in human
societies. In small isolated groups they tend to march closely with "a
culture." Yet even here they may have very different boundaries, e.g., much
the same cultural tradition, say, a buffalo hunting way of life among North
American Indians of the Plains, can be carried in different languages; the
Ghost Dance faith, a nineteenth-century religious movement among North
American Indians, could ~in adherents in many different Indian tribes.
In more complex tradition~, the cultural whole may include multiple linguistic, citizenship, and belief systems, and these in turn may be diffused
more or less widely over a ~eries of rather distinctive cultural groups. Europe, for example, in add~tion to having French, Italian, German, and
other traditions, divides into considerably different zonings on the basis
of spoken language, of nationality, and of religion. Indeed, all other cultural components, such as /economic or artistic traditions, also have their
own distributions in particular systems which can be isolated for study, as
will be seen later.
Two groups with different cultures, coming into contact, are in a
situation where one may take over cultural elements from the other-or
more usually where each has elements "diffused" from the other. Where

28

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

contact and diffusion occur with some continuity, the transfer process is
called acculturation. Everywhere along the world's frontiers today, formerly isolated groups are undergoing such acculturation through contact
with the modern West. Cultural reformulation of this kind, old in human
history, will be seen as taking many forms (Problem 78). Though in the
United States acculturation is seen most fully at work among American
Indian and other minority peoples who are adjusting to the Europeanoriented milieu of American life, we are well aware that the American tradition also includes some minor acculturation to such traditions, as witness the wearing of moccasins or eating Chinese or Mexican food.
Culture is a "continuum." This further proposition about culture in
general recognizes the fact that cultural traditions have accumulated without any break in continuity. Cultural elements, once invented, pass by
learning from individual to individual. They must be shared from one
generation to another, and by living members of the group concerned. Any
break in the learning chain would lead to their disappearance. Broadly considered, all of human culture from its beginnings has a continuity in trained
human minds.
This concept was particularly stressed by Linton. He points out (1936)
that the cultural continuum extends from "the beginning o~ human existAcculturation: the Basic Model. The two cultural systems, previously
isolated (time position 1), come into contact (time position 2). Each
can be spoken of as undergoing acculturation, or the whole may be
spoken of as an acculturation process.
TWO

CUI.. TURAL SYSTEMS

TIME POSITION 1

ISOL.ATION

,REFORMUlA7'ON"

'.

TIME P9SITION 2
(_:;;

TR"'NSFE.R..

B...

CONTACT
\

"

R.EFOR.MULATION

ACCULTURATION

[6] The Relation of Culture to "Society"

29

Form and Function. This artifact from paleolithic caves has known
form, but its function is unknown: it is variously called a baton of
command (Fr. baton-de-commandement), an arrow straightener, or a
thong stropper.

ence to the present." Cultures have variously crossed and recrossed, fused
and divided; elements have been added here and lost there. A culture seen
at any point in the continuum is the result of "all the changes and vicissitudes" of the past, and has in it the potential for continuing change.
Culture is "symbolic." It is a series of artifacts or man-made objects
and of personal motivations and actions to which meanings are attached.
By definition, a "symbol" is some form or fixed sensory sign to which some
fixed meaning has been arbitrarily assigned. As the signs are signaled between persons trained to know the form and meaning they have in the cultural tradition concerned, these individuals share common understandings.
A person outside that culture may see material objects 'or overt behaviors,
as the visitor would in watching, say, a Pueblo Indian ceremony, or hear
the signs in spoken language. But unless he knows their meanings they are
incomprehensible. He takes great risks in guessing from his own cultural
meanings, though he may occasionally infer a general answer where the
significance is associated closely with the form or sign, as witness the Ainu
arrow. A culture, looked at from this sign-meaning aspect, is sometimes
referred to as a symbol system. The importance of precise "symbolic communication" will be explored later (especially Problems 12, 70).
To this point, a geberal delineation has been given of what anthropologists mean when they talk of "culture," "a culture," and "elements" or
"traits" of a culture. It will now be appropriate to widen the scope of reference by bringing in th~ terms "society," "personality," and "character."

,I
Problem 6 . The Relation
of Culture to "Society"
I
What does the anthropologist mean by "society"?
"Society" has been developed as a key concept primarily by sociologists. Anthropologists have tended to use rather the concept of a "cultural

30

Culture and P!ople: Some Basic Concepts

group" or an "ethnic group," that is, a population culturally distinctive or

ethnologically more or less unique. Yet some, especially British social anthropologists, will be seen as making "society" as central a term in analyzing group behavior as the anthropologically older term "culture."
Society was defined above as the aggregation of individuals in organized populations or groups. Put most simply, "culture" puts the focus
on the customs of a people; "society" puts it upon the people who are
practicing the customs. As Linton (1945a) states it, a society is "a permanent collection of human beings"; the "institutions by which they live together" are their culture. Geertz, summarizing a rich stream of thought by
sociologists and social anthropologists in the Harvard University Department of Social Relations on the significance of these concepts, says of culture and society, or social structure:
Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret
their experience and guide their action; social structure is the form that action
takes, the actually existing network of social relations. Culture and social structure are then but different abstractions from the same phenomena [1957, pp. 3334].

The essential relation between these concepts leads to the frequent use of
a conjoined form "sociocultural" as applied to group behavior.
Culture could not exist without people conditioned to it, and transmitting it to their descendants: without "society." But c~n "society" exist
without culture? For example, do not other animals besides man aggregate
in organized groups? Again, are there not forms of human social behavior
where learned and patterned custom has little or no part, as in mob or
panic behavior?
Some scientists use the term "spciety" to <ipply to organized populations of animals other than man.- The "social" ,insects, for example, such_
as bees and ants, often have very complicated types of aggregation. Many
~nimals run in herds, or w,hatever else we may call their groups, and have_
orderly "family" life, a hierarchy of leadership, al!d ,other systems of
organization. While some 'small margin of learning may' be involved, such
behavior is essentially triggered by inborn, genetically controlled mechanisms. Culture is nonexistent, or merely foreshadowed, at nonhuman organic levels (Problem 12). As used here, society is far wider in scope !
than culture.
1"-.
To aVOId confusion, many social scientists prefer to limit the term
"society" to culturally shaped human populations. They may substitute
such terms as "sociality" or "aggregation" when speaking of animals other
than man. The distinction between culture and society then becomes easier
to "operate" in analyzing behavior. Whatever the usage, however, i~ is
clear that "social organization" among humans is overw9.e1mingly based ,on

[6] The Relation of Culture to "Society"

31

learned and well-established patt~rns of conduct, that is, on culture, e.g.,

marriage and family customs, community organization, rank and class,
government. Only in the extreme stress of crisis or sudden new experience
are the tried habit patterns likely to break down into spontaneous, random,
or minimally structured behaviors of individuals and groups, as in the
cited cases of panic or mob action. Nearly always, however, a cultural
pattern asserts itself, as in following a certain type of leader, or in some
circumstances carrying out a lynching. Such informal types of collective
behavior have been studied more by sociologists than by anthropologists.
"A society" refers correspondingly to a specific and usually localized
population with distinctive customary ways of aggregation. It will consist
of a definable number of individuals, whether large or small, with given age
and sex patterns, birth and death rates, community distribution or settlement pattern, degree of mobility, and other characteristics which have
an intimate relation, as will be seen, to the culture concerned (Problem 45).
For a tiny Pacific island such a social group may consist of a few dozen
or a few hundred persons, plus perhaps in local eyes numerous spirits and
ghosts capable of interacting with the living. At the other extreme is what
some social philosophers have called "the Great Society" characteristic
of modern civilization.
Would "a society," then, be coterminus with "a culture"? This would be
most likely to be so in an isolated, homogeneous, and stable group, as in a
small island community. The picture which the anthropologist brings back
from most of the remoter zones of the world, however, is of a number of
little societies (sometimes single communities) which may share a fairly
common regional or localized culture, including closely similar social patterns, yet which are politically independent and more or less constantly
feuding and warring with one another, e.g., the African Bantu, the Polynesian islanders (Problem 56). By contrast, most of the large societies are
multicultural: the United j States, seen as a total society, has a vast network of social relationships which include American Indian tribes, Chinatowns, Spanish-American ivillages, overseas students from many countries.
The world's frontier com~unities, too, as with ports-and towns in underdeveloped coun~ries, are likely to have indigenous and immigrant groups
of culturally varying badkgrounds more or less interdependent and integrated into what is ofteh called a plural society. Obviously, in these latter more diversified popu~ation groups the concept of "a society" becomes
less sharply meaningful than in the small homogeneous group: they tend
to be a composite of many sub societies or social systems, and they are likely
to have many ties outwara to other populations and systems.
Anthropologists usually speak of any ethnic group as having a social
organization as one aspect of its culture. By a social organization they
mean the sum of the customs or culturally transmitted behaviors relating

32

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

to community aggregation, age, sex, family, friendship, leadership, class,

and other group ties (Problem 45). The more formally patterned or institutionalized arrangements through which a group or population becomes
integrated to form a society are called by some its social structure. An
anthropologist may also use the term social system in this general sense;
but it may be better to employ it, as was done with "cultural system" to refer
in more mobile fashion to any type or level of organized group behavior
significant for the problem he is studying, e.g., the social system of a factory or hospital, of a kin group or class, of a nation or civilization.
Anthropologists also use increasingly a more general social science
concept of interpersonal relations to refer to the totality of social links
among individuals making up such a group. Some stress a similar general
concept of interaction, i.e., the play of interpersonal relations, based, of
course, almost wholly on culturally shaped habits (Problem 31). How
culture and societal factors are interwoven will be dealt with particularly
in Chapter XI.

Problem 7 . Anthropological Use of the Terms

"Personality" and "Character"
These concepts are particularly associated with an interest in the relation of the individual to his culture and society. This came into sharp focus
during the 1930's-that is, quite late in the development of cultural anthropology (Problem 30). Use of the terms by anthropologists corresponds essentially to that employed in the social sciences more generally.
Studies of "personality" and "character" form one of the nub problems in_ all behavioral research.
j
The cultural anthropologist, in studyi~g the individual, tends to stress
those particular shaping influences which colne from participation in a certain cultural and social tradition. His constructs deal particularly, with types
of pefsonality, or of character, 'which are "normal" and '~modal" to an
ethnic group or distinctive society. But he also recognizes that each individual has a unique organization of constitutional factors and of cultural
and social experience which, as we say, gives him "individuality." No two
individuals, even identical twins, are exactly alike. The varying individuals
who serve as informants for the field worker, and who are the "actors" in
all observed behavior, are the necessary starting point for all generalization about ctllture and society. The modern cultural anthropologist is fully
aware that he must have as much knowledge as possible of the range of
individual behavior around the sociocultural modes and norms which he
may construct. Some anthropologists are even specializing on study of the
deviant, or "abnormal," person in our own and other cultures. Further-

[7] Use of the Terms "Personality" and "Character"

33

more, it is fully recognized that the individual is no mere "culture carrier"

or passive recipient of cultural "rubber-stamping" by his society. He has
an active and creative role in building up his particular cultural and social
experience through selective perceptions and choices, and he may add innovations to the culture as a whole which continue beyond his lifetime as
part of the stable tradition.
The term "personality" focuses attention most clearly on the individual, while still taking account of sociocultural dimensions. This will be
seen by taking several definitions given by anthropologists:
The dynamic organization of needs and emotions which members of a particular cultural group share in common, and which fit such persons to respond
adaptively to the major social values of the group.-Beaglehole (1944)
The continuity of functional forces and forms manifested through sequences
of organized regnant (i.e., ruling) processes in the brain from birth to death.
-Kluckhohn and Murray (1948)
The actions, thoughts, and fee1ings characteristic of an individual.-Honigmann
(1954)

The dimensions or "components" of personality have been presented

in many different ways by anthropological and other theorists. At this stage
of thought, we may note that the English language recognizes the uniqueness of each individual in speaking of him or her as a person. A person
has constitutional, cultural, and social characteristics whish are in some
respects unique, or as behavioral scientists usually say, idiosyncratic ("peculiar-mixture"). No two individuals perceive the world in exactly the same
way. A distinctive hereditary tendency, an illness, a place of birth, a chance
contact with an outstanding person, are examples of specific factors which
go to the building of distinctive personality. The individual also tends to
take on personality characteristics from his family setting and training, as
from parents and other intimates, and in terms of his sex, as male or
female, his progress up the age ladder from child to old person, perhaps
his membership in a class or caste, an occupational group, a religious denomination and other sociochltural groupings. Because all of these dimensions involve for the indi~idual a series of statuses within his society,
anthropologists often sum the~ up under a general concept of status personality.
Again, all members of a distinctive ethnic group or society tend to
be trained to, and so share,I'a common core of what Honigmann calls
above "actions, thoughts, and feelings," as on matters of right and wrong,
group loyalty, the total view of the world. These larger configurations, which
tend to be characteristic of ali persons in a cultural group have been called
a basic personality structure, or more usually modal personality (i.e., modal
to a culture, in the sense of having highest frequency), as they are drawn

34

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

together into a scientifically generalized construct out of the minutiae of

specific individual behaviors. Even more widely than this, human individuals everywhere, regardless of their particular cultural and social settings, have broad personality dimensions characteristic of the human species
in general, e.g., capacity to learn, need to interact with fellows, ability to
select, to create, to make individual decisions in relation to the cultural
and social milieu. Such universals in personality will be noted particularly
in the next chapter. These broader generalizations or constructs of personality may be likened to the airplane view of a countryside, where the hills
and valleys that are all-important to the everyday life of the people residing
among them flatten out, and the general contours such as the map maker
draws are revealed.
The term "character" is often used by anthropologists and other social scientists interchangeably with personality when the focus is on individuals. This has been to some extent a result of a personal choice of
terms (Problem 30). "Character" has currency, too, in the humanities as_,.
referring to individuals, notably in literature and drama. The "characters"
and "character situations" in a novel or play are constructed through the
creative imagination of the author, but from his actual sociocultural experience, and with the assumption that the reading or listening audience will
understand and respond to them in expected ways as being familiar types.
They are, in a real sense, types abstracted in a rather parallel way to corresponding social science constructs-except that the humanist is likely to
be most interested in individually variant types and the social scientist in
generalized types.
In the definition at the beginning of the chapter, "character" was
spoken of as referring to the distinctive consistencies or characteristic
features of culture and personality in a given group. As used, for example,
by Mead, the concept, sometimes in the fo;m character structure, has been
applied particularly to the speci1!l characteristics which an adult has, -and
shares more or less with fellow adults in his society, as a result of training from infancy in their particular cu!tural setting. I The Samoan child -is
trained to Samoan character, or character struct~re, the Balinese chilfi
to Balinese character, and so on (Problem 30). Because, too, both the
training and its results tend to be the same, at least in the basic and common elements, in a specific culture, the people or society are spoken of by
extension as having collectively such attributes. In this sense, the "character" o~ an ethnic group I is conceived as the sum total of the shared or
common modalities in its culture, more or less distinctive from those of
other cultures. The concept is now best known, because of application
during and since World War II to the analysis of characteristics of large
nations such as Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States,
in the term "national character." In other words, most or possibly all inI

[8] The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such Concepts

35

dividuals even in such huge, loos~ly structured, and culturally variant societies, tend to share a common and distinctive core of character structure
(Problem 30).
It is an obvious corollary of the above discussion that every individual
is conditioned by learning and training within a particular context of cultural tradition. Nearly always it is within one culture, but sometimes it takes
in more than one, e.g., a person of "mixed" ancestry having contact with
cultures of both parents, or one growing up along a frontier of acculturation. The process of learning and being trained in a culture from infancy
is often called enculturation, i.e., entering into a culture.
When the emphasis is on becoming a member of a society, the corresponding term is socialization. In reading, it may be found that the two
terms "enculturation" and "socialization" are often freely interchanged.
But, by definition, it will be realized that the first emphasizes the acquisition
of cultural habits, the second the assumption of a place within a social
system.
No one individual carries the whole culture in his learned experience.
He is conditioned to, and participates in, certain particular segments of the
total tradition of his group. In studying even the most homogeneous cultures,
the anthropologist finds that an elderly man will have many blind spots in
his knowledge. He is unlikely to know, for example, details relating to
women's activities, because he is limited by sex status and role factors. He
rarely knows more than a segment of the religious lore, which is likely to be
spread among the various families and leaders. This btcomes far more the
case in complicated and dynamic traditions such as those of a modern
nation. "Personality," especially in the sense of the personality of an individual, is consequently not bounded by the same limits of experience as
are represented by "culture" and "society." The latter are larger composites
from the total web of interpersonal relations, the interaction of all the personalities (persons) within the ethnic group.

I
I

Problem 8 . The Abstract or "ConstrucC Nature

i

of SUjh Concepts
What scientific operations go into their definition? In what sense do
they generalize behavior?!
To this point, the text has included rather free use of the terms "abstraction" and "construction." One of the crucial yet difficult hurdles to
surmount in understanding the scientific analysis of behavior is to grasp the
nature of generalization in this field. Early cultural anthropologists, like
other social scientists, developed the habit of describing customs as though
they had an existence independent of the individuals concerned with them.

36

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

The rule, say, that a husband should avoid his mother-in-law, or that a
person should show deference in the presence of a person of superior rank,
appears for the culture and group concerned to have a solid reality. Some
have even spoken of culture as being a superorganic heritage with its own
laws or processes capable of being studied apart from the individuals who
carry it in their learned experience (Problem 26).
Numbers of later theorists, however, have worried over this habit of
mind. Scientific generalizations about "culture," "society," "personality,"
and "character" are, they insist, "abstracted" or "constructed" from the behavior of individuals. "A culture," for example, seen in its totality, is such
a construct; so, too, is "the modal personality" characteristic of that culture.
A "trait" is also a construct, though of much less generality. In this sense
they are classifying concepts, just as with so many other scientific terms, e.g.,
atom, molecule, species, galaxy.
Furthermore, following up a view now prevalent in discussions of the
philosophy and method of science called operationalism, they say that
concepts and constructs have meaning only in terms of the "operations"
which enter into their definition-the instrumental and symbolic procedures
which are employed in establishing them. The implications of this important
line of thought are (a) that culture does not have any independent existence
apart from the repetitive similar behavior of individuals, or in the case of
material culture the similar single artifacts they make; "society" does not
exist apart from the individuals who are participating in 'a form of organization; "personality" relates only to the similar characteristics of individuals;
and (b) that as anthropological and other social science "operations" become progressively more controlled and precise, the concepts and constructs will became correspondingly more valid.
_
Theorists following up this viewpoint attacked with vigor any tendencies to consider culture to be an independent or superorganic phenomenon. To attribute any separate existence to cultural constructs is to faIr
jnto the error of "reification," that is, making real things out of scientific
abstractions. A few anthropologists became so unhappy with careless- "reifying" in the language dealing with culture thaf they even proposed
abolition of the term "culture" itself. It is quite difficult, in fact, to talk
about culture without implying that it has a reified, or superorganic, existence apart from scientific generalization. A field worker easily writes that
"such-and-such a culture moved to this or that area," or that "this culture "met that cul~ure," or that "one' culture stood firm when others were chang-'
ing." Ihreality, it was individuals-trained-in-similar-behavior who were mo-ying, meeting, being conservative. But culture continues to be an indispensable concept simply because regularities in individual behavior can be
generalized for scientific purposes in this way. The same is true of other
broad operating concepts such as society and personality.

[8] The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such Concepts

37

For many types of problem, ~ndeed, it is possible to deal with cultural

generalizations as though culture has an existence of its own, apart from
individuals. Differing patterns of behavior may be traced historically and
geographically. The symbols ~hich are shared by a cultural group may be
isolated and examined, as in language or art. This is done in everyday life as
well as in science: a humorous story, perhaps in differing versions, goes
the rounds, a hero is widely extolled, a wedding is compared with other
weddings.
The issues here can be made clearer if one considers the everyday
generalizing tendencies in language. We see, on the streets, a "terrier" here,
a "dachshund" there, a "poodle" still farther along; then we generalize in
the term "a dog" or just the category "dog." The category "dog," useful as
it is, has no real existence, but is a kind of abstraction, or construct of this
class of mammals of which we can see, hear, touch, sometimes smell, and
might if we wished (as is the custom in some cultures) taste, individual
specimens. Or we may apply the same reasoning in a further discussion of
one of the cases cited above, that of the Ainu arrow, as follows:
Q. Are all these Ainu ceremonial arrows going to be exactly alike?
AA. No. . . . No two persons making them could shape them exactly
the same. . . . Each one would be a little different. . . .
Q. Then how can I know that this one is an average or a normal type
/'
of arrow?
A. It must have some essential features which all ceremonial arrows
should share.
Q. But there would be differences?
AA. Yes, but they would all vary around the same type. . . . They would
need to approximate to the same shape. . . . All would need to have
about th~ same length of tip. . . . All would need to have a notch
so they could be shot by a bow. . . They would have to be of
projectile shape andi balance.
Q. What you are implying is that, within whatever range of variation
is possible or permitted in this recognized class of objects, there is
likely to be a modal or central tendency, a highest frequency pattern,
to which all such ;arrows approximate. What do these statements
mean?
A. Can I ask a questioil? How, then, can we know that the arrow you're
showing us is an aferage one-or fits closely the mode?
Q. Well, you can't merely from this one case. If you aren't prepared
to take my word, what could you do about it?
AA. Look at a number of them. . . . See what the range of variation can
be. . . . Strike a kind of average. . . . Use statistics.
Who
has had a statistiCs course? What is an "average"?
Q.

38

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

A.

The average is the mean, as where all arrow lengths are added up and
divided by the number of arrows. Then there is the median, the middle point at which half of the series fall on one side and half on the
other. These are different measures from the mode which is the highest frequency.
Q. Good. Let's try another approach. Is the modal arrow type the same
as the "normal" or the "ideal" arrow?
A. (After long pause.) The arrow makers, I suppose, must have had
some ideal kind of arrow, one which would be the best or perfect
form.
Q. Would you expect many arrows to approximate to such perfect form?
AA. No. I think that only the best arrow maker could get near to that
ideal. Others might make good, or pretty good, or just poor arrows. . . . The people would have a standard as to what good and
bad arrows are. . . . I think what you are getting at is that the mode
in the case of the arrow may be quite a bit different from the ideal.
Q. It's getting clear that where in the case of modality we are talking
of highest frequency tendencies, in the case of what is counted ideal,
or the norm, we are dealing with a measure or standard of expectation, of value. The maker cannot deviate too much from this normative standard without criticism and disapproval of his 'fellows. How,
then, would you go about establishing the norm in Ainu arrows?
A. Ask the best-informed people? .. Watch the arrow maker who is
counted the best workman. . . . Find out what brings approval and
disapproval.
Q. How would we relate the terms "mode" and "norm" to a more general
concept we have used ,already; that of "pattern"?
_
A. Could we say that a certain custom will have a modal pattern and
_- \
a normative pattern?
Q. Then what would be the relation "Of the two?
They could be quite a lot different, or _they could be just about the
same. That is, people could all obey a custom if it is important enough. - . . . Wouldn't that have to be studied for every 'separate item of
custom?
DO,we
ever see, or touch, a "pattern" of behavior?:
Q.
No.
It
is
really a kind of scientific generalization.
A.
Q. Yes. The pattern of a custom, as described scientifically, is really an "
abstracti,on or construct frbm numerous individual cases. In the case
ofl the Ainu arrow it is a class of artifacts, but it could equally well,
be an action sequence of behavior by individuals trained to value
that mode or norm.
A. How can we tell when such a pattern is rightly located and describe\f?
Q. The anthropologist does not depend on one case or on a few cases
I

[8] The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such Concepts

39

-or if he has to he should say so. Being a participant-observer over

a long period, he locates a whole number of cases wherever possible. He gets from this the sense of repetition, and of what is essential
and basic to the item of behavior. Ideally he would record sample
case after sample case until he had adequate knowledge of the range,
and also of the mode in a statistically valid sense. But the complexities of behavior patterns, and in some matters a lack of frequent
practice, or of practice easily open to observation-the Ainu bear
ceremony is a case of infrequent occurrence-make this nearly always a matter of the anthropologist's judgment and his integrity in
field work rather than of exact numerical counting. What kinds of
customs would you say are easiest to record in terms of very fixed
and exact patterns?
AA. Those that are very rigidly fixed as habits? . . . Those you can't
break without severe punishment, like incest or killing. . . .
Q. Certainly an anthropologist, recording in our own society the rules on
killing one's fellows or engaging in forbidden sex relations among
relatives (incest) would judge from his comparative experience that
he could put the item down confidently in his field notebook as both
modal and normative without expecting much range of deviation.
Conforming to such rules has very high frequency in its patterning,
and the abstractions or scientific constructs involved have very high
predictability value. What kinds of behavior wo~ld you expect to be
least patterned and so least predictable?
A. Perhaps the making of ordinary arrows-the Ainu could make them
of various shapes and sizes.
Q. Perhaps so. But the likelihood is that arrows must have a reasonably
similar form, based on principles of aerodynamics.
A. Perhaps some custom in which the people have very free choice, and
where they don't have to conform?
Q. What might be an ~xample, in our own culture, of low frequency in
patterning, or to put it another way, of a great range of permissible
1
-variation?
AA. Your choice of sports . . . . Joining in a crowd to watch a fire . . . .
Q. Good. In every sy~tem of life, or culture, there are customs which
have low pattern frequency and minor normative value, hence little
predictability, as 'r~gards individual behavior. Here the abstractions
or constructs whiCh the anthropologist makes should certainly indicate the individu~l range as well as whatever mode or norm can be
discerned.
!
The steps taken by the anthropologist in "constructing" or "abstracting" whatever regularities or patterns are evident in behavior are brought

40

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

out clearly in this exchange. Like any other observer, he sees, hears, feels,
smells, or tastes specific items of experience, associated with specific artifacts or persons: innovative or habitual acts of individuals, and communicative acts between individuals. From these, with the best linguistic, statistical, and other controls his field work allows, he builds up classes of
artifacts and of behavior. Partly this step can be based on actual words
used by the people themselves in classify~g experience, e.g., "We [Menomini] are related to totemic animals"; "Candles are used in church." But
partly it may emerge from scientific frames of reference of which the people may be totally unaware, e.g., "religion among northeast Asian peoples
such as the Ainu emphasizes close relations of men with animals such as
the bear." In turn for each class of behavior he makes the effort to sample
the range and establish the mode and norm.
It is possible, now, to add a series of further propositions about culture, which arise particularly when account is being taken of the "operations" which enter into scientific generalization. First, constructs or generalized statements about culture can stress its normative aspect. From this
viewpoint, the concept is concerned with norms of behavior which represent what have been variously called expectations (or expec~ancies), values, goals, ideals, designs for living. Humans are inveterate rule makers.
The society presents to the individual what he should do, the behaviors
which are counted normal, correct, desirable, in its particular cultural tradition. In turn, the actual behavior of the individual is likely'to approximate
to these norms, especially to the extent they are "valued," or affectively
(emotionally) charged as being "good," held up as conative (action) goals
and cognitive (thought) ideals as being "right," backed up by compulsions
or "sanctions" as being "expected," "lawful." For some behaviors the i~eal
may be a perfect standard out of ordin~ry reach, el.g., never breaking traffic
laws. So far as individual behaviors-deviate in a marked degree from these
normative patterns the person concerned'is thought of as progressively more
abllOrmal, i.e., unconventional, Bohemian, queer, bad, criminal, even insane
(Problem 60). Beyond is the realm of "unthinkable" _behavior-though,
indeed, such behavior may be a norm in another culture, e:g., the marriage
of a brother to a sister. Anthropologists may therefore speak of the normative culture, or sometimes the ideal culture.
Again, constructs or generalized statements about culture can stress
its modal aspect. The actual behaviors of individuals tend to cluster according to a trend i or mode. No two individuals reproduce exactly the same
artifact dr action sequence, nor does the same individual at different times:
a range of at least minor variation shows. But in any group or "population"
and in any class or "universe" of behavior there is likely to be a high frequency or central tendency, and sometimes more than one, within the total range of individual conduct involved. As regards the class of behavior

[8] The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such Concepts

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NORM -- SAY, OBEYING TRAFFIC

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SIGNAL5 IN

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CULTURE

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Cultural Norm: an Example

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Cultural Mode: an Example

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EVENING MEAL: U.S. CULTURE.

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RESIDENTIAL. UNIVERSITY
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(HALL MEALS AT 6 ".M.)

41

42

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

"handshake" in our society, there are broadly modal features, e.g., grasping of right hands, an up-and-down motion, an etiquette context. But there
are also polymodal tendencies, as with the polite handshake between
strangers, the double handclasp of warm friends, the secret pressures of
fraternity brothers. In turn, these latter greeting behaviors can be regarded
as modal to such more limited classes of etiquette. Some anthropologists
have called the actual behavior of individuals within a cultural tradition
the real culture, or the behavioral culture. This real or behavioral culture,
with its different extent and directions of variation, has its most patterned
manifestations in the modal constructs which an anthropologist works out
as subject to greatest regularity and hence statistically typical.
In a very homogeneous and stable culture, the norms and modes of
behavior tend to correspond closely. People are likely to do with greatest
frequency what they are expected to do. But discrepancies presumably
occur in all cultures, and they certainly do in our own. The cultural shoe,
so to speak, will always pinch somewhere. As indicated above, some ideals
or goals, such as those relative to the perfect citizen, the infallible leader,
or the successful magician, may be set so high that few approximate to the
expected behaviors. Individuals tend to lag and dodge those rules which
chafe them as requiring great effort, interfering with personal tastes, or
otherwise making heavy demands.
I
This discrepancy becomes exaggerated when customs are changing, or
when a social group aligns itself on different sides of an' issue. A frequently cited example is the former prohibition law in the United States,
which many people felt free to break. The modes of practical behavior
certainly stood statistically far from the norms represented in the Volstead Act. It would be more accurate, however, to say that public opinion
clustered around two opposing norms, p~o- and anti'-prohibition, and modes
of behavior tended to cluster accordingly at two widely separated zones.
In a variegated and changing cultural milieu the contrasts between what are
tra<jitionally the ideal cultura~ patterns and the real behavior patterns are
often very great.
'
,
Normative constructs relating to a given culture are likeiy to have their
counterpart in well-formulated verbal statements which the people themselves make about their way of life; modal constructs tend to be scientific
abstractions. The anthropologist, listening to admonitions by elders and
parents, probing what different individuals say about their beliefs and
activities, gets into his notebook statement after statement of what a person is ass'umed to do, or should do-whether they do it or not. An in- .
formant nearly always talks initially about the cultural norms rather than
about individual or even modal behaviors. For this reason, normative patterns tend to be what various social scientists have called overt, explicit,
manifest, or "conscious." They are part of the established symbol system,
(

[8] The Abstract or "Construct" Nature of Such Concepts

43

of the culture, emerging especially in language terms and statements. By

contrast, modal patterns are more likely to be covert, implicit, latent, or
"unconscious"-or at least, even if the people concerned make assertions
about what is "most frequently done" or "common practice," a careful
field check is considered essential if at all feasible. For both types of record,
however, the anthropologist's written report is almost always dominated
by statements which are scientific constructs, even if interspersed with
illustrative cases from specific behavior.
The distinction made here between the overt (explicit, manifest, and
so on) and the covert (implicit, latent, and so on) has had considerable
vogue in recent behavioral science literature. It goes back in anthropology
to the 1930's, when an earlier preoccupation with externals of behavior and
artifacts was being enriched by admitting study of motivation, function,
and integration to the scientific frame of reference. Where the former could
be seen, heard, and otherwise observed at the sensory level, the latter were
regarded as inferential constructs formulated through an exercise of insight or judgment, and so were considered to be covert or implicit rather
than overt or ,explicit. Culture then divided easily into overt (explicit) culture and covert (implicit) culture.
The operation of these terms, however, is more complicated than
appears at first sight. The covert culture category, for example, had readily
assignable to it the "unconscious patterning" of behavior, premise and
value systems, functions and configurations. But what may be unconscious
in behavioral habit for an individual most of the time rriay emerge to consciousness when some crisis occurs or alternative choices present themselves. Moreover, premises, values, and other motivational and integrational tendencies in behavior which a people share are usually (or even
perhaps in a measure always) capable of being expressed in verbalized form
by words and phrases in their language. The anthropologist constructs the
proposition, for example, that the world view of the Zuni Indians of the
American Southwest judgbs the world to be good rather than evil; but a
Zuni mother probably often states to her child various equivalents of the
English statement: "The {vorld is good." A Zuni priest, too, may convey
this theme in prayer and 6ther ritual. The so-called covert or implicit level
of culture tends therefore/to dwindle as a category when the explicit symbolic reference system of language is taken into account. Our own tradition, for example, has rUin strongly to crystallizing in abstract words and
in clear-cut scientific, philosophical, and other statements what is so often
spoken of as the covert in ,bulture. We also have a plentiful store of proverbs,
tales, political and legal/ statements, religious tenets, and other linguistic
devices with which to administer in appropriate situations the motivational
and evaluational sets of our culture both to children and to adults.
A category still remains, however, where the distinction between overt

44

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

and covert constructs appears to be capable of valid use. What a people

themselves recognize and make explicit about their culture is not necessarily
all that an intellectually curious person, and especially an observer using a
scientific frame of reference, can abstract from the behavior concerned. An
anthropologist analyzing, for example, the character structure or value
system inherent in a particular cultural tradition can try after refinements of
generalization beyond what the traditional symbolism of the language milieu
concerned have reached. Faced by Benedict's penetrating study of J apanese culture and personality, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946),
Japanese anthropologists and other social scientists have been critically
reviewing both her work and their own national behavior system to see
how closely her model fits (Problem 29). The recent tendency, following
this line of thought, is to speak of the overt, explicit, or manifest in a cultural system as covering all that the people concerned actually have recognized and formulated in their tradition. The covert, implicit, or latent
then comprises whatever understandings can be won through scientific observation and analysis.
These statements about abstraction and generalization relating to culture could be matched with similar analyses relating to society, personality,
and character. For further understanding the following exercises might be
undertaken:
1. Locate and analyze a normative pattern widely accepted in contempo-

rary society.
2. Locate and analyze a case where the real behavior shows wide variation.
How far can modal tendencies be traced?
3. What would be an example of the covert (implicit, and so on) as relating to our own culture?
j

In sum, scientific generalizations about beha;vior necessitate the formulation and control of constructs or abstractions. They enable us to view
behavior in a schematic or summary fashion. On the one h::J_nd, the Scylla
of Isuperorganic assumptions 'or reification must be avoided. On the other
hand, the Charybdis of labeling all constructs "unreal" has its dangers.
Cultural constructs, whether formulated as generalized statements in the
language of the people being studied, or by the scientist through his sharpened intellectual operations, certainly have whatever "overt" substance
we may be prepared to grant to formulated symbols.

Problem 9 . "Civilized" and "Non literate" Traditions

What is the scientific distinction between these types of custom?
,
The term "civilization" is used in anthropology to refer to those par-

[9} "Civilized" and "Nonlfterate" Traditions

45

ticular cultural traditions which a~e associated with the development of

city life, initially in the Near East, and subsequently in India, China, Middle
America, Europe, and elsewhere. Civilization in this sense follows its Latin
meaning of living in a civitas, or "city-state." It dates back in Mesopotamia
not much more than 5,000 years, and in Middle America less than 2,000
years (Problem 19).
Anthropologists have correspondingly needed some term to cover the
many cultural traditions over the earth which are more or less outside the
scope of civilization. The conventional adjective here has been primitive,
as in "primitive culture," from the Latin term for "first." Modern anthropologists, however, have been quite unhappy over this term. This is partly
because it has a popular connotation of being somehow inferior or simple,
and partly because it implies by its original meaning that so-called primitive peoples have ways of life that survive from the times of "first" or
early man (Problem 25).
Attempts to find some substitute have not been too satisfactory. One
term with some currency is preliterate, i.e., "before writing." But this, too,
has implications that such peoples and cultures are survivals from times
predating the invention of writing. A widely used term is nonliterate, i.e.,
"without writing," and this will be frequently employed in the text. Yet it,
too, is not entirely satisfactory, as numbers of the peoples outside the
main streams of "civilization" do have forms of writing. Almost no anthropologist of today uses in technical writing the O1}Ce popular terms
"savage," "savagery," and "barbarous," "barbarism." They are words to
be avoided, picturesque as they may be, as containing in popular thought
strong evaluative overtones of the exotic, the inferior, the simple, the wild,
even the bad.
Scientific use of the terms "primitive" and "nonliterate" must be taken
as purely descriptive of a great class of cultures, distinguishable from the
class "civilized." It does not mean they necessarily have cultural elements
in common, other than in the rather negative sense of not having entered
into the special behaviors associated with city types of society, or in a very
general positive sense of ~eing what Redfield (1955) . calls "a little community," with limited ou~ooks and highly personalized relations. It certainly does not mean anytqing derogatory, or even that such cultures are in
their total characteristics "simpler." Indeed, their social structures may be
in some ways much more complex, as will be seen. The categories, too, are
not exclusive. The influe~bes of the city, and associated statecraft, spread
far beyond the existing cities, while people living in a city may carry into
it many cultural elements connected with nonurban life. One might say
that, scientifically speaking, a people or culture may be called "civilized"
to the extent that the historic urban characteristics are present.
Recent social science has shown great interest in urbanization, espe-

46

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

cially relating to the emergence of the large modern city or "metropolis."

The cultural innovations concerned are further specializations of the earlier
city-state traditions (Problem 19). Anthropologists have taken note of the
related concepts of a peasant or folk society, as referring to rural populations under less direct urban influences, though still within the broader
frame of reference of "civilization" (see Redfield, 1947, 1956). The broad
classification here would then become threefold: urban, peasant, primitive or nonliterate. Most of the traditionally "primitive" societies have become, or are well along in the process of becoming, peasant societies, in
the modern world, and many are considerably urbanized.

Problem 10 . Cultural Perspectives and Scientific

Objectivity
How does "ethnocentrism" distort the comparative study of custom?
What does the anthropologist mean when he says that each system of custom should be studied in its own terms?
Every cultural group tends to be influenced, in its evaluation of other
groups, by "ethnocentrism." Sociologists particularly have developed the
concept of being "own-group-centered." They postulate what anthropological observations confirm, namely, a universal tendency for any people to put its own culture and society in a central position of priority and
worth. Nearly always the folklore of a people includes myths of origin
which give priority to themselves, and place the stamp of supernatural approval upon their particular customs. Many cultural traditions carry ethnocentrism to a point where the group concerned l.ooks upon itself as-a
superior or even a "chosen" people. Others may hllve a kind of tolerant
compromise: our way of life is best for us, those of our neighbors best for
I
them.
_
IThe traditions of "civiliiation" have been, particularly marked by
ethnocentrism in the sense that one or more peoples ih an area have
felt that they had a right, a duty, or a mission to consolidate, if necessary
by conquest. States, nations, empires, and religious faiths which have
served as the building blocks in Western civilization have been typically
marked by ethnocentrism. It was no wonder, too, that the gentlemanscholar of Europe, in the early days of anthropology, looked with ethnocentric eyes on other peoples and uncritically labeled them "barbaric" or
"savage" according to how far their physical appearance and custom differed
from his own. European upper-class urban life was taken without question
as the yardstick for measuring other ways of life as "primitive," and in

Collateral References

47

terms of development (or evolution). earlier-even, in the case of "savages,"

close to human origins.
With the rise of professional anthropological science, however, a great
revulsion occurred against the naIvete of this still all too popular view. To
the objective eye, peoples and cultures were different, specialized. Each
culture and society had its own integrity, its own system of values, and indeed its own areas of complexity in custom. Science, to be science, had to
rid itself of distorting perspectives of ethnocentrism. At least, if evaluations of different ways of life were to be tried, they had to be based on more
sophisticated criteria.
The scientific habit of looking at each people's standards and values
objectively, seeing them as "relative" to the particular view of life fostered
within the culture concerned, has led some thinkers to a philosophic position often called cultural relativism. This viewpoint rejects any "absolute"
standards or scales of worth over and above particular cultural traditions
as to what is "good," "right," "beautiful," and otherwise evaluative. It has
become a focus of controversy in science and philosophy (Problem 32).
Though rejecting uncritical ethnocentrism, the scientist is also well
aware that a society, to be well integrated, must have a healthy respect
for its own values, an appreciation of its own way of life as over against
alternative ways. That is, an intelligent modification of ethnocentrism, perhaps deserving some special name, such as "ethnic appreciation," has functional importance for the maintenance of a society and c~lture.

Review
The tools of thought sharpened here are refinements of everyday language. Clearly they will have to be used throughout the remaining chapters with care and pointedness. Students who have training in social science, indeed, can usually ~e singled out in everyday contacts because of
the habits they develop of giving words referring to behavior this precision.
This is something to practice.

. I

Collateral References

m~kt

All standard texts

a feature of defining basic terms, particularly the
concept of "culture." The relations between culture, society, and personality
are well defined in Linton, R., The Cultural Background 0/ Personality (1945);
also very useful is Benedict;, R., Patterns of Culture (1934), which broke significant new ground in theory. A series of important papers are made available

Culture and People: Some Basic Concepts

48

in a source book edited by Haring, D. G., Personal Character and Cultural

Milieu, which has been periodically revised since 1948. Papers on the personality concept are also brought together in a volume edited by Kluckhohn,
C. and Murray, H. A., Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture (1948).
A general work focused on this concept is Honigmann, J. J., Culture and Personality (1954). Anthropological use of the term "character" is discussed in a
paper by Mead, M., "National Character," in Kroeber, A. L. (ed.), Anthropology Today (1953); this source can also be used for an up-to-date review of
the conceptual framework of anthropology as a whole.
Early use of the term "culture" is well demonstrated by Tylor (1871).
It is comprehensively analyzed by Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952). Examples
of other sources primarily concerned with the clarification of concepts and related problems of scientific generalization are Sapir (1934), Kluckhohn and
Kelly (1945), Kroeber (1949b), Kluckhohn (1951b), Spiro (1951), Steward
(1951), Bidney (1953b). A recent assessment of the status of "operational"
theory in science is given in Scientific Monthly, 80, 4 (October 1954).
Field work methods used in the study of culture are reviewed in the highly
useful handbook Notes and Queries in Anthropology (Royal Anthropological
Institute, London, 6th ed. 1950), and also, for example, by Bennett (1948),
Nadel (1951), Mead and Me1raux (1953), Paul (1953), and Herskovits (1955).
For a student of anthropology who may want at this point to examine a study
of a culture seen as a whole, comparative summaries of specific cultures are
found in Benedict (1934), Murdock (1934), Kardiner (1939, 1945), Linton
and others (1953), and Mead (1953). For examples from the many full-length
monographs on particular cultures see Warner (1937), Evans-Pritchard (1940),
Opler, M. E. (1941), Nadel (1942a), DuBois (1944), Lowie (1945), Beals
(1946), Kluckhohn and Leighton (1946), Barton (1949), Holmberg (1950),
Gladwin and Sarason (1954).

III

Culture and Biological

Heritage

CULTURE, it has been said earlier, has no effective existence apart from the human individual, which means an organism with a
constitutional, or biological-psychological nature. The crucial problem of
the relation of cultural tradition to the physical heritage takes us into the
zone of overlapping between cultural anthropology and physical anthropology. The latter field of the science will not, however, be presented systematically here. For this, reference would need to be made to standard
texts such as Howell's Mankind So Far (1942), Hooton's popularly titled
Up from the Ape (rev. ed. 1946), or Montagu's Introduction to Physical
Anthropology (rev. ed. 1951). Only those facets which are relevant to the
development and operation of man's cultural behavior will be dealt with.
It will be seen that constitution and culture interact mutually in complex
ways.
Constitution, as defined at the beginning of Chapter II, is a construct
or abstraction referring to the organic or biOlogical-psychological characteristics of an individual seen at anyone time in their totality. By extension,
the concept may also be a~plied collectively to groups, and more broadly
still to all humans, i.e., "human nature" in an organic sense. The fact that
"constitution" has other m~anings, including the somewhat narrower usage
of speaking of variant body shapes as constitutional types, need not deter
us from using freely this convenient concept rather than more cumbersome
forms such as "bIological-psychological," "biopsychological," or "psychophysical," or the very general terms "body," "mind," "organism."
A scientific understanding of man's constitutional and cultural nature
rests upon certain broad ptemises which are part of the essential knowledge
of an educated mid-twentibth-century person. The following statements of
such premises are offered;'
1. Man is a member of the animal kingdom. Humans are linked in a total web of biological life with all other organisms. As the Chinese philosopher
put it, "Man is ~insman to all nature."

49

50

Culture and Biological Heritage

2. Modern men, like all other living organisms, are products of a vast
and dynamic process of evolution. This development has proceeded from
simpler and more generalized forms to complex and more specialized forms.
Man is still a notably generalized animal, with a potential for much further
development.
3. Man is in important respects a unique animal. This shows above
all in his capacity for precise symbolic communication, particularly through
language, and so for learning and storing experience (culture).
4. In broader perspective, all living men have essentially similar characteristics. But the nearer look shows great variability in populations and
in individuals-specializations in constitution and in behavior.
5. Throughout the lifetime of each individual a constant interplay is
going on between hereditary potentialities and environmental influences.
The human constitution and behavior take their shape from a complex
interaction of genetic, habitat, and sociocultural factors. These mesh in a
notably definitive way during growth to mold the adult, and of course every
individual becomes in the process to some degree different and unique.
6. Man is not standing still. The constitutional characteristics of groups
and individuals are being constantly modified with each generation and lifetime. Cultural traditions also undergo modification, as indica~ed already.

Problem 11 . Human Characteristics in Biological

Perspective
In what ways is man like other animals in his bodily characterg,tics and behavior? In what ways is he unique?
I
Man shares by far the greatesrnumber of his ,characteristics with other
animals, so that these predate the devetopment of man and his culture.
/ Anthropological study ,usually starts with animal forms which were
the immediate precursors of man, and those which are _hi~ immediate collaterals today: the anthropoids, or "manlike" animals. But the anthropologist also makes himself familiar with all characteristics in organisms
which point the way to man.
Biologists, zoologists, and related workers recognize that living organisms even down to the lowliest types manifest characters which -are
found in the human body and its functioning. The following is it list of
notable ~haracteristics which men share with other animal life at different
levels:
f

All living organisms: a life cycle; reproduction; sensitivity; use of

ergy; dependence on food.

e~

[11] Human Characteristics in Biological Perspective

51

The animal kingdom: locomotion; the food quest; nervous activity.

Multicellular animals (Metazoa): specialization of organs (vents,
heads, and so on); mostly bisexual reproduction; potentiality of greater
size.
Backboned animals (chordates): internal mobile skeleton and muscles (especially the vertebrates, or jointed-backboned animals); symmetry;
a nervous system and sense organs; breathing organs; a blood system with
heart as pump.
.
Mammals: placental development of young (in the placental mammals); suckling; warm-bloodedness; body hair; jaw hanging directly from
the skull; seven vertebrae in neck.
Primates ("first" order of mammals) : larger and more complex brains;
shortening of muzzle; improved sight, including stereoscopic vision (except the lemuroids), but weakened sense of smell; collarbone giving mobility to the arms; prehensile (grasping) hands with opposite thumb; padded
inner side of fingers; mostly flat nails instead of claws. (It will be noted that
these characteristics have "adaptive value" for arboreal living, that is, life
in trees.)
Anthropoids ("manlike" primates and man): greater brain development, with increased capacity for learning and for at least crude forms of
symbolic communication; 32 teeth, comprising incisors, canines, premolars,
and molars (except New World monkeys, which have 36); blood chemistry
closely similar to man's; mostly no definite breeding sea~on; mostly a female
menstrual cycle.
Simians and hominids (the Simiidae, or "ape-family," and the Hominidae, or "man-family"); large brain size; absence of external tail; ability
to assume fairly erect posture; tendencies to be at home on the ground
(terrestrial living); Y pattern of the five cusps on molar teeth; very similar
blood groupings and susceptibilities to disease.

This tabulation of bodily characteristics shows in broadest outline

the evolutionary or develdpmental sequence that leads to present-day man.
In the last few million ye~rs the continuum comes by way of the hominids,
including the South African "man-apes" (Austraiopithecines) , known
through fossils, to HomoJ "man," and so to Homo sapiens, that is, modern man. Every part of ~ur bodily structure falls into the pattern, which
can be checked not only from comparison of man with other living animals
but also in many respec,ts with fossil forms from the distant past. Our
brains, hands, eyes, digestive systems, and other characteristics provide a biological frame on which cultural behavior is woven.
Structural characteristics such as those listed are, of course, specialized in more or less distinctive ways. Taken together, they enable us to
recognize immediately what, for example, is ape and what man. Neverthe-

52

Culture and Biological Heritage

J~--.-~~~=---~--~

Skull Proportions 0/ Chimpanzee and Man. Using D'Arcy Thompson's

trans/ormation diagram method to show the proportionate size of
twenty areas.

less, physical anthropologists point out that, taken one by one, the anatomical and physiological differences between men and apes are seen
to be almost wholly quantitative rather than qualitative, that is, of proportion and degree rather ~han of kind. Man, for example, has feet which
have become adapted as supporting rather than grasping organs, with a
big toe and high arch; legs are straighter and longer; pelvis broadened and
flattened; a lumbar curve to the back; a head set well back on the spine;
flattened face, with a projecting nose and chin; a ballooned skull giving
more brain space; lessened body hair. Schultz, the physical anthropologist
who was assigned the taxidermy work on the famous gorilla Gargantua
when it died, says that early in life, man and other primates are in many respects "indistinct," even though at the completion of the adult growth their
physical distinctions are "numerous and striking."
I

Nearly all apparently fundamental, qualitative differences between adult man

and apes are in reality of a mere quantitative nature, emerging gradually with
ag, in consequence of diverging trends of development or of differing intensities in otherwise closely corresponding growth ch~nges [1950, ,po 550].
Two great bodily modifications have occurred in man which are little
developed even in the chimpanzee and gorilla, the contemporary apes who
appear to be his nearest anthropoid collaterals. One is concerned with
bipedal locomotion, i.e., adaptation of the feet as walking organs, with consequent adjustrpents of the body ,to an upright position, and freeing of the ,'"
forelimb~ and 'hands which become adapted notably for tool using. This
goes back at least as far as the Australopithecines of South Africa, whose,
fossil skeletal remains have been coming to light increasingly since 1924.
These were ground-walking hominids with partly apelike and partly manlike characters, and lived from perhaps seven million years ago to within
half to one million years ago. Apes at best are awkward when on their

[11] Human Characteristics in Biological Perspective

53

feet only. The other modification is brain development to the point where
precise symbolic communication is made possible through assignment of
specific meanings to specific signals: primarily by way of language. Judged
by fossil brain cases of early man, such as Java Man (Pithecanthropus or
"ape-man") and Peking Man (Sinanthropus, or "China-man"), this degree of brain development does not go back nearly so far in time, perhaps
less than a half million years.
In evolutionary terms these two great modifications toward bipedal 10comotion and precise symbolic communication appear as critical or tip over
points in adaptation; that is, they opened out vast new zones of potential
development. In the terminology of the biologist Simpson, they qualify as
"quantum evolutionary modes," i.e., genetic changes with the potential of a
major adaptive trend. Above all else, these are the biological marks of man
as a distinctive animal. Their implications for cultural development are
enormous, and particularly so in the case of communication through symbols.
So far the discussion has focused on bodily structure and function.
A number of additional behavioral attributes are also shared by man and
other animals. Already a reference has been made to society, or, as some
call it, sociality or aggregation, which is widely spread among animals.
Evolution of the Human Body. The upper body took 'approximately
its present form first, then the pelvis and lower limb/, and finally the
skull. Adapted from Washburn (1951).

BETWEEN
BETWEE.N

35 AND IS MILLION

MILLION AND
25;000 YEARS AGO

YEARS AGO

BETWEEN 7 AND I
MI LLION YEARS AGO

54

Culture and Biological Heritage

Zoologists, psychologists, and others have been carrying on increasingly

complicated and controlled experiments relating to organized populations
of insects, fishes, birds, and other organisms. What are often called "gregarious" tendencies may involve very intricate types of group behavior. Quite
commonly an organized population occupies a given locality and takes steps
to control its resources: principles of territoriality and of group action,
including that needed for defense of an area, which foreshadow in some
respects human political organization. A hierarchy of rank and of leadership may be worked out, as in the well-known experiments on the "peck
order" of birds, and more familiarly the dominance of leaders in many
types of mammal groupings. Bisexuality, involving relations of males and
females, finds expression in many organized forms. The exercise of kinship
ties, and especially the joint care of the young by parents, through some
more or less stable form of family, or familiality, is widely characteristic.
Some animals practice tool using in an incipient way, as does a bird
which cracks a shell with a stone. "Homes" for shelter, protection, display,
and comfort are found in many forms, e.g., the nests of birds and some
fishes, the borrowed shell of the hermit crab, the tree platforms and nests
of apes. Some animals use others for transport. There are, suggestive
analogies between bright plumage and other "showy" features, apparently
having sight recognition value-and often associated with intersex behavior
-in many animal species and the visual ornamentation of human art.
Some animal types engage in ordered movements which' are popularly
called "dancing." Particularly notable among mammals, and found also
among some of the other animal types, is the apparently nonserious, recreative activity which humans call play.
The behavior of apes would appear to be especially critical for uncierstanding man's movement into the gre~t new realm of cultural behavior.
Controlled observations here have mostly been made in various anthropoid
laboratories where apes corne under influences from human culture, and
thi~ has its significance too. ;The following are some representative selections from records of ape behavior, these initial 'examples ~l,being taken for
convenience of reference from the Yerkes' compilation, The Great Apes
(1929), to which the page numbers refer:
EXAMPLES.

APE BEHAVIOR
.

1. A captiv:e gibbon was playful, but preferred children to adults. He would

play, chase, and wrestle with a small Papuan child; when tired he would show
by a warning nip that the game was over [po 7112. A captive orangutan learned to eat with relish all kinds of cooked meat,
vegetables, canned fruit and bread, and to drink tea, coffee, milk, and chocolate
-but remained strictly a teetotaler [po 123].

[11] Human Characteristics in Biological Perspective

55

3. Two laboratory-reared fefi?ale chimpanzees repeatedly join in a "spinning top" kind of dance as a climax of friendly and amicable joie de vivre. A
whole group of chimpanzees combine in motion patterns comparable with a
dance or ceremonial, marching circle-wise around a post, stepping, wagging
heads, and occasionally spinning in somewhat concerted rhythm with obvious
enjoyment [po 219].
4. A laboratory chimpanzee became an inveterate "collector," assembling
stones, pieces of wire and wood, rags, and other materials into heaps, into her
nest, or into a tin bowl; she also "plaited" straws through the wire interstices of
her cage, fixed rags to a stick and otherwise tied knots [po 254].
5. Laboratory chimpanzees almost daily draped their bodies with cloth,
chains, rope, tree branches. Some hung dangling strings over head and ears
[pp. 255-256].
6. A male chimpanzee would dance about, keeping rhythmic time to
music. His female companion did not dance, and though interested in the music
gave no clear indication of satisfaction in it [po 281].
7. Two laboratory chimpanzees had excellent voices, and could reproduce
a wide range and great variety of sounds. Yet they exhibited only a few types
of vocal reaction 1 particularly relative to situations or objects variously liked,
disliked, feared, and otherwise subject to marked emotional responses. Over
an eight-month period, four methods of speech instruction were tried without
positive results; at most they became trained to connect a few sounds with situations, as a dog is taught to "speak" for food [pp. 306-307].
8. Two gorillas, each faced independently with a mirror, reach cautiously
around it and feel for the animal apparently at the back/of it. Not finding it,
they peep over, under, and around the sides, with interest, anxiety and disappointment showing in turn; they "never tire" of the attempt to find the "vanishing"
gorilla [po 437].
9. Gorillas, though "taciturn," lead other apes in nonvocal sound production, beating chest rhythmically with clenched fists, beating cheeks and lower
jaw with the palms, pounding on the ground and on hollow logs [po 545].

Anthropologists judge that tendencies of such kinds in the modern

apes, and so presumably in the generalized anthropoid ancestors which
lie behind both them an~ man, could provide biologically permissible directions in which cultural innovation and elaboration could move. For example, the kinesthetic (Body movement) sensations of pleasure indicated
in some of the above qu1otations may be the forerunners of the aesthetic
l
emotions connected with the arts (Problem 66). Apes sometimes "paint"
crudely with their hands and lips where pigments and surfaces are available
to them, like the much-publicized chimpanzee "artist" Betsy of the Baltimore Zoo. Some animal experimenters have suggested that what looks
like "awe" before the unknown may anticipate the development of religion.
An excellent summary of ape characteristics as relating to human behavior
is- given by Kroeber in his Anthropology (1948).

56

Culture and Biological Heritage

Problem 12 . The Distinctiveness of Cultural Behavior

How do other animals compare with man in regard to learning, innovation, sharing, and storing experience? Do they show at least the beginnings of culture?
In animals other than man, such physical structures and behaviors
develop through the interplay of genetic (hereditary) tendencies with the
environment, without significant accumulation of "culture." Even the most
complicated societal arrangements tend to be inborn. There is a minor
need only for learning, for communication of experience from adult to
young or from one adult to another. A fringe area exists here, though not
fully understood, in the case of at least many animal species in which some
"teaching" seems to occur, i.e., a mother bird demonstrating flight to its
offspring, an adult cat guiding and sometimes "punishing" a kitten. Moreover, an older adult animal builds up individual experience, as with the
crafty fish who avoids the bait, or the carnivore who turns man-killer. Such
a measure of learning, however, seems in the main to be limited to the
finesse of behavior: the essential survival techniques, such as what to eat,
how to pick a mate, or how to be camouflaged in the face of enemies, seem
not to be left in any large measure to the chance margin of training and
experience, even in the higher animal species, other than man:
Animal capacity for learning is seen most clearly when training is
given in behaviors drawn from human culture. Here the whole range of
experiments with animal training, as in circuses and more recently in scientific laboratories, is relevant. Birds and cats play Ping-pong. Mice "solve"complicated maze tests, moving from initial random behavior to smoothlY
executed habits. Horses and other animals learn signals, as in "counting."
Parrots "talk." Apes ride bicycles, use tableware, work slot machines. Apes,
partis:ularly, show some degree of "insight," of. ability to see a problem
whore in working out a solution. How far this often' surprising capacity to
learn, this psychological plasticity, is brought out under conditions of life
in the wild, as in the case of an experienced older animal, remains a matter
for speculation.
Animals forget such learning when habit patterns lapse, as do humans. Laboratory apes showed ability to remember a place where food
was buried very niuch longer than they could retain a sense of color or other
more speciillized signals indicating its location. When, too, their learned
behavior patterns are interfered with or deliberately broken down through
deprivation or punishments, animals show such responses as frustration,
aggression, neurotic irritability or passivity, or, in more extreme cases,
,Psychotic sets. The laboratory rat, thwarted repeatedly by an electric

[12] The Distinctiveness of Cultural Behavior

57

shock from completing his familiar run through a maze to the food box,
may bite his fellows, "pretend" indifference, lie down with his feet hanging
limply, or otherwise behave surprisingly like humans do under stress.
In terms of at least one essential in the building of human culture,
that of learning, or the ability to store experience, many animals therefore
show considerable capacity and versatility as individuals. Physical anthropologists consider that a chimpanzee can be trained in human types of
bodily behavior to about the level of a three-year-old child. A gorilla,
if it were not so surly and intractable, might possibly go a little further.
How far an ape "learns to learn," as in secondary learning, is an open question. But, at best, this all falls vastly short of human learning, with its
prolonged enculturation and socialization, and its clear-cut and confident
models for problem solving in the form of cultural norms.
Animals also have considerable capacity for individual creativity or
"innovation," a second obvious essential in the building of human culture.
The laboratory rat, faced with a new maze which controls his way to the
food box, not o~y may engage in random (trial-and-error) behavior, but
may also apply his previous experience in "perceiving" and solving the
problem. The ape will fit sticks together or build a pile of boxes to reach
his food. In a broad sense, indeed, all behavior of living organisms constantly involves at least minor acts of "innovation" in meeting new situations and applying past experience to them. The innovative act is, so to
speak, the minimal unit in all new behavior.
/
How far, in the wild state, animals are innovators is again largely a
matter of speculation, for want of exact evidence and because of difficulties
of interpreting what we see. Ants solve numerous problems in a garden, and
bears in a national park learn how to open garbage cans. By and large,
however, they appear to carryon their ordinary activities within a relatively
narrow range of behaviors which assures their species survival. It is once
more in the scientific laboratory, where culturally shaped problems are
presented to them by manl that animal capacity for innovation shows most
vividly. Nissen (1956) di~cusses the great "individuality" in behavior of
the chimpanzee in the Y~rkes laboratories of primate biology in Florida
which makes eaCih one redognizably distinct to the research workers there.
J ojo, who discovered ho~ to use a stick to flip on and off a light switch,
and also how to screw in, and out a light bulb near her cage, is poor in
social adjustments; Jenny, her half sister, is mechanically inept but has
much better social adjusdnents than Jojo's.
Yet even with such laboratory animals, random behavior is likely to
dominate any situation, arid innovations appear sporadically as chance solutions to perceived problems. The chimpanzee, given a simple puzzle of fitting squares, triangles, and circles into holes, may well spend a long time
biting the pieces, looking through the holes, putting his fingers throu~h

58

Culture and Biological Heritage

them-then possibly at last catching on to the idea of fitting the pieces

into corresponding holes. By contrast, human innovation may show not only
increasing control but also purposiveness (Problem 77). All in all, in
this second essential of cultural behavior, animals cannot be said to show
at best more than mediocre achievement.
Why do animal potentialities for training and innovation fall away,
whereas the human child goes on learning and creating? Clearly a major
factor here is the lack of ability, of brain capacity, to participate in precise
symbolic communication. The ape cannot be taught more than the most
rudimentary language sounds. The parrot, which has vocal apparatus capable of making approximately the range of human sounds, has even much
less ability to grasp meanings. Reasoning, memory, and other mental
processes have no finesse without language. The ape, too, fails to learn the
full range of affective (emotional) states which acquire significance in human behavior. How far ape self-expression goes beyond widely prevalent
animal emotions, such as friendliness, pleasure, affection, suspicion, rage,
pain, or fear, to encompass such emotional nuances or frames of emotional
reference as humor, compassion, reverence, or humility, is still under review by psychologists. Missing, too, is the frequent cultural repression or
exaggeration of affective states. Kohler (1925) points out, however, that
the ape uses movements of his whole body to express emotions much more
than humans do. All such expression forms in man tend to be associated
with a particular cultural matrix, and it is not always clear even how far a
given emotional nuance is universal in the sense of being recognized in all
cultures. It may furthermore be noted that apes, as other mammals in
general, mature at a rate faster than man's, and this may be a braking
factor on ready learning and innovation.
Lacking any refinement of symbolism beyond very generalized signals
and meanings-the warning cry of-birds, the upr~ght ears of a rabbit, the
limited vocal sounds of an ape-all animals other than man fall down
wgefully in another essential feature of culture: ability to transmit experi-'
ence, and so share it, as a social or group tradition. Wh~~ an ~ndividual
animaymay learn cannot be passed on to others in ani significant degree. '
The human animal trainer initiates practically all communication in building habit patterns in his charges. The signals he develops are sublinguistic,
or involve exceedingly simple and general language meanings. Circus apes,
released with their wild fellows, would presumably not teach them to ride
bicycles or eat! with a spoon. The human individual who strikes out in a
new cultural direction-an improved tool, or use of a new plant food, a
fresh magical formula-has the ability to communicate his personal experi- '
ence to others.
If such an innovation is accepted, it becomes part of the cumulative

[13] The Relation of Constitution to Culture

59
group store of custom. Ability to accumulate experience in patterned group
activity is an essential condition of cultural life. On this test, animals other
than man have obviously fallen down almost completely. Modern man has a
heritage of cultural accumulation which makes his behavior almost wholly
a matter of following learned group habits, as stressed earlier. Where, for
example, the apes continue their old herbivorous (vegetation-eating) diet,
man has become as omnivorous (everything-eating) as he chooses to be;
the apes stay in their familiar tropical forest habitats (the chimpanzee and
gorilla in Africa, the gibbon and orangutan in southeast Asia), while man
ranges in earth-wide fashion.
In sum, animals can learn and store experience individually. They
may also engage in some innovation as individuals. But they can transmit
it to other animals, and so share it socially, only in very limited degree for
lack of specific communication techniques. Accumulation of individual
innovations into a developing social tradition is virtually absent except
in man. Individual learning rather than cultural learning is therefore characteristic of animal behavior beyond that which is genetically shaped. The
criteria of culture developed here will be further discussed in other contexts,
e.g., language, innovation, diffusion.
Is it fair, then, to state that man is the only cultural animal? Many
anthropologists say this. Others see enough learning and transmitting in
many animal species, particularly among man's nearest collaterals, to admit
a zone of proto culture, i.e., "first culture." Whether w~ speak of the tendencies involved as "precultural," or "pseudocultural," or "protocultural,"
we may hypothesize with reasonable certainty that it was out of these beginnings that the long road toward modern culture took its definitive turn.

Problem 11 . The Relation of Constitution to Culture

What is the relatiorl between biological-psychological characteristics
and cultural behavior? How far can "psychological" capacity be probed
and measured by tests, in11view of the fact that such tests are cultural constructs?
I
To this point we ha~e seen the evolutionary development in man of a
bodily structure, with constitutional characteristics and behavioral tendencies which are partly shared with other animals, but which in certain
respects are distinctive, e~en crucially distinctive. Biologists, psychologists,
physical anthropologists, (and others have tried various scientific vocabularies to express in genebl terms the biological factors which enter into
behavior. The anthropological viewpoints have been summarized effectively
by Kluckhohn (1954).

60

Culture and Biological Heritage

An older approach was an "instinct" theory, which tried in man's case

to explain behavior by a series of instincts corresponding to cultural and
social tendencies. Different lists were made up, comprising such instincts
as hunger, sex, gregariousness, mother-love, ghost-fear. From the anthropologist's point of view, this approach ran foul of the obvious fact that to
explain culture and society by way of such biological factors alone would
mean that ultimately a minutely different instinct would be needed to explain every varying detail of difference in human custom over the earth.
An instinct would be needed for bowing, for kissing, for rubbing noses instead of kissing, and so on and on. Whether called instincts or anything
else, such a theory involved assigning biological factors an unduly determining or dominant role in human behavior, and fell into the scientific discard
as naive. So hard was its fall that the term "instinct" has remained suspect,
and is on the whole avoided by behavioral scientists.
Various other terms have had currency in referring to biological motivations, among them "needs," "interests," "urges," "drives." Of these,
"needs" and "drives" have been most used in anthropological theory, as
will be seen. Anthropologists, however, are on the whole content to leave
any attempt to build up an inventory of such biological-psychological factors
to psychologists and others. For their own work they are likely to operate
with those that have special significance for the particular problem they
are studying, e.g., the drives for food, shelter, and other material goods as
underlying technology and economics; the fact of being born ifrom the mating of a female and a male, having blood kinsmen, and needing to care for
children, as among given elements in developing a system of social organization.
Biological tendencies in modern men are seen by the anthropologist
as intricately bound up with cultural f~ctors. Even separating them conceptually involves an often difficult exercise in thought. The human hand
is a genetically framed organ of the body,-but its detailed shape and texture
sho.}V cultural influences: per~aps the effects of good or poor diet, often
marks of occupational use, nails trimmed by scissors and perhaps colored
in the case of females, a scar from burning at a stove. The head or feet can
be systematically deformed to meet a cultural standard of beauty. Again,
at mealtime, the "primary drive" of hunger is there, but the actual appetite
drive of an American calls for certain breakfast dishes in the morning, and
so on through the day's food intake. Among some other people, not only
would the foodstuffs hungered for be different, but also the timing, rate,
and quantity of intake: perhaps even just one large meal in the evening,
and otherwise chance snacks. Even breathing can be affected by cultural
habits, as with Yogi exercises or the wearing of corsets. Such specific cultural
shaping of biological tendencies has led some anthropologists to speak of,

[13] The Relation of Constitution to Culture

61

Head Deformation: Cultural Values Can Shape Bodily Characters. The

principle that constitution can be influenced by culture is exemplified
by a formerly widespread practice among South American Indians of
head flattening. The frame shown at left was used in Argentina (after
Imbelloni). On the right is a skull from Bolivia, in the U.S. National
Museum.

derived drives, i.e., "derived" through conditioning to specific cultural

"cues" or expectations (Problem 30). Undoubtedly well before actual
birth, the human infant, by way of the mother's culturally shaped bodily
characteristics and habits, begins to have its genetic potential of structure
and function shaped in terms of culturally influenced growth patterns and
drives, as with exercise and rest, diet factors, tensions-;-though little is
known of this yet.
.
.No anthropologist is likely to discount the ge6etic factors which
enter into behavior. But such factors account in part only for the development of culture, and for the specifics of local custom. Put in terms used by
Kluckhohn and some other anthropological theorists, biological-psychological ten~encies involving a hereditary or genetic base are among the determinants of culture and also of society, i.e., shaping influences. But they
are not the single, or even the prime (most important) "determiner" in any
sense of a biological deterfninism of culture and society.
Man, a student once )wrote, is distinguished from other animals by his
1

Mustache Lifters: BOdJlY Characters Can Shape Culturaz, Invention.

Ainu men, in north Japan, with their characteristically profuse mustaches and beards, use 1uch lifters when eating and drinking. The upper
one is a common type,! the lower one is for ceremonial use.

~~4@~~~

62

Culture and Biological Heritage

"more complex brain convulsions"-he meant "convolutions." The long

development of man as a cultural animal, covering several thousand generations of breeding, and probably a million or more years of time, has
been seen as fostering a greatly expanded capacity for learning and for retention of experience. The human brain, especially the neopallium, or "new
brain," which is the lodgment of "higher" mental processes, has both enlarged and increased in complexity. Anthropologists hold to the hypothesis
that any human being, unless biologically defective or damaged, has the
potential capacity to learn to a reasonably efficient degree any cultural tradition to which the individual concerned might be exposed. Here, par excellence, man is a generalized animal. As will be noted shortly, this still
leaves room for recognition of special capacities in which individuals may
excel or be deficient.
A corollary of this proposition is that the human infant is highly plastic
in its capacities, even "unformed." A baby is helpless, not for the brief time
that marks at most the young of other animals, but for a prolonged period.
The evolutionary risk, so to speak, has been taken in human development,
far beyond that taken in the case of any other animal, of resting survival of
the species upon care of the-young by adults. (It is no wonder ,that in all
cultures, as will be seen, highly institutionalized provisions are made
through marriage, family, and other customs to provide a stable setting
for the rearing of children.) By being exposed to this unique risk, man has
gained the capacity to develop his great range of alternatives in learning.
The infant hungers, but after weaning he can adjust to many differing food
appetites rather than having a built-in menu, so to speak, of grass, or flesh,
or insects. He needs sleep, but can be trained to sleep according to different timetables and in different bedding arrangements. He can adjust, in d~e
course, to many alternative types of sex,ual customs. By adulthood, he is
not just a well-trained cultural animal, but also one trained more or less
expertly in the intricacies of the specific cultural tradition of his particular
soci~ty. No wonder, therefore, that the genetic elements in human behavior are so hard to isolate.
"
It can be understood, here, why anthropologists have been consistently
critical of any claims that "intelligence tests" provide a measurement of
hereditary capacities only. Such claims were often made in the early twentieth century, when psychologists and others were first developing standardized tests. By th~ time a child can take even the simplest test, anthropologists point~d out,1 he has had his gehetic potential molded basically and with
considerable specificity in his particular culture. The "I.Q.," "maze," or
other test, measures, rather, individual attainment in terms of a complex
interplay of hereditary capacities and of cultural training and motivation.
Furthermore, most standard tests have linguistic and other behavioral con-

[13] The Relation of Constitution to Culture

63

tent which obviously places their qrigin within Western culture, so that
they are anything but "culture-free."
Comparison of responses to tests by individuals trained in the same
cultural tradition are useful if care is taken to recognize that differences
may involve both genetic and training factors. The testing situation of
which anthropologists have been most critical, however, is that in which the
tester crosses cultural boundaries to compare responses of individuals
trained in one culture with those trained in another. This has often been
done, as did the psychologist Porteus when he applied his maze test to Australian Aborigines and African Bushmen. These latter experiments show,
in rather extreme form, the problems involved. Such desert peoples rarely
or perhaps never have been inside an enclosed space such as a house
with rectangular corners, walls, and doors. Would they be expected to
have the same motivation, the same store of experience, as an American
individual accustomed since infancy to finding his way through closed-off
angular structures? Would an American, correspondingly, do very well on
a test, if such were to be compounded by an Aborigine or a Bushman, on
finding his way over desert horizons, or on tracking a wild animal?
Psychologists have been making the effort to develop tests with greater
cross-cultural validity by reducing language and other "culture-bound" elements. The well-known Rorschach test, considerably used by anthropologists, has probably best met this criterion to date as being based on forms
and colors which might occur widely in nature, as in stains
or other mark/
ings on flat surfaces. Here, an individual in any culture, once informed of
what the nine "inkblot"-like cards are, and what the tester wants done,
responds in terms of how the shapes, spaces, and colors are perceived by
him. Rorschach specialists judge that certain likenesses and differences in
response do transcend cultural boundaries, and so indicate consistent personality and other patterns of universal significance. For any form of test,
however, the complexity of unraveling the dimensions of cultural training
l
must intrude problems of interpretation to the extent that the individuals
being tested are drawn fromi differing cultural contexts. This stricture would
apply not only to tests on ethnic groups overseas, but also to comparisons
made between ethnic groups at home, as in the case of white Americans,
Negroes, Spanish Americarys, and Asians in a school population in California, where preschool conditioning and the sociocultural milieu outside
school are different.
'
In review, the relation1between biology and culture as discussed to this
point can usefully be summarized in a series of propositions:

1. Man has a constitutional or biological-psychological heritage in

which genetic, habitat, and cultural-social factors play an interacting part;

Culture and Biological Heritage

64

the locus of this heritage is the body of the individual, with its structures
and behavioral tendencies.
2. The genetic potentialities, carried by heredity, when isolated conceptually for study, include a wide range of structural and functional characteristics shared selectively with other animals: the life cycle, hunger,
sex, locomotion.
3. In man, exceptional plasticity for learning and innovation, combined with refinement of symbolic communication, led to his unique development as a "cultural animal," storing experience which is socially transmitted.
4. The cultural and social man has his bodily actions and drives
trained to the specific cultural traditions of his "enculturation" and "socialization"; his genetic tendencies are therefore conditioned to particular
cultural and social outlets: "derived drives," as they are sometimes called.
5. Culture and constitution, therefore, intermesh in complex ways.
The biological-psychological potentialities existing at anyone time are a
frame setting bounds for cultural behavior; and culture influences the directions in which constitutional developments move, as in individual growth
and evolutionary process, as we shall see in the next section.
6. Though individuals vary in their genetic potential, the complexity
of unraveling cultural training makes dubious any interpretations 6f comparative ability except as the latter is defined as representing attainment
by individuals conditioned within a common cultural milieu.
'
The reference in the last proposition to individual differences, both
genetic and cultural, raises the larger question of variation among humans.
So far the discussion has emphasized the characteristics held in common
by man as an animal, and as a cultural animal. The focus can now be turned on what anthropologists say about boc!ily' differencd and their relation
to culture.
'
I

Problem 14 . Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

What relation exists between constitutional differences such as those
of race, bodily form, and sex, and differences in cultural behavior?
The term "race" almost surely comes to mind first in this connection.
But what are popuHuly considered "racial" differences comprise one class
only of the oiological-psychological variations in populations and individuals. Among others are so-called body types, or constitutional types;
special physiological characteristics such as right- or left-handedness, differing susceptibility to diseases, or color blindness; and the differences between males and females.

65

[14] Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

Popular ideas on "race," based mainly on a few high-visibility bodily

characteristics, are oversimple. A fresh scientific appraisal of the whole
problem of human variability has recently been under way, particularly
through studies of genetics (breeding processes), maturation (bodily
growth), and ecology (the interrelationships between life and its environment). The idea that there are a number of distinct or unit races, somehow developed in the distant past, and subsequently mixing, is now quite
inadequate to bear the weight of known facts. While this is not the place
to develop fully the newer viewpoint which is emerging, a general framework of understanding is necessary to show the relations between constitutional and cultural variability.
In imagination, we may cast our minds back once more to the generalized anthropoids from which modern men and apes have become specialized. Physical anthropologists postulate that various "experiments" took
place in human directions. Some of them landed from time to time in dead
ends, known through fossils, as probably was the case with the hominid
Australopithecines o( South Africa and the early Homo populations in Java
and China (Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, spoken of earlier), also
Early Man: Development and Distribution. The simplified map of the
land masses of the world, with Africa, America, and Oceania shown
as extensions of Eurasia, is explained on p. 108.

SWANSCOMBE ETC. MEN

FOURTH GLACIAL
(PERHAP:I 2S;000 YEARS AGO)

FOURTH GLACIAl..
(peRHAPS 25'.000 YEARS AGO)

..., ..
, '
#

66

Culture and Biological Heritage

the later Neanderthal type populations of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Somewhere, perhaps in west or south Asia, perhaps in Africa, a breeding line
started its successful biological venture in the directions leading to modern
man (Homo sapiens, "thinking man"). All human populations of today,
however different they may appear physically, fall within the sapiens group.
Fossils approximating to modern man, with his large brain case and
foreshortened face, definitely appear in Third Interglacial deposits, that
is, from perhaps about 50,000 years ago-so-called Fontechevade Man
of France. Other older fossils such as Swanscombe Man of south England
and Kanam Man of east Africa have led some students to postulate that
the special evolutionary developments leading to modern man go back
from 100,000 to 300,000 years ago. Such mineralized skeletal materials
show tendencies to variability: bones thicker or thinner, foreheads with
differing slope, and so on. By the Fourth Glacial, that is, around 30,000 years ago, there are variations corresponding to some of those
characteristic of modern racial variation: the Cro-Magnon Men of Europe
are within the range of modern Caucasoids or Whites; the Grimaldi mother
and child in a Riviera cave suggest Negroid characters; three skulls from
near Peking, China, show some resemblances to Mongoloid types; and
Wadjak Man of Java and certain fossils found in Australia and New Guinea
are like larger versions of some modern Australian Aborigines~
There is no certain knowledge of what such early men were like other
than what the bones tell. It could be hypothesized that, as in animals more
generally, there were somewhat taller (or longer) and shorter individuals,
bulkier and thinner ones, darker and lighter ones, and so on. Put technically,
man, like other complex organisms, tends to be polymorphic, or "many
structured. "
Without doubt, these early hum~ns lived inltiny groups, perhaps-of a
few families, and kept moving in -quest of the wild foods on which they
subsisted. No large groupings could be assembled in anyone area without
s~arvation, so that, as numgers increased, members of the: original groups
"hived off" and moved to new areas. Individuals probably mated for the most part within their own' groups, though members of n~ighboring groups
might exchange or capture mates from one another and so intermarry. Each
unit, as with so many other animals, would tend to establish a territory,
which it would defend if necessary to control resources. What biologists "
call the breeding population was very small and tended to be stable. -Re- "cent eS,timate's of the size of breeding populations among some of the I
very remote hunting and gathering peoples of today show them as mating
almost exclusively within groups of fifty to five hundred persons. If humans had not built up their culture so as to foster increasing movement
and interaction, some localized groups might have been well on their way
to complete reproductive isolation, that is, they would have been diff7r-

[14] Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

67
entiating toward the point where ipterbreeding could no longer occur, i.e.,
specialization would then have reached the stage of speciation, or becoming
separate species.
.
Such tiny groups, spreading out over the warmer land zones of Asia,
Africa, and Europe, provided at first what geneticists and ecologists might
consider approximately ideal conditions for constitutional differentiation,
i.e., for fostering polymorphism. Sometimes here, sometimes there, a mutation, or change in the genetic potential, would occur in an individualthe theory surrounding this cannot be dealt with here. In a small inbreeding group such a mutant character had its best chance to become a continuing part of the local "gene pool," or store of hereditary materials. Not
only had it to survive the first cross between the individual concerned and
a "normal" mate, but it also had to become more or less established in
the breeding line, which was most likely to happen through continued very
close inbreeding. The whole range of known human variations, from giant
to pygmy stature, from near-black pigmentation to albinism, from straight
to frizzly hair, must trace back ultimately to mutation processes. Probably,
too, almost all the outstanding physical characters of modern man trace
back to mutants established here and there over the earth in times of early
man. A complicating factor in trying to trace the history and geography of
particular characters, as with the distribution of pygmy size, or prominent
noses, or a particular blood type, is that in some instances approximately
the same mutant variation may have occurred more th~n once in different
places.
Other forces making for difference were also favored in small breeding
populations. One is known as genetic drift, i.e., the chance statistical variation in gene materials from generation to generation. Two small groups
branching from the small parent group, for example, would tend over passing generations. to "drift" genetically along different lines, through selective
"shuffling" of genes, even without mutation. They would, with passing time,
have different frequencid of characters, through greater survival of some
gene materials, and lessened survival of others. Here, too, more familiar
forces of selection come into play by which some individuals survive and
reproduce offspring, whilel others are eliminated.
Darwin, in his classfc theory of selection, stressed the influences of
"natural" forces such as climate, disease, the struggle for food, and also
"sexual" selection in choiCe of mates-factors which could operate among
organisms generally. In mkn, cultural selection brings into playa wide range
of additional influences ~hich affect directions of biological development.
With the gradual accumulation of specialized cultural traditions, survival
of particular individuals 'and breeding lines could be differentially affected
by such factors as particular diets, medical knowledge or its lack, methods
of child care, religious ideas relating to the worth of human life, methods

68

Culture and Biological Heritage

of fighting. Marriage customs could have important cumulative effects.

Where kinsmen marry closely, as with a practice among many non-Western
peoples of marrying cousins (Problem 48), genetic transmission would
be limited to a much narrower range of characters than would occur when
marriages run consistently beyond the immediate kin. Differing standards of
beauty or worth, physical and otherwise, could affect the choice of mates.
A Solomon segregating large numbers of the choicest wives in his menage,
a system of "trial mating" to ensure a fertile marriage, and many other
local items of custom could affect "sexual selection" in man.
As physical characteristics diversified, and matings occurred between
markedly different individuals, notably in contacts between populations
ordinarily separate, still another basic process became increasingly operative:
hybridization. This is not an exceptional phenomenon, as many people are
inclined to think because it is usually associated in our minds only with
"race mixture" in the modern world. How fundamental it is will be realized
when we remind ourselves that even the first cross between a mutant individual and a "normal" individual involves to a degree such hybridity.
Outbreeding is obviously the factor which opens the way for mutant characters to enter into breeding lines beyond their immediate grO?P of origin, '"
and in some cases to spread widely through regional breeding populations.
A biological metaphor refers to this process as "gene flow." Hybridization,
however, would by and large have been a very localized process so long
as man moved at foot pace. Later, with the canoe, the horse, and other
means of travel, it crisscrossed groups widely over the world, and it has
become particularly the mark of modern breeding.
The four processes mentioned-mutation, genetic drift, selection, and
hybridization-have been basic in producing markedly polymorphic t~nd- encies in man, as in other complex organisms. Some anthropologists have
pointed out that only dogs, which have become highly differentiated in the
course of human domesticatIon and selection, show a much greater range
oJidiversity. In early human ,populations these-processes tended to produce
an increasing range of variability in individuals and in_breeding lines. At
the same time, any local population would tend to build' up with a high
frequency a particular cluster or complex of characters in its particular
gene pool. Presumably the early gene pools of west Asia, Europe, and
north Africa became marked by a high frequency of lighter pigmentation, of
taller stature, ?f prominent noses and chins, and some of the other: char- I"'
acters which we associate with the "Causasoid" type. In east Asia, straight
and rath~r heavy-textured hair, little body hair, broad faces, an overhanging
fold of flesh called an epicanthic fold more or less covering the upper eyelid, and certain other characters associated with the "Mongoloid" type
gained high frequency. In the isolated Australian area, reached by small
migrant groups who crossed the intervening water channels from the Asiatic

69

[141 Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

POLYNESIANMICRONESIAN
OCEANIC

Distribution of Principal Racial Types

/

continental shelf probably during the Fourth Glacial (Problem 24), the socalled Aborigines, have carried forward into modern breeding lines what
appear to be rather early developed characteristics of man in south Asia:
the rugged-faced, heavily haired "Australoid" ("southern-like") type, and
the dark-pigmented, frizzly-haired "Negritoid" ("little-Negro-like") type.
The tendency for more complex organisms such as man to become "manytyped" is often referred t~ as polytypism.
Clearly, in such a developmental scene, "races" in the popular unit
sense did not suddenly sp~ing into existence, each with its own physical and
psychological characteristks. The nearest approach 'to a "race" in this
more biologically realistic Ipicture is the concept of a high-frequency cluster
or complex of constitutional characters so far as this may be discernible
in any regional or local population. A "race," or better, a racial type, is, in
scientific terms, a statistical concept or construct.
Furthermore, the mJasures which a physical anthropologist applies in
isolating such a cluster of;characters or type carry considerably further than
the popular yardsticks of racial difference. Our interpretations of "race,"
going back even into Hebrew, Greek, and other early Western traditions,
tend to rest on a few high-visibility marks which we can see immediately:
skin, eye, and ~air color, hair texture, thickness of lips, nose shape. The

70

Culture and Biological Heritage

anthropometric (man-measurement) techniques of the physical anthropologist also record polytypic differences in terms of head shapes, tooth structure,
blood types, physiological capacities, susceptibilities to disease, maturation
(growth) patterns, and many other relevant characters. Even the most
"race-conscious" individual fails to get excited when marriages take place
between very tall and very short individuals, long-heads and broad-heads,
persons having differing blood types, and so on, though to the scientific eye
these involve crisscrossing, hybridization, among man's great array of
polymorphic characters.
The physical anthropologist looks not only at the types or clusters
(complexes) of constitutional characters in a population, but also at the
range of variation among individuals. He studies the range of characters in
a given population, and as he turns attention from one neighboring population to another, he notes what shifts in the frequency or incidence of
characters take place. A rather new, and important, concept here is that
of a character gradient, or, as in a geological term, a cline. As one passes
geographically, or "ecologically," from one population to another, a shift
in the frequency of characters is to be expected. This "gradient" or "cline"
involves some characters becoming less frequent, or even disappearing
altogether, and others becoming more frequent, or new ones app~aring. A
gradient may be "low" or "shallow" if the shift is gradual, "high" or "steep"
if it is abrupt. On a vast scale, there is a generally shallow gradi~ht between
Europe and east Asia in which dominantly Caucasoid-type characters
give way to Mongoloid. Africa has a inajor gradient from Caucasoid in the
Character Gradients or Clines. Showing those most notable in Old World areas.

71

[14] Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

north to Negroid in the south, and especially in the west. India has one from
tall, fairer characters in the northwest to short and darker in the southeast.
But the shifts between African and southeast Asian Pygmy populations and
their taller neighbors tend to be steep. So does that between the dominantly
Caucasoid Ainu of north Japan and the Mongoloid Japanese. Neighboring
populations, however, through intermarriage, nearly always show intergradation, i.e., a concept indicating an overlapping and sharing of characters.
What has been happening to man over the last few thousand years? It
will be seen in the next chapter how, with agriculture and other foodproducing techniques, larger systems of social aggregation, and other
cultural inventions, certain populations took the lead in what was to be a
vast population increase. The tiny groups initially affected by the foodproducing revolution in the Mesopotamian area, in Egypt, in the Indus
Valley of India, and in the Yellow River Valley of China, entered upon
what might be called a "swarming period." Their particular gene complexes
went, so to speak, into mass production. These influences spread in turn
to nearby areas, notably Europe. So today we find in these zones the massive
human populations, dominated by the Caucasoid or the Mongoloid type
characters, but with many subtypes. By contrast, Negro African, north and
central Asian, aboriginal American, and Pacific Island populations had in
terms of their types of culture more limited stimuli to population growth
(Problem 24). Moreover, here and there in remote zones, there continued
into modern times numbers of tiny groups still living og /wild foods and
breeding mostly within their immediate local lines: e.g., Australian Aborigines, African Bushmen, Pygmies, some North and South American peoples.
With the expanding populations, migration, contact, and interpenetration of hitherto separate groups became the rule, as witness familiar
European history. The prospects of any human groups becoming inbred
and specialized to the point lof reproductive isolation, hence of separating
homo sapiens into distinct species, fell away, we presume, permanently.
Mutations, though continuirig to occur, had less likelihood of becoming
established in breeding lines\ Gene drift became of less -total significance.
The range of selective force~ widened, particularly those of cultural selection, as an exercise in imagi~ation should readily show. Selection continues
to assume new forms even in our living population. With medical discoveries
and welfare, for example, many types of individuals who would formerly
have been eliminated now s4rvive and reproduce. Industrialization and city
life foster new marriage and family patterns (Problem 20). Hybridization
operates on a world-wide sc1ale, and is particularly characteristic of contact
frontiers and urban centers. The continuing unity and generalized character
of the human species and the development of culture thus go hand in hand.
Man's long-term survival being predicated, the prospects for future huo

IJ

72

Culture and Biological Heritage

man breeding on a planet-wide basis easily suggest themselves, at least in

broad outline. They point toward (a) greater intergradation, with shallower
gradients (clines); (b) lessening geographic localization of genetic characters; (c) lessening definiteness of particular types hitherto represented
with high frequency in regional and local populations; (d) greater diversity
and variety in the constitutional characteristics of individuals (just look
~round us!); and (e) the pruning back in terms of frequency of some of
the most extreme specializations, e.g., very marked long-headedness, lack
of body pigments (blandness), pygmy size, forward-thrusting jaws, large
back molars. It also becomes apparent that, as culture continues to build
up, it will influence in increasingly complex ways the particular directions
of human breeding and so of biological development.
Exercise
Some students ask whether in the future all individuals will become alike,
e.g., a kind of brownish color, medium height. Frame an answer in the
light of these principles.

It has been noticed, perhaps, that in this discussion a scientific vocabulary exists for describing physical differences in man without using. the older
term "race" at all. Several biologists and anthropologists have even gone so
far as to say that the term should be abolished from the scientific vocabulary
relating to man, both because of popular misconceptions and, because the
concept of "a race" has such a statistically limited validity. At least if we
continue to use it, the meanings assigned to it must not be naYve.
So far the analysis has stressed happenings in human populations at
the genetic level, i.e., the hereditary characters. Physical anthropologists
also take note of the complicated maturation (growth) processes that go tothe making of the adult human. The fer~ilized human "egg cell" has a particular gene potential, called by biologists the genotype. ,But as cell multiplication takes place, and the human body takes structural form, external influences' from the mother and later from the habitat and sociocultural setting
come into playas well. Cultural factors of nutrition and control of diseases
are of very great importance in' the maturation process. A way of squatting
or sitting may mold growth of the knee. A football injury may produce a
new nose form, a "permanent" wave affects the visible hair texture. But
apparently blood type, eye color (short of an eye graft), and certain o~her
characters cannot:be manipulated cl1lturally. What biologists call the pheno;'
type, or actual body (morphological) form, is developed by way of a complex interplay of genetic, habitat, and sociocultural factors. American men
and women have become considerably taller in the last half century, and so
have Japanese immigrants to the United States, presumably without significant shifts in their genotypic potential. Relatively little is yet known about

[14] Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

73

this intricate interplay of biological and cultural factors in human growth.

But obviously "race" in the popular sense is not solely "inborn."
With these perspectives in mind, the difficult subject of psychological
capacity, obviously highly relevant to the understanding of culture, can be
tackled. In the previous section it was shown that the human infant has very
great plasticity for cultural molding, and that "cultural tradition takes hold"
very early in the maturation process. It was indicated, however, that individuals undoubtedly vary in their genetic potential, i.e., in their capacity to
respond to cultural stimuli.
We do not know exactly what so-called psychological capacities are.
We can merely see how an individual responds with different efficiency to
everyday experience, or to a culturally shaped laboratory test. In this respect, one child or adult may respond with greater finesse to mathematical
symbols, another to musical sounds, another to art patterns, and still another
to abstract comprehension. Or again, one individual is energetic and "outgoing," another rather passive and shyly self-conscious. One responds more
sensitively than another to what is counted "beauty" or to religious experience.
The anthropologist, faced with the great array of physical variations in
man, can justifiably associate himself with the psychologist in postulating
that such specialized behavioral tendencies relate in part to differences in
genetic potentialities. Upon these capacities cultural stimulus and opportunity in turn play. The anthropologist must also assume! that, so far as
"psychological" behaviors of the individual have a genetic basis, the same
world-wide processes of differentiation and distribution would have been at
work as in physical characters.
.
This would mean that, by the reconstructive postulates outlined above,
those psychological characters not already in the heritage of the anthropoid
ancestors would have arisen through mutation at some place and time. Each
would follow its own patterns of breeding in human lines over the earth.
Localized inbr.eeding might give it high frequency in a population, it might
tend to become associated with a particular cluster of characters making up
a type,. and gene flow might !take it nearer or farther. But these are hypothetical statements. The antHropologist knows virtually nothing of the frequency distribution of, say, ~athematical or musical or artistic potentialities
in human populations. Of so-called "intelligence" he can merely report in
general that in every ethnic! group studied there appear to be some very
bright individuals and some~'very stupid ones, and that the rest appear to
be in between-as is true of ,I'ordinary" people in our own society.
What can really be observed and measured are the responses of individuals and groups, given the opportunities and stimuli represented by their
cultural and social traditions. No matter how much an individual's mathe-

74

Culture and Biological Heritage

matical potential, he will not get far in a culture which is vague about numbers above, say, 100, or which in its written symbols lacks the "place" system (1, 10, 100, and so on) and the zero sign, not to mention "higher"
mathematics. Few of us, however, can yet count in the binary system now
widely used in machine computations. A potential expert at singing, if he is
a male in American society, is unlikely to get the stimulus to become a specialist; solo male singing for most men rarely extends beyond the stag party
and the bathroom. But in a Polynesian society he has an opportunity for
singing that may lead him into a position of prestige. Anthropologists often
point out a kind of reverse twist in responses to cultural heritage. An individual who has whatever potential qualities make for energetic action, even
aggression, may do excellently in a cultural milieu which values warfare or
individual push. He fits the local mold of the "normal person," the "good
citizen," the "leader." But in a milieu consistently valuing passivity and conformity, an individual with such energy potential may become the misfit, the
inefficient individual, the "maladjusted," the "abnormal." In the latter cultural medium, the less energetic, unaggressive person, who would have had
difficulty in fitting into very active culture patterns, would find himself easily
at home.
Anthropologists have been highly critical of theories which ,attribute
uniform inborn capacities to "races" or to other population groups: for
example, nations or followers of a common religion. The once p,opular idea
still lingers that psychological qualities are genetically linked with skin color
or other distinguishing marks of race, e.g., all Orientals are "inherently"
industrious, all Nordics are individualistic, all Negroes musical, all American
Indians stolid, even impervious to pain, all Gypsies wanderers by "instinct."
It is absurd to consider that, with all the polymorphism and intergradation,
in any collection of individuals among modern men, sdme population could
as if by genetic magic share a common psychological heritage. At most
we could hypothesize that a given population might have a distinctively high
freque,ncy of a particular characteristic through inbreeding, though with its
individual members varying more or less widely arou~d the mode.
But whole populations such as hom,ogeneous ethnic groups, or even
large modern nations, do share what are' often quite uniform types of behavior. The cultural milieu of one may have a strong set toward "individualism"; of another, toward not giving a public show of emotions; and
of a third, toward l,llusicality or extre,me mobility. Anthropologists are cer- tain that the~e special sets or directions of behavior are not due to genetic
uniformities inherent in each individual, but rather form parts of the cultural
tradition to Which the population as a whole is trained. They are linked to
cherished values, goals, ideals, of that particular culture-of which more
later.
NaIve or false thinking in this field has obviously provided one of the

[14] Bodily Variation and Cultural Differences

75

great stumbling blocks in human retations. Intellectually, it often comes into

focus in some kind of racial determinism in which genetic differences are
postulated as the basis, or prime determiner, of cultural differences. That is,
Western culture is said to be a product of the genes of the Caucasoid race,
Chinese culture of those of the Chinese race, Hebraism of those of a supposed Jewish race, and so on. Culture history, we shall see, does not bear
this out any more than the genetic realities. Genetic variation does
not march with cultural variation. No significant correlation shows between
the distribution of genetic characters and the distribution of cultural behaviors. Any normal human child, it was postulated earlier, could be trained
to any culture, if put from the start into the appropriate learning situation.
Unhappily, deterministic ideas have not only had intellectual currency
but have also entered into high public policy, as with the justifications of
aggression or social superiority by appeal to racial factors: Nordic superiority, the "chosen people" idea, and their like. How far so-called racial
tensions have reached their peak in the modern world scene, and prejudice
and discrimination are giving ground through increased contact and familiarity amol1g peoples, can perhaps best be assessed by the sociologist
who specializes in "race relations."
The distributional and other principles reviewed here apply equally
to the many further variations recognized by physical anthropologists, and
not popularly included in the term "race": body types, growth patterns,
disease susceptibilities, and others. For example, in the case of so-called
body types (or "constitutional types" in a narrower usa'ge of the concept)
there may be at most a statistical tendency for certain behavioral characteristics to march with physical characteristics, e.g., possibly being jolly
and fat, intellectual and lean; and there is no certainty at all that this goes
beyond our own cultural setting, with its particular expectations and stimuli,
to other populations.
To round out this discussion of constitutional-cultural relationships,
a brief comment may be given on the often controversial subject of sex
differences and cultural be,havior. The basic anatomical and physiological
differences of sex are happily obvious. A limited number of sex-associated
characteristics also appearl. to be transmitted at the genetic level, such as
an apparent tend'ency shared with many other animals for dominance and
passivity in the male and f~male, respectively, possibly universal tendencies
to greater hardiness among females in infancy and old age, and certain
sex-linked traits such as th~ dominance or recessivity of color blindness and
hemophilia, which are und~r genetic and medical scrutiny. The vast number
of polymorphic characteristics discussed in earlier sections, however, are
not sex-associated. At the level of custom, the comparative view of anthropology notes that almost any cultural behavior assigned to females in
one culture can be found assigned to males in some other culture. Men do

76

Culture and Biological Heritage

agricultural tasks here and women there-or both do them. Basketry or

pottery making is a male occupation in one culture, but a female occupation in another. Religious leadership may be strongly assigned to men or
alternatively to women. Margaret Mead gives vivid illustrations of such
differences in her book Male and Female (1949). She has pointed out that
even baby suckling can be passed over to a modern husband by way of a
feeding bottle.
The anthropologist, however, does discern some high-frequency tendencies in man's over-all behavior relating to sex differences. For example,
societies nearly always classify individuals firmly by cultural definition into
two classes, "male" and "female," minimizing in the process the biological
fact that maleness and femaleness are "more or less" present in the individual, and some few individuals are not sharply one or the other. The "highvisibility" reinforcement of sex identity by distinctive clothing and ornament is universal, or practically so. Sexual differentiations, too, are usually
brought strongly into play at the onset of puberty, often in special sexstatus-defining ceremonies.
Societies tend to assign to adult men any tasks that require very great
physical strength, though this is by no means always so, as witness women
carrying heavy loads and doing farm chores. More particularly a society
is likely to avoid depending on WOmen to carry responsibilities which require continuous attention or sudden effort even at unexpected times, as
with government, defense, and religious leadership. These may also be
occupations of group prestige, monopolized through "male dominance."
Yet a basic reason may well be that women, needing to take time out for
childbearing, and in some cultures for menstruation, could not exercise
responsibility for such tasks so effectively, at least prior to modern birth
control. Childbearing (obviously "women's work") and home duties are
widely tasks of females, though there- are surprising breaks in the patterns
familiar to us, as where a husband may go to bed at childbirth (the couvade),
apparently to signalize his public acknowledgl!1ent of the J,"ole of male
par/nt, or cooking may be done by males. Fuller.. discussion of the sex dimensions of culture will be left to a later section (Problem' 47). Clearly,
genetic factors relating to sex are important, yet they do not compel any
fixed patterns of custom.

Review
Culture, it has been seen to this point, has no existence outside the
similar habitual behavior of individuals, whether in bodily actions, ideas
as expressed through symbols, or material artifacts made for purposive
use. This behavior results from an interplay of genetically influenced struc- .

Review

77

tures and functions (drives, needs, and the like), with social learning. The
plastic, potentially responsive infant is conditioned, along with other growing individuals, in the cultural behavior accumulated by members of his
particular society over past generations. In contact with persons trained
in another cultural milieu, the individual may, by further learning, enter
selectively into the actions and meanings of another cultural traditionthough, as will be seen, this involves difficulties and limitations (Problem 81).
In broadest terms, the constitution or biological-psychological heritage
provides, by way of both its generalized and its specialized characters, one
great class of determinants of human behavior. But it is not the sole, or even
the prime, "determiner" in the sense of the older "instinct," race," or other
biologically oriented theories.
Constitution, from one point of view, sets limits, that is, it is restrictive
rather than compulsive. Whether looked at broadly or in terms of the individual, it provides boundaries within which cultural behaviors to date
have had to operate, and any further innovations must develop. Man has
to be born, sleep, eat, reproduce if his heritage is to continue. In this sense,
too, biology presents problems which cultural ingenuity solves in many different ways. It also provides instrumentalities with which varying cultural
behavior can be expressed: hands for gesture, neural pathways for transmitting messages, associations of human bodies to set up a dance pattern.
In such respects constitution allows alternatives, is permissive. How far
the way is open for a narrow or wide range of cultunll solutions has to be
studied for each constitutional character we may want to isolate.
This view of constitution as being restrictive, yet permissive, allows
full room for considering the influence of other factors or determinants in
the development and the differentiation of culture: the multiple influences
of habitat, the demographic characteristics of groups, and the cumulative
tendencies inherent in culture itself.
The cultural heritage, moreover, has been seen as shaping in turn the
, constitutional heritage in; complex ways. Marriage rules, medical practices,
war techniques, even phi~osophies channel the selective directions of breeding in populations. Head shaping, hairdos, dieting, and other components
of local custom may m:old the bodily form of individuals to a cultural
standard.
In terms of futur'e /perspectives, the constitutional heritage of man is
not static, even in its genetic potential, i.e., limits, problems, materials,
permissio{ls have a dynamic character. Even if the genetic heritage were now
somehow to stand still (of course it cannot), man has capacities to create,
learn, and store experience so that presumably he could go on building and
sharing cultural life far beyond the range reached today. Indeed, we know
nothing about even the existing boundaries of biological-psychological na-

78

Culture and Biological Heritage

ture beyond what can be seen of the total range to which given genetic
tendencies have been trained in human culture to date.
But the genetic heritage of such a generalized, if notably polymorphic,
animal as man does not stand still. Breeding processes modify each generation and lay the hereditary groundwork for differing individuals. In the
longer perspectives the frequency of characters in populations can change
markedly. Physical anthropologists have even projected forward the biological trends characteristic of man as a species to prophesy what future
man may be like-if he survives, and if the same tendencies continue.
Shapiro (1933) and Howells (1942) picture men a half million years from
now as likely to be taller, with larger brain cavities, higher foreheads, more
receding faces, smaller and usually fewer molar teeth, bodies more efficient
for staying upright, a tendency for loss of the "little toe," less body hair (and
more baldness). Krogman (see Collateral References below) has suggested
that the man of five million years hence could be Homo cerebrointricatus
("man of superbrain") with greatly increased cerebral efficiency, a chemical food-intake system very different from his present gastronomic apparatus, and diminished foot complexity. The anthropologist is at least
likely to appear as the world's greatest optimist in his judgments, of flexibility and dynamism of constitutional heritage as it relates to :cultural
achievement.

Collateral References
Texts giving a general introduction to anthropological science characteristically have an early section sum~arizing the findings of physical anthropology. Of works concentrating on this field, the beginning stude,nt can get an over-aUcoverage in Howells, W. W., Mankind So Far (1942), Hooton, E. A., Up from
the Ape (rev. ed. 1946), or Montagu, M. F. _A., An Introduction to Physic:al
Anthropology (rev. ed. 1951). A notable early work analyzing the relations of
constit}ltion to culture is Boas, F., .The Mind of Prim-itivl{ Man (1911, rev. ed.
1938). For early man, see Boule, M. and Vallo is, H. V., Fossil Men (1957).
Of more technical works, Washburn offers an important critique of the
field in a paper titled "The New Physical Anthropology" (1951). Knowledge
to the 1920's of ape behavior is summarized by Kohler (1925) arid Yerkes and
Yerkes (1929); subsequent studies of ape and other animal behavior of special
importance to the anthropologist may be located by reference to bibliographies and reviews in the quarterly American Journal of Physical Anthropology, which
is also a basic Isource for up-to-date materials on the field as a whole. The reference to Simpson's concept of "quantum evolution" can be followed up in
Simpson, G. G., The Meaning of Evolution (New Haven, Conn., 1949). Recent
general studies on race include Boyd (1950), Coon, Gam, and Birdsell Q950),
and Count and others (1950). The relation between constitutional and cultural
factors is notably reviewed by Kroeber (1948, 1952), Hallowell (1950a, 1955),

79

Collateral References

Kluckhohn (1954), and Spiro (195.4). Anthropological evaluations of psychological techniques are exemplified in papers by Hallowell (1945) and Henry
with others (1953, 1955). Many key scientific papers have been reproduced
since 1945 in the Yearbook ot Physical Anthropology, while current advances
and problems are assessed in a Kroeber-edited symposium volume (1953) and
in the Yearbook ot Anthropology, 1955, partly reproduced under the editorship
of Thomas as Current Anthropology (1956)-aII four of these compilations
being sponsored by the Wenner-Oren Foundation for Anthropological Research,
New York.
The closing reference to Krogman's long-term predictions is from "The
Doctor Who Solves Old Murders," Saturday Evening Post, January 15, 1955.
For other predictions see Shapiro (1933) and Howells (1942).

IV

The Growth

cif Culture

IT WAS SAID earlier that culture can be studied as a historical phenomenon. Questions relating to its origin, development, and variation have challenged men's minds everywhere, though the answers given in
myth and story are often fantastic.
In cultural anthropology, early thought was dominated by attempts
to explain the long-term growth of culture and society (Problem 25). By
the first half of the nineteenth century, numbers of attempts were being
made to formulate laws of "progress" from "savagery" to "civilization."
When in 1859 Darwin published his theories of organic evolution, an overriding tendency emerged to match it with a grand theory of cultural or
social evolution.
As will be seen, the oversimple views of the early evolutionists became
discredited around the turn of the twentieth century. In their place further
theories easily sprang up trying to explain the great panorama of cultural
behavior through historical events and forces, particularly the "invention"
and "diffusion" in time and place of all its constituent traits. This became in its extreme form a kind of historical determinism (Pr9blem 26).
As a result of such theorizing, monumental amqunts of speculative
material have accumulated purporting to account for the beginnings of marriage, religion, art, and other facets of custom. S_uch writings, I however,
turned bp even by the everyday reader in general libraries, must be treated
with the utmost caution and eve!} skepticism. The only sound factual evidence we have on the growth of culture preceding written documentary
records comes from tools, living sites, burials, and similar fin4s being progressively revealed by prehistoric archaeology. Certain limited inferences
on origins and developmental sequences may also be drawn with scientific _
caution from studies, of animal behavior and from ethnological comparison
of the range and types of modern cultures, as will be seen at other points
in the text.
This ch~pter will bring together in broad perspective what studies of
"prehistory" by archaeologists can contribute at this juncture to an understanding of cultural growth, and so of the total history of culture and society.
80

81
It will be seen that this, perhaps surprisingly, is a very active and moving
front of knowledge. As with "race," many popular ideas and earlier findings
which appeared to have the stamp of scientific proof have been undergoing
revision.
[15] Available Evidence on the Distant Past

Problem 15 . Available Evidence on the Distant Past

What types of information are in hand to show man's early cultural
history?
Archaeologists reconstructing the early levels of human culture must
rest their case upon the limited range of artifacts which have been preserved
over long periods of time-stone, bone, shell, and other substances which
maintain recognizable identity.
Men have long been finding old stone tools and other objects. Where
their identity was not known, they were usually assigned supernatural meaning and given such names as "thunderstones," "fairy darts," or "elf darts."
A milestone, already noted in the historical survey of anthropology, was
the action of the Danish government in sponsoring systematic study of the
shell mounds abundant on the coasts of that country. The nineteenth century
was a very active period of building roads, railroads, and other works involving excavations, especially throughout Europe. Such activities brought
to light numerous chance finds of artifacts, and sometfrnes "workshops,"
living sites marked by fireplaces and refuse dumps, and remains of the men
as well as of the plants and animals of the times. Archaeology, including
classic studies of Greece, Egypt, and other early centers of civilization, became inqeed a "gentleman's" interest. It also became a systematic branch of
science, especially as chance discovery was supplemented more and more
by the purposive search of professional scholars.
Reconstruction of the:early
of man from such materials resembles
detective work. It interests ,many types of people over the world, as witness
scientific societies, museums, and similar institutions in practically every
country, and even down to ~tate or province and local levels. Often from the
most meager factual cluest-a roughly shaped tool, some charcoal from a
fireplace, shattered fragments of a pottery vessel-the archaeologist may
infer ways of life, though proceeding with maximum scientific caution.
Many objects are frankly ibterpreted in terms of what we know of modern
man: a small projectile p,bint may be called an "arrowhead," a skeleton
found, say, with red ocher earth in a depression called a "burial," a cave
drawing of an animal pierced by a spear interpreted from customs of modern
hunting peoples as being associated with magic rites. Sometimes, however,
an object turns up which has no recognizable meaning or function at all in

life

82

The Growth of Culture

Bison Pierced by Weapons. Niaux cave in the Pyrenees, a Magdalenian

site. After Cartailhac and Breuil.

modern experience, and so illustrates vividly the limits of such inferences.

Modern scientific archaeology is a highly technical study. The worker
may locate and map sites by using aircraft. He may employ electronic devices to locate differential rock formations or the presence of, intrusive
objects. He surveys hjs site and, after marking it off in exact sections, excavates it in controlled ways which do not allow even very small objects to
pass through his earth screener or escape his delicate brush. He charts and
photographs all significant finds so that later, if necessary, he can reconstruct minutely the whole setting. He passes mineral specimens over to the
mineralogist; animal bones to appropriate zoological specialists; and otherwise uses collateral experts. Recently he has endeavored to locate severalgrams of undisturbed organic matter-sQme charcoal, bone, or shell-so
that a physics laboratory can r;;alculate the extent of disintegration of its
radioactive carbon (C14), and so estimate -the date at which the organism
studiyd stopped living. This process has been giving strikingly interesting
chronologies for sites in various parts of the world: For the preceding several
thousand years, at least, it is the best time tool that archaeologists yet have.
For older time sequences, geological chronology is the archaeologist's clock.
The locality of an archaeological find substantially different from other
known finds is called a type site. It becomes a point of reference and comparison with other materials. By now practically every country and signifi-cant zone oyer th6 world has its ow~ distinctive type site names, which are
often formidable and baffling to the nonspecialist. Most familiar are ones of
long currency in Europe, e.g., Acheulian (from Saint Acheul in France),
Aurignacian (from the cave of Aurignac, also in France).
_
One of the revolutionary changes going on in archaeology involves putting such latter labels and associated cultural types in their proper perspec-

[15] A vailable Evidence on the Distant Past

83

tive. Popular education has tended to give an impression that the cultural
growth traced by archaeologists for Europe, through Lower, Middle, and
Upper "Old Stone Ages," and so on to the "New Stone Age" and the "Metal
Ages," has universal application for the story of cultural origins and development. But, as will be seen, finds coming from other parts of the world
are often markedly different from this usually familiar classification. Prehistorians today are therefore trying to put together a wider picture of the
growth of culture into which all archaeological finds, including those of
Africa, Asia, and the New World, will fit. Correspondingly, the European
perspectives are now considered to represent special regional and local varieties of early culture.
Archaeologists usually call a given type or level of technology an industry, e.g., chipping flakes off a core of stone and using the flakes is a
"flake industry"; more specifically, striking off flakes of bladelike type is a
"blade industry." Specialists have remarkably accurate knowledge of the
technical processes jnvolved jn even very crude workjng of artjfacts. They
can recognize by the points and planes of percussion whether an early toolmaker shaped ,his stone ax by hitting it between a hammerstone and an
anvil, striking it on another stone, or otherwise chipping flakes from a core.
As artifacts increase in complexity, the forms and manufacturing processes
become increasingly controlled and so lend themselves to classification and
comparison from place to place.
An industry or series of associated industries which/persists over time
may be called in archaeology a tradition. The spread traced spatially at any
one time, or at anyone level may be called a horizon, e.g., the horizon of the
so-called Solutrean cultural type, marked by finely chipped leaf-shaped
points and great quantities of wild horse bones, was limited to a very narrow

Basic Stone. Working Techniques. Control of flaking comes with

pra~tice.

I'
I

..... ,:..

~.~:-r.

PERCUSSION

PRESSURE

FLAKING

FLAKING

The Growth of Culture

84
geographic zone around Solutre in France, and was apparently practiced
at the same time level. A given tradition or horizon may have a number of
specific components, and it could be a phase of some larger cultural composite; Willey and Phillips (1953) have recently called a "phase" the "basic
space-time-culture concept." A localized grouping of related cultural elements has been called by Braidwood (1948) an assemblage, i.e., a group
of associated industries found in one place. These terms are introduced to
show how the archaeologists have been struggling toward precision and
agreement in terminology. It will also become clear that, dealing with objects
rather than people, they have developed a way of classifying cultural elements rather different from the main concepts used in ethnology and social
anthropology (Chapters V, VI).

Problem 16 . The Main Levels of Cultural Growth

How do archaeologists divide the stream of history into periods?
Where earlier prehistorians emphasized as a basic distinction in cultural growth a division into "Stone Ages" and "Metal Ages," the newer perspectives of world-wide archaeology make more important the contrast between man as a "food gatherer," living on wild products, and man as a "food
producer," having cultivated plants and domestic animal~. The shift involved, coming considerably earlier than the inventions of smelting metals,
is often spoken of as the "food-producing revolution," or the "first technological revolution"-the second here being the "industrial revolution" of
modern times.
This great change, marked by numerous cultural and social innova- tions, appears to have started betweetl 12,000 aM 10,000 years ago. The
initial locality was undoubtedly in -the Middle East, and probably on hilly
hmds south of the Caspian Sea in northern Iraq or Iran. From here, the
b,asic inventions spread out,and received regional and local accretions. By _
the opening of the Christian Era they seem to'have rea_ch~d all Old World
peoples except a few very isolated groups such as the Aildaman Islanders
(between India and Sumatra), the Bushmen of South Africa, and the
Australian Aborigines.
Perhaps about 4,500 years ago-the date is still uncertain-a similar
invention cycI~ started in Middl~ America. It is anthropological orthodoxy I "to consi,der this a parallel development, generated by much the same conditions as in the Middle East, though differing considerably in specific de-'
tails, as will be seen. American anthropologists have consistently pricked
bubbles of popular or pseudoscientific speculation which picture agriculture
and other elements associated with the food-producing revolution as coming via the Pacific or the Atlantic to Middle America from the Old Worid.

[16] The Main Levels of Cultural Growth

85

The problem, however, keeps cropping up: whether some of these cultural
elements (e.g., pottery, art motifs) could have been carried by later comers
across the Bering Strait, following the migration pathways of the earlier
food-gathering peoples who became the first Americans, or later across the
open Pacific (Problem 24).
The use of metals, potentially much more efficient than stone, wood,
bone, or shell for artifacts requiring hardness or sharpness, has importance
in cultural history. But metallurgy is now seen as only one among the many
important innovations of this technological revolution. Metals in the raw
state, indeed, were sometimes used when found by food-gathering peoples:
lumps of copper, silver, gold, and even meteoric iron were beaten into
ornaments and ceremonial objects. Smelting as a technical process dates
from somewhere between 7,000 and 6,000 years ago, or fairly early in the
food-producing period. It appears to have been discovered in the eastern
Mediterranean area, possibly on the copper-rich island of Cyprus. Copper,
gold, and silver ornaments appear in the excavations of early villages and
towns of the Mesopotamia region. Bronze, involving an "alloy" combination
of copper with . another metal, usually tin, followed about 6,000 years ago,
and iron, which requires a much higher smelting temperature, about 4,000
years ago.
The spread of metals can be traced to some extent historically. Bronze
was being used in Indus Valley cities of India approximately 5,000 years
ago, and in the Yellow River cities of China 3,500 ye,ars ago. Iron was
brought to ~ronze Age Britain by the conqueror Caesar, and reached northern Scandinavia about the beginning of the Christian Era. lron seems also to
have reached southeast Asia several centuries B.C., probably from India,
and perhaps overtaking the spread of bronze so that traders brought them
together.lln east Asia, the Han conquerors of the period 200 B.C. to A.D. 200
spread the use of. iron from China to outlying northern zones such as Korea,
and it may have reached Japan along with bronze--or at least it followed
soon after. On the American continent, smelting metals and making alloys
came very late, perhaps not until about A.D. 500; of the metals mentioned,
smelting of iron was completely absent until the arrival of European voyII
agers.
The older emphasis qn contrast between Metal and Stone Ages involved a time gap between the beginning of the food-producing revolution
and the beginning of metallurgy. This period is called the Neolithic or "New
Stone Age" epoch. The tedhnological development of the time is therefore
sometimes called the "ne6lithic revolution." The neolithic classification,
while of little importance ~ in the Middle East, where metalworking was
quickly developed, has great classificatory usefulness to the anthropologist
because many of the remoter peoples have long had elements and varieties
of the food-producing "complex," such as plant cultivation, village living,

86

The Growth of Culture

polished stone tools, pottery, or weaving, but no smelted metals. Notable

examples of peoples at this neolithic level were the Oceanic peoples of the
Pacific area (whose island homes mostly lacked workable metal ores anyway), and American Indians outside the zones of city center influence in
Middle America, often called Nuclear America.
Behind what the prehistorian counts as these archaeologically recent
events lie the long time zones of man the food gatherer. Food gathering, it
will be seen, was to persist in a scattering of societies either very isolated or
in arctic and other habitats where cultivating plants and herding animals
would be technologically most difficult or else had no appeal to the peoples concerned. Though amazing differences appear in the gathering way
of life in later times, the modes of living of these groups suggest some basic
patterns from which earlier food-gathering conditions may be cautiously
inferred.
In technical terms the cultures antedating the Neolithic are known
broadly as Paleolithic, or "Old Stone Age." Often distinguished is a transitional period between them called the Mesolithic or "Middle Stone Age."
In north and west Europe this was marked by wet climatic conditions
brought about by the melting of the last Glacial ("Ice Age"). The Mesolithic is not so clearly distinguishable outside this zone. Elsewhere the cultural phase where the Paleolithic is beginning to be penetrated by neolithic
elements is often called the Epipaleolithic, i.e., "edge of the Old Stone
I
Age."
The Paleolithic, looked at in world perspective, may be divided roughly
into "Upper" (or "Late") and "Lower" (or "Early") periods. This distinction is based partly on time elements and partly on technological
advancement. In very isolated zones the two show few, if indeeft any;
differences in the form of artifacts, e.g., the Tasmanian Aborigines, some
Australian tribes. But particularly in Africa, E~rope, and west Asia a well:,
defined series of tool industries and-other cultural elements has come to
light, particularly for the Upper Paleolithic. It is also possible to distinguis!!_
lover much of these three 'areas a "Middle Paleolithic," though this has no
identity in the materials from other zones, i.e., it is regional, not universal.
Archaeologists vary in the dating of the lower limits of the Paleolithic.
The problem here relates to very crudely flaked "tools" which have been ,
a subject of controversy since the later nineteenth century. The Paleolithic
had been given a respectable enough antiquity, for archaeologists had se~ "its base at tl;le beginning of what geologists called the Quaternary period,
or, by 'another of their terms, the start of the Pleistocene epoch, which dates
at approximately a million years ago. But such flaked stones were turning
up even back of this, in the Tertiary period. De Mortillet and other archaeologists dubbed them eoliths or "dawn stones," and the time zone. the
Eolithic. Unhappily, eolithlike stones have been turning up in Tertiary st~ata

[17] Man as Food Gatherer

87

far earlier than the time to which even the generalized anthropoids are
assigned, let alone early hominids. The Eolithic, or Pre-Paleolithic, stands
today in a kind of state of suspended animation. Whether a given eolith,
or early paleolith for that matter, has been "worked" by natural forces
such as frost or water, or by early manlike animals, must be left to
the experts.
Our scheme of classification is now complete in general outline, and
a rough chronology established. It will now be possible to reverse the time
process, and see what actually is known and hypothesized about these total perspectives of cultural growth.

Problem 17 . Man as Food Gatherer

What is known of the origin and early development of culture?
Discussions of particular cultural elements, such as marriage, religion,
or art, often present quite glib accounts of their origin, as though it were
possible to reconstruct with scientific precision what the ways of life of
early man were like. Anthropologists regard these theories with the utmost
skepticism, to say the least. In actual fact, as represented by the archaeological record, there is only the most fragmentary knowledge even of material objects. The number of specialists capable of analyzing this evidence
scientifically is very small indeed.
/
Establishing a base line for "the origin of culture" is in itself a difficult matter. What was called earlier "protoculture" appears to have been
characteristic in some degree of prehuman animals, especially the generalized anthropoids in the zone immediately behind man. The early hominids
or "manlike" anthropoids, in adapting to bipedal locomotion and an upright position, freed their forelimbs for other uses. It is a fair hypothesis that
they would have used stic~s, stones, and other extensions of the hands as
tools long before they developed habits of shaping them artificially for
greater efficiency-hence e'nabling those capable of being preserved to be
recognizable by the archaeplogist. Again, the refinement of symbolic communication was undoubtedly a very slow and selective process, and in
spite of various theories rJlating to the origin of language (Problem 70)
it.is pure guesswork to say what patterns of learned symbolic behavior
came first. Even such an ~musing remark as the physical anthropologist
Hooton's statement that 'jman must have descended from a particularly
babbling kind of ape" has no necessary validity. Our picture remains necessarily one of inference and of great generality: that at the time for which
archaeologically recognizable elements have become available, their users
were living in tiny groups as mobile food gatherers (judged from caves and
other living sites, and from animal bones, shells, and other food remains);

88

The Growth of Culture

HAMMER

CORE:

OR

NUCLEUS

Basic Tools. The flaking of a stone core may be done with hammer
and anvil.

that a group typically consisted of a few related and congenial "families"

(but of their family organization we know nothing); that one or more
groups occupied a territory, using and guarding its resources; that strong
individuals emerged as leaders; and that members of the group had a sense
of identity and submitted for the most part to habits of "social order" as
modern men do.
Now come the "eoliths" into the picture, sometimes, as, at Red Crag
in southern England, found together in large numbers at whfit appears to
be a "workshop" and showing some crude regularities of form. Together
with "paleoliths" from early time zones of the Paleolithis:, they sort out
into basic tool types. One is the hammer, in this case a usually rather
rounded hammerstone showing marks of percussion. The hammered stone
materials fall mechanically into two types: the core or nucleus from which
pieces are struck, and the flake or piece struck off. An anvil in the form
of another stone may also .be used. Cores and flakes, after the prirriary
fracture, may be retouched by seconc\ary working to produce one face or
edge (unifacial, or a "uniface") or -to produce two faces or edges (bifacial, _
or a "biface"). Archaeologists infer fom shape and sometimes from use
~arks that, besides the hammer and the anvil, -even very early tools fall into
some familiar types: the ax or chopper, the knife, the_scraper, the borer,
the chisel, and (probably coming later) the point, most' familiar in projectile tools and weapons.
The most efficient of stone materials is flint, which: is hard, yet tends
to fracture in a controllable way. It has been aptly said that, wherever de- "
posits of flint ~ere located, early, man thrived. Another material with tliese ,
qualities, is the black volcanic "glass," obsidian. But many other hard
types of stone were flaked by early man. One chopper type, known as the
"pebble ax" or "pebble tool," has as its basis a more or less rounded pebble such as could be picked up along a shore or river bed. Judging by the
distances that flint and other desirable stone materials were carried in
some localities, an early type of "trading" among groups is suggested.

[17] Man as Food Gatherer

89

Fire might also be listed in th~ "tools" of early man. Apart from an
unproved hypothesis that some of the fossil anthropoid and "ape-man"
types of Africa used fire, the earliest evidence is from the cave living-site
of "Peking Man" at Choukoutien, near Peking, China. Here not only remains of early fires and charred bones have Come to light, dating from
perhaps 350,000 years ago, but also dried-up berries which were part of
the diet of this early Homo type.
Given certain technological alternatives, eVen in these beginning tool
types, cultural variation appears to have begun almost immediately. In
western Europe, Africa, southwest Asia, and south India, both cores and
flakes were used as tools. But in some sites the so-called "hand ax" or "fist
ax" (a core biface held in the hand) predominates, while in others most
or even all of the tools were based on the flake. In eastern Europe and
Asia north of the Himalayas to east Asia flake industries predominate.
In north and east India and southeast Asia, and on to the caves of Peking
Man, a uniface "pebble tool" or chopper is characteristic. Choppers also
have a very early distribution in east Africa. The implication is that, as with
genetic heritages discussed earlier, isolation in small scattered populations
favored a selection among alternatives in behavior-a process which was
to become vastly magnified as cultural innovations became cumulative.
Lower Paleolithic finds have by now been located widely over the
warmer zones of the Old World, and have been equated with a considerable
number of "type site" names. In Europe an older development sequence
into "Pre-Chellean," "Chellean," and "Acheulian" hal been undergoing
revision, particularly in terms of the core-flake distinction. Of somewhat
varying new classifications, perhaps this should now go into the opening
section of standard texts on "Western Civilization":
Period
Lower Paleolithic

Eolithic, or
Pre-Paleolithic

Core Industries
Acheulian
~ various periods)

Flake Industries
Levalloisian

Abbevillian
(formerly Chellean,
Pre-Chellean)

Clactonian

Ipswichian, etc.

Unless one were specializip.g in archaeological study it would be cumbersome to learn a number
of\special
type-site names for collateral traditions

I
of various regions in Afri~a. For Asia, some important traditions are the
Soanian (from the Soan River terraces of northeast India), the Anyathian
(from Anyathia in Upper Burma), the Patjitanian (from Patjitan in Java,
and probably associated with the so-called "Java Man," Pithecanthropus),
and the Choukoutienian (from the Choukoutien caves near Peking). The
I

90

The Growth of Culture

last-named type site is of very great importance as it is the only place

where such tools have been found to date directly associated with a fossil
form of early man; they have come to light in large numbers and their
manufacturing processes are well understood.
Hundreds of generations were to pass without much perceptible shift
in the tool kit and presumably only minor changes in the way of life generally. Control of stone flaking improved in some zones, particularly the
working of flint. An artistic modern eye might also infer that, over and
above pure utility, some objects began to show an appreciation of symmetry and other aesthetic qualities. Then, by perhaps 60,000 to 40,000
years ago some new elements come into the archaeological picture.
The time is around the Third Interglacial, and the cold of the Fourth
Glacial is gathering in Europe and in the more northerly zones of Asia.
Homo types called "Neanderthal" are the actors, and they are moving into
rock shelters and caves for at least the winters. There, fire is put to use for
light, employing simple lamps; bones of animals are worked into tools;
burials are placed in holes discernibly cut into the floors; the large hand
ax becomes small, and emphasis is placed upon flake tools including scrapers, which suggest the use of body coverings: "Micoquian" cores, and flake
tools of "Tayacian" and especially "Mousterian" types. This'is the Middle
Paleolithic or "Mousterian" period-the latter name from a type site in
the cave of Le Moustier in France. Its characteristic features have come to
light, sometimes associated directly with fossil skeletal remains of Neanderthal Man, at points through Europe and as far east as Uzbekistan in
middle Asia. Earlier it was spoken of above as a regional, not a universal,
horizon of culture.
Some archaeologists have suggested that, in colder zones, Neanderthal _
groups may have been "refrigerated," because ev,idence of their occupation
of caves ceases toward the height-of'the Fourth, Glacial. In Palestine and
Iraq, however, skeletal remains of "Mount Carmel Man" and "Shanidar ~
Man" suggest a hybridizing process between ~eanderthalers and early types
df modern man, Homo sapiens. Some fossil.t_inds, moreover, suggest thatearly Homo sapiens group~ were living in parts of Europe at least by the
Third Interglacial, that is, over the same time period as the Neanderthalers,
e.g., "Fontechavade Man" of France, "Swanscombe Man" of England.
There are possibilities that, besides some intermarriage, these larger-brained
peoples may have contributed to the demise of Neanderthaloid ("Nean- "
derthallike") groups not only here but also in Africa (e.g., "Rhodesia Man") r
and southeast Asia ("Solo" or "Ngandong" Man, of whom eleven skulls,
have come to light in that ocean-bound migration pocket, Java).
'
The zone of final evolution toward Homo sapiens from earlier, more
generalized, Homo forms is not yet known. Howells (1942) and perhaps
most other specialists consider it to be that vital crossroads region in h,u-

91

[17] Man as Food Gatherer

man history, the Iran-Iraq plateau south of the Caspian, now so dried up.
Some believe it to be in Africa, from which, in such a warm period as an
Interglacial, migrating groups moved into Europe. What is clear, however,
is that the modes of living of some at least of these "early moderns" show
marked advances in technology, in art and religion, and presumably in
other types of cultural growth. The "Cro-Magnon" men, best known from
e~tensive archaeological remains in Europe associated with the later phases
of the Fourth Glacial, evidently brought with them a complex of cultural
traditions which had already been basically worked out in whatever were
their zones of former occupation.
This is the Upper Paleolithic, dating in Europe from perhaps 35,000
to 12,000 years ago. Immediately striking are new techniques of working
stone. Instead of knocking off flakes by percussion, a much more controlled
method is developed for removing chips, even down to tiny size: pressure
flaking. A bone or hardwood tool, pressed with skill against the stone
matrix, will flake out even delicate and intricately shaped artifacts, as with
arrowheads or Solutrean leaf points. Again, the skilled craftsman could
strike off-not always with success, of course-long flat pieces called blades.
Typical Artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic. Chatelperronian and Gravettian points; Aurignacian pressure flaking and blade; Solutrean
laurel-leaf point; Magdalenian bone work.
CHATELPERRONIAN

GRAVETIIAN

AURIGNACIAN
SCRAPER

HARPOONS

SOLUTREAN

NEEDLE.

MAGDALEN IAN

BLAOE

92

The Growth of Culture

Near the end of this period a pecking and grinding technique was developed
by which stone which does not fracture well could be shaped out, even
if the surface was left more or less roughly pitted. The tool kit often became greatly elaborated, and has called for a quite technical vocabulary
in archaeological classification: keeled scrapers, busked gravers, batteredback blades, and so on.
The Upper Paleolithic is also marked by great elaboration of bonework. In its final stages in Europe, the extensive use of bone, horn, and
tusk materials caused some scholars to call this particular subtype (the
Magdalenian) the Bone Age. Among bone artifacts were borers and projectile points, including an important new invention, the harpoon, with
a detachable head, often barbed; spear throwers to add force to projectiles;
needles and toggles (for buttoning) indicative of clothing; carved figurines;
necklaces and other bodily ornaments; and a perforated "baton" of unknown use. Many ethnologists hypothesize that these bone industries of
Glacial man in Europe have their modern continuity in the circumpolar
traditions of bonework still so important to groups scattered along northernmost Asia, and on into the Eskimo zones of North America.
Animal remains in their refuse dumps indicate the great ,reliance of
these people for food upon larger cold-weather mammals: amOI~g them the
reindeer, the woolly mammoth, the European bison, the wild horse. Fishing
was also a source of food. The food quest is also the main, theme of the
well-known "cave art" traditions so much publicized since the first "galleries" came to light in southern France and northern Spain in the 1860's.
From early and mostly crude gravings in outline on objects and on cave
walls, these visual representations became elaborated in the later Upper
Paleolithic into often realistic sculptures and cave paintings. Judged by our
art standards (we know nothing except by inference of the standards of
these early peoples), these traditions -represent a first great efflorescence of
aesthetic creativity. As indicated earlier; representations of animals, and
the ;much less frequent and cruder representations, of men, are judged to
have meanings connected with religious belief, "especially_hunting and fertility magic. African Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, and certain other
hunting peoples of modern times have cave art traditions broadly involving such meanings. Not least interesting are numerous minor markings,
among them tectiform (tentlike) drawings which suggest summer outdoor
dwellings (Problem 36); hand outlines, sometimes with missing fingers;
circles, chevrons, and other geometric forms, including some which might
be forerunhers of writing. It must be noted that such art has limited regional
distribution. It occurs selectively in parts of Europe and in some forms
(e.g., bone carving) through north Asia. The great number of Upper Paleolithic traditions, found widely over the world, show little tendency to ar-'
tistic elaboration.

[17] Man as Food Gatherer

93

Engraving of a Mammoth. One of fourteen in the Grotte des Combarelles, a Magdalenian site. After Capitan and Breuil.

In the older archaeology, the Upper Paleolithic subdivided into a

threefold sequence of "Aurignacian," "Solutrean," and ','Magdalenian."
Later classifiers have been trying out new type schemes, even for Europe,
to bring out regional traditions. Two new names have b~en more recently
emphasized for this period in Europe: "Chatelperronian," so named for a
small type of stone "point" located initially in the type site of Chatelperron,
and "Gravettian," so named after a characteristic type of long slender stone
gravette or graver tool which was used notably in ornamentation. In turn,
these are sometimes called Lower and Upper "perigordian." A diagram for
the Upper Paleolithic is the~efore likely to show a sequence or regional emphasis somewhat as follows: Perigordian (Chatelperronian, followed by
Gravettian), Aurignacian, jSolutrean, Magdalenian. As with the Lower
Paleolithic, there is also a~ ever-increasing elaboration -of type names for
traditions outside Europe: i~ Africa, Asia, and (more tentatively) America.
The question of classifYing the earliest American traditions as paleolithic deserves more space than can be given here. Many archaeologists
specializing in American' s~udies have held that even the oldest types of
materials were of mesolith~c or early neolithic derivation, i.e., offshoots of
less elaborated forms of these traditions which had reached northeast Asia.
A post-Glacial crqssing of the Bering Strait could then be visualized as very
recent in archaeological time: perhaps 12,000 to 8,000 years ago.
Evidence has been accumulating, however, suggestive of an earlier
timetable, at least for the initial Indian migrations. Bird (1946) found in

94

The Growth of Culture

caves near the tip of South America materials closely like those of circumpolar cultures such as the Eskimo. De Terra (1949) located paleolithlike tools on old beaches in the Valley of Mexico. Former lake areas in the
Colorado and Mohave deserts, as well as in shore areas in southern California, have yielded some typologically old tool industries, "stone circles,"
refuse middens, and other elements which may approximate to the earliest
levels of occupation. Possibilities of Bering Strait crossings during Fourth
Glacial times, via pockets free of ice, or even along the edge of the ice
with sea mammals as the main basis of subsistence, are currently being
taken into account. This view could push datings back to anywhere between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago.
An amazingly wide range of cultural types is found among the surviving food-gathering groups still existing in more isolated parts of the
world. They have adapted to different habitats, with quite different resources
-far-ranging animals like the reindeer or caribou, seasonal ones like the
salmon, nonmoving ones such as shellfish; scattered root and fruit plants,
seasonal seeds and nuts, a bulky resource in the case of the sago palm
(Problem 24). Some groups with stationary resources, or with seasonal
staples which they can store in quantity, have even been able to develop
larger and more sedentary types of community of village siZe in place of
their earlier tiny roving bands. Many of these adjustments must have been
initiated by the time of which we are speaking. In some of them the dynamic was evidently lodged which led to the food-produCing, or neolithic,
revolution.

Problem 18 . The Genesis of the Food-Producing

Revolution
How did the special traditions associated with "civilization" take form?
I
Climatic changes coi~cident with the decline of the Fourth Glacial_
may have stimulated cultural innovation. With the slow retreat of the cold
belt northward and the resulting migration of the large mammals adjusted
to such a habitat, regional ways of life appear to have become considerably diversified. In the European area, what was classified as the Mesolithic, or Epipaleolithic, is marked by a number of cultural traditions to
which special names are given: such as the Maglemosian in northern- EU-,'
rope, the Tardenoisian in middle Europe, the Azilian (with its geometrically
marked pebbles) in southwest France, to mention three well-known types ..
Childe and other archaeologists have described in great detail the
Maglemosian hunters and fisherfolk. In the wake of the ice, much of northern Europe and Asia became a great forested and lake-flooded zone in
which settlements of these peoples appear to have thrived. A heavy, pi(,:k-

[18] The Genesis of the Food-Producing Revolution

95

like tool suggests their preoccupation with harvesting wild root plants.
Shore and lake areas provided fishing. In waterlogged zones of western
Europe built-up mounds apparently made the most satisfactory living sites,
judging from their numbers. With a favorable conjunction of flesh foods
and seasonal wild plants, a sedentary (settled) village might be built up
-much as the coastal Californian Indians, with acorns, seeds, shellfish,
and wild game as their main resources, could build villages and develop the
greatest population density of any American Indian zone north of Mexico.
The Glacial decline was, at the same time, causing the Middle East
and north Africa to become warmer and drier. Here, too, some groups
had both resources and an impetus to develop more sedentary living. The
best-known "assemblage," as Braidwood calls the extensive finds involved,
is in the Palestine area, the type-site name being Natufian. These Natufians
harvested apparently wild grains, as witness sickles with sheen still on the
edges, and pestles and mortars for grinding; they worked stone by pecking and grinding, and used bone harpoons, awls, needles, and beads; they
had the bow and arrow, as indicated by stone points; the dog was already
an associate of man, apparently domesticated; and stone and bone objects
were sometimes artistically decorated. Natural rainfall enabled the grain
crops to grow in quantity sufficiently accessible for hamlets or villages to
be permanent. The sickles of such grain users were sometimes arcs of stone
with a pressure-flaked inner edge. Alternatively, a wood, or bone handle
might have set in it a row of sharp, toothlike flakes of/stone. Such small
flakes, called microliths, "tiny stone" pieces, were used in the then new
invention of the arrow, in sickles and knives, and probably for many other
purposes including a razor. They are counted the characteristic tool type
of the Epipaleolithic.
Br'aidwood (1948, 1953), probably the outstanding authority on this
archaeological phase, feels sure that some cultural tradition of N atufianlike
pattern provided the basic inventions which triggered off the food-producing
revolution. He looks, ho~ever, not to Palestine, but to the Iran-Iraq plateau as the most likely ar,ea, and over a period of years he and his associates have been excavating village sites which push the horizons of food
producing back toward tHis base line. On the basis of recent radiocarbon
dates, he places its start fbetween 12,000 and 10,000 years ago (1958) .
. Here, once more, a, widely
held idea has been exploded. Earlier archaeI
ologists, concentrating on the great centers of early "civilization" in the
river valleys, hypothesiz~d that agriculture was developed initially along
their watercourses. Mesopotamian specialists vied with Egyptologists as to
which of the river systems in this "Fertile Crescent" (Euphrates, Tigris,
Nile) should have this honor. Women, it was suggested, first thought of
holding over seed to plant after wet-season floods had deposited their silt
-hence variou~ religious symbolism linking crops and females. Instead,

96

The Growth of Culture

Braidwood and other specialists now judge that the initial cultivation of
crops was worked out by villagers living in natural rainfall areas on the
"hilly flanks" of the Fertile Crescent. This involved a "shifting" or "fireclearing" type of gardening in which the cultivator moved on periodically
as plots became exhausted. In upland Iran and Iraq, even though conditions have become much drier, there are still peoples who do "dry" farming
(as natural-rainfall cropping without irrigation is often called) on the hill
slopes. This view appears to have both archaeological and ethnological support. One early agricultural village in north Iraq, J armo, excavated by
the Braidwood group, dates back to about 8,500 years ago, which appears
to be beyond the time range of the agricultural civilizations of the valleys.
Besides sickles and other indications of grain cultivation, this site yielded
houses of substantial construction made of sun-dried mud (adobe); bones of
apparently domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs; pottery; and stone
"spindle whorls" indicative of weaving. The first great technological revolution was certainly well under way there by that period. More recently
Braidwood and his associates made sample excavations at an apparently
older and smaller village site, M'lefaat, with circular pit dwellings and
cruder stone artifacts than those found at Jarmo (1948, rev. ,ed. 1957). On
the ethnological side, it can be noted that "dry" cultivati~n has a much
wider distribution over the world than "wet" or irrigated techniques, suggesting a later origin for the latter. The circumstances l~ading to the development of irrigated agriculture, which certainly seems to have been an
adaptation to river valley conditions, will be discussed below.
The origin of domestication of animals is scientifically obscure, though
theories are quite numerous. The dog, practically world wide in its distribution, is generally considered to have become a "camp follower" of man atleast by the Mesolithic. Its numerou~ breeds mark it as the most domesticated animal, i.e., one bred, often selectively, in captivity. Evidence such_
as that from J armo suggests that mosl familiar domesticated animals used
for food and traction beca:t,ne "herded" early in ,the Neolithic. Some specu-_
lations suggest that they were originally heriled for fo_od; others, that they
were needed at hand for 'religious sacrifices; still others, that young animals became play associates of children, and so were kept around. One
idea is that, as men and animals had to compete fot diminishing water
supplies, they came into close association. The obscurity of the problem is "
intensified by the fact that, even when skeletal remains of these animals are t
found in livirig sites, it is by no means clear whether they were domesticated
or still 'wild. Lowie (1940), speaking of the ingenuity of "prehistoric" man,
points out that, by the time written records begin, virtually every animal
the world over capable of being domesticated had been brought under human control, and even those capable of taming only (i.e., not reproducing
in captivity, hence having to be caught after birth in the wild, and then
trained) had been tamed.

[19] World-Wide Consequences of Food-Producing Revolution

97

The story of artifacts is on .the whole easier to trace. In traditional

archaeology the special mark of the Neolithic is the polishing of stone,
though in some north European sites it appears at Mesolithic levels. Clays
are also hardened by firing into pottery, the ceramic arts showing characteristically, in the early sites, in utensils, brick construction, and perhaps figurines of religious or "play" significance. The presence of stone weights
("spindle whorls") for spinning thread from plant fiber or animal hair attests to the textile arts, even though the actual cloth, basketwork, or other
perishable materials have long since disintegrated. Hearths and floors, often
in sunken or semisunken holes, indicate a widely spread neolithic practice
of living in "pit houses." Religious structures and tombs are, with many
local variations, likely to be part of the construction complex. Once a
settled way of life is established, the human group concerned can accumulate heavy goods which would have been quite unsuitable, hence not
"valued," under migratory conditions of life.
If Middle American "civilization" represents (an entirely independent
development, how could so much duplication of invention occur? Steward
(1949) has made perhaps the most notable attempt to account for this.
Numbers of Americanists had already discussed the postulated shift from
wild maize, bean, squash, potato, and other American food plants to their
cultivated descendants. These changes of food producing appear to have
been initiated in higher-altitude zones where natural rainfall brought along
seasonal crops, and where populations tended to becOlp.e sedentary. Steward suggested as a "trial formulation" that, given much the same conditions
as occurred in the earlier Middle East, the essential innovative insights could
be reduplicated. He postulates a universal developmental scheme which
could link the Old and New World "revolutions," namely, a terminal foodgathering era, marked by Natufianlike pre-agricultural conditions; followed
by an era of incipient agriculture, in which the essential inventions of carrying over seed for artificial\planting occur; and followed in turn by a formative era of basic technologies and folk culture (or peasant culture), in which
many of the same cultural elements are worked out. Beyond that, he goes
on to discuss further urban elaborations and regional differences. These
latter, together with classi~cations of other specialists, will be discussed below. Here we are obviously on a very active front of contemporary study
of cultural growth, and th~ answers are by no means in hand.

/,

Problem 19 . The World-Wide Consequences of the

Food-Producing Revolution
What are the central features of this first great technological revolution, and what variations occurred as its elements spread?
The range 'of cultural alternatives opening out for human choice was

The Growth of Culture

98
now vastly widening. As "diffusion," the spreading of culture geographically from group to group, brought the new elements to their attention, a
people could reject them and stay food gatherers. Or, remaining predominantly food gatherers, they could take over a few selected elements, as, for
example, through trade with food-producing neighbors. This latter happened with such ethnic groups as African Bushmen, Pygmies, and those
Australian Aborigines accessible to Malay traders touching at the northern
coasts of Australia. If they accepted the food-producing techniques, they
could stress cultivation of plants, or more specifically certain plants, or else
herding of domestic animals of one or more kinds. Usually, they had further
choices here of settling in a larger community or scattering out.
Other inventions continued to accumulate, widening the range of
choice. Where some paleolithic groups living by the sea or along rivers
had probably developed simple watercraft-rafts, logs, and perhaps rush,
bark, or other buoyant supports-the navigation arts became an important
part of neolithic technology. Coasts with sheltered waters and inland seas,
notably the Mediterranean area, the Baltic, the Persian Gulf area, the
South China Sea, and to some extent the Caribbean, nurtured seagoing traditions. The way became open for the outer islands of the world to be
found and settled. Polynesian "Vikings," moving out from southeast Asia,
located even the most remote islands of the eastern Pacific. Coastal groups
could base their subsistence heavily on marine products.
The neolithic world is marked by tendencies of groups to stabilize an
economic bas~ with the emphasis on one major type of food produdng:
agriculture (though usually with domestic animals, and sometimes fish, to
provide "mixed" farming); herding (pastoralism, or animal husbandry);
or more rarely fishing. The great range which such economic systems can_
take will be analyzed more fully in later sectiofls. As would be expected,
archaeological type names become far more numerous for all parts of the
world. In Europe, for example, there are Dartubian farmers, Swiss lake ~
dwellers, Irish crannog (bog island) peoples, and numbers of others.
this is a time of expanding populations and,of,migratory movements, thebiological consequences o~ which have been already assssed.
A settled community in an area of marked rainfall can get very muddy
underfoot. This could possibly be a main influence, thoVgh of course we do
not know, in the wide development over the neolithic world of stone construction work: house platforms, walls, pathways, religious centers, tombs. ,
From the Bri,tish Isles to the Near East, to India and north and east Asia, I
to the Pacific Islands, to Middle America, stone traditions include selectively
a tendency to build big. Megalithic ("giant stone") constructions include
such w:ell-known variants as Stonehenge, Egyptian pyramids, temples carved
from stone in India and China, the giant images of Easter Island, pyramidal
platforms and other structures in Central America, the huge stone walls
,

[19] World-Wide Consequences of Food-Producing Revolution

99

Giant Stone Images of Easter Island, in Polynesia

of early Peruvian cities. In some instances these traditions appear to result

from diffusion of ideas, especially where adjacent and more or less continuous distribution can be traced. But children in a playroom can reinvent a pyramid form with blocks, and most anthropologists look with
a highly critical eye on attempts to relate historically any widely separated
and isolated cultural elements, as with pyramidal con~tructions in Egypt
and America, on general resemblances of form alone. It may be noted that
the "mysterious" images and platforms of Easter Island have been demonstrated by archaeologists to be an extreme variation of the Polynesian
religious "temple" structure-in this case elaborated by a remote offshoot
group into giant form.
In terms of the history of civilization, the most significant innovations
took place as food-producing techniques diffused from the hilly flanks to
the river valleys of the Fettile Crescent. Valley peoples had the advantage
of ground water; yet the tnain river systems of this area were subject to
potentially destructive flooding. Archaeological specialists on the region
accept the widely held vieJ, that these are the localities where the basic inventions of sedentary agri~ulture-irrigation, regular artificial fertilization,
cultivating tools such as the hoe and plow-were worked out. They also
generally hypothesize that the need for water control led peoples of the
region to organize in larg~r groups, and so opened the way to urban and
state consolidation which 'are particularly the marks of "civilization." The
use of irrigation and its accompanying techniques in turn made possible the
feedlG(of large towns for'the first time.
Braidwood (1953), following up the classificatory system of Steward
cited above, calls the initial period of such developments the era of primary

100

The Growth of Culture

village-farming efficiency. Then follows an era of incipient urbanization.

He considers that the innovations of the latter type took place in the Mesopotamian drainage system (Tigris, Euphrates, and so on) rather than in the
Nile Valley away to the western margins of the Fertile Crescent-this
again jolting some popular ideas on the primacy of Egypt in the development of civilization. A characteristic archaeological feature is the great
mound or tell, often showing numbers of distinct occupational layers from
top to bottom: names such as Ur, Jericho, and Hassuna may be familiar.
The empires of early history-Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, Egypt, and others
-are foreshadowed in town sites which evidently grew out of large and
strategically placed villages, starting perhaps 6,000 years ago.
Braidwood emphasizes that the newer classifications based on types
of economy-terminal food gathering, incipient agriculture and animal domestication, primary village-farming efficiency, incipient urbanization-are
"much more provocative" than the older Mesolithic-Neolithic-Metal designations for this period. In the case of the early urban sites, metal ornaments
are also characteristically found; hence the statement made earlier that
metallurgy does not represent a sharp break into the Metal Age but rather
one series of elements in the gathering stream of invention. Two terms may
be encountered which archaeologists apply to horizons where'.stone industries and minor metal industries conjoin: Aeneolithic, the pn!fix of which
comes from the Latin aes, "copper," and applied to the sites such as the
tells; and Chalcolithic, with the prefix from the Greek worCl for "copper,"
and capable of being applied more comprehensively than Aeneolithic, as
where a tradition which is dominantly of the Paleolithic shows accretions
of metal in some remoter zone, e.g., parts of east Asia.
Copper was the first metal to be produced in quantity. It can be sm~lted
from ore at comparatively low temperfture, and also molded. But because
of its softness its uses were limited. Along with scarcer gold and silver,
it was mainly an ornamental material. The same was true of lead and tin.
A/key invention, therefore, ~as combining metals into hard, alloys, notably
copper and tin into bronze. Bronze ax heads;" swords, chariot wheels, and
other gear of war were linked importantly to dynamic eve~ts of aggression
and political consolidation. The still later innovations connected with iron,
including the finely edged sword, had even more repercussions as they
moved outward from the eastern Mediterranean: the "Iron Age" migrations and conquests in Europe and Asia are vital threads in what are sometimes called the "Dark Ages" of'history.
Thb base line for defining growth from "town" to "city" is necessarily
arbitrary. Some archaeologists link the city concept with a population number of around 5,000 to 8,000; others think of a spatial concentration of
settlement of around a quarter square mile. The earlier valley cities were
zones of dense population; market places for the villagers; focal points for

(19] World-Wide Consequences of Food-Producing Revolution

101

Early Centers of Civilization

religion, as with the Sumerian "ziggurats" or temple st~uctures located in

such centers; places of craft and other specialization (tradesmen, moneylenders, entertainers, and so on); residences of ruling dynasties; centers
of learning where astronomy, mathematics, and other incipient sciences
could be cultivated, and of literacy when written symbols were developed
(probably around 5,000 years ago); and a hub for waterworks, roads for
wheeled vehicles, and other public works. Inventions connected with larger
community organization, political consolidation, and other nonmaterial aspects of urban culture wer~ at least as important as material innovations.
Their effective diffusion over the world is still going on actively under our
eyes today.
The archaeological story becomes exceedingly complex here, both in
terms of the affairs of thes~ early riverine civilizations of the Middle East,
and in terms of the spread of urban influences to other zones. Only its
barest outlines can be given here. Bronze Age city centers appeared in the
Indus Valley of India (Mclhenjo-Daro, Harappa, and so on) around 5,000
years ago, that is, soon aft~r their development in Mesopotamia. Wheat, the
standard grain of early village farming, was grown; domesticated animals
comprised both west Asian and tropical Asian species; there were impressive water and sewage works; and seals used for stamping documents
often closely resembled those of Mesopotamia. By 3,500 years ago the

102

The Growth of Culture

urban assemblage had appeared in the great bend of the Yellow River in
North China, and Chinese technological know-how and statecraft gave it
distinctive twists as the "Children of the Yellow Emperor" spread outward.
About this time, the Aegean coasts were developing their proto historic
Bronze Age civilizations: Helladic, Minoan, and Cycladic.
In Middle America, however, city development came late in the invention cycle. Archaeological perspectives show some elements of the New
World types of urbanism taking form prior to the Christian Era, e.g., the
development of temple centers, heavy stone construction. But the first
large population concentrations in Mayan and Peruvian sites appear in the
period from A.D. 600 to 1,000. The Maya and later cities of Central America (or, as some call it, Mesoamerica) were primarily ecclesiastical centers,
with temples, markets, and residences of the elite, serving scattered groups
of rural villagers. In the Andes, however, urban concentrations culminating in those of the Incas had more of the characteristics of the secular city,
though including religious establishments. Useful summaries of archaeological findings in these zones are offered by Vaillant (1941), Bennett and
Bird (1949), and Thompson (1954).
Settled city dwellers and villagers, however solid the wa,lls they might
build, have been particularly vulnerable to any mobile warrior group prepared to raid or attack in force. The brigand and pirat~ are familiar
historic figures. But the massive role of aggression has beel1'carried by herding peoples occupying the grasslands and deserts beyond the fertile farmlands. A key point in history came with the domestication of the horse,
which appears to have occurred perhaps as late as 4,000 years ago. More
than any other domestic animal, the horse supplied mobility with strength
to carry men and loads. Soon what archaeologists often call "the horsemen of the steppes" were making inroad~ upon agricultural communities even
far distant from their Asian and north African bases. Scythians, Huns, or ~
whatever other name might be applied struck into the Middle East and
l1urope; Aryan-speaking h~rders debouched through the passes into India;_
Hsiung-Nus and others raided into China, undeterred ~ve,n when the Great Wall was built. Along the borders of cultivating and herding peoples of
Asia and Africa this basic dichotomy of struggle still goes on: nomadic Arab
versus Christian and Hebrew neighbor; Mongol and Manchu versus Chinese
farmer; African herder versus Negro agriculturalist and modern Christian ' I
......
settler.
A,tackirlg herders were at times able to lay waste or even permanently
destroy agricultural city-states. Sometimes, however, they moved into conquered centers and established ruling dynasties-almost every Chinese dynasty up to the Manchus was establishecL by warrior groups out of Asia.
Egypt had its herder rulers ("Shepherd Kings") . A marked tendency showed
for pastoralist groups, entering agricultural regions as conquerors or otherI

[20] The Machine Age in Cultural Perspective

103

wise, to be assimilated into the .settled milieu. The Hebrews are an obvious case. From herders, such as those Abraham led, they became sedentary
city people and farmers. But the temple sacrifices and sacred traditions still
carried the marks of a pastoral people: in Genesis, Abel's animal offerings
were preferred to Cain's agricultural ones. Such a shift to sedentary life
is another major thread in the story of Old World civilization. Inversely,
many zones formerly suited for agriculture in Asia and Africa have dried
up, and their populations evidently shifted across to herding; ethnologists
may call them "denuded agriculturalists." In the New World, with animal
domestication a small factor only-the dog, the llama, the guinea pig, and a
few minor animals complete the list-no "herders" of significance existed
in pre-Columbian times. The clash and combination of the two traditions do
not enter into the prehistoric picture, but they do form an important element with the coming of the horse to the Plains Indians in historic times.
Exercise

What written, museum, and other records exist of the archaeology of your
own locality? How do they fit into the cultural perspectives outlined here?
From this point, the story of cultural growth and cultural variation
may be passed over, so far as the anthropologist is the responsible exponent,
to the ethnologist, with his record of peoples in the "recent" time period,
and to the documentary historian. Many of its thread~, 'will be continued
in later chapters. It remains, however, to be made clear how modern civilization looks in this total perspective.

Problem
20 . The Machine Age
,

In

Cultural Perspective

Why do anthropologists often speak of this as a "second great technological revolution"? I

In terms of these broad trends, the machine age or industrial revolution of modern times certainly must be placed as a "second" great period
of cultural dynamics. As lwe know well, this largely western European and
American development is world wide in its acculturative impact. It bids
fair to surpass the food-p~oducing revolution in its all-embracing effects on
culture and society.
Innovations of machine technology have had, and are continuing to
have, a revolutionizing ~hfluence on economic and sociopolitical systems
everywhere. Networks of communication, of trade, and of monetary operations leave virtually no Icorner of the earth still untouched. For the first
time, the world's work may be done without dependence on "slavery" and
its equivalents, or on a mass-depressed base, as automation and other phases
of the Western industrial economy have recently been demonstrating. The

104

The Growth of Culture

metropolis now dwarfs the city. Agriculture tends to become increasingly

like an outdoor factory. Political reorganization, particularly in directions
of national identity and international consolidation, has made over the
nineteenth-century maps. Numerous ethical and religious systems compete,
offering many alternatives in conduct and belief to formerly homogeneous
societies, especially along ethnic frontiers and in urban centers. Small mobile families of parents and children have emerged in place of older large
kin groupings. What some future generation may call "industrial nomadism" has set in, with individuals and small family units moving where
jobs take them within the mass structure which Graham Wall as termed
"the Great Society."
As local peoples have been touched by such factors, they have typically entered once more upon a period of rapid population increase, though
perhaps preceded for a time by decrease through inroads of new diseases
and economic and other dislocations. Europe first, and then the Asian and
other countries, entered a period of proportionately massive population
growth. The technOlogy of modern medicine, particularly, has driven death
rates (mortality) down while birth rates (fertility) have tended to stay up
because of persistent customs such as those relating to sex and marriage.
But later in Europe and America, birth rates dropped spectacularly,
and
!
other countries show signs of declining birth rates as industrialism and education put their marks on social custom. Techniques of birth control, combined with other fertility-limiting factors, have been bringing an increasing
number of countries once more to an approximate balance of births and
deaths, though at a level far below that ever known before in human
demographic history. Correspondingly a new age distribution has set in,
accompanied by changes in culture and society: many less children~pro- portionately, much longer life expectancy for the individual, and many
more old people. The greatly decreased demands of child rearing have _
meant an enormous release of time and energy, especially for women, and
of wealth and social activity in the society at la~ge; the small family may _
be highly "child-centered"; traditional distrioutions ot labor between the
sexes have been changing; problems of the "elder citizen" make daily news.
It might be appropriate to call this now world-wide phase of cultural
growth "modern civilization," by contrast with the earlier "civilization," or
"Western civilization." Reversing man's prolonged centrifugal tendency "
toward regionfllism and cultural, differentiation, it has introduced a strong I
fresh tepdency which is culturally centripetal, bringing peoples and cultures at the ends of the earth into contact. It is, of course, in a strong and,
swelling tide, and our own generation as a transitional one can only speculate on its longer-term consequences. At an earlier point an attempt was
made to assess its significance in relation to directions of human breedir:tg

Collateral References

105

(Problem 14). Other more speciijc elements of this newer "revolution"

will be discussed at a number of points in the chapters which follow. At
least the backward look at the total growth of culture puts it into clearer
perspective.

Review
The concepts of "invention" (or "innovation") and "diffusion" (or
"distribution") have been emphasized in this time-dimensional analysis of
culture. The idea of "parallelism" or "independent invention" of formally
similar cultural elements has also been stressed, particularly in comparing
Old and New World traditions. It can be appreciated why many anthropologists have treated culture as if it has had a "superorganic" existence
and entity of its own, and has followed its own laws or processes of growth
and distribution-or at least as if it were capable of being discussed without
reference to the organic nature and behavior of individuals. Apparent, too,
is the inadequacy of any simple or unilinear scheme of "evolution" such as
that of nineteenth-century theorists who pictured all cultural growth as
passing from hunting, through herding, to agriculture (Problem 25).

Collateral References
Most introductory texts have a very general section on prehistoric archaeology. A volume edited by Shapiro, H., Man, Culture, and Society (1956) has
summary articles by five scholarly authorities on different facets of the subject.
Useful l;>ooks dealing with long-term cultural perspectives as revealed by
archaeology are Childe, V. G., What Happened in History (1946), Clark, G.,
Archaeology and Society (1947), Oakley, K. P., Man the Tool-Maker (1950),
Howells, W. W., Back of History (1954), Coon, C., The Story of Man (1954),
and Linton, R., The Tree
Culture (1955). A Chicago Museum of Natural
History handbook by Braid~ood, R. J., Prehistoric Men (3d ed. 1957), gives in
popular language the essential information on cultural growth to the beginnings
of urban life. For a general $urvey of North American archaeology, see Martin,
P. S., Quimby, G. I., and Collier, D., Indians before Columbus (1947); for
I
Middle America, see Vaillant, G. C., The Aztecs of Mexico (1941) and Thompson, J. E. S., The Rise and'Fall of Maya Civilization (1954); for South America,
see Steward, J. H. (ed.), H~ndbook of South American Indians (1946-1950),
Bennett, W. C. and Bird, J./ B., Andean Cultural History (1949).
A general history of a,rchaeology is given by Haddon (rev. ed. 1924) and
by Daniel (1950). Early types of men are described in the physical anthropology
works listed at the end of Chapter III. Cave art is discussed notably by Breuil
(195~). Steward suggests an experimental correlation between cultural growth

0/

106

The Growth of Culture

in the Old and New Worlds (1949), and Braidwood offers modifications of it
(1953). A professional review of the field of archaeology is given in a Kroeberedited volume (1953), including dating techniques. Field methods are analyzed
by Vayson de Pradenne (1940), Atkinson (1946), Taylor (1948), Wheeler
(1956), and in a field handbook by Heizer and associates (1949). Archaeology
has a quite vast regional literature, and a number of special journals, including
Archaeology, American Journal of Archaeology, and Antiquity. Study visits
should be made to museums with archaeological collections where possible.

v
MAN IS NOT only a biological organism but also an animal of place, of locality. His cultural life can therefore be studied as a
regional phenomenon. In this chapter the spatial distribution and locality
characteristics of culture over the world will be examined. The focus will
be on what is sometimes called the ethnological present, that is, the cultural
systems of recent times prior to the changes brought about by acculturative
impacts of modern civilization.
This will 'also be the appropriate place to define the interrelationships
between cultural behavior and habitat or physical environment. Included
will be the shaping through local technologies of "secondary environments"
which are culturally defined, and which constitute the material culture of
the people concerned. The habitat will be seen as providing, not a single
or prime determiner of culture, any more than biological' factors play such
a role; rather, its constituents-climate, physiography, resources, and so
on-comprise another type or class of determinants which help to shape
the behavior of groups and individuals, and which in turn are shaped by
such behavior.
,

Problem 21 . The Earth as a Human Habitat

What are its main zon'es of human occupation and use?

Anthropology joins fbrces with the "earth" sciences in defining the
relationships between man) and his habitat. This is shown in the use of a
number of compound label,s applied to various types of collaborative study,
notably:
.
Anthropogeography: /the general investigation of relations between
man and h~s habitat.
'
Ethnobotany: the relation between culture and plants.
Ethnozoology: the r~lation between culture and animals.

Man is essentially a land surface mammal. This is still so, even now
that he can stay for long periods on the sea, and for shorter periods in
107

108

Culture in Space

the air, under the sea, and underground. His spatial distribution on the
earth's land surfaces may be understood most clearly by using, not the
more familiar Mercator projection, bisected by the equator, but a northpolar projection now increasingly seen especially because of its usefulness
for military strategy and north-polar communications.
Such a projection, already used in several diagrams, shows Asia as a
massive land zone, with Europe, India, and southeast Asia as its major
abutments. Africa appears as a kind of great peninsula, easily accessible
from the Eurasian land mass. North and South America show as another
great peninsula, though not so accessible by land, except as migrating man
(or plants and animals) could cross the cold zone of the Siberia-Bering
Strait-Alaska bridge. A third great zone leads out to the continent of
Australia and to largely submerged ranges and peaks on the Pacific Ocean
floor; the outer Pacific Islands could only be reached as the arts of oceanic
navigation became developed to the point where man could move safely
beyond the immediate coastal waters.
The logic of this map shows when it is noted that the earlier diffusion
of "civilization" was limited to Eurasia and northern Africa, and that socalled primitive types of culture were concentrated in the more remote
zones: southern Africa, Oceania, America (that is, prior to the development of the Middle or Nuclear American civilization). In addition, pockets
of more or less "primitive" peoples continued even in Eurasia, as with
groups along the cold northern fringe, and in mountain, desert, and forest .
fastnesses.
Habitats have widely different potentials for human utilization. The
range of cultural alternatives they have permitted to date has been in
some cases very narrow and restrictive, and in others very broad. Geographers and other earth scientists frequently speak of habitats in evaluative
terms, as, for example, "poor" to -"v~ry good" in relation to particular
technologies. The anthropologist recognizes the technical standards of
effipiency here as measured by the soil scientist, the hydrologist, and other
specialists. But he also realizes that, for the people concerl1ed, their traditional values are likely to define the physical environment with which they
are familiar and for which they have techniques of utilization as being the
"best." The Australian Aborigine is thoroughly at home in a desert where
the civilized man would starve or die of thirst. The Pygmy cannot easily
be tempted out of the rain forest. In Micronesia, the former Bikini Islander,
displaced by the atom bomb from his fishing lagoon, finds difficulty in adjusting to' soil-rich Kili Island, which has no lagoon. Hence the cautious
use by anthropologists of evaluative words here.
Even so, many land zones have scored poorly in cultural history to
date. Notably so have been the "cold deserts" of ice and tundra (boggy
flat land grown over with mosses and lichen) of the polar regions; the

[21] The Earth as a Human Habitat

109

Major Habitat Zones. Simplified scheme to show major characteristics

on a global basis.

hot deserts and scrub lands lacking in surface water; rugged mountains
and swamps. Man has lived in such places, and continues to do so. But
residence there has involved a specialized and narrow range of cultural
adjustments, and generally a stiff battle for survival even for sparse and
small population groups, just as it has with the limited range of plant
and wild animal populations.
Somewhat less restrictive have been the taiga zonev(boreal, or subarctic, forests, mainly of conifers) as found massively across northern
Eurasia and America. These have extremes of climate, a short growing
season, and poor soils usually choked with glacial boulders. The tropical
rain forests may also be classed here, with their enervating humidity, heavy
rains, easily exhausted soils, serious diseases, and teeming insect and other
animal life, though in places where they have been cleared they sometimes
carry heavy populations. Small islands bounded by ocean usually have a
narrow range of resources, 'though some of them have exceptionally dense
populations maintained thrdugh skillful use of sea as well as land resources.
Moving up the scale 6f potential cultural electives, the savannas or
tropical grasslands may be put next in order. Located in southern Asia,
Africa, northern Australia, and Middle America, they are marked by
coar~e plant growth and usually a heavy but seasonal rainfall. The steppes,
or temperate grasslands, 'h~ve by comparison proved a more diversified
type of habitat. These ha~e been particularly extensive in central Asia,
especially in wetter cycled of climate, such as the Glacial declines; in
America they form the faniiliar prairie and pampas. The steppes, together
with the sea, haye provided great pathways for migration and cultural
diffusion.
Perhaps broadest in their permissive range of cultural alternatives to
I,

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Culture in Space

date have been the semitropical and temperate forest lands. These areas, particularly river valleys and plains with fertile alluvial soils, have played a dominant role in culture history. Parts of west and east Asia, Europe, and North
America are the major zones with such climatic and resource conditions.
A great range of cultural alternatives in food gathering and food producing has been demonstrated in their generally massive populations. Finally,
wherever in any zone during recent times political power, key communications (harbors, or crossroads of land and sea transport), and availability
of major natural resources have come into conjunction, the great metropolitan centers of trade, industry, and services have tended to spring up.
Conditions external to man, the habitat, are seen here as playing vital
roles in the development and distribution of culture. They influence cultural
behavior, and in turn are influenced by it. Every group must work out a
way of life which is adapted sufficiently to the immediate external world
to ensure physical survival. Most groups try also to attain a considerable
margin of material security and comfort.
In the last chapter, the economic factors of food production were
made a major theme in tracing cultural growth. It is hardly to be wondered
at that, among early specialists in geographic and economic studies, theories
should have emerged giving these factors the prime role, or even the decisive role, in cultural dynamics and especially in the development of
"civilization": what have been referred to as "deterministic" points of view.
At this juncture, therefore, it will be wise to make clear what the anthropologist considers to be the relation between culture and habitat.

Problem 22 . The Relation of Habitat to Culture

I

How far does the physical environment shape culture, and vice versa?
This problem is very old in anthropological theory. Even classical
Gre,ek scholars speculated on influences of clim~te and diet on man's
physique and customs. In the early nineteenth century, a number of writers
recognized that such factors acted as shaping forces in cultural development. Evolutionary thinkers tried out classifications of economic "stages,"
notably the threefold sequence of savage "hunting," barbaric "herding,"
and civilized "agriculture" (Problem 25). Marx and his collaborators took
note of such ideas in formulating "dialectic materialism"-the so-called
economic determination of history.
It rerilained, however, for certain geographers to get the anthropological view on culture-habitat relationships thought through-by making anthropologIsts thoroughly angry. Around the turn of the century, theories
pervaded by geographic determinism were given considerable popularity'
through the works of Semple, Huntington, Taylor, and others. Huntington, ,

111

[22] The Relation of Habitat to Culture

in his book Civilization and Clima~e (1915), for example, charting a relationship between latitude and the centers of civilization, attributed the
dynamic of the latter to climate. By academic coincidence, the leading
American anthropological theorist of the time, Franz Boas of Columbia
University, had been trained as a geographer, and had had a rich field
experience, particularly with the arctic peoples. In the 1910's and 1920's,
he and other anthropologists made a concerted attack upon all types of
geographic and economic determinism. In doing so they clarified anthropological thinking on the relation of culture to habitat. Notably definitive
works here are Boas' The Mind of Primitive Man (1911, rev. ed. 1938),
Wissler's Man and Culture (1923) and The Relation of Nature to Man in
A boriginal America (1926), Goldenweiser's Early Civilization (1924),
Kroeber's Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America (1939),
and the British geographer-anthropologist Forde's Habitat, Economy and
Society (1934, rev. ed. 1950).
Some "classic" examples revealing the anthropological approach may
be given first:
EXAMPLE

1.

CULTURAL VARIATION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

The Pueblo and Navaho Indians of the American Southwest occupy

essentially the same habitat, some Pueblo Indians even living today in "pockets"
within the Navaho Reservation. The Pueblo groups are ,villagers, with an
agricultural economy based primarily on maize. The Navahos are descendants
of migratory food gatherers, who lived on wild nuts, grass seeds, and game, much
Cultural Alternatives in the Same Habitat. A rebuttal of geographic
determinism.

DE.SERT ANn MOU,...TAIN

HUNTERS "NO COLl-.E CTORS

MOOERN CI,.Y PEOPLE

112

Culture in Space

like the Apaches and some other neighboring Indian groups have done into
modern times. But, obtaining sheep from Europeans, the Navahos are now
primarily herders, scattered out with their flocks in family groups. Man's
creativity could thus work out three very different cultural alternatives-food
gathering, cultivation, and herding-in the same natural setting, so that habitat
factors could hardly provide the prime determiner. Later, in the same habitat,
American settlers were to work out other systems of life based on ranching,
irrigated agriculture, and urbanization.
EXAMPLE

2.

ARCTIC PEOPLES

Groups choosing to live in these cold settings have to fit their cultures
closely to many obvious habitat factors, needing warm clothing, fuel and light
for the dark winters, mobility where the animals forming their food supply are
far ranging. Yet there are also many alternatives. Some groups chose to stress
a hunting economy based primarily on sea animals, particularly marine mammals (seal, whale, and so on), as with the coastal Eskimos in general. Other
groups elected an economy based primarily on hunting land animals (reindeer,
caribou, and so on), as with inland Eskimos and Indians of the North American
continent, and some of the Paleoasiatic peoples of northeast Siberia such as the
Chukchis (Problem 24). Of the Old World arctic peoples, however, some became herders of reindeer; of these the Lapps of northern Sca~dinavia are a
well-known example. Some arctic peoples on the rivers stress a diet of fish rather
than sea mammals. Here again the habitat can remain essentiapy the same, but
very different cultural alternatives have been developed. A later example (Problem 25) shows how Alaskan Eskimo hunters, without habitat change, shifted
their way of life to include the herding of reindeer.
EXAMPLE

3.

JAPAN'S MODERNIZATION

Without change in climate or othe; factors in Ithe natural setting, such a

people as the Japanese have vastly modified their culture both through acceptance of elements diffused from outside and thmugh internal innovations. It is
trtie that habitat changes can trigger off cultural ch~nges, as with, say, a volcanic
outbreak or the introduction qf a pest. But most modifications 'in behavior must
be explained by other factors than the stimulus of the habitat.

What, then, are the implications of materials such as these for understanding the relation of culture to habitat?
Habitat exercises its most direct influence upon material culture- or
technology. In :nonmaterial aspects of culture, it provides minor and ~elec
tive influences only. The materials that go into the food menu, clothing,
housing, tools, transport, and other technologically fashioned cultural elements, must come from what the physical environment provides. Yet even
here the specifics-the combinations of foods, the styles of clothing, the
choices between using adzes or axes, digging sticks or hoes-are not "de;-

[22] The Relation of Habitat to Culture

113

termined." In a rainy climate, mal)Y shapes and sizes of roofs will keep
people and their goods dry. Moreover, trade can extend technical possibilities far beyond those allowed by local resources.
The field worker may take note of many points at which habitat
enters into nonmaterial aspects of culture. The religion of the people he
is studying may stress success in obtaining basic foods, bringing rain for
crops, keeping off storms. The economic organization may be shaped by
physical tasks which require the efforts of larger groups, or by the need
to obtain salt, iron, or other locally unavailable materials from regions
where they exist. The habitual alignment of persons and families in a community involves the essential factor of space position, and thus the physical
environment. Political organization is concerned, among other dimensions,
with a territory. Such matters will be discussed more fully in later chapters.
Taken as a whole, however, the rich tapestry of a people's religion, social
organization, and other nonmaterial culture will be seen as having merely
general and selective threads shaped by the external world.
Habitat (as does constitution within its particular type or class of
determinants) sets limits within which cultural behavior must always operate; it is restrictive even if not compulsive. Man must have air, water, a
temperature range within which he can survive, space for his body to
occupy. If he is a cattle herder, he must have adequate pasturage. On an
entirely isolated island he must make out with the coconuts, fish, stone,
and other products which are at hand. Human existence
is bounded by
/
physical laws from atom to universe.
The idea of the physical environment as a limiting factor, however,
does not imply fixed and static forces, an implacable wall against which
cultural creativity must press in vain. As with biological limits, we know
no more about them than what has been demonstrated in cultural manipulations to date. The whole story of technology is one of pushing back limits
which previously appeared to exist. By an increasingly controlled interplay
of physical and chemical piocesses, man gets air under water, diverts rivers,
controls thermal conditions, does hydroponic gardening, and otherwise
makes previously inhospidble habitats livable. The hitherto isolated island
can have commodities bro~ght in by trade. Given, indeed, the right combination of location, resou~ces,
and human needs, it could become a ManI
hattan or a Singapore. Animals dangerous to man, from viruses to carnivores, are eliminated or 'brought increasingly under control. Plant breeders
produce spectacular changes in plants. Forces .outside man, too, are changing the habitat over time, both convulsively as with volcanic and other
emergencies, and through slow and even geologically long-drawn action.
The ultimate curbs of physical environment upon the individual and upon
cultural development are far from being yet in sight.
The statement, therefore, that culture is subject to the limits of habitat

114

Culture in Space

means more specifically that a people's behavior must operate within the
bounds of the external world as defined and perceived by their learned experience to that date. The proposition may be added here that the more
adequate the technology of a people the more they can manipulate the
habitat to create a man-made "secondary environment" which relieves them
of its direct pressures and controls.
In addition to the negative concept of restriction, it may also be said
that habitat, like biological heritage, poses problems and provides instrumentalities for their solution. The man who wants to travel on water faces
problems of buoyancy and balance. He solves it by using wood, metal, or
other materials to make a craft which meets these requirements at least to
a minimum degree of efficiency. The straight walls of buildings, irrigation
flumes to carry water, artificial fertilizers-objects, in fact, all around us
-become meaningful in terms of these two further principles, as even a
quick analysis will show.
Habitat in the more positive sense allows alternatives; it is permissive.
Perhaps always, as suggested by cultural differences to date, there are numbers of different specific solutions possible to any material problem. Fire
may be produced by rubbing sticks, striking flint and steel, or using,matches
-to mention a few techniques only. Grain may be ground with. a pestle
and mortar, between stones, and in other ways. Extreme seasonai changes
have been met by migrating, storing food, adapting clothes and houses.
Polynesian islanders, using outrigger canoes, have developed a quite amazing series of local variations in the shape of the outrigger and the way it
is attached to the hull. The solution of a problem in a certain way usually
opens up a whole series of deriv:ative problems to challenge ingenuity, an
example being the Polynesian canoe types which involve different techniques of manufacture and of navigation. Any succdsful scientific experiment is likely to uncover more scientific a~d technological problems than
it solves. Man is clearly not compelled by habitat as regards specific details
of cultural behavior.
.
1
-

A lternative Solutions to a
Problem.
Two
widely
spread
techniques
for
grinding illustrate this important principle of cultural variation. Grinding
stones at left, pestle and
mortar at right.

115

[23] The Geographic Distribution of Culture

Given such leads, anthropologists early reached the conclusion that

the habitat, both limiting and stimulating as it is, cannot be counted as
the sole, or even the prime, creative factor in cultural development. It provides a further important class of determinants, but is not the single or
dominant determiner.
Kroeber, writing in the 1920's, summed up the discussions of his time
by saying that the directly "determining" factors of cultural phenomena are
"not nature which gives or withholds materials," but "the general state of
knowledge and technological advancement of the group; in short, historical
or cultural influences" (1923, p. 182). As implied here, even the most
favorable environment and richest resources will lie passive until man's
inventiveness gets to work, as where early European food gatherers roved
unnoticing over fertile cultivable soil and mineral fields, and California
Indians ground their acorns over oil pools that were later to be marked
by forests of derricks. At a later point, what Kroeber means by "historical
or cultural influences" will need to be made more clear. We shall especially
have to look for an understanding of the dynamics of cultural growth to
the contexts in which innovation occurs, and to the creative acts of individual innovators (Problem 77). The geographer-anthropologist Forde,
in his well-known work Habitat, Economy and Society, puts the whole
problem in a somewhat different and useful form. In noting that habitat
factors enter "intima,tely" into every way of life as "one category of the
. raw materials of cultural elaboration," he says that between the physical
environment and human activity there is always "a middle term, a collection of specific objectives and values, a body of knowledge and belief:
in other words, a cultural pattern" (1934, pp. 463-464). Looked at from
the viewpoint of all such analyses, it can be understood why anthropologists
consistently' attack deterministic theories, couched with either geographic
or economic emphasis, as distorting the role of habitat in human behavior.

I
Problem 23 . The Ge6graphic Distribution of Culture

:~gionallY?

How does culture look then studied spatially, or

What
is a "culture area"? Can cul~re history be reconstructed by tracing resemblances in custom occurring in different parts of the world?
A large proportion of ethnological time and effort has gone into tracing
the localization of cultural elements in space, and accounting for their
distribution. The geographic placement of cultural elements and types over
the earth in both past and prekent was the theme of numbers of nineteenthcentury compilations. The most influential in its day was Ratzel's History
of Mankind (1885-1888)-one of the works that earned him the title
of the "father of modern geography."

116

Culture in Space

In anthropology, the spatial attributes of culture became particularly

apparent as exhibit materials were prepared for museums and "fairs" or
"expositions," especially during the later nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. These were designed so that the viewer moved in imagination
from one ethnic zone to another. Dr. Clark Wissler, the main coiner of an
important spatial concept, that of a "culture area," told the writer how
it took form in his mind as he participated in setting up the Indian exhibit
halls at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
One series of display cases, for example, dealt with Eskimo peoples.
For all their details of cultural variation from group to group, their language
differences, the narrow bounds by which they recognized their political
affiliations, all Eskimos tended to share the same basic traits adapted to
arctic living. But in the next series of display cases, dealing with inland
Indian peoples, with life centered around caribou hunting, the range of
basic traits changed rather abruptly. The contrasts showed still more among
Northwest Indians, with their village clusters and dependence on the salmon
runs. In these instances, again, cultural likenesses over arched tribal and
linguistic units. These phenomena were repeated as cases were set up for
Plains buffalo hunters, California seed gatherers, Woodlan~ cultivating
peoples, and others. The boundary lines for each of these large zones of
more or less shared cultural elements, or, to put it another way, the unities
of the cultural systems concerned, appeared to be based on a zoning of
plant and animal life, particularly the food staples of each 'set of peoples.
On the basis of these observations Wissler developed the idea of a culture
area.
Wissler elaborated his initial "anthropogeographic" leads in several
works, notably The American Indian (1920) on the ethnographic _side
and Man and Culture (1923) on the ~ide of general theory. In the latter
he proposed a schema or model for the culture area, shown ideally as a
circle. It has a culture center, which should have the largest frequency of
tho/ typical traits, and also a, culture margin, where the traits tend to thin
out and interpenetrate with traits from neighooring cult_!lre areas. One of
numbers of compilations based on this distributional hypothesis is a study
of the Plains Indian "sun dance" by Spier (1921), in which the presence
or absence of some eighty traits of this "complex" is plotted for the tribes
practicing it. The general concept has been applied with varying success
to cultural systems in other regions of the world: Middle and South America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and even to modern European and American
cultural ~ettings, as will be seen later in the chapter.
Wissler's model of the culture area was attacked by Dixon in The
Building of Cultures (1928) and by others who felt that it did not correspond to the much less regular geographic realities of cultural distribution.
On the whole, its clearest validity seems to be in Wissler's original zone o~

[23] The Geographic Distribution of Culture

117

application: North America. Here, small independent groups scattered out

sparsely over a huge area with large and rather distinctive "natural" regions.
Intergroup contacts were mainly on foot and with immediate neighbors, so
that peoples adjusted their lives closely to the local habitats. Culture areas
and natural areas in North America came to correspond closely, as Kroeber
shows in a later definitive study (1939). Man became a closely knit part
of the total ecological system of the local landscape.
Where, however, communication routes have been more open and
peoples have moved about and interacted culturally a great deal, the definition of culture areas is much less easy and the operational value of the
concept dwindles. Trait distributions tend to be less patterned geographically, boundaries more fuzzy, and areas very general or based on a few
notable traits. For Europe or Asia, boundaries are markedly different according to whether the focus is on economics, nationality, religion, or
language. In the modern American milieu, regional factors are one only
among numbers of marks of cultural difference.
A culture area represents a spatial system or geographic distribution
of traits at anyone time. An associated concept, taking account of chronological dynamics, is that of age-area. Wissler and others working with peoples, such as the American Indians, without written records to preserve
their long-term history, and at a time when archaeological materials were
still often scanty? attempted to use trait distributions as a.means of tracing
time depth in culture. They therefore took over this coptept of "age-area"
from biologists who were in much the same predicament. The theory hypothesizes that older elements will show the widest distribution, and later
elements will-not have had time to become spread so widely. In the
California culture area, to take an example from Kroeber, certain rituals
of initiating young people at puberty are very widespread, while certain
religious "cults" have quite localized distribution. The age-area concept
would suggest that the former are older than the latter. Sapir (1916) and
others have pointed to the dangers in applying this measure rigidly. It assumes a kind of uniform liar even mechanical rate of diffusion that has no
reality in culture change. Especially where channels of communication are
open, and innovations h~ve general appeal, a later culture element may
spread away beyond the pound aries of an earlier one. A relevant exercise
here is to examine the history and distribution of Brahmanism and Buddhism
in Asia: the latter religion, though of later origin, is far more widely spread.
The age-area concept ap~ears on the whole to be most valid where communication goes at foot pace and by word of mouth.
In the eyes of many;anthropologists, tracing the distribution of cultural
elements or "traits" in space has had a quality of scientific precision and
control which made it a ;major emphasis in cultural study. It is particularly
associated with the "historicalist" approach which came to predominate in

118

Culture in Space

early twentieth-century ethnology. Theorists of the 1920's and early 1930's,

however, made this approach a target for criticism as being often unduly
"mechanistic" and "atomistic" (in the sense of treating culture merely as
a collection of unit traits), and as being open to dangerous pitfalls of subjective interpretation (Problem 26).
As a method, this distributional approach has had three main aspects:
(1) locating the component traits which exist in a given culture or culture
area, and using them to reconstruct its history so far as possible; (2) comparing cultures or culture areas to see how far given traits are present or
absent, and from this trying to establish any historic relationships between
them; and (3) tracing the distribution of a selected trait or group of traits
regionally, or where appropriate over the world, with.a view to understanding its history and distribution. Maps, charts, and statistics add an air of
scientific objectivity to such studies.
The most systematic and elaborate "culture element distribution"
studies made in anthropology to date have been done under the leadership
of anthropologists at the University of California, and deal particularly
with Indian cultures of the Far West. Trait counts have been worked out
for numbers of groups, the field workers concerned isolating from around
4,000 to more than 10,000 trait elements in the cultural haqits of each
one: architectural details, items of religious belief and practice, and so on
through the way of life. Comparisons have then been made between different groups to see how far traits are held in common or vary. The distribution and frequency of interesting or critical traits have also been traced.
These compilations have even been given mathematical precision by applying statistical methods in defining unit distribution. In many other areas
of the world similar trait distribution phenomena have been charted with
more or less exactness. Where reasonably adjacent peoples share what
appear to be reasonably identical traits, a historic relationship of contact
is usually hypothesized. To the extent that traits differ, historic relationship
is ~ken to have been lacking, or at least longer chronological separate'
-.._
ness is indicated.
Some examples of distributional studies which are "cla'ssic" in anthropology follow.
I

EXAMPLE

1.

THE HORSE IN ABORIGINAL AMERICA

Wissler (1914) and others have shown how Indians first obtained horses
from Spa~iards coming up from Mexico. Adapting this animal to their use,
they diffused the "horse complex" (horses, saddles, and other gear, hunting and
fighting with horses, use of the horse motif in art, sometimes the long, streaming,
feather headdress, and so on) rather universally over the plains and plateaus of

[23] The Geographic Distribution of Culture

119

The Horse Motif in

American Indian Cultures.
Above: stone sacrificial
bowl and /lute, Menomini
of Wisconsin. Below: a
beaded horse fetish, from
a medicine bundle used in
the Piegan Indian Horse
Medicine Cult, northwestern Plains area.

the North American continent. With greatly widened mobility, tribes spread
over new areas and differentiated as they expanded in numbers. Distribution of
the horse, however, fades out among settled agricultural groups to the East,
seed gatherers and other more settled peoples in the west, and in the pine forests
of the north.
EXAMPLE

2.

SPREAD OF RELIGIOUS CULTS AMONG MODERN INDIANS

In 1869, a first so-called Ghost Dance cult came into existence among a
Nevada Paiute group, and spread among western Indian tribes. These peoples
were then under great cultural stress from the destruction of their food resources,
incipient, settlement of their lands by Whites, the military pressures of Indian
wars, and the breaking down of their traditional cultures. The Paiute "prophet"
Wodziwob had religious visions which foretold the end of the existing world,
the ousting of the Whites, tp.e return of dead relatives, and the restoration of
Indian lands and integrity. ~he cult took on different forms of belief and ritual
as it spread regionally. A sefond Ghost Dance followed around 1890, inspired
by another Paiute prophet, Wovoka, with much the same-aoctrine. This spread
especially eastward through the Plains tribes, and even beyond to some eastern
Woodlands tribes, again ten~ing to become modified to local cultural circumstances and to develop oth~r cult offshoots. It also changed over time in its
zone of origin, so that trait study of the cult is a complicated matter. Still later
another great cult complex 6r pattern, the Peyote religion, spread outward from
the American Southwest o~er much the same area, providing a new basis of
faith which became adapte~ considerably to local circumstances as it diffused.
A central trait is the eating of pieces cut from the peyote plant, a cactus having
an alkaloid-drug effect, to induce religious visions. Such cults and their motivation are discussed more fully later (Problem 80).

120

Culture in Space

The advantage of dealing with materials of the kind cited in these

examples is that distributions in space and time are subject to a large
degree of historical control through documentation and direct observation.
The requirements of "reasonably adjacent" residence and "reasonably
identical" traits as a basis for postulating historic connections are more
than met. When, however, reconstructions of relationship are postulated
on the basis of trait frequencies and similarities alone, the greatest safeguards have to be exercised in making comparisons and claiming results.
As already indicated, the distributional approach has become an area
of controversy in cultural anthropology. Moreover, to complicate the picture, an extensive amount of pseudoscientific "scholarship" has been forthcoming, and is still produced. Even a casual visitor to a museum may find
himself falling into mental patterns of comparison: "This Maya sculpture
looks just like that Chinese carving in the other room," or "Isn't this
Northwest Coast decoration just like the patterns on my Persian carpet?"
Library bookshelves often contain plausible, even fascinating, works which
purport to reconstruct the history of whole regions or even of the whole
of human culture on the basis of distributional studies involving apparent
resemblance in the form and meaning of traits, e.g., the "Los~ Continent
of Mu" books; the "Children of the Sun" books which have Egyptians
spreading even to America such broad trait forms as sun worship, kingship,
mummification of the dead, and pyramid building; the Kon-Tiki and other
linkages of America with Oceania. In anthropology itself, certain earlier
European "diffusionist" schools which have attempted to reconstruct total
culture history on the basis of culture element distributions and relationships have been a target for modern professional criticism (Problem 27).
The greatest difficulty is to be certain whether observed resemblan<;es
in form between cultural elements sepated in space or in time are the
result of historical connections or of independent development. In the
earlier example of the Ainu arrow, we recognized the artifact as apparently
beil}g within the familiar class, of projectile "weapons" by its Ishape, notch,
and other elements of material form. But we would have peen mistaken
had we attributed to it patterns of me~ning and use with which we were
familiar. Its "trait" details, too, such as the short point .and the carved
designs, are peculiarly Ainu. Resemblances, seemingly obvious at first, are
likely to have little substance until pinned down through meticulous analysis. In the process, many an easily formulated trait resemblance vanishes,
with corresponding theories of historic connection, as is true of the use
of pyrami(lal constructions in the Near East and Middle America.
Even where traits, once defined, show identities of form, the factor
of parallelism, or independent invention, must always be counted a possibility. Goldenweiser (1933) formulated here what he called the law of,
limited possibilities, namely, that cultural form has limits set by natural:

[23J The Geographic Distribution of Culture

121

conditions which make for resemblances. A craftsman, working on a log

which he intends to make a watercraft, has to fit it to the natural conditions of buoyancy, balance, and so on, so that the possibilities of formal
variation are limited, especially if he wants to make a wooden dugout.
Similarly, a paddle has limited possibilities of form. One school of German
diffusionists, to be discussed later (Problem 27), considered that the most
sure likenesses on which historical connections could be based are those
which they called irrelevant form, that is, a form which is not "relevant"
or rendered necessary by the natural conditions and by purposes of immediate utility. Two jars in different cultures might have the same very
peculiar design of handle, two rituals the same detailed sequence of action,
two marriage systems some special way of choosing the partners. Even
here, however, parallelism could not be ruled out: for example, two artists
might duplicate a curvilinear design from independent observation of
curved forms in nature.
Approaches which trace the spread of cultural units in time and
space are often called "diffusionistic," and the methodology involved
summed up as "diffusionism." By the 1920's they tended to dominate
the theoretical study of culture by anthropologists. The "objective" way
in which cultural units were handled, including statistical manipulations,
gave every appearance of meeting the criteria of "science." By the 1930's,
however, uncritical and "mechanistic" types of diffusion study were under
severe attack by Malinowski (1931), Sapir (1934), ~nd others. Culture,
they said, is not an assemqlage of separate units, the bits and pieces of
which are distributed arO\\n~)he world. The so-called traits or cultural
elements, however much their statistical and other manipulation looks
"scientific," do not have the unit indentity ascribed to them. They are
generalized constructions from the detailed varying behavior of individuals,
and their mean\ngs or "functions" can be understood only within the context of the whole cultures, of which they are a part. Cultural elements do
not transfer mechanically:as units from one ethnic setting to another so
that their pathways of distribution are marked by persisting identities.
Rather, diffusing elements are likely to undergo complicated changes of
form and meaning as theY: enter new cultural settings. Though the significance of such newer ideas ~ust be left for analysis elsewhere (Problem 78),
it can be sensed how they would make naive any uncritical handling of
diffusionistic or distributional analysis.
Malinowski, one of the scholars mentioned, even went to the extreme
of trying to dismiss all diffusionistic reconstruction by way of culture element distributions as incapable of scientific control, and suggested that they
"be left by the anthropologist to his more convivial moments." If, however,
this view were to be accepted, it would shut all kinds of doors to the reconstruction of regional and local culture history. Events such as the

122

Culture in Space

spread of the horse "complex" and of religious cults, as in the examples

cited above, actually did occur. Though intricate adjustments in form and
meaning took place as the elements involved diffused from tribe to tribe,
and the ethnic traditions of the tribes underwent change, the happenings
are recognizable even without written documents to back them up: traits
do tend to show selective persistence (Problem 81). Again, where "culture
areas" are discernible, they are significant cultural systems. Distributional
studies must remain an important part of ethnological analysis. But they
must be carried on with full cognizance of what social anthropology now
has to say about cultural behavior, its patterning, and its dynamics. The
older mechanistic, or unit, approaches, and any uncritical equating of
cultural elements on the basis of formal resemblances, no longer have
scientific validity. They are most likely to be encountered now in speculations by amateurs, whose often plausible theories are matters of which
to be wary.

Problem 24 . Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

What are the characteristic features in Africa? in the Pacific Islands?
in the Americas? in Asia and Europe?
/
It would go far beyond the spatial limitations of this work to give even
a superficial delineation of the very great number of regional and local
cultures which had become differentiated by modern times. What is to be
tried here is a broad and elementary characterization of the major cultural
zones or areas over the earth. Its purpose is partly to give some of the
greater perspectives of cultural variation, and partly to give local identityto peoples and cultures mentioned throughout the I text. The content is
filled out in cultural anthropology books and cour~es having titles such
as "World Ethnography" or "Cultures of the World," or more usually
deali?g with particular regions such as Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas.
The materials emphasize the fact that anthropology, as one major facet
of its total approach to the studJ of man, is a regionally oriented discipline.
The great "peninsula" of Africa can serve as a starting point. Almost
four times the size of the United States (about 11 million ,square miles),
it is dominantly tropical. Its major geographic features, somewhat simplified, comprise a northern strip with a "Mediterranean" climate; vast desert
and scrub lands a,cross the north and to the southwest (Sahara, Kalahari,
and so on)'; tropical rain forests and savannas especially in west-central
zones; and wooded and grassy (veldt) plateaus particularly in east-central
and southern zones. River systems, including the narrow Nile "tube,"
provide major lines of communication away from the open veldt lands.
Two very specialized and isolated groups, formerly much more wide-

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

123

~MDITERRANEA;;_F~R_tv1RS
'*,i~ii~$. li
~_i 1\
__ - - - -

~ ~~~~~
NORTHERN

.h,-:
-

HERDERS --

CAMELS, GOATS, SHEEp, HORSE.S

~f~

~ ([

Culture Areas of Africa. Simplified to show the six major types of

habitat utilization.

spread than now, have remained food gatherers. The south African Bushmen of the Kalahari are primarily desert hunters, stressing animal foods,
though they also gather edible plants such as roots and melons. The central
African Pygmies inhabit the deeper rain forests, and are primarily collectors
or "gleaners" of roots and fn,Iits, though also taking game as opportunity
offers. Both these peoples agg~egate in small mobile bands. They trade with
neighboring food producers, ?ut neither their habitat co~~itions nor their
cultural values have favored ~bandonment of a food-gathering way of life.
Elsewhere, e.g., among t~e Negro peoples of central and south Africa,
the numerous local cultures fall into two great types, one based in economic
terms on agriculture, the othq on herding. Generally to the west, agriculture is emphasized, with domesticated and wild animals having a supplemental role. Numerous gro~ps, particularly in the coastal rain forests
and in higher country, pract1ce "dry" (fire-clearing) cultivation, utilizing
the natural rainfall without irrigation. Clearing and burning new patches
of land as the soil becomes exhausted after a growing season or two, they
tend to be mobile, and rarely aggregate in communities larger than what
might be called a '~hamlet" of a few families. Other groups, particularly

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Culture in Space

in the Nile and Niger valleys, along the southern edge of the Sudan, and
on the Ethiopian highlands, practice more settled and diversified agriculture. They use more or less extensive irrigation, the plow and hoe, and
fertilization for soil maintenance. Larger villages, and even towns and
small city-states, could be established. The highly organized Negro "kingdoms" of west Africa, such as Ashanti, Dahomey, Yoruba, and Benin, with
their notable political and artistic traditions, rest on such an economic and
social base. Ashanti, for example, encompasses about a half million people.
Important crops usually include yams, millet, sorghum, and bananas, and
nowadays maize, peanuts, and manioc (tapioca) from America.
The herders fall broadly into two groups. Mainly to the east and
south are cattle raisers. These peoples have, so to speak, grazed their way
outward over the generally rich natural pasturelands to cover much of
Africa, reaching the extreme south perhaps some four centuries ago. Cattle
are the only kind of domestic animal sedentary enough, and yielding enough
food, to enable a pastoral people to base themselves in permanent villages.
The villagers have often maintained kin and political ties as they hived off,
so that their tribes and kingdoms are frequently large. Usually having strong
warrior traditions, cattle herders tended to dominate adjacent ~ultivators.
and this relation sometimes results in an organized herding-pastoral society
in which the herders are the dominant and aristocratic element. In the
south a people called the Hottentots, product of hybridiza~ion between
Bushmen and incoming Negro groups, have adopted cattle herding. A
general name, Bantu, applied to many of the Negro cattle herders, is
strictly a linguistic category.
Northern Africa, generally lacking rich grasslands, can rarely support
cattle, and agriculture becomes impossible in the dry zones-at least jn
terms of the indigenous technOlogy. Here herding is the characteristic activity, with sheep, goats, horses, and- (in desert areas) camels, variously
the animals central to the economy_ Pasturage conditions combine with
the nabits of these animals to. make life typically mobile. Sheep and goats
move slowly, but the camel herds here and in Asia may _travel great distances seasonally between summer and winter pastures. The tent-living
kin group, ranging a historic territory, is usually the ba~ic spatial unit.
Where intensive cultivation is possible in north Africa, as along the Mediterranean coast and up the Nile "tube," wheat is the most valued crop.
Here villages, towns, and city cent/ers were developed. The donkey or ass
becomes an important animal for transport.
Africa, Fortes says (1953), is marked by the notably great size, in
terms both of territorial space and of numbers, of many ethnographic units
as compared with the stereotype of "primitive" societies. It has been
blocked out by Herskovits and others into a number of "culture areas."
Herskovits' latest revision (1948) shows nine such zones on the African

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

125

mainland, apart from the Europe-like northern coastal strip. Culture element studies show, as would be expected, a tendency for traits associated
with "civilization" to diffuse eastward and southward from the Egyptian
and Middle East areas in selective fashion to the extent they had appeal
and did not meet with habitat roadblocks.
The use of metals, for example, particularly ironsmithing, had by
historic times spread almost universally in Africa; possibly only certain
Bushmen groups and a people called Bube on the island of Fernando Po
remained to historic times in the "Stone Age." The institutions of centralized political organization, including "kingship," had spread not only to
adjacent Nilotic and Ethiopian groups but also to some of the west African
and the cattle-herding peoples. In the process they assumed many variant
and complex local forms, as is well illustrated in a survey of African political systems by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940). The plow, writing,
trade in gold, ivory, and slaves, and other relatively late cultural elements
have their own southward and westward pathways and distributions. Notably since the seventh century, the Islamic religion has diffused over large
zones of north and west Africa, just as, somewhat earlier, Coptic Christianity spread into limited areas, as in Ethiopia.
This glimpse at the pre-European cultures of Africa illustrates basic
principles of distribution and of regional and local specialization which
will hold for other zones as well. The paleolithic understratum of food
gathering shows through in isolated and marginal areas.;The cultures of
Bushmen and Pygmy peoples have selectively changed and developed over
the generations to modern times; yet they hint at some of the ways of
living which enabled early man to occupy much of the continent. With
the food-producing revolution, cultural alternatives were widened. Habitat
conditions' undoubtedly stimulated the choices between cultivating and
herding which provide the broadest marks of difference. Moreover, because
Africa falls into rather distinctive physical zones, and has many impediments to travel, conditions ~avored the emergence of fairly well-marked
culture areas. As techniques of communication improved, many of the
later elements of "civilizati6n" were diffused from the northeast, and
show in modern times their o~n distribution patterns. In closer perspective,
Africa'displays very numeroJs ethnic groups, the great majority of which
are small and localized.
The vast island-dotted zone of the Pacific Ocean, usually subdivided
into Malaysia, Australia, an~'Oceania, may be considered next. This again
is a warm area, and the oce~n spaces have in some respects favored communication and migration, and in others isolation and cultural specialization.
During the Glacial periods, sea levels were lowered; hence "Java" and
"Solo" man could get on foot into the Java "pocket," and Homo sapiens

126

Culture in Space

Early Migrations in the Southwest Pacific. Hypothetical movements

into Australia and New Guinea during the Fourth Glacial., Dotted
areas, now shallow seas, were more or less dry land, and present
channels were narrower, facilitating migrations of AzistraloidNegritoid type populations.

groups of the Fourth Glacial could cross even with simple watercraft what
would be generally narrower channels through present-day Indonesia on to
the Australian continental pliltform (Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea).
Again, food-gathering groups survive from this paleolithic understratllm.
The pygmy Negritos and other short-st~tured collectors, or gleaners, of the
rain forests from the Andaman Islands through Malaya and the Philippines
to western New Guinea have nomadic ways of life. Their bands, made up
of fi few families, move over ,considerable territories after roots, fruits, and
game. In more open and often desert Australia; -and in T~smania, the main
subsistence was derived from hunting. The so-called Aborigines accumulated few material goods other than what a man could carry and yet range
after game, and what a woman could carry and still gather roots and tote
children. Yet, as seen earlier, they developed elaborate forms of social
structure and religion. As with the Bushmen of Africa, their specialized
adjustment to restrictive desert environments is, to Western eyes, a marvel
of survival.
In Malaysia, the Negrito peoples have taken over a few selected elements from later-coming groups, including iron tools. Later peoples also
introduced some goods and ideas into northern Australia in pre-European
times: for example, the polishing of stone. But, in general, the fodd-produc,,:

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

127

ing revolution followed the coastal and river valley areas in Malaysia,
carried by the brown-skinned peoples who have become dominant in southeast Asia.
Fire-clearing or dry cultivation appears to have come first. At least
it has the widest distribution, being practiced by very numerous groups
from the southeast Asian uplands through to New Guinea and nearby
island chains. With numerous minor variations there are the characteristic shifting of gardens and aggregation in hamlets or, more rarely, scattered farmsteads. Irrigated agriculture, especially with the plow, and the
water buffalo as a draft animal, is limited in Malaysia to lowland zones, and
here and there to terraced slopes. No peoples are herders as such, though
families and individuals may occasionally become occupationally specialized in handling the domestic animals characteristic of the area: water
buffaloes, pigs, chickens. Among coastal peoples great reliance was placed
on sea products, so that fishing became a major tradition and for some
groups the essential economic base. The breeding of fish in ponds has
some analogies to animal herding.
Dates and events are vague for this Malaysian area, not least of all
because archaeological work has so far been limited and local. Beyer
( 1948), an authority on the Philippines, considers that the neolithic traditions started to penetrate that area around 6,000 years ago, some culture
The Peopling of the Pacific. The main ethnic zones art! shown, also
the hypothesized migration routes. The diagram, at first sight complicated, becomes clear when each ethnic area is examined. The black
arrow east from Malaysia represents by far the earliest of these migrations (see map, p. 126).

128

Culture in Space

elements coming into Malaysia from south Asia, and others from east Asia
(the Indochina and later the China region). Perhaps as early as 4,000
years ago, the first boatload of migrants from the eastern fringe of the
Malaysian islands reached-most probably through wind and current drift
rather than intentionally-some of the western islands of Oceania. Spoehr
(1952) found near the base of a refuse dump in the Mariana Islands a
large tridacna shell which, on radiocarbon analysis, yielded a date of approximately 1527 B.C. Other carbon dates have shown occupation of New
Caledonia by at least around 846 B.C., Fiji by 148 B.C., and Hawaii away
to the extreme northeast by A.D. 957.
The so-called Melanesian ("dark island") peoples of the southwest
Pacific, who appear to result from complicated hybridizations of the early
Negritoid and Australoid types of breeding lines, and of later canoe settlers
from marginal Malaysia, show an amazing cultural diversity. Long a focus
for ethnographic analysis, they range in their economies from coastal fishing peoples to dry and wet cultivators. In New Guinea "highlands" quite
dense populations have the sweet potato as a staple food-a plant which
possibly was carried by visiting Polynesians back from west America into
the Pacific Islands. Some of these groups have been seen only through air
reconnaissance and still live in the Stone Age without direct contact with
the white man. Some peoples in the coastal swamps, with wild sago' palm
forests from which one palm trunk can yield hundreds of ,pounds of sago
flour as a staple food, have given up plant cultivation and so have become
dominantly a highly specialized type of food gatherer or extractor of wild
resources.
The Micronesian ("tiny island") and Polynesian ("many island")
peoples, of northern and eastern Oceania, respectively, take advaqtage of the generally heavy rainfall to gr0'Y root and fruit crops without irrigation; yet they usually cultivate taro-as a "wet" crop. They also concentrate ~
heavily on fishing, and use not only the flesh foods of the sea but also
esIible marine plant foods-;-what we dismiss ignorantly I as "seaweed."
Local isolation makes for amazing variations 'in the d~ta~ls of island cultures. Some peoples of low and drier coralline islands can practice only
limited gardening in pits cut down to the water table, growing plant species
which can tolerate a considerable saline content. Occasionally soil is so
poor that the population cannot cultivate significantly but depends upon
the coconut and flour pounded from wild pandanus (screw pine) fruit. "These &roupsi go essentially into another specialized category of food r
gatherers.
It may be noted that, though technologies are fairly uniform between
the Micronesians and Polynesians, a sharp difference shows in the social
structure of the two zones. Polynesians have a descent system which
stresses both. parent lines and is called bilateral or two-sided (see GlosI

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

129

sary). This, with other elements, corresponds in general to forms of social

structure widely spread through the Philippines and much of Indonesia,
so that the whole complex is sometimes called a "Malaya-Polynesian" type
of social organization. By contrast, the Micronesians typically stress descent
through the line of the mother, a unilateral or one-sided system of "matrilineal" ("mother-line") type. This appears to link historically with matrilineal systems found sporadically in Sumatra, Borneo, and some other
zones of Malaysia and Melanesia, and so indicates a contrasting trait distribution pattern.
Here, too, any interested student would find distinctive patterns of diffusion. Pottery is absent in Polynesia (except for some carried from Melanesian Fiji to neighboring groups), perhaps because the habitat has limited
clays, perhaps because the peoples became accustomed to using gourds,
coconut shells, receptacles of wood, and similar nonceramic materials.
Weaving on the loom has spread down from east Asia through Micronesia
into parts of middle Melanesia only, but has failed to take hold in Polynesia. All Oceania remained in the Stone Age. Metal was confined (before
Europeans arrived) to the Malaysian area. A zone of smelting may be
distinguished, beyond which was a zone of forging, where metals traded
in were shaped to local purposes, and in turn beyond that a zone in which
metal artifacts wer~ traded to remoter peoples who could neither smelt
nor forge.
Of key importance were the cultivated plants use,? for staple foods.
A great division here shows between the grain-growing area, marked above
all by rice, which covers roughly Malaysia, and the root- and fruit-growing
area of Oceania,. to the east. Roots and fruits such as the yam, taro, banana,
and breadfruit are, in comparative terms, low-yield crops, though mostly
easy to" cultivate and calling merely for simple digging-stick gardening.
Even sedentary, irrigated cultivation did not permit local settlement size
to rise above that of a large village of, perhaps, 500 persons at the maximum. Rice, by contrast, is a very high-yield crop when given efficient irrigated cultivation. In the :most
favorable zones, such as the volcanic soils
I
of Java, rice cultivation w:ith the plow and water buffalo opened the way
for very large villages, ov~rcapped by towns and even city centers when
combined with trade, c0n1mercial fishing, and other elements of the lowland economic complex of Asia. It may be noted that, in modern times,
Malaysians have been most ready of all the Pacific Island peoples to take
over new food crops fro~ America, notably maize and manioc (or tapioca), which in areas poorly suited to irrigated rice have sometimes become
the staple food. In the latter areas, the roots and fruits which were carried
by migrants into Oceania' may also serve as staples, as in areas where the
banana is a key food in parts of eastern Malaysia.
On the side of nonmaterial culture, a notable feature has been the

130

Culture in Space

diffusion into the more accessible parts of Malaysia of the great religions
which took form in Asia. When, around 200 B.C., the older Brahman faith
in India was threatened by the rise of Buddhism, refugee monks appear to
have settled in southeast Asian centers, which were then developing on
the basis of trade in spices, gold, and other goods. In turn, several centuries
later, the renascence of Brahmanism in India made Buddhism a refugee
faith which was to gain its longer-term hold in outer places such as southeast Asia, China, and Tibet. By the seventh century A.D., records show local
city-states in Sumatra and Java, as well as on the adjacent Asian mainland,
with rulers and aristocracies variously Brahman or Buddhist-or combining
elements of the two traditions.
Space does not permit telling the story of subsequent Malaysian s~ates
and empires, rarely described in history books. Modern Indonesians, Annamese, Burmese, and others look back on what appear as "Golden Ages,"
marked in their countries by great architectural ruins, and by dramatic and
religious traditions. Offshore Malaysia was largely protected from the
dynamic conquests and pressures of thirteenth-century Mongol expansions. By the fifteenth century, however, Mohammedan expansionism
overwhelmed the Javanese and other Brahman- and Buddhist-oriented
centers. The so-called Madjapahit empire of Java was overthrown in or
about A.D. 1475. Its aristocratic survivors appear to have joined with the
Balinese to the east, and dominantly Brahman Bali has remained impervious to Islamic penetration up to the present. Mohammedan' assimilation
and settlement had moved as far as the southern Philippines, and was
beginning in the north, when in 1565 Legaspi started conquest and Christianization in that archipelago. The Spanish, after centuries of holding back
the Islamic tide from across the Mediterranean, found themselves holding
the line again halfway around the world: no wonder they called the
Mohammedan Filipino a "Moor" or Maro.
Definition of "culture areas" in this zone of the: world, as may readily
be ufderstood, is much less satisfactory than _in North Aplerica. The
broken-up nature of land and sea, the contrasts even bet/ween coastal
and inland peoples along a shore, and the great variety and complicated
history of cultural traditions defy a sharply spatial approach. Attenipts
have been made, with some success, to work out culture areas for subregions such as Australia, Polynesia, and the Philippines; but in parts of
New Guinea, for example, cultural differentiation often runs to extremes
even down to ai small cluster of' hamlets shut off from neighbors by
linguistic as well as geographic barriers. Most classifiers are content to
deal with the Pacific peoples by broad subregional labels such as Aborigine,
Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian.
The hourglass-like "peninsula" of America shows a much wider range
of habitats than do the two zones dealt with above. Its migration story and
I

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

131

cultural aspect have already been dealt with to some extent (Chapter IV).
As shown in such a general work as Martin, Quimby, and Collier, Indians
before Columbus (1947), archeological investigation is making great
strides; but the details are beyond the scope of this work. For the ethnological "present," a number of culture area delineations have been tried,
revising Wissler's original scheme. Here the maximum simplicity may be
maintained by blocking out a general tabulation of North American areas
as follows:
1. The Eskimo Area: Hunters of the Arctic. This shows remarkable general uniformity from eastern Asia across the Bering Strait to
eastern Canada. Its central traits, generally familiar enough, were referred
to earlier (Problem 22).
2. The Caribou Area: Woodsmen of the North. Scattered and mobile Indian bands here concentrated on hunting, with the caribou as the
characteristic source of food.
3. The Northwest Coast Area: Fishermen of the Northwest. Along
this narrow coast and island strip, preservation and storage of salmon
from the seasonal runs enabled its Indian occupants to adopt a sedentary
village life. A notable accumulation of heavy goods, and an extremely
competitive status system associated with ceremonial wealth, developed
in this highly specialized setting.
Principal Culture Areas of North America /

132

Culture in Space

4. The California and Plateau Areas: Seed Collectors of the West.

Storage of seasonal seeds and acorns, notably in basketry containers, enabled the population groups of these areas to occupy sedentary villages or
hamlets if they so elected. This was especially possible when dependable
marine foods such as shellfish were added to the diet along with the
universally hunted wild game: rabbits, antelope, and the like.
5. The Plains Area: Hunters of the Plains. The way of life centered
around the buffalo; taking much of its modern form after introduction of
the horse, it is generally familiar.
6. The Woodland Area: Gardeners of the Eastern Forests. Food
producing, based on a dry-gardening economy emphasizing maize, squash,
and beans, was practiced with increasing intensity from the north (where
hunting was likely to be a major occupation) to the south. Community life
tended to become correspondingly more sedentary, with larger villages
sometimes reaching nearly town size. Often large earth mounds indicate
the emphasis on heavy construction and durable goods; pottery adds to
archaeological control.
7. The Southwest Area: Pueblo Farmers. Here, sometimes on high
mesas, sometimes in river valleys, the clustered stone and adobe "apartment houses" of these community-oriented peoples were usually tightly
packed. Maize, the staple crop, appears to have survived at times almost
miraculously in the dry ground; concern with water occupied a major
place in the elaborate ceremonial life. A great deal is now 'known from
archaeology about the so-called cliff dwellers and other predecessors of
these sedentary peoples, who bore the brunt of much marauding by gathering and hunting neighbors.
8. The Southwest Area: Navaho Shepherds. As noted earlier (Problem 22), the modern Navahos are descendants of former food gatherers
who adopted sheepherding as their major way of life. The older foodgathering traditions have been maintained by many tribes of the desert
and Fountain region stretchi~g southward into the Mexican lowlands.
Relymg variously on the collecting of seeds and, on the hunting of wild
game, these latter peoples are sometimes distinguished from the general
California-Plateau area peoples as desert and mountain dwellers.

Middle America, with its special developments of civilization, stands

in marked contrast to this North American scene by showing no such neat
areal patterning. Cultural systems here have a complex history of migration, of cultural interaction, and of regional and local specialization, which
make the spatial factors very complicated. Vistas range from apparently
pre-agricultural times, as with roughly shaped artifacts found on old
beaches in the Valley of Mexico, to the complex ebb and flow of power
among Maya, Aztec, Inca, and other "empires" of Nuclear America.

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

133

Vaillant (1941) and others hav~ pointed to a great distinction between

the urban power units of Central America, or Mesoamerica as it is often
called, and those of South America. The former zone, often called the
Nahua area, emphasized the building of ecclesiastical centers around temple
structures which provided the surrounding villagers with calendrical reckonings, higher rituals, and other services. By contrast, the cities of the
Andean highlands were more secular aggregations, and especially in the
Inca period became highly organized politically (Problem 54). This latter
zone, often called the Inca area, has many notable marks: its intensive
cropping of maize and other plants, including potatoes; its waterworks;
its control of drugs; its craftsmanship; and its use of the llama as a domestic
animal. Beyond this broad areal distinction, interest in any regional or local
tradition would have to be followed up through other sources. The standard
anthropological reference work for South American cultural systems, Andean and otherwise, is the United States government's publication edited
by Steward: Handbook of South American Indians (1946-1950, in six
volumes).
Culture area depiction becomes somewhat more definite for parts of
Central and South America away from these major zones of cultural
elaboration. It shows most clearly in remoter zones where the indigenous
Indian ways of life had a chance to survive without undue leveling out
through Hispanic influences over the past centuries. For the purposes of
this work the classification will be kept as simple as possible. Counting the
/
Inca or A ndean area as the first, the others are
2. The Circum-Caribbean or Antilles Area. Here the characteristic
economy practiced among the surviving aboriginal groups is one of tropical
dry gardening and fishing, which enabled the peoples to live in settled
communities.
3. The Chibcha and Amazon Areas. The South American tropical
forest area shows a cultur~l continuity with the circum-Caribbean. The
many economic variations here include different reliances on garden products (especially manioc), hunting, and fishing. As with the rugged and
forested New Guinea terrain, conditions have favored great cultural variability. The area is well ktlown for the elaborate use of drugs, including
poisons; it is also the regio~ from which the hammock comes.
4. The Guanaco Area~ The guanaco is the wild llama of the pampas,
a great grassland zone in wpich the peoples had a hunting way of life much
like that of the buffalo hunters of the North American plains. The aboriginal
cultures, now almost extinct, also received a temporarily extended mobility
with the coming of the horse.
5. The Fuegian Area. The cold and rugged zone around the Strait
of Magellan was sparsely populated with fishing and hunting peoples, no-

Culture in Space

134

tably the Yahgan and Dna. Their marked dependence on sea mammals,
their elaboration of bone technology, and their migratory patterns of
settlement are in some respects reminiscent of the Eskimo. It may be noted
that the Handbook of South American Indians links the Guanaco and
Fuegian areas and the remoter tropical forest tribal zones into a "marginal"
category.
The American continent, as noted already, demonstrates most clearly
the spatial and habitat dimensions in cultural variation. Yet problems of
migration directions and sequences are far from solved. Some movements
of peoples and cultural influences across Bering Strait appear to have
traversed the Mackenzie country and then moved down the eastern side
of the Rockies. So-called Yuma, Folsom, and other early tools found in
the Southwest appear to have come by this route. But other movements
may have passed down the West Coast: Cressman, an Oregon archaeological specialist, has a carbon date of approximately 8,000 years ago for an
early site (1951).
Above all, theories involving influences into Middle America via either
the Atlantic or (more usually) the central Pacific Islands give professional
workers unhappiness. They are so plausible, as long as the vast ocean
distances are disregarded. Parallels also keep turning up between: Old and
New World materials; yet on critical analysis the likenesses become open
to attack. As we have seen, Americanist scholars are in almost unanimous
agreement that the Middle American developments can be accounted for
without postulating such diffusion. Certainly, cultural likenesses between
coastal west America and the tiny nearer Polynesian islands some 2,000
miles away are scanty indeed.

Exercise
The main land mass of Eurasia (Asia, with its western extension, Europe)
now remains for examination. Forgetting, for the moment, our knowledge
6f this region, what might be counted the logic'!_]. possibilities in terms of
historical and distributional, principles? Would we expect the paleolithic
substratum to show through, and if so, where? Would great cultural variation be expected, or great uniformity? Would the most vigorous cultural
development tend to occur in the original centers of the food-producing
revolution, or in more marginal areas?
Geographically, Eurasia has ceitain very marked zones. In the north
are the arctic and boreal belts. South of these is a belt of temperate forest
and steppe lands, almost continuously flat from the British Isles to north
China except for the Ural Mountains. Then, in southern Europe and middle Asia, the terrain breaks up into rugged mountains or high plateaus, sometimes with mountain ranges like the Himalayas in turn piled on them; with

[24] Cultures in the "Ethnological Present"

135

. moistureless winds and lack of surface water, there are great arid stretches
and deserts. From a southern promontory, India, to south China there
are tropical forests and grasslands, with river systems in which the major
populations live. A temperate to cool fringe, generally rugged in terrain
and including the Korea-Japan area, rounds out the broad picture.
Remnant food gatherers do survive in remote places. In the northern
parts of Siberia, some paleoasiatic peoples are wild-reindeer hunters and
fishermen. In the north Japan area, and formerly on nearby coasts of the
mainland, the Ainu and related peoples hunted, fished, and gathered wild
plant foods; remains of pit houses and other archaeological evidence suggest that at one time they may have covered Japan and extended into the
Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa). In inland Ceylon Island a cave-living people
called the Vedda were primarily gleaners, and a few rather similar peoples
are reported in hills of southeast India. On the southeast Asian mainland,
fastnesses of the Malay Peninsula rain forests also have gleaners: the
Semang and Sakai.
Asia vies with Africa in the extent of its herding populations, and has
a greater range of domesticated animals. Sheep and goats, cattle in favorable pasturelands, horses, camels in the driest zones, and reindeer in the
cold northern areas are the main animals involved. Other domestic animals
are mainly adjuncts to the agriculturalist, like the donkey or ass, the pig,
the southeast Asian water buffalo, and the habitat-specialized yak, the
shaggy cattle of the Himalayan "roof of the world." Thy' great hordes of
the central Asian pastoralists were noted as providing a major dynamic
in cultural history (Problem 19). Though the herding way of life tends
to show certain broad uniformities, such as the need to be mobile and the
tendency to aggregate in rather small, politically loose groups, there is
still room for great cultural variation. Yakut cattle herders, for example,
have carried their herds far north into the Lena River system, where they
must be kept more mobile ~han in lush pasturelands. The reindeer ranges
so far seasonally that the peoples concerned have to move their camps
great distances. The "house on a cart" is one of many types of dwelling
which illustrate cultural ad4ptation through these Asian zones.
Various types of fire clearing or dry cultivation occur. As expected,
these tend to be correlated rith rugged terrain and sparse populations, as
in many tropical localities. The diffusion of irrigated agriculture, and of
intensive general farming, 'has for the most part carried wherever the habitat
permits-though modern technology is currently expanding the earlier
farm boundaries here as els~where. Two great cropping zones are familiar:
one with wheat as the cer11ral crop, along with barley, rye, oats, and a
number of other grain, root, and fruit crops; the other with rice as the
central crop, with certain types of millets, peas, and tropical root and
fruit crops among its accompaniments. The former is distributed from

136

Culture in Space

Europe to west India and north China, and the latter from east India to
south China and Japan. The present-day Japanese people and culture, developing identity from various immigrant elements in southwest Japan
around 2,000 years ago, carried rice cultivation amazingly far north, considering its evidently tropical origins.
Bacon (1946) divides Asia into six main culture areas and four major
zones of "culture blend." But all are very broad categories, marked both
by internal complexity and by external overlapping. The difficulties of
trying to apply the culture area concept to Asia are at least matched when
Europe is considered. Such zones practically defy significant spatial definition except in terms of the multiple distributions of particular linguistic,
political, religious, and other elements (Problem 23). Moreover, there
are no simple answers to the questions raised in opening the discussion on
Eurasia as to the logical possibilities in terms of historical and distributional
principles. The historic development of urban nuclei in both Asia and
Europe, the emergence of modern nations, and the increasing tempo of
the industrial revolution which was initially centered in western Europe
render fluid the later cultural time-space picture, with its world-wide scope.

Review
Only the most sketchy delineation of culture in its spatial or distributional facets has been possible here. The final problem section, particularly, is designed more to present a way of thinking about peoples and
cultures in a regional sense than to give any depth of information. In later
problem sections, the theoretical questions associated with historical ~nd
distributional reconstructions will be dealt
, with more fully.

Collateral References
I

The general dynamics of,cultural distribution are usually,'stressed in texts

dealing with cultural anthropology, e.g., Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (1948),
Turney-High, H. H., General Anthropology (1949), Herskovits, M. J., Cultural
Anthropology (1955). An ambitious attempt to cover the total story of cultural
development and distribution is Linton, R., The Tree of Culture (1955). T_he
most definitive 'York on the relation of habitat to culture and society is Forde,
C. D., Habitat, Economy and Society (rev. ed. 1950); this includes summaries
of the ways of life of selected food-gathering, herding, and agricultural groups.
Further ethnic summaries on a world-wide basis are given in Murdock, G. P.,
Our Prim'itive Coniemporaries (1934) and Linton, R. (ed.), Most of the World
(1953).
The most important early compilation on the geography of culture is by

137

Collateral References

Ratzel (1885-1888). A notable critique of the problems of reconstructing culture history without written records is a monograph on "time perspective" by
Sapir (1916). Wissler presents a pioneering treatment of theory relating to cultural development and distribution (1923); see also his study of "the relation
of man to nature" in aboriginal America (1926). A book-length critique of
Wissler's culture area concept and other theories was offered shortly afterward
by Dixon (1928). Goldenweiser's "law of limited possibilities" and his other
significant ideas on culture distributions may be seen in two works (1930,
1933). The most extensive "culture element distribution" studies are found in
the University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology. An example of recent scholarship relating to distributional problems, in
this case possible contacts between Asia and America via the Pacific, is a series
of papers edited by Smith, M. W. (1953). An important symposium on human
utilization of the habitat is Thomas, W. L. (ed.), Man's Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth (Chicago, 1956).
The application of the culture area concept to North America is best
seen in Wissler (1920) and Kroeber (1939). For culture areas of South America see Steward (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians (1946-1950) and
Murdock (1951)., For African culture areas see Herskovits (1930) and Hambly
(1937) . African ethnology has a very extensive literature, particularly the product
of British and French scholars. For ethnic delineations in the Pacific region see
Keesing (1945) and Oliver (1951); here, too, the literature is very rich. Asian
culture definitions are essayed by Bacon and Hudson (1945) and revised by
Bacon (1946). The problem of delineating culture areas in so complex and
dynamic a setting as Europe is discussed by Lowie (1954)..'

i,
I

VI

Theories Relating to Culture,

Society, and Personality

THE FOCUS to this point has been strongly upon the

specifics of cultural development, distribution, and content: the descrip~
tive or historical emphasis spoken of earlier (Problem 3). It will now be
timely to turn to viewpoints and propositions about behavior (culture,
society, and the individual) which represent the generalizing or normative
scientific emphasis. This approach will bring to the fore the field or sub~
science of social anthropology. It will also call for exploratio,n of some of
the wider trends of scientific theory and method within which the anthro~
pological ideas concerned have their origins.
The body of current social anthropological theory can best be appreciated through a time-dimensional approach. The major systems of
thought which have emerged will be reviewed and critically examined in
their order of emergence. Almost every decade since the later nineteenth
century has been marked by significant new insights, much as an arq:tae- ologist cutting progressively from the surface breqks through deeper strata.
The major viewpoints or theoreticlll 'Ischools" to be dealt with, some of
which have already received mention,. are usuaily summed up by brief
labels: in historical sequence, they are "evolutionism," "historicalism" (or
"hfstoricism"), "difIusionism," "functionalism;'~ "configurationalism," and
various "psychological" and "social interactional" approaches.
Necessarily this survey 'will require considerable generalization of the
work of theorists in cultural anthropology. It will call for construction or
abstraction of a series of theoretical schemes or models representing prevailing modes of thought. No two anthropologists think exactly alike, or
use precisely th7 same operating concepts or symbols. The science is too
new, and the struggle to give sharp meanings to what are usually everyday
terms still too wide open, for any such rigid standardization, as, say, in
much of chemistry or botany. When some creative thinker formulates a
fresh approach, it is always possible to see in the earlier literature some,
statements where it was partially foreshadowed. Furthermore, present-day,

138

[25] Cultural and Social Evolutionism

139

anthropologists favor different approaches: some emphasize "historical"

interests, some "configurational" studies, and sO on.
The attempt is made here to present each viewpoint in its own formulated terms, and then to show how it has stood up or otherwise fared in
the face of professional criticism and in application to field study. Space
does not allow more than passing biographical reference to the individual
anthropological innovators; a reader habituated to going to reference works
such as Who's Who may readily gain that information. A reminder need
hardly be given that no final word has been spoken on these matters. Such
behavioral sciences as anthropology are in a highly dynamic state of development, and further break-throughs in insight are occurring continually.

Problem 25 . Cultural' and Social Evolutionism

Can great laws of cultural growth, or "progress," be isolated? What
criticisms were brought against nineteenth-century evolutionist thinkers
in the social scie'nces?
As anthropological theory relating to culture first took form, its major
goal was to establish if possible grand "laws" such as those that stood as
milestones in other sciences: Archimedes' law, Newton's law, Mendel's
law of inheritance. Early nineteenth-century thinkers groped particularly
after some touchstone idea or sequence which could, explain the total
/
panorama of human "progress."
The German scholar Klemm, for example, made a compilation of
customs to show how man had passed through successive stages of "savagery" and "tameness" to "freedom." Comte, often called the "father of
sociology," had man advancing from the "theological" through the "metaphysic31" to the "positive," or scientific. Buckle, in his History of Civilization in England (1857-1861), tried to account for man's advancement by
way of an interplay of f~ctors such as climate, diet, and physical type.
Bastian, a prodigious w~iter and museum collector, suggested that the
similarities in cultures everywhere were based on a common framework of
what he called "elementaky ideas."
By the 1860's such theorizing became channeled almost wholly into
an evolutionary framewo~k. The scholars concerned applied by analogy
to culture and society th~ same over-all pattern of thought which Darwin
postulated in his Origin df Species (1859) for organic evolution (Problem
4). Here seemingly was a/grand law which could explain the whole development of custom. It has often been said that in the mid-nineteenth-century
atmosphere, when biological evolution was gaining admittance as a critical
new "great idea," theory relating to culture and society could hardly have
had any other emphasis than an evolutionary one.

140

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

CONTEMPORARY CUSTOMS
191'>1 CENTURY
EUROPEANS
CIVILIZED

AUSTRALIAN
ABORIGINES, ETC.
SA VAGi:

BARBARIAN

1\

,;fI

"

CIVILIZ.ATION

"

I
I

SURVIVALS

,"/

<c_
:A

,'/

,,'~
,

"

,,\,'/

,1,1

%17-p

,/

,l

DEGENERATION,'
(RARE)
,-

.J...

I
I

""

SAVAGERY

Lf"
ORIGINS

The Evolutionary Interpretation of Culture. This model shows the

essential terminology and theoretical assumptions of the school.

The distinctive vocabulary of this approach makes possible almost

immediate recognition. Besides the key term evolution there is a preoccupation with origins and stages. Elements in modern cultures which appear
to persist from the distant past are survivals. Though there can be some
"degeneration," in which evolutionary "progress" gets setbacks, the trend in
cultural or social "organisms" is upward from the "simple" to the complex
or "heterogeneous." The great framework of stages is the threefold one
9f savagery, barbarism, and civilization': the first two represented not only
in the past but also in contemporary "primitive" cultures which have still
no~ evolved beyond one or other of these stag~s. The viewpoints involved
are plausible enough to have' wide credence in popular thought, and even
in some corners of science other than the social sciences- which have been
exposed to anthropological ideas.
The leading theorists of this "school" were practicillly all armchair
scholars who were indefatigable compilers of information on non-Western
peoples, but who had little firsthand contact with them in the field. Prior
to the 1870's, a number of sporadic ideas had been accumulating along
evolutionilry lines. A Swiss junst Bachhofen, for example, in his Miitterrecht ("mother-right"), published in 1861, suggested that the patrilineal
("father-right") descent system had been preceded by a matrilineal system.
Henry Maine, in his Ancient Law (1861), pictured the "territorial" tie
characteristic of modern political groups as originating with the early

[25] Cultural and Social Evolutionism

141

Greeks, and all previous societies as aggregated by "blood" or kin ties.

McLennan, in Primitive Marriage (1865), built up stages in the evolution
of marriage and the family, including what he called "bride-capture."
The most notable compiler of the time calling himself an anthropologist was Edward B. Tylor, an English scholar who was an associate of
Darwin, Galton, and other leading thinkers of the time, and is often called
the "father of ethnology." His outstanding work, Primitive Culture (1871),
offered the first full-length and careful treatment of the evolutionary point
of view, and is a classic of the science. Another key work was Ancient
Society (1877), by the American anthropologist Lewis Morgan, which
offered a complicated classification and terminology relating to the evolution of family and kinship. Numerous other evolutionary writers filled up
anthropological bookshelves of the time, among- whom perhaps the most
widely known is Sir James Frazer, whose thirteen volumes titled The
Golden Bough (published from 1890 on) deal primarily with the origin
and nature of religion. This theoretical viewpoint was predominantly an
interest of European scholars. Though a few American anthropologists of
the time wrote papers with this orientation, Morgan alone attempted to
work out this line of theory at all fully; American research of the time was
concentrated on field work, particularly among Indians, and on hard-headed
factual reconstruction of the past especially through archaeology.
The evolutionary viewpoint may be appreciated by quoting Tylor
(1871):
/
[By] simply placing [the European] nations at one end of the social series and
savage tribes at the other, [and] arranging the rest of mankind between these
limits .. ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilisation . . . [representing] a transition from the savage state to our own [I, 26-27] .

And again Morgan (1877):

As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in a state of
savagery, other portions in I a state of barbarism, and still other portions in a
state of civilization, it seem~ equally so that these three distinct conditions are
connected with each other in a . . . necessary sequence of progress. . .
[The] domesticated .institutions of the barbarous, and even of the savage, ancestors of mankind are still exemplified in portions of the human family with such
completeness that, with the ~xception of the strictly primitive period, the several
stages of this progress are tolerably well preserved [pp. 3, 7].
I

Morgan's scheme places J'Lower Status of Savagery as involving the "infancy" of man. Middle Sayagery starts with acquisition of a fish subsistence
and knowledge of the use:of fire; Upper Savagery with the bow and arrow;
Lower Barbarism with the invention of pottery; Middle Barbarism with
domestication of animals; Upper Barbarism wit4..4Delting of iron; and
Civilization with the alphabet.
V

142

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

This nineteenth-century evolutionary approach is often spoken of, in

retrospect, as a kind of "superhistory" or theory of "progress." The "significant cultural system" being studied tends to be always the totality of culture
from origins on. This viewpoint took little account of the specific facts
relating to cultures as regional systems or local wholes. Moreover, it used
a crude comparative method to locate and extract supposed "survivals"
in the modern bodies of custom over the world, and then fitted these
arbitrarily into "stage" sequences back to origins. Where evidence was
vague to nonexistent, evolutionists did not hesitate to make up connecting
links: for example, marriage systems originated supposedly from an original
stage of "primitive promiscuity" (which has no actuality among humans,
and is rare if existent among his near animal collaterals). A "pre-economic"
man browsing like an animal without organized handling of resources, or
a man having initial religious experience through speculations about the
dead, or feeling awe before the unknown, or having his magic fail, or making a mistake in language-all these are also evolutionary figments.
Evolution, as seen by these scholars, was here a single or unilinear
thread throughout cultural history. It was rooted in a vague psychic unity
by which all human groups were supposed to have the same po~ential for
evolutionary development, though some were further ahead than others
because of climate, soil, and other factors. Little was said about'the interrelation of groups in terms of the specifics of invention and diffusion, so
that an impression is gained of cultures having vague multiple origins as
a result of each having tendencies to evolve through the cultural and social
stages. "Survivals" were the "rudimentary organs of social groups," e.g.,
old folklore themes and "superstitions" might persist even in civilized
groups, just as an appendix or an internal tail appeared to be organi_c
survivals with little or no functional ill1portance in the modern human
body.
This whole viewpoint has little credibility when set against presentday ttnthropological and other, knowledge of cultural and social origins,
development, and dynamics, as shown elsewhere in- t1le text: T~e conceptual
atmosphere has almost no reality at all to the research worker who goes
into the field and sees cultures as working wholes having their specific
local histories and non-Western peoples as human beings 'rather than as
repositories of supposed past cultural and social stages. It would hardly
be fair, considering the psychOlogical knowledge of the time, to expect the
role of the indiviCIual in group-patterned behavior to be understood; but
it is anothet of the significant areas of study which evolutionary viewpoints
did not even foreshadow. It remained for later schools of thought to define
better such terms as "primitive" and "civilized," to refine the concept of
"psychic unity," and to make more critical use of "the comparative
IIlethod."

143
The first major attack on the basic assumptions of the evolutionists
was made by Franz Boas, in an anthropologically famous paper read at
a scientific meeting in 1896, with the title "The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology." He points out that similarities between
cultural elements are not necessarily proof of historical connections and
common origins. A much more realistic approach for discovering uniformities in cultural process, he says, is to launch scientific inquiry as to the
historic origin of specific cultural elements, and as to how they "assert
themselves in various cultures." This, he says, calls for
[25] Cultural and Social Evolutionism

another method, which in many respects, is much safer [than evolutionist comparison]. A detailed study of customs in their relation to the total culture of
the tribe practising them, in connection with an investigation of their geographical distribution among neighboring tribes, affords us almost always with a
means of determining with considerable accuracy the historical causes that led
to the formation of the customs in question and to the psychological processes
that were at work in their development. . . . We have in this method a means
of reconstructing the history of the growth of ideas with much greater accuracy
than the generalizations of the comparative method will permit. [1896 (republished 1940, p. 276)].

It was not long before even numbers of the European evolutionary sl::holars
were publicly recanting. Historicalism, as Boas began to define it here, took
the stage, as will be seen under the next problem heading.
/

EXAMPLE.

THE CHANGING ECONOMIC LIFE OF ALASKAN ESKIMOS

Alaskan Eskimos had an economic base variously emphasizing hunting

of marine mammals or of inland caribou. European whaling became an important' factor in the area from about 1850 to 1900, and many Eskimos were
essential participants in this activity. A kind of "Golden Age" of work and
trade ensued, in which a reformulated Eskimo culture became, so to speak, an
adjunct to the European whalebone corset industry. When whaling dwindled,
Eskimo rifles decimated the caribou herds.
As a new basis for Eskimo livelihood, the government from 1891 to 1902
imported some 1,300 Siberian reindeer, together with Lapps from Scandinavia
to demonstrate reindeer herding. According to Rainey (1941), Eskimo groups
learned the new technique~ with remarkable rapidity. With their strong sense
of property, they soon had 'thriving private herds, and by 1931 Alaska had over
a million reindeer. An abo~tive government experiment in making herds "communal" brought about thei~ decimation, as Eskimos lapsed once more, secretly,
into hunting reindeer whicr they no longer regarded as their own. Today there
are about 25,000 reindeer. The Eskimos still hunt marine animals, and continue to be predominantly meat eaters.
The cultural sequence here summarized marks the partial shift of these
Eskimos from "hunting" to "herding." No vague evolutionary impulse was in-

144

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

volved, but rather a specific historic set of events brought about by acculturative
contacts.

During a generation or so, the generalizing approach represented by

the evolutionary viewpoint tended to remain in the background. For nearly
all professionals, labels such as "evolution," "stages," "the comparative
method," became taboo. To the older generation, used to criticizing this
popularly persisting viewpoint, these were anathema. More recently, however, with old controversies and emotional associations fading into the past
and younger scholars on the scene, a tendency shows for this approach to
be selectively revived, though in a much more realistic and critical atmosphere, and taking full account of multilinear development. Expositions of
the dynamics of long-term cultural growth, based jointly on archaeological
fact and on hypothetical reconstructions which attempt to generalize history, are reappearing, as in the ideas of Steward and Braidwood (Problem
18). Some have called this more sophisticated revival of theory relating
to total-culture development a "neo-evolutionary" viewpoint.
Oddly enough, the ideas of Morgan on "ancient society," though so
soon relegated to the background by American scholars, have meantime
shown great persistence as part of the Communist dialectic. Engels and
other Marxians used Morgan's scheme as the basis for their treatment of
primitive societies. He continues, therefore, to be an ideological "hero"
in the Soviet intellectual system, though Russian anthropologists have been
recently revising some of his ideas.
In 1945 an American anthropologist, Leslie White, surprised his colleagues with an energetic one-man campaign to revive the main ideas of
the evolutionists, particularly those of Morgan. Stimulated by counterstatements in the professional journals, he expres~ed the view that Boas'
historicalism had drawn a "red herring" across the true path of anthropological theory, and attacked most of the modern viewpoints in cultural
ant7ropology, including the "psychologically" _oriented inter~st in the indiVidual. A return should be made, he claimed Q 949), to what he dubbed
"culturology," the estabIish11lent of generalizations about ,cultural evolution. His public presentations, reaching considerable audiences, have gone
beyond the older evolutionism by trying to establish indic~s of progress on
the basis of increasingly efficient use of human effort through technological
control.
White's viewpoint has been la stimulus to fresh thought. His theory
of progress represents an exercise in great generalization about the dynamics of history in the same tradition as generalizations attempted by
several well-known scholars in other fields, e.g., Pareto's theory of "residues," Toynbee's "challenge-and-response." Among other anthropologists
who have recently offered interpretations of total cultural perspectives are
Childe (1951), Coon (1954), Howells (1954), and Linton (1955). Such

[26] Historicalism

145

theorizing is so much a part of scholarly curiosity that it will undoubtedly

continue in anthropology as in other areas of knowledge. Indeed, it has
a particularly valid place within the framework of anthropology, which
looks at culture and society in their wholeness.

Problem 26 . Historicalism
What were the assumptions of early twentieth-century anthropologists
who favored what was called a "historical" approach? How valid is the
"historical" method today?
Boas, in turning anthropological attention toward specific analysis of
culture history, appears to have been influenced strongly by two scientific
traditions accumulating outside the evolutionary viewpoint: one a German
"geographic" approach, the other the American "field work" approach.
Trained in physics and geography in Germany, he was a product of the
first tradition. In the American setting he had as colleagues the
factually oriented staff workers of the Bureau of American Ethnology and
the museums (Problem 4). In 1888 he had major responsibilities for
handling the anthropological exhibits for the great fair at St. Louis, where
the displays illustrated different peoples and their customs.
The historical method, as promoted by Boas and others following
him, does not mean just study of the past, as "history" tends to connote
popularly. It can be applied just as much to observation of the present.
The historical viewpoint focuses attention on unique, or specific, objects
and events in time and in place. In ethnology it deals with cultural elements
as they have actually existed and may exist today, recording their chronological' and spatial story. Boas insisted on "the consideration of every
phenomenon as the result of historical happenings." As he put it further
(1927), in discussing pa~ticular cultural systems, each culture represents
a "historical growth" shaped by "the social and geographic environment"
in which the people concerned is placed, and by the way it "develops the
cultural material that com~s into its possession from the outside or through
its own creativeness" (p. 4-).
Again the terminology of this "school" of thought is distinctive enough
to give ready identificatiop, and most terms have already been used freely.
The minimum significant; unit of culture capable of being isolated by observation in time and spa;ce is a trait. Interrelated traits group into a traitcomplex. The historic perspectives of culture involve invention and diffusion, resulting in a distribution of cultural elements at anyone time not
only into cultures but into more or less clear-cut culture areas. The empha sis on culture as a regional phenomenon, indeed, would have made it no
surprise if this ElPproach had been called "distributionalism" just as much

146

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

as "historicalism." Though the term "comparative method" was not in

favor, it will be noted that the tracing of specific units in cultural settings
of past and present involves constant exercises in cultural comparison.
Historicalists counted their approach one of pragmatic science, and
on the whole were suspicious of broad generalizations. Yet Boas, Alfred
Kroeber, Clark Wissler, and other leading thinkers of the time kept on
attaining broad insights which they recorded, even when these aroused
controversy. Boas, particularly, led opposition to what have been called
deterministic theories, as with racial, geographic, and economic determinisms already discussed; his book The Mind of Primitive Man (1911) represents the vanguard of such criticisms. Kroeber, of the University of California, in a well-known paper called "The Superorganic" (1917) put
forward the view that culture is a "phenomenon of its own, behaving according to its own laws," and so forms a kind of superorganic heritage capable of being studied apart from the individuals who are its initiators and
carriers. Wissler, in his Man and Culture (1923), does take account of individual learning from childhood, but sees culture merely as a set of "conditioned reflexes" which can be studied in their own right.
Wissler, in addition to his culture area theory already, discussed,
elaborated the idea that culture falls into patterns. A culture pattern, to
him, is a grouping of trait-complexes into a larger organization of distinctive features which characterize a culture. The patterns of Eskimo culture,
he said, comprise their whole series of adjustments to the 'arctic way of
life, and those of American culture include the use of machines, rapid
communication, purposive education through schools. Furthermore, from
his experience of sorting out materials for museum case displays in the
American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was curator
of anthropology, he came to the conclus\on that a universal culture pattern
exists. A list he developed of universal categories of culture (Problem 33)
touched off extensive discussion of the pioblem of why all cultures share
the );ame general framework ,(Chapter VII). In its extreme forms, historicalism produced a unit ,treatment of
culture which gave it to later- eyes a spuriously objective character. This
has already been discussed (Problem 23). Statistical handling of traits
particularly gave an impression that cultural distributions occurred in a
mechanical way. "Reification," or treating culture as if it had an in depend,ent existence (Problem 8), aroused no pangs of scientific conscience. The
criticisms which I later psychologists were to bring against the so-called
behaviorism of Watson, Pavlov, and others, current at this time in individual psychology, apply aptly to this approach to cultural behavior-it
had an atomistic, rigid, externalized viewpoint which missed much of the
rich texture of human action and motivation. It treated the individual much
like a passive m_atrix upon which culture, the active element, was impressed. '.

147

[26] Historicalism

To a point it represented an anthropological type of determinism which

was as extreme as any coming from other fields of knowledge-what might
be summed up as cultural determinism,
Historicalism, nevertheless, made rich and still valid contributions to
the development of anthropological science. It laid a most healthy stress
upon identifying the component elements of culture through objective observation and field work, still the essential basis of cultural anthropology.
It stressed the identity of "a culture," and the need for studying specific
cultures in terms of the significant behaviors involved. It imposed critical
rules for historical reconstruction: tracing (where this was feasible) the
actual events of invention and diffusion replaced the loose evolutionary
habit of putting bits and pieces of cultural behavior together from all over
the world to make a sequence. In classifying traits it began to isolate principles of order, such as patterns and areas. A considerable sorting out was
made of the interplay of forces involved in cultural growth and change:
the positive factors of habitat, the broad unity of biological-psychological
potential, the creative and communicative processes at the cultural and
social levels.
EXAMPLE.

THE PYRAMID IN THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLDS

The pyramidal form of architectural structures in Egypt and other parts

of the Old World and also in Middle America has been one
basis for assertions
/
that the two areas had a historical connection (Problem 23). Some observers
have even claimed that associated Maya sculptures show elephants' trunks and
other Old World motifs indicative of contact and diffusion.
In Egypt, the classic pyramid is primarily a tomb. In Middle America it
is the bfse of a temple structure, with a stairway leading up to it-though by
no means all temples have such a pyramid-shaped base, or indeed a raised base
at all. The "functional" contexts and meanings are therefore quite different, as
well as the more specific e~ements of form. Moreover, children, given blocks
in the nursery, may repeatedly "invent" the pyramidal form. It offers tempting
formal principles of stability, balance, and symmetry which favor operation of

i
_Parallelism. The pyraJid form was apparently invented independently
in the Old World (e.g.!, Egyptian tomb) and in the New World (e.g.,
Maya temple platform).

, i

I
I

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

Goldenweiser's "law of limited possibilities." Anthropologists, particularly

specialists in American studies, have therefore been critical of attempts to read
historical connections into what they regard as an instance of parallelism between Old and New World cultural elements.

The historical method dominated cultural anthropology during the

first three decades of the twentieth century. New leads in cultural theory
were by then emerging, their exponents including a number of the scholars
who were thoroughly steeped in the historical approach. But before this
is made clear, a kind of aside in the drama of theory has to be presented.
So-called diffusionistic schools must take the stage briefly.

Problem 27 . DifJusionism
How effectively can study of the geographic spread and distribution
of specific customs open the way to knowledge of culture history and
process?
The American approach to "diffusion" was an academically restrained
one. Scholars in the United States were dealing almost wholly with cultural
traditions without written records. Apart from the memories of living informants they had to depend upon archaeological evidence, historically
dubious analysis of oral folklore, and even more tricky distri}mtional reconstructions. As a result, studies of actual diffusion sequences were confined almost wholly to regional and local reconstructions: the interrelations
of culture areas, the distribution of identifiable customs over larger or
smaller segments of the world of culture, and the ever-present problem of
New World cultural growth apparently independently of the Old World,as just exemplified.
\
I
European scholars, however, were soon using the historical approach
in attempts to make a total reconstruction of world cultural history, just
as pr,eviously they had approached this problem through evolutionism.
Schools of thought which emphasize this viewpoint have b~en called "diffusionistic." Two such schools Stand out enough to be discussed here, bqth
having their main popularity in the 1920's: one developed in England, the
other in Germany.
The English type of diffusion was highly amateurish, and is referred
to here primarily as a warning to the uncritical. Elliott Smith, a very com-petent student of ~ the human brain; became interested in social anthropology. He knd a few associates, mainly at the University of Manchester,
were impressed by the archaeological findings of Petrie and others in
Egypt. As they examined cultural data elsewhere in the world, they came
to the conclusion that Egyptians- must have traded far and wide for gold,
pearls, and other valuables, and at the same time carried their inventions

149
through Asia, and even beyond via tJ:!e Pacific Islands to Middle America.
Without any critical appraisal of the great complexes of behavior involved,
they claimed that Egyptian customs, such as the sun cult, kingship, mummification, and megalithic construction, and even earlier elements such
as agriculture and improved working of flint, had been carried widely over
the world by these "Children of the Sun." Works in this tradition, such
as ones by Smith (1915) and Perry (1923), plausible as they may seem,
exercise none of the careful standards of comparison which have been discussed (Problem 23). This viewpoint gained no following even among
British anthropologists outside its small circle, and it has subsequently
withered away. It is sometimes called the "Manchester," or heliocentric
("sun-centered"), school.
Far more scholarly, and hence difficult to characterize briefly, has
been the German school, though it, too, is now obsolescent. This type of
diffusionism traces back to the geographic tradition of Ratzel, mentioned
above. Its special approach to world culture bistory was called by its
practitioners the culture historical method. Graebner (1911), one of its
main formulators, indicated its major task to be the tracing, historically
and geographically, of combinations of basic elements, called Kulturkreise,
from which world cultural growth has been woven. A single Kulturkreis,
variously anglicized as "culture complex," "culture circle," or "culture
stratum," is a cluster of meaningfully associated traits which can be isolated
and identified in culture history. The earliest Kulturkreise were sought
through meticulous analysis and comparison of what appear to be the
most primitive cultures. For tbis purpose, said these culture-bistoricalists,
"irrelevant form" is the best criterion of relationship-far more important,
for example, than modern contiguity or closeness (Problem 23).
The outstanding figure among exponents of this school was a Catholic
scholar, Father Wilhelm Schmidt, whose base was in Vienna. The English
translation of his work, titled The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology
(1939), gives the non-GenTIan-speaking reader access to its theories. In
sum, the modern cultural scene is said to result from the complex diffusion
of elements from nine main early "culture complexes" (the Kulturkreise):
three Primitive or Archaic I( with culture elements variously represented
today among [a] Pygmies of Africa and Asia, [b] Arctic Primitives, and
[c] some of the Australian' Aborigine and comparable peoples); three
Primary (represented in [d~ widely spread "higher" food gatherers, [e]
pastoral nomads, and [f] ga~dening groups with certain matrilineal descent
rules); and three Secondary, all agriculturalists, two of which practice
other specialized forms of matrilineal descent, and the third having patrilineal descent, as "at the dawn of written history."
Though this looks somewhat like the schemes of cultural evolution,
its exponents insisted on the historicity of the method. Critics, however,
[27] DifJusionism

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

have pointed out that the "culture circles" were generalized composites,
and no real attempt was made to show how they originated, when and
where they existed as entities in the past, and how they supposedly diffused
to widely separated areas. Despite the wealth of scholarship which went
into their construction, they have a hypothetical character that, for nonadherents (including perhaps all American professional anthropologists),
gives a sense of unreality. This approach, sometimes called the "Vienna"
or "Anthropos" school (after the anthropological journal Anthropos,
which it publishes), has recently been declared inadequate even by its
former major European exponents, who are realizing that a much wider
range of problems have significance for anthropological attention.

Problem 28 . Functionalism
Why should stress have been laid by theorists since the 1920's upon
understanding the "function" which each element of behavior has within
the total culture of which it is a part?
The theoretical developments now to be traced cannot be properly
understood if treated in terms of anthropology alone. As twentieth-century
scholarship advanced, the long-standing tendency to treat elements of experience as if they had an objective unit existence began to show major
inadequacies. Our Western languages gave difficulty here,' for they were
chock-full of unit concepts and contrasts: mind and matter, body and soul,
time and space, atoms, chemical elements, behavioral traits. Such a new
and necessary point of view, for example, as Einstein's relativity theory
not only shook the scientific world but also bulged beyond familiar langu_age
symbols.
I
The newer frame of reference,- carried partly in fresh concepts, emphasized the interrelations of elements -of experience, and the significant
combinations of elements comprising whole systems. By the 1920's and
1930's, every field of knowledge from science. to philosophy was being
strongly affected by these viewpoints. In the philosopny of science, for
example, A. N. Whitehead (as in his Science and the Modern World, 1926)
called the new approach "organismic." Others have calied it "holistic,"
"integrative," "functional" in the sense that all the parts of a system do
something, i.e., have a significant function in relation to the whole. In
psychology, as :many will know, 'the so-called Gestalt psychology broke
in vigorously upon the older types of behaviorism.
Such a viewpoint had been foreshadowed in the work of the American
historicalists, from the very nature of cultural materials. Traits were obviously linked into complexes, cultures patterned into wholes, all cultures.
showed a broad universal pattern. But the theory of such connections

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[28] Functionalism

was, on the whole, left implicit. Bringing it out explicitly came to be the
task of two British scholars who have given their names to what are now
generally called functional schools of social anthropology: one a Britishnaturalized anthropologist of Polish background, Bronislaw Malinowski;
the other Cambridge-educated, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown.
It appears significant that each scholar, working independently, brought
out in the same year, 1922, his initial field monograph defining a functional
approach to the study of culture. Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western
Pacific (a study of the place of an.elaborate system of gift exchange, the
Kula, in ~he Trobriand Islands and neighboring areas along the northeast
coast of New Guinea), and Radcliffe-Brown's The Andaman Islanders
(exploring the meaning of certain group ceremonials among the people
of these. islands in the Indian Ocean), are both recognized as classics.
Each of these scholars, highly individualistic, rarely in personal contact,
and more or less rivals for the allegiance of student minds, produced in
due course a quite different system of theory. They employed markedly
different concepts, opening the way to possible confusion, yet easily
identifiable.
EXAMPLE.

THE KULA EXCHANGES OF THE TROBRIAND ISLANDERS

Malinowski's now classic case of the Kula relates to an exchange of

ceremonial goods among a series of ethnically different /communities at the
east end of New Guinea and on adjacent island groups. These form geographically a rough "ring." Around this ring, in a clockwise direction, move as
principal trade objects long necklaces of red shell; armlets of white shell move
counterclockwise. These are passed between fixed men "partners" and the whole

I
Kula Exchanges in S01theast New Guinea.
Objects ceremonially e~changed are armlets
made of the spiral trochus shell (left) and
necklaces primarily ofl,pink spondylus shell
discs. After MalinowsK,i.

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

forms a closed circuit. Surrounded by elaborate social and magic activities

of traditional character, the transactions are called Kula. In an area otherwise
beset by exclusiveness and war, the "Kula ring" ties all these peoples by way of
such ceremonial gifts between neighbors into a system of mutual interrelationships. Kula activities tend to penetrate all aspects of their life: visiting, feasts,
ceremonies, art display, religious activities, the status of kin groups and individuals, opportunities for trade. An inquiry, therefore, into the function of the Kula,
i.e., what it does, calls for an examination of its total meaning and context as
regards each of the cultures concerned and also the intercultural relations involved.
Up to this time, cultural anthropology had been largely addressing
itself to anthropologists. Malinowski, a brilliantly vocal person, and a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, addressed
himself boldly to intellectual circles at large, writing books on topic after
topic, mainly using his excellent Trobriand field materials for illustration.
To the annoyance of colleagues, he not only flailed all other approaches
but also claimed to be initiating for the first time a real "science of culture."
Every culture, he said (1931), is a working whole, an "integrated" unity,
in which every element has a functional contribution to make. The "function" of any "institution," that is, an organized system of activity, is the
part it plays within the interrelated whole in fulfilling human purposes or
"needs." In developing this need concept he tried out several schemes, but
usually he distinguished three types or levels of needs (or "imperatives")
which had to be met by all cultures, hence were universal:
Primary or biological needs (or imperatives): procreation, nutrit}on, defense and protection, and so on (see also Problem 33)
Derived or instrumental needs (or imperatives), necessary to organi,?:ed
activity: economic organization, law, education
Integrative or synthetic needs (or imperatives of mental and moral integration): knowledge, magic and religion, art, play
/ To his death in 1942, Malinowski was a controversial figure. He influenced profoundly an oncoming generation of -anthropologists. His central
concept of functional analysis rapidly became general property, and his
expositions of anthropological viewpoints relating to law, religion, economics, psychoanalysis, and other collateral fields remain highly provocative. On the other hand, he made overrigid his conceptual system, e,g., ih
overstressing tht? coherence and i~tegration of culture, in shutting his eyes
to the val~dity of historical and distributional studies, in neglecting "form"
through emphasis on "function." His classification of "needs" could hardly
be the final word on biological and cultural motivations. Yet it stimulated
interest in the concept of "derived," or culturally shaped, drives (Problem
30). Malinowski largely carried the battle in anthropology for the scientific
right to generalize from observed behaviors to postulated interrelations of,

[28] Functionalism

153

cultural elements, to their meanings, and to motivations underlying them.

While Malinowski built his system of thought around the concept of
culture, Radcliffe-Brown made the concept of society central. This scholar
held professorships successively at Capetown, South Africa, Sydney, Australia, the University of Chicago, and Oxford University, so that his views
were widely disseminated. He called his approach a science of social anthropology, or of "comparative sociology"-sociology as a separate social
science having had until recently in British scholarship very little distinctiveness from anthropology, economics, or social philosophy. The "function" of an element of culture, he says in one of his rather rare publications
(1935), is "the part it plays in the social life as a whole, and therefore
the contribution it makes to the maintenance of the structural continuity."
To understand this statement, it will be well to go back to one of
the acknowledged sources of Radcliffe-Brown's point of view: the French
"sociologist" Durkheim. In one of his anthropologically oriented works,
translated under the English title Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1915), Durkheim used materials on Australian Aborigines and other
"primitives" to suggest that the early social group, in worshiping a god
in the form of a totem, was really "worshiping itself" and so reinforcing
its collective identity and continuity. In this speculative re-creation by
Durkheim of the supposed origin of religion, there was an insight which
foreshadowed the functional method. In seeking the meaning of such a
ceremonial in the contribution it made to social identity ,and continuity he
was offering a generalization as to what it does, i.e., i(s function.
Radcliffe-Brown, in his Andaman Islands study (referred to near the
beginning of this section), gave what is sometimes called a "neo-Durkheimian" interpretation to Andamanese gatherings for feasting, dancing, and
ceremonial. Their function, he said, is to contribute to the maintenance of
the social structure, that is, of the established interrelations among individuals, hence to what he called social integration. In generalizing this
point of view, he frequeptly used analogies with biological organisms,
speaking of a society in terms of its social morphology (structure) and
social physiology (functional "laws"); while he did not deal with individuals
and their needs or drives,! he did speak of "necessary conditions of existence" to meet the survivaliinterests of a society. In this sense he sometimes
spoke of culture as an adaptive system in which each element has its special
functions contributing to survival. This rather formal set of concepts, the
drift of which at least cari, be sensed from the foregoing, was to influence
strongly some later theoties in social anthropology, and the behavioral
sciences more generally, in which "social structure" and "interaction" are
stressed (Problem 31).
Unlike Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown had thorough respect for dynamic studies, and counted valid a search for "laws of cultural evolution."

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

In one recent statement (1951) he compared social "laws" with laws of

physical science, noting that, though in a historical sense one cannot predict that a man standing on a high place will fall off, one can predict
what will happen to him if he falls; in this sense, a search for generalized
processes underlying historical events is justified. Radcliffe-Brown coined
a term, diachronic, for a viewpoint which looks at culture and society over a
span of time. This contrasts with a synchronic viewpoint involving a single
time level or cross-section analysis.
Malinowski tended to look at culture as a tightly integrated wholethough he did admit that individuals might break the institutionalized rules
of their culture. Radcliffe-Brown, however, took formal note in his conceptual system of the fact that some societies might be well integrated,
others less so. Durkheim had noted this, and had a term eunomie, or
"healthy structure," for the state of well-being of a social group which
had order and integrity, and a related term anomie, for the absence of these
characteristics. Radcliffe-Brown felt that these were matters of degree, so
that he modified them to eunomia (tending toward "healthy" social integration) , and dysnomia (tending toward an unintegrated state of society).
He also added concepts of euphoria and dysphoria to express the emotional
states involved, the one emphasizing a happy sense of order, harmony,
consistency, and the other unpleasant feelings of malaise, conflict, even
breakdown. It should be noted that these pairs of terms do not refer to
"good" and "bad" in an evaluative way, but are scientific indicators respectively of a functional equilibrium or of dysfunction. A small, isolated
society with a homogeneous population might tend to be highly eunomic;
our own sprawling society is extensively dysnomic though still having
essential social integration.
This system of thought was an important pioneering effort, and mosf
of its concepts have become widely used, in'the United States and elsewhere
as well as in the British world. But it was rigid and general, allowing many
important problems to escape through its net, e.g., the relation of social
structclre to the individual, the relation of society.tp culture, the more detailed dynamics of change. Its eJIlphasis on the concepts related to society
have fostered closer ties between anthropologists and sociologists. But
the absorption of many of its followers with problems of sqcial structure
has tended to stand in the way of their keeping up with other fresh insights
on cultural and personal behavior. Studies of social systems still provide ~
the main motifs of :British social anthropology in the United Kingdom and
in overseas centers. Here the momentum of ideas pioneered by Malinowski
and Radcliffe-Brown has been carried into important continuing work in
this field by their former students, notably in British zones of Africa and
the Pacific. Some recent British works, however, such as those by Firth
(1951a), and Nadel (1951), show interest in wider lines of inquiry as

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[29] Configurationalism

well. A published series of radio talks. by British anthropologists (EvansPritchard and others, 1954) gives a good introduction to their contemporary points of view.
The concept of "function" is being subject to much further study and
refinement in anthropology and other behavioral sciences. Linton, for example (1940), distinguished the more general category of function into
use, or inherent usability of a cultural element regardless of cultural context: an ax for chopping wood; a more general context of meaning in an
immediate cultural setting: the ax employed for cutting out canoes; and a
wider context of function: the ax in the total setting of the culture concerned, in which it might give an axman prestige or be twirled in a dance
performance.
It will be noted, again, that the uses of the term "function" in the
two pioneering systems just examined are different from the use of the
term in mathematics, where two elements may show a fixed functional
relationship of covariance. In human behavior the "variables" are so complex that such precise definition of functional relation among elements
can rarely be spelled out with any marked predictive value. A useful distinction has been made by the sociologist Merton between manifest and
latent function: the first being intended and recognized by the people themselves (e.g., the uses of the ax), the second being revealed only through
scientific analysis, i.e" the meanings that the scientist assigns to behavior.
An anthropologist, Spiro (1953), has elaborated this distinction by suggesting that each may fall into subtypes, of which his main ones are (1)
teleologic, that is, functions connected with ends or consequences, as in
social and individual welfare; (2) genetic, that is, the covariation of interdependent variables, as referred to above; and (3) configurational, that
is, involving as in the Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown senses the interdependence of a whole system of elements.

Problem 29 . Configur~tionalism
Why has there been stres1s since the 1930's on treatment of cultures
as more or less unique and integrated wholes? What conceptual and
methodological problems does, such an approach pose?
An analogy might help' to locate major lines of emphasis in theory
to this point. If one were to c~)llsider an automobile, the evolutionary approach would have represented an attempt to generalize the origins and
development to date of autorJobiles, over and above such historic details
as particular trade brands and individual vehicle designs. Historicalism
might be exaggerated somewhat by picturing all the parts of an automobile
placed as units in juxtaposition in front of us. Functionalism puts the parts

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

together in their relationships, and an automobile as a whole vehicle can

be seen. Our knowledge, however, is not yet complete; we have to ask,
further, "What makes it go-and where is it going?"
Some social thinkers prior to this time had pictured a culture or
society as having a kind of "spirit," "Soul" or "Genius" which made it
different from others. Spengler, for example, spoke of "great destiny ideas"
which dominated the ways of life of Greece, the West, and other civilizations. The sociologist Sumner had cut through the atmosphere of mysticism
which pervaded much of this thought to apply the term ethos to what
seemed to be the dominant set or direction of a culture. It remained, however, for anthropological analysis to give these general insights a substance
in terms of the study of cultural wholes.
A first name to require attention here is that of Edward Sapir, founder
of no school or theoretical system as such, but brilliant pioneer of practically the whole range of modern problems in social anthropology. A
student of Boas, he had written a definitive work on the possibilities and
limitations of historical reconstruction through trait analysis: Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture (1916). His major early studies,
however, were in the field oflanguage, and his book on Language (1921)
contains many ideas which he applied later to cultural behavior in general.
As with the grammar of language, he asserted, behavior has an unconscious
patterning which ordinarily is not brought to mind. The distinctive patterns
provide a predominant style in culture, e.g., the marshaling of thought
in English has possibilities and limitations different from thinking or writing in Latin. In an experimental paper of 1924, with the curious title
"Culture, Genuine and Spurious," he contrasted well-integrated and consistent bodies of cultural behavior with ones which lack harmonious pat..;
terns and deeply shared meanings, henc~ have a "spurious" quality when
labeled "a culture."
From his study of the symbolic chanfcter of language communication,
Sapi1 also developed the idea, noted above, that all cultural behavior is
symbolic. That is, it is based on "meanings" shared an~ communicated
among individual members ofl the society concerned (Problem 5). Even
to the extent that two individuals might share common understandingshanging by the same strap on a subway train, exchanging a meaningful
wink-they exhibit the essential qualities of cultural behavior. This line
of analysis led Sapir to present squarely to his anthropological colleagues
the need for bringing the individual within the scope of their professional
reference-!instead of leaving him, as they were accustomed to put it, "to
the psychologist." In a series of papers, written especially from 1927 to
1934, and in his teaching program of the time, first at the University of
Chicago and later at Yale University, he offered brilliant delineations of
the relation between culture and individual behavior.

[29] Configurationalism

157

That culture is a "superorganic, impersonal whole" is a "useful enough

methodological principle to begin with," he says (1932). But such a view
"becomes a serious deterrent in the long run" to the more dynamic study
of the "genesis and development of cultural patterns." The reason is that
the latter "cannot realistically be disconnected from those organizations
of ideas and feelings which constitute the individual." The so-called culture
of a group, as ordinarily treated by the anthropologist, is essentially a
systematic list of behavior patterns which "may be illustrated in the actual
behavior of all or most of the individuals" concerned. The "true locus,"
however, of "these processes which, when abstracted in a totality, constitute
culture" is not in the "theoretical community of human beings known as
society," for the term "society" is "itself a cultural construct." Rather, he
says (1932),
the true locus of culture is in the interactions of specific individuals and, on
the subjective side, in the world of meanings which each one of these individuals
may unconsciously abstract for himself from his participation in these interactions [pp. 432-435].
From this viewpoint, Sapir reiterates in another paper (1934), the
cultures so carefully described in anthropological monographs are not
"truly objective entities." They are "abstracted configurations of idea and
action patterns," which have "endlessly different meanings for the various
individuals" in the group concerned. Here we see not only enough intellectual dynamite to blow up many an assumption in earlier anthropological
work, but also a fresh outlook on behavior, culture, society, and personality which was to be profoundly influential. A number of Sapir's papers
have fortunately been collected into one volume since his death in 1939
(Mandelbaum, 1949).
Another of Boas' students, Ruth Benedict, was following up the ideas
implied by Sapir's term "c~nfigurations," used above. Throughout her
career a member of the anthropology staff at Columbia University, and
a poet as well as an anthropologist, she derived from her studies among
Southwest Indians a vivid sense of deep contrast between the way of life
of the Pueblo peoples and the ways of neighboring peoples such as the
Navahos and the hunters a~d gleaners of prairie and desert. By 1932, in
a paper titled "Configurations of Culture in North America," she crystallized her impressions into ai total characterization of these two distinctive
cultural types. These were' couched in "psychological" terms-that is,
she extended to all the individuals within a culture qualities which psychologists had been attributing to individuals. The Pueblo cultures, she said,
were "extrovert"-emphasizing external forms of behavior, ritualistic, conformist, distrusting individualism, avoiding excesses, showing restraint. The
neighboring Indian cultures were, by contrast, "introvert"-intensely in-

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

dividualistic, aggressive, valuing violent experience, self-motivated rather

than group-motivated. Acknowledging her debt to a somewhat similar
duality in the earlier traditions of social philosophy, she borrowed from
both Nietzsche and Spengler in naming the first type Apollonian, but kept
to the Greek value contrast by following Nietzsche in calling the second
Dionysian (rather than Spengler's corresponding polar term "Faustian").
In this essay, Benedict took to task the "anecdotal" type of anthropological
reporting which "made virtue of handling detached objects," and expressed
disappointment that functionalists such as Malinowski were failing to "examine cultural wholes."
An initial storm of criticism broke over Benedict's head. She was accused of returning to a philosophical mysticism. Her cultural delineations
were called artistic rather than scientific. Her configurations, it was said,
were inferred from oversimplification of the cultural materials: the method
was subjective, selective. The consistency of a culture was overstressed.
Terms valid in individual psychology could not be applied indiscriminately
to a culture. In 1934, Benedict's fuller statement of her position in the
classic book Patterns of Culture, which has an approving introduction by
Boas, met these criticisms and gave a less rigid "configurational" interpretation of the Southwestern and some other cultural types, inclu~ing sketchy
comments on patterning in American cultural behavior. A culture, Benedict
says, is like an individual in having "a more or less consistent pattern of
thought and action." Each culture comes to have its own characteristic
"purposes," "emotional and intellectual mainsprings," "configurations,"
"goals" which pervade the behavior and institutions of the society concerned. Cultures differ not only because one trait is present here and
Some Theoretical Emphases in the Modern Stu}1y of a Culture. Historicalism stresses the historicaf accumulation 10/ constituent traits;
Functionalism stresses the interrelations of all the elements present;
I Configurationalism stresses the integration- and uniqueness of the
whole. The black circle sYmbolizes the dominating or focal configuration or configurations.
<

000

0 000
OOGO
0 000
000
H ISTORICALISM

FUNCTIONALISM

CONFIGURATIONALISM

<

[29] Configurationalism

159

absent there, but "still more because.they are oriented as wholes in different
directions." Anyone society can make use of a "certain segment only"
of the great "arc of potential human purposes and motivations," with its
many alternatives and contradictions. The significant unit, Benedict insists,
is therefore not the trait or the institution but the "cultural configuration"
(especially pp. 45-49, 223-244).
It will be seen how this approach goes beyond study of the functional
interrelations of the parts of a culture to investigate and characterize cultures as wholes. It came to be known generally as configurationalism, or
as a "psychological" or "typological" approach to cultural behavior.
Benedict's theoretical work did not stop with this volume. During the
period of World War II she analyzed the dominant features of several cultures having military significance, notably the Japanese (The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 1946). At her death in 1948 she was directing a very
extensive series of research studies at Columbia University on "Contemporary Cultures," financed heavily by the Office of Naval Research. These
studies deal not only with the characteristic patterns of custom which represent "normal" behavior for the group, but also with the personality development of the individual from infancy which gives the adult carriers
of the culture their typical "character structure"-of which more shortly.
The analysis of cultural configurations has become a major theme
in modern social anthropology, though still suspect in sQme quarters as
going beyond factual science. It will be noted that Ben(!dict used various
concepts to get at this central point: "patterns," "purposes," "mainsprings,"
"goals," "orientations" were among them. Other workers both in and
outside anthropology have added a further variety of terms in the attempt
to bring out facets of total-culture analysis. An undoubtedly incomplete
catalogue" of them may be tried as follows:
a. Terms emphasizing ideational (cognitive) characteristics of a cultural
system: ideas, maste~-ideas, themes, premises, hypotheses, common denominator concepts, 'enthymemes ("unstated assumptions")
b. Terms emphasizing emotional (affective) characteristics: values, value
attitudes, interests, "1f courses"
.
c. Terms emphasizing qction (conative) characteristics: purposes, goals,
life-goals, ideals, or}entations, sanctions, directives (popular during
World War II)
d. Other terms: configqrations, integrating factors, total-culture patterns,
sociopsychological c6nstellations
I
Terminology, for better or/worse, has been equally flexible to express the
holistic or total characteristics of a culture: the older "ethos"; total-culture
pattern, interaction, focus, plot, style, set, orientation, climax, social cynosure (what holds the people's attention most).
To the earlier scholars who tended to think of culture as a super-

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

organic, objective entity, the formulation of such broad consistencies in

group behavior could well appear to be an artistic rather than a scientific
exercise. In some instances, the people under study would of course have
their premises, values, goals, or whatever else we may want to call them,
spelled out verbally and consciously in laws, myths, philosophies, stories
for children, or other "overt" or "explicit" statements. But to greater or
lesser extent configurations would be unstated, unconscious, "covert,"
"implicit," "latent," and hence call for a careful exercise in scientific construction. The fact that in the latter case the margin of subjectivity is likely
to be great, and (we may add) methods are still crude and experimental,
cannot deter efforts to formulate these great regularities in behavior and
motivation.
EXAMPLE.

THE "PHILOSOPHY" OF THE NAVAHO INDIANS

As an example of such configurational abstraction, a survey by Clyde

Kluckhohn of Harvard University (1949b) of the great consistencies which appear to make up the "philosophy" of the Navaho Indians may be cited. By examining such critical zones of life as child rearing, religion, economic motivation,
interpersonal relationships, sickness and death, he postulates that the Navahos
rest their way of life upon a series of generally unstated premises; or assumptions, of which the following are illustrative:
The universe is orderly: all events are caused and interrelated.
a. Knowledge is power.
b. The basic quest is for harmony.
c. Harmony can be restored by orderly procedures.
d. One price of disorder, in human terms, is illness.
The universe tends to be personalized.
The universe is full of dangers.
Evil and good are complementary, and both are ever present.
Morality is conceived in traditionalistIc and situational terms rather than
in terms of abstract absolutes.
'
/
Human relations are premised upon familistic individllalism.
,

Morris Opler (1945), in a somewhat similar study of an Apache

Indian culture, isolated some twenty major "themes," as he called them.
A theme, to him, is a "postulate or position, declared or implied, and
usually controlling behavior or stimulating activity, which is tacitly approved or openly promoted in a society."
Kluckhohn (1941), on the basis of conceptual experiments of this
kind, proposed an ordering of the unruly terms listed above into a scheme
which would recognize the degree of scientific generalization or construction involved. Traits, he suggested, could be grouped into patterns, which
may be considered generalizations of behavior, i.e., the overt or explicit

[29] Configurationalism

161

regularities noted by observation; c~nfigurations, going further, are generalizations from behavior, i.e., constructs which define regularities at
covert or implicit levels; finally, generalizations postulating total-culture
characteristics represent the integration of the culture. Such a vocabulary,
however, while valuable as suggesting the levels of abstraction involved
in cultural study, does not give scope for all the nuances involved and so
has use as a general framework only. Kluckhohn himself in subsequent
work (e.g., 1949a, 19S1a) employs other concepts, such as values, premises, goals, with great freedom. This is a good example of how the social
sciences are still struggling to work out precise frames of reference and
verbal tools to handle human behavior.
Since about 1941, special emphasis has been shown in social anthropology in the study of the value dimensions of cultural behavior. "Values"
are afIectively (emotionally) charged tendencies to action which involve
preferences, and often conscious choices among alternatives. The value
orientations explicit and implicit in a cultural system make up its value
system. Lines of study, in which anthropologists have been joining forces
notably with philosophers, include the degree to which values held by an
ethnic group may be consistent or otherwise; the location of "basic" or
"focal" values which provide central and powerful motivations of behavior;
the role of values in shaping choices under dynamic conditions, leading to
persistence or change in culture; and difficult and challenging questions
relating to "cultural relativism" (Problem 32).
/
One further line of thought connected with cultures as wholes deserves
special mention here: the concept of folk society. This was first brought
into social anthropology by Robert Redfield of the University of Chicago,
in a study of a Mexican community (1930). Use of the term "folk" had
already been current among sociologists, especially in making a great
typological contrast between societies with the limited horizons of the
"folk," as with the isolated ;villager, and those under metropolitan and
other influences of world scope (often referred to by Tonnies' German
terms gemeinschafft and gesellschafft, respectively). Redfield gave the
term "folk society" the special meaning of a peasantlike -intermediate type
between the "primitive society" and the "metropolitan society," e.g., as
in his Mexican case, not the pre-Columbian aboriginal society and culture,
but the Hispanized rural society and culture developed with passing centuries, and upon which urba~ influences were then impinging.
Redfield and others ha,ve subsequently discussed the worth of the
"folk society" idea, including the question as to whether the primitivepeasant type of distinctions lare as operationally clear-cut and significant
on a universal basis as they appear to be in the Hispanic American area.
The "folk"-"urban" typology certainly provides a useful if very generalized tool in examining cultural perspectives. But the category of "ft;)lk

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

society," lumping together the vast array of nonurban cultures and societies
over the earth, implies only very broad common "configurations": localized
loyalities, tendencies to local self-sufficiency, and so on. Redfield, in recent
works (e.g., 1953, 1955, 1956), has delineated these common elements,
and has set them in contrast to the "great traditions" more associated with
civilization (Problem 32).

Problem 30 . The Relation of Culture to the Individual

What has led many anthropologists to turn in recent years to a concern with personality, character, learning, and other "psychological" phenomena?
Roughly parallel in time to the emergence of total-culture interests,
anthropological attention was becoming focused on what study of the
individual could contribute to the understanding of culture and society.
The theoretical impact of Sapir's work has been noted above. Even among
conventional historicalists, the individual had received some selective attention. In the course of breaking down naive viewpoints on racial determinism, Boas and others had discussed the nature of psychic capacities
in the individual. Standard ethnographic reports usually included an account of the main events of the individual life cycle: e.g., birth, naming,
initiation to adulthood, and on to death. Furthermore, a 'number of "life
histories" of Indians and others had been accumulating in their ethnographic records, such as Radin's autobiography of the Winnebago Indian
"Crashing Thunder" (1926).
The first anthropologist to put the individual in the forefront of
theoretical and related field, work attention was ~argaret Mead. In 1925,
when doing research on Samoan culture, she took detailed records on the
lives of a number of adolescent girls .. One of lier resulting publications,
Coming of Age in Samoa (1927), not only cr~ated somethiIJg of a sensation
i6 child study circles by demonstrating that sUPEosedly universal "adolescent .
strain and stress" need not,occur under some circumstances of child rearing; it also thrust child rearing dramatically into the spotlight as a potential
area of action for the understanding of cultural behavior. Mead, as a staff
member of the American Museum of Natural History and of Columbia
University, followed up with a further series of studies in the southwest
Pacific which emphasized the relation between child training and what she
came to call the "character structure" of adults in a society. During World
War II she applied this viewpoint to American culture in And Keep Your
Powder Dry (1943); and, working with collaborators, she has subsequently
presented "national character" delineations of Russian, French, and other
large ethnic traditions.

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

163

Mead's work received essentially the same initial criticisms as that of

Benedict, with which it became quite closely associated (Mead was Benedict's first graduate student at Columbia). Her generalizations were called
subjective, selective as emphasizing major characteristics or modal behaviors only, and art rather than science. She has therefore spent much
effort on developing methodological controls, as could be seen from a
volume explaining the research techniques used when, as with studies of
peoples "behind the Iron Curtain," direct field checks cannot be made
(Mead and Metraux, 1953). Mead's influence outside anthropology has
been notably extensive in fields of knowledge which focus on subadults:
e.g., child psychology, education, psychoanalysis.
From the 1930's on, following up Mead's initial impetus, the anthropological literature on child rearing expanded rapidly. That a consistent
relation exists between (a) training methods in a given cultural setting
especially in infancy and early childhood, (b) the types of adult "character"
or "personality" favored in that setting, and (c) the institutions and values
which are patterned in group behavior (i.e., the culture), has become one
of the major propositions upon which modern social anthropological theory
rests. This may be illustrated by reviewing several of Mead's field study
cases (1940):

EXAMPLE

1.

THE SAMOANS

Samoans think of the child as developing progressively the ability to behave according to the prescribed standards of the culture. Small children,
though cared for by a large kin group, are thought of as somewhat of a nuisance
and likely to disturb elders. Hence older children are assigned to the task of
seeing that they do not trespass on adult attention. A child learns, "If I am to be
let alone and allowed to stay where I like, I must keep quiet, sit still, and conform to the rules.;' The culture and society are congruent with this. Adults are
regarded as persons who, with varying degrees of facility, follow the wellprescribed cultural rules. Shame sanctions rather than guilt sanctions keep the
individual in line. Recalcitra~t individuals are expelled from the household, the
village, or the status they hav~ attained, and "gods are conceived, on the pattern
of the formally occupied adults, as concerned about their own affairs and presiding graciously over the aff~irs of men as long as men keep quiet and conform
to the rules" (pp. 96-97).
, I
EXAMPLE

2.

I'

THE BALINESE

In a series of ceremodies the Balinese child becomes initiated into "full

citizenship in this world" and concomitantly is believed to shed his membership
in that of "heaven." Long before he can learn effectively he is put again and
again through the numerous prescribed ritual and other action sequences by

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

parents or anyone else around. Conformity brings admiration and approval. But
any departure from passive acquiescence, or any unacceptable behavior, is first
quietly blocked, then if necessary associated with fear through exclamations of
horror, and so on. From such training the child learns that a pleasant mood
and cultural conformity to fixed patterns occur together. An adult Balinese is
relaxed and capable only when his total situation is known and familiar. "Balinese social structure is congruent with this type of character structure." It is a
static formal society in which individuals "function, as it seems to us, motivelessly, tirelessly, in following out endless ritual forms, dedicated to gods who
have no personalities, whose names are meaningless abstractions" (pp. 98100).

EXAMPLE

3.

THE IATMUL OF NEW GUINEA

An Iatmul mother takes more care of her baby than a mother in Samoa
and Bali. She assumes, as it makes its wants known, that it possesses a will and
determination as strong as her own. She meets the child's demands only after its
crying becomes compulsive, and may slap it hard if it annoys her. As a routine
procedure, food is withheld for an hour or so daily after cooking: the children
are not allowed to forget that ."parents are in control of the necessities of life."
The Iatmul child moves warily, knowing, "If I do not assert myself I will get
nothing and if I anger other people I will get slapped." He learns to accommodate himself to a society in which everyone is assertive and protectively hightempered, though such vigor is tempered by great gaiety. The community has a
social structure in which age grades, clans, and moieties have no way of disciplining their own members other than by strong shame sanctions, or by bringing
in members of another age grade, clan, or moiety to force compliance of offenders. "An individual's safety lies in getting angry first, in asserting his will over
others, before they assert theirs against his" (pp. 100-102).
I

The type of "character" analysis illustrated here raises squarely the

question as to how far such a large and clearly much less homogeneous
socirty as that of the United States or any other modern "national" political
entity has modal tendencies of this kind. In addition to Mead, the Kluckhohns (1948), Gorer (1948), Hsu (1953), Warner (1953), and others
have tried delineations of the American "national character." Extensive
studies have also been under way of German, Russian, French, Chinese,
and other national traditions, and the number of such publications is growing. As Mead has said, most of the expositions here are of an experimental
or "stage one" type in which preliminary studies give us tentative hypotheses for further types of testing, as through new field work. There is a current danger that such hypotheses will get "out of the laboratory" too soon.
Oversimple ideas in this difficult zone of study could easily feed popular
misconceptions and prejudices, or be overconfidently applied to national
policy or to educational and social work practice.

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

165

What, then, of great modalities, in one's own "national character"?

What answers would be given to the following?
Exercises
1. What are the six or so major values, themes, goals, characteristic of
culture and personality in our own national milieu? (How far, additionally, does your own personal code fit, or deviate from, this general
culture pattern?)
2. What do we insist on most in the rearing of children?
3. What types of behavior give us status, security, social approval, as
adults? Inversely, what "lets us down" most?
4. What types of conduct do we oppose, hate, condemn most, arraying
over against them social and religious sanctions?
5. What might we be prepared to die for, or die opposing? (This might
suggest one way of getting at very "basic" values.)
6. What behaviors might we judge to be most likely to persist over the
longer pull in our society, in spite of cultural changes?

As an example, a selection of statements by anthropologists who have

essayed to analyze the American national character or value system may
be summarized here.
EXAMPLE.

THE AMERICAN NATIONAL CHARACTER

Margaret Mead (1940), in one of the pioneer delineations, takes as her

starting point the traditional or "Puritan" character type. Here, she says, the
child at a very early age begins to take as its model the parent of the same sex.
The child "~ccepts the standards of that parent, as stated to the child, as its own,
until, in the absence of the parent, the child learns to act as if the parent were
still there," and to choose or reject courses of action accordingly. Failure to
conform induces a retrospectiye discomfort (technically guilt, or popularly
conscience) which is independent of actual discovery by the parent or other
member of the society. This behavior pattern is reinforced by various sanctions
-the threat of punishment, or' of withdrawal of love and succor-which play
upon the child's fear. Within lthe society at large, too, teachers, the clergy,
judicial officials, and others cor;respondingly share the character of the judging
I

parent. Rewards are meted out to the child, and later to the adult, who "makes
a satisfactory approximation to the desired behavior," and punishments are
vented on the nonconformist.L "A conception of Deity which sees Him as
primarily concerned . . . with moral behavior, and as backing up the parent
in dealing with the potentially iimmoral child, completes this classic picture."
Mead notes, however, that this American character structure is undergoing
change. It has had, she judges, a potential of "progress" in the sense that the
parental ideal as put before the child is unobtainable, reSUlting in a "culturally
engendered disconte~t." The tendency now is to shift from the moral emphasis

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

to increasingly prevalent "age-grade standards." The developing child moves out

from the home and parental setting to participate in school and in play with age
mates among whom he tends to repudiate the standards of the former. The
disciplining forces are those of group approval and of shame rather than guilt.
This makes for marked discontinuity and instability in socialization.
Gregory Bateson (1942) and Margaret Mead (1943) throw into contrast
the American character pattern and the English upper- and middle-class pattern.
English parents, particularly the father, exercise much more dominance over
the child. Where English children are generally submissive, American children
show only "slight" tendencies to submit to parental authority. Parents in both
societies are succoring, and children dependent-though the English child may
be sent off to boarding school at an early age. Where English children are
spectators to their parents' exhibitionism ("children should be seen and not
heard"), the American parents are the spectators to their children's exhibitionism. The English need to "understate" and the American need to "overstate"
goes back to the children, in the one case being held back, and in the other
being pushed forward toward "independence." The role of the authoritative
father in English society stands in contrast to the emphasis on mother responsibility in American society.
Geoffrey Gorer (1948) ,. an English psychologist-anthropologist, looks for
the key to American character in the immigrant shifts from Europe. "The more
successful the immigrant father was in turning his children into Amer;icans, . . .
the more his foreignness became a source of shame and opprobrium, the less important did he become as guide and exemplar." This break in the continuity
between the first generation and their European-trained parents produced a
pattern signalized by "the rejection of authority as such." Two major themes
appear: an emotional equalitarianism ("all men are equal"), and a belief that
authority over people is morally detestable and should be resisted. The father is
"old fashioned" and indeed does not expect his sons to be like him; he must .Qe
like an "Uncle Sam" to his children. Almost by default,! such parental authority
as exists is exercised by the mother, and by her substitutes, such as the female
schoolteacher.
Clyde and Florence Kluckhohn (1948) see Americans holding as a dominant ~remise, rare in other cultures, that "this is ~ world in which effort triumphs." They are enthusiasts, optimists. Major cultu;al orientati~ns include (1)
"moral purpose"-giving acts, personal to national, a moral justification; (2)
"rationalism"-man and the world are essentially rational; (3) "romantic individualism"-centered upon the dramatization of the individual,' his equality, his
liberty, his success, and so on; (4) "cult of the average man"-conformity to
the standards of the majority; (5) "tendency to personalize"-a person-centered
culture; (6) "charige is a value in itself"; (7) "pleasure principle"-having a
good, excitirig time; (8) "externalism"-love of bigness; (9) "simple answers"
-a lust after absolutes; (10) humor-probably no complex society has had
such "generalized patterns for laughter"; (11) "generosity"-a genuine benevolence.
W. Lloyd Warner (1949, 1953) speaks of the "significant principles on
which the American social system rests," as exemplified in "Jonesville." Some

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

167

of the basic "social logics," often contradictory, are these: (1) all men are
equal; (2) some men are superior in status, others inferior; (3) all occupations
are to be respected; (4) skilled jobs stand above unskilled jobs; (5) jobs demanding more schooling are higher in rank; (6) clean jobs outrank dirty ones;
(7) success may be measured by a man's movement within the job hierarchy;
(8) the more money, the higher the economic ranking, but money must be
translated into socially approved behavior; (9) money should be spent properly
rather than hoarded-hoarders, while gaining economic power, can never
achieve top status, as this implies social acceptance and recognition; (10) investment income gives higher status-and the top person is the one born in the
independently wealthy status; (11) "the principal methods of upward mobility
are accumulation of money and its translation into socially approved symbols,
educational advancement, recognition of trained talent, marriage into a higher
level, the use of beauty and sex, the acquisition of moral and ethical codes of
superior groups, the acquisition of secular rituals at superior levels, learning
the social skills . . . of those in higher groups, and participation in cliques,
associations, and churches that are frequented by the higher groups."
Francis Hsu (1953), a Chinese scholar teaching at Northwestern University, says that the basic mechanism of socialization in American culture is
"repression." Character training is centered on developing internalized controls
of self-discipline. This contrasts with the emphasis in Chinese culture on "suppression," in which externalized controls of the group are the key to conduct.
The former makes for a dominant emphasis on individualism and preoccupation
with self, the latter for one on familial control and other types of group action.
American life is subject to strong emotions, where the Chinese lack strong
emotions but are highly sensitive to social opinion.
Cora DuBois (1955), writing on the "dominant value profile" of American
culture, notes the prevalence of oppositional propositions in Western culture.
These, fostered by the structure of Indo-European languages, represent recurring dilemmas in our logic and ethics, as in good-evil, aggression-submission,
superordination-subordination. In straining for consistency, Amercan values
have come to stress (1) the prizing of change, and (2) compromise, or
"splitting the difference." The particular view of the world now fostered in
the American middle class is ~ased on four basic premises: (1) the universe is
mechanistiCally conceived; (2)1 man is its master; (3) men are equal; and (4)
men are perfectible. These yielli in turn at least three major focal values: effortoptimism (work, vigor, and ~o on); material well-being (standard of living,
success, and the like); and cOI}formity (cooperation, equality, and so on).
George Spindler (1955b) sees American culture as in process of transformation from traditional values to what he calls "emergent" values. The former
center around Puritan morality, the work-success t:;thic, individualism, achievement orientation, and future-time orientation (the "pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow"). The emerging pharacter type is marked by sociability, relativistic
moral attitude, consideration for others (outward-orientedness), a hedonistic
and present-time orientation, and conformity to the group. Such a major shift
is inevitably marked by conflicts, and in most severe form by demoralization and
disorganization. The social character of most individuals is split, calling for

168

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

"different responses in different situations and with respect to different symbols."
Enculturation of the individual is marked by discontinuity and tendencies to
confusion as the traditionalist and emergentist battle it out.

With the impetus of Mead's original ideas on child development and

culture patterns, anthropologists turned considerable attention to the
educational process. The child in every society is a target for cultural
transmission activities, i.e., education in the broad sense. Early enculturation, or socialization (Problem 7), is universally centered in some form
of intimate group setting of "home" or "family," with parents or at least
parent substitutes assigned the major training roles. Details of such arrangements, however, can vary widely, as, for example, in the extent to
which mother and father both participate in "succoring" and training activities of boys or girls, or wider circles of kinsmen and other community
members may be expected to help with guidance and discipline (Problem
49).
Education in the homogeneous and relatively static society can set
the clear goal of teaching the existing adult patterns to the oncoming children. The latter at an early. age are likely to be allowed to tag along,
imitating and helping adults as they can, and they may also play in their
own groups at adult activities such as sailing boats, spearing .game, or
caring for the house. Children's toys, for example, have an interesting
relation in all cultures to adult activities; so, too, have stories for children.
Even in important ceremonial settings, children may be allowed to observe,
provided they sit quietly. Before long, boys will be, so to speak, "apprenticed" to men, and girls to women. The typical atmosphere is likely to be
reminiscent of modern "problem-oriented" education, in which the goal.
is to get the child to learn by doing. But deliberate instruction of more
or less organized form will have a place. Adults :nay correct mistakes
when a child is dancing; boys may listen tQ explanations of the group lore
by an elder in the men's house; an adolescent initiation may be marked by
systematic instruction.
:
An educator in our own s,ociety would see important- differences between this learning atmosphere and that in which he works. In the dynamic
modern situation, the front of culture is on the move, and elders tend to
fall behind in their grasp of its immense technical and other ramifications.
Children, in being sent to schools for many years, have to master a core_
of knowledge and; skill which at many points is in danger of becoming
obsolete. The teacher must somehow try to adjust the child to his world
as it is; yet prepare him to face an adult world some years hence, the
shape of which cannot be fully anticipated. Moreover, school cannot mesh
realistically with numerous aspects of the real adult world, such as job,
government, religion; instructional activities must therefore be confined
in these fields to fictional exercises. And the professional teacher has to

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

169

grapple with the fact that there are as many "experts" with opinions as
to the desirable method and content of education as there are adults.
Educators are becoming increasingly interested in how the perspectives
and materials of anthropology may be of use in their work. A book edited
by Spindler (1955b) can serve as a useful introduction to the rapidly
expanding relation between educators and anthropologists.
While Mead's approach to the individual in culture was stressing
the sub adult, a further important approach was being made by Ralph
Linton, another scholar trained in the tradition of American historicalism.
In a general text called The Study of Man (1936), he applied to anthropological materials certain viewpoints then becoming much discussed in
sociology on the "status" and "role" of an individual within his society.
In any culture, he said, no individual learns and transmits the whole
cultural tradition. His participation is limited to behavior appropriate to
a particular set of statuses he occupies, of roles he plays, in the course
of his lifetime. These are defined from infancy by his sex, and perhaps by
his order among siblings, his class, and other given status and role specialization, and also build up with his age, his occupation, and similar factors.
Some of these statuses are fixed and unchangeable (as he called them,
ascribed); others are elective and involve choice and effort (hence,
achieved). Some cultural elements are learned by every individual in the
society, i.e., they are cultural universals; others are alternatives as regards
individual participation. The individual, therefore, in the /building up of
his personality, draws partly upon these common universals, so that there
is a basic personality core shared by all, and partly upon status personality
characteristics associated with his particular roles. Here, for the first time
in social anthropology, was an explicit theoretical scheme ticketing neatly,
if still very generally, the relation of individual, personality, culture, and
society.
Boas, "father of American ethnology," retired in 1936, and Linton
was given his key academic, "chair" at Columbia University. There he
became interested in a graduate seminar which Cora DuBois was conducting jointly with a Freudian psychoanalyst, Abram Kardiner. When DuBois
went to Indonesia in 1937 to' make her well-known study of the Alorese
personality and culture (194J,), Linton and Kardiner continued the seminar, a collaboration which lasted for some five years. During that time
Linton and other anthropologists with field experience acted as informants
in presenting to the seminar h detailed description of child rearing, adult
behavior, and institutional structures in a series of cultural settings. The
way of life was subjected to a kind of prolonged culturo-analysis with strong
psychoanalytic overtones supplied by Kardiner. The main findings of this
almost Jaboratory-like dissection process are contained in two works which
bear Kardiner's name and strong imprint: The Individual and His Society

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

(1939), Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945). Linton presents his

own views more directly in a small theoretical book The Cultural Background of Personality (1945).
For each of the cultural systems examined, the group felt itself able
to isolate what Kardiner called a basic personality structure, that is, the
"personality configuration which is shared by the bulk of the society's
members as a result of early experiences which they have in common,"
i.e., especially through training in infancy and early childhood. Linton and
other anthropologists felt that later training, for example, initiation rites
of young people as they "graduate" into adult status, could not be overshadowed by the psychoanalytic concern with infant experience, so that
Linton added an emphasis on status personality dimensions. DuBois, after
testing in Alor the operational validity of these ideas, as referred to above,
suggested that, because the degree to which given individuals shared the
"basic" behavior varied around certain highest-frequency tendencies, the
common core abstracted through scientific analysis could better be called
modal personality-and this concept has become generally used. The
"modality" referred to here is that of a whole cultural system, so that
the term implies total-culture-modal personality.
,
These analyses merged with the "character structure" stu/dies of Mead
and others. The anthropological use of the term "character" was defined
earlier (Problem 7) as referring to the distinctive characteristics of a society
or a person as over against others. Its current usage is particularly to the
fore in the term "national character." Essentially "character" delineations
tend to put the focus on distinctive modal characteristics of a group considered as a whole, while "personality" delineations make the individual
the point of reference. In each case, however, the consistencies are thought
of as extending from "normal" behav,ior in individuals to "normality" in
the aggregated group, i.e., in tenns of its institutionalized and expected
common behavior. As applied to the individual, "character" and "personal}ty" have often been used ipterchangeably (Problem 7). The specific base
of all such generalization is, of course, the vastly varying detail of "character" or "personality" in individuals,. with their important "idiosyncratic"
(individually unique) components.
Relationships between anthropologists and psychoanalysts, spoken of
here, haVe a particularly interesting history. Psychoanalytic theorists had
long been using data from non-Western cultures. The historicalists had ,
particula,rly att~cked their uncritical methods of equating "savage" customs
with cultural origins, in the manner of the evolutionists, and for going still.
further in frequently equating such customs with the behavior of children,
and also with that of "abnormal" individuals, in "civilized" society. Freud
himself wrote a work titled Totem and Taboo (1919), which purported to
show that basic elements of religion originated through a supposed "par-

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

171

ricidal" (father-killing) act, in ,:\,hich sons, jealous of their father, killed

him, and then in their repentance developed beliefs and restraints surviving
most clearly among savages-this long a major target of anthropological
scorn. R6heim (1950) and some others tried out psychoanalytical interpretations on some of the non-Western cultures in which a kind of infantile
determinism involving the birth trauma, sex, child-parent complexes, and
other elements provided exotic vistas for anthropological criticism. Malinowski, in one of his best-known books, called The Father in Primitive
Psychology (1927), took relish in showing that, in a matrilineally organized
society such as the Trobriands, the supposedly universal infantile tendency
of a son to develop an "Oedipus complex" (father hostility) did not exist
in the classic Freudian manner, for a boy received his major social training
on the male side not from his biological male parent but from the brothers
of his mother.
With the new anthropological interest in child rearing, looked at
"cross-culturally," it was inevitable that negative criticism should give
way to collaboration. Psychoanalysts became aware that their classic neurotic and psychotic patterns existed in contexts of local culture, and that
those fashionable in upper-class Viennese or New York patients could not
in detail be assumed to be universal; that the so-called superego and id
represented dimensions of personality and sociocultural conditioning; that
no all-embracing motivation such as "sex," "love," or ','power" could account for the amazing range in human custom; that "normality"
and "ab/
normality" are in many respects relative to a particular cultural system.
Anthropologists, for their part, acknowledged the great role played by
early childhood conditioning; became more aware of the importance of
studying not oIlly modal and "normative" behavior but also "abnormal"
deviation; and took account of the fact that some of the critical shocks or
dilemmas in the life cycle, such as weaning, toilet training, and methods of
baby carrying, were general to all cultures, whatever the details of associated custom. This, however, is not an area of unanimity among anthropologists. A few are almost entirely absorbed in the types of approach and
the problems which also interest psychiatrists and --psychoanalysts, while
at the other extreme th~re are many who shy away almost entirely from
these types of behavioral dynamism. An example of a general work in
which an anthropologist Itries to span both the psychoanalytic and the anthropological approache~ is Weston LaBarre's The Human Animal (1954).
Marvin K. Opler (,1956) reports on pioneering research which he
and others have been drrying out on psychotic disorders among different
ethnic groups in the Uriited States and elsewhere. Psychiatric and anthropological workers find that types and frequencies of particular mental
diseases, and their transmission from one generation to another, vary with
the nature of the culture concerned: its securities, its demands, its tensions,

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Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

and anxieties. Individuals who are ill likewise tend to manifest symptoms
and behaviors consistent with their cultural contexts; and treatment, to be
successful, must align itself with these larger cultural modalities. It appears
generally agreed that universal patterns of mental disease exist, based on
a common core of factors making for "normality" or for "abnormality"
in the basic psychophysical characteristics of individuals. But cultural
factors weave deeply into these patterns.
EXAMPLES.

CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES IN MENTAL DISEASE

Opler cites cases from a psychiatric hospital at Portland, Oregon, for

patients from Alaska. The fantasies of Eskimo male patients tended to revolve
around such matters as food (including the magic and folklore of hunting), a
"starved and neglected" childhood, maternal rejection, and sexual inadequacy
in the face of conditions which minimize sex frustrations. Northwest Coast
Indians showed markedly the effects of accuIturative breakdown in highly
individualistic psychotic manifestations; paranoic patients even had fantasies of
holding European princely titles and traveling on the Continent. In a New York
psychiatric hospital, Opler found that Italian male schizophrenics tend to be
highly talkative, excitable, given to bizarre mannerisms, and generally. overactive
and fluctuating in behavior. By contrast, Irish male schizophrenics tend to be
passive and compliant, anxious, hostile to females, beset with a sense of sin
and guilt, and subject to blurring of their self-image or self-esteem. Space
does I;tot permit filling out the clinical details here; the cases are cited merely
to indicate the importance of such lines of inquiry, and the need for psychiatricanthropOlogical collaboration in defining the characteristics and contexts of
mental diseases.

The discussion to this point implies an interest by anthropologislS

not only in "personality," or "character,',' but also in another of the great
nub problems common to behavioral-science give-and-take: that of learning. Here they have had opportunity to note and apply to their materials
othe,' "learning" theories besides that involved -in the psychoanalytic ap~~.

Brief reference is appropriate here to a viewpoint in psychology

which has become influential in social anthropology since the 1930's:
what is sometimes called the "Yale learning theory." This viewpoint was
based notably on the ideas of the psychologist Hull, and its implications
for anthropology were worked out particularly by John Dollard (1950), a
social psychologist with marked anthropological interests and field work
experience.' The central concepts of this system call into play a vocabulary
in which a number of anthropologists couch their theoretical writings, for
example, George P. Murdock (1945), John Gillin (1948), and A. Irving
Hallowell (1955). Behavior, it is said, originates in a drive toward some
goal. The tensions involved, notably anxiety, emerge into action when a

173

[30] The Relation of Culture to the Individual

STIMULUS
O~

REPETITION,
~EINFORCEMENT

CuE.

o~~~~~~J

~81T

TENSioN

~EWARD

ANXIETY

DRIVE

RESPONSE~ -

'1
'
\

POS~IBLY
A MODEL

- -

->

............ PUNISHMENT

(IMITATION)

USUALLY
ANTICIPATION
(<<>NTEXT OF
PRIOR LEARNING)

GOAL

ATION

.j\

I
REPETITION,
BREAI(DOWN 01'
PRIOR HABIT

~~~:~!~'ON
ETC.

Learning and Habit. Schematization of the main terminology and

processes embodied in the "Yale" theory, as applied to human behavior.

cue or stimulus occurs, producing a response, or goal-response. If this

meets consistently with a reward, which reduces tension, there is reinforcement into a habit. If it results in punishment, through deprivation and increase of tension, the response may be discontinued, or a consistency of
frustration may build up, resulting in aggression and other compensatory
or escapist outlets. An established habit, if the situation shifts so that it
fails to bring reward, will tend to break down, opening/the way to change
through random behavior or through imitation of other available models.
This range of learning, unlearning, and relearning shows up starkly
in the laboratory behavior of the rat and other experimental animals. In
man's case, there are elaborations, particularly from the existence of
symbolic communication, stored cultural experience, and nurturing helpers
within the society. Drives, as noted earlier, are nearly always "derived,"
or shaped to cultural specifics. The anxieties, conflicts, and other tensions
usually fall into patterns f*miliar to the group and the individual-though
in neurotic and psychotic jpersons they may run wild. Cues are provided
mostly by cultural signals fnd expectations. By a variety of training methods, parents and others pl}sh the child, so to speak, toward the responses
which are counted "normal" habits, and SOciety has methods of punishing
deviant responses. Random behavior, such as a rat's trial-and-error attempts to move through an unfamiliar problem area to the feed box, has
rarely more than a minor ~ble. Yet the cultural and social milieu always has
goal-response inconsistenc~es and other conditions which more or less foster
persisting group and individual tensions and frustrations. Culture, by this
viewpoint, consists of learned habits. Personality is the "behavior of the
individual as a result of training"-in general to culturally standardized
habits. The mai~ concessions which this conceptual system makes to the

174

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

psychoanalytic viewpoint is that much of habit becomes "unconscious,"

in the sense of being unverbalized, and that the first learning is most critical,
standing as a kind of model for later learning.
This approach was tested for its operational worth by a Yale-trained
anthropologist, John Whiting, in a field study of a New Guinea people,
the Kwoma (Becoming a Kwoma, 1941). It contributes an important way
of looking at cultural patterning, and the enculturation process. The concepts, however, tend to constrict anthropological thought if used too rigidly.
For example, the affectively charged "value" dimensions of a way of life
tend to escape through the terminological net of "goals," "tensions," "rewards." The austerity of the drive-habit sequence makes little concession
to the pleasure and play that so often goes with learning and creativity.
The wholeness and rich variety of cultural behavior have to be sifted out
through other frames of reference. Nevertheless, learning theory can offer
a notably controlled and objective approach to behavior, and its applications to the understanding of culture are still undergoing refinement, e.g.,
the work of Whiting and his associates (1953).
A penetrating analysis of personality is presented by Kluckhohn, in
collaboration with a psychoanalyst, Henry A. Murray (1948). ~very man,
these scholars say, is in certain respects (a) like all other men; (b) like
some other men, (c) like no other man. He is like all other men in that
some of the determinants of human personality are common factors in
biological endowment, in habitat influence, and in culture and society.
These universalities tend to remain "background phenomena"-taken for
granted like "the air we breathe." Personality dimensions making a man
like "some other men" include such limiting factors as ethnic affiliations,
living in a certain physical environment such as a desert, membership ~n
class or caste. In still other respects th~ individual man is unique. The
"determinants" of personality are organized by these writers into four
classes: constitutional (e.g., he~editary pofential, sex, age), group-membership I( e.g., ethnic group, class, family), role (the- many roles the individual
plays), and situational (things which "just happen" to people, e.g., divorce
of one's parents, illness). The organism (the individual) moves through
a "field" which is "structured both by culture and by the phy!>ical and social
world in a relatively uniform manner," yet is subject to "endless variation
within the general patterning due to the organism's constitutionally-determined peculiarities of reaction and to the occurrence of special stituations"
(pp. 35-47).
I
'
The niethods used by the anthropologist in studying the individual are
partly those of conventional ethnography: tracing the life cycle from conception to death, and sometimes on to beliefs and activities concerning an
afterlife, examining individual variation in behavior around the cultural
mode or norm, seeing from all angles the participation of individuals in th~

[31] Interpersonal Relations

175

daily round of life. Partly, too, anttIropologists have used the more structured tests developed by other behavioral scientists, e.g., the Rorschach test,
the maze tests. Sometimes such tests have to be modified in content to have
meaning in other cultural settings, as in the Thematic Apperception Tests
in which pictures with doors, tables, chairs, and other Western elements
might not be understood unless adapted to local circumstances (Problem
13) . Another important device is to get "life histories" of individuals. There
is considerable controversy among anthropologists as to whether the use
of so-called "psychological" tests contributes dimensions of cultural understanding beyond what detailed ethnographic observations can yield, and
whether it is the business of the anthropological field worker to apply them
and become expert in their interpretation. There is, however, an actively
growing literature, both using tests, and "testing" their validity in crosscultural situations: this. could be followed up by the interested reader in
works of A. Irving Hallowell (1945), Iules Henry and MeIford Spiro
(1953), and Henry and others (1955).
Reviewing this section, it can be realized why anthropological understanding of culture and of society inevitably calls for reference to the individual. Kroeber in 1946 suggested that a distinctive field to be called
"cultural psychology" may have to be separated out, as these explorations
of the relation of culture to the individual take further shape, particularly
engaging anthropologists and psychologists in common endeavor-just as
the field of "social psychology," the relations of society and individual, has
already been separated out as a zone of common concerriespecially between
psychologists and sociologists. Individual-cultural relations are now sometimes dealt with by anthropologists under the rubric ethnopsychology or
"culture and personality." An important general work for the student who
wants to read further is Honigmann's book with the latter title (1954).

Problem 31 . Interp:ersonal Relations, or Interaction

I
between Individuals
What has led some aJthroPologists, working particularly with sociologists, to seek understandings of behavior by making this a focus for theory
and research?
' I
Still another major theoretical focus h<:ls been a concentration on
the interplay of relations ah'lOng individuals within any sociocultural system.
This was already encountered as a major concern in the Radcliffe-Brown
approach with its central 'themes of "social structure" and "social integra- tion" (Problem 29). It was noted, too, that Radcliffe-Brown drew upon
the earlier ideas of Emil Durkheim.

176

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

A French "sociological" group which centered around Durkheim during the early 1900's used anthropological data in a somewhat evolutionistic
manner. One of its central postulates was that early societies, and also
"primitives," were dominated by a kind of collectivity of mental processes
often spoken of as the group mind. The thinking of the individual supposedly followed what may be translated directly from the French as the
"collective representations" of the group, which bear some resemblances
to the values or premises studied by later scholars. Lucien Levy-Bruhl, one
of the exponents of this view, included as a central idea the claim that
early and savage man had a "prelogical" way of thought of this grouporiented nature in contrast to the "logical" way individuals think in civilized
society. The historicalists bitterly attacked this rather mystical hypothesis
as ethnographically quite unreal, e.g., Alexander Goldenweiser (1924).
Nonliterate man, they insisted, has the same logical thought-processes as
literate man; the differences, so far as they exist, lie in the fact that the
former has less command of scientifically valid premises on which to base
his reasoning. This "group mind" approach was labeled a kind of sociological determinism, which can be added as still another to the list of deterministic theories.
The approaches of Radcliffe-Brown and of scholars under his influence gave a much more realistic appraisal of the nature of interaction among
the individuals comprising a social group. Particularly influential here have
been the ideas of W. Lloyd Warner, an American anthropologist who did
field work in Australia under Radcliffe-Brown's sponsorship (1937). He
brought to Harvard University what then seemed to the historicalists on that
faculty the very unor~hodox approach of Radcliffe-Brown's social structure
theory. Warner and his students shocked the conventions of the time still
further by applying it to contemporary communities: a peasant group in
Ireland (see book title by Conrad Arensberg and Solon Kimball, 1940);
a New England city with its industrial and other dimensions (Newburyport,
Ma~sachusetts, delineated in the "Yankee City" publication series by
Wimer and associates from 1941 on); a racially segregated Mississippi
community (Natchez, delineated in a "Southern Town" -series by Dollard
and others from 1941 on).
For Warner, a community or other social unit comprises "a group of
mutually interacting individuals." The significant focus for analysis, therefore, rather than being the individual, is the total system of interaction.
Events or activities, to be understood, must be placed in an "immediate
social relational context." A social structure comprises "a system of formal
and informal groupings by which the social behavior of individuals is regulated," or, to put it another way, a system of "interrelated statuses" which
individuals occupy. Personality can be understood in terms of the "total.
system of relations and statuses that pertain to the individual."

[31] Interpersonal Relations

177

It was on such groupings 8:nd associated statuses that Warner and

his co-workers focused in the research studies spoken of above, and in
further community and institutional investigations conducted after he shifted
to the University of Chicago, e.g., the status system of "Jonesville" (Rockford, Illinois,-Warner and others, 1949). Well-known features of Warner's
system of social analysis are his class and rank delineations of American
society, popularized on a lower-middle-upper grid, or, popularly, "lowbrow" to "high-brow." Warner's lack of strong concern with the concept of
"culture"-indeed, for these American studies the detailed milieu of custom
could be largely assumed-led many to dub him a "sociologist." Nevertheless, a recent general work interpreting American behavior (1953) is closely
aligned with social anthropological interpretations of "national character."
A concept in the Radcliffe-Brown system was that of social equilibrium
-implying a kind of eunomic balance of social forces. The idea that social
interaction involves equilibria and disequilibria of interpersonal relations
became a critical point in theory for two of Warner's Harvard pupils, Eliot
Chapple and Conrad Arensberg. These scholars felt, too, that if behavior
were to be d9cumented scientifically, it had to be subject to measurement.
Operationally, they said, a concept such as "interaction" could have meaning only to the extent that the play of interpersonal relations could be
measured in a controlled way. They and others, feeling that a starting
point could be tried out by measuring time dimensions of interaction, took
stop watches into Boston shipyards and factories and kept records of the
chronological sequences in the interaction of workefs. A monograph on
"Measuring Human Relations," published in 1940, showed the patterns
of active interaction and of "equilibrium" (periods marked by tendencies
toward a balance of relations). Chapple, with Carleton Coon (1942),
wrote .a novel anthropology text applying these principles to culture and
society in gen,eral. "Interaction," namely "that situation in which the actions of one individual are followed by the actions of another" is a central
concept; and equilibrium is defined as "that state of a system such that
when a small force is ~pressed upon it, a change takes place within it,
and once .this force is removed the system returns to approximately its previous state." Culture is treated both as an "action" system and a "symbol"
system consisting of stimuli which set off "conditioned responses." Subadult training is "merely the process of making the child repeat actions
in a certain order until rhe desired response becomes automatic." Society
is seen as a group of inqividuals who interact in "set" events in which one
individual originates action to two or more others. Social structure represents the "state of equilibrium" in the group. Personality is the corresponding state in the individual, or, in other words, his combined state of emotions and interactions.
Chapple became especially interested in differences in the characteristic

178

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

interaction systems of individuals and their classification by personality

"types." Individuals vary, he said, in the "amount" and "frequency" of
interaction, their capacity to originate action and elicit responses (the
"leader," for example, shows high "origin-response" tendencies), the
"rhythm" of their "basic interaction rate," their ability at "synchronization" with others. Chapple (1949) developed and patented what he calls
an interaction chronograph, a controlled 25-minute interview in which
such characteristics are measured with enough predictability to have enabled him to establish an industrial consultant firm selling it as a service
to business. Little is known as yet, however, as to what results would accrue
in presenting this as a "test" in cultural settings very different from our
own.
The social interaction approach, though as rigid as some of the other
theoretical systems, contained many fresh ideas. Studies have been carried
forward not only in social anthropology but also extensively in social psychology and sociology: it has become another nub point in general behavioral science analysis. The minimal operational element here is the
more or less patterned interaction of two individuals, or, as it is now sometimes called, a social dyad -(from the Greek word meaning "two"). One
of the most interesting facets of this system of thought within anthropology
has been a considerable application to industrial problems: the efficient
organization of a plant, job allotment of employees, union 'negotiations,
upsets in "equilibrium" as represented by labor disputes, strikes, and other
stresses. One criticism brought against those making this approach is that
they may fall into an evaluative habit of considering a "state of equilibrium"
as being "good" or "right" in itself. A general work by the sociologist
George Romans called The Human Group (1950) shows how interaction
may be made a central concept for ana!yzing many, though by no me~s
all, types of behavior. Reference is made in a later chapter on social
organization to transactional and emotional elements of interaction (Problem/45).
-

Problem 32 . The Rapprochement of

Anthropology

Philo~ophy

and

What common interests have brought together in recent years scholars

from thes~ two fields? What, notably, is emerging from collaborative studies
of "values," and from examination of "cultural relativism"?
The tendency to be increasingly aware of the nature of scientific generalization has appeared as a major trend in anthropological theory. This
shows in the consciou~ examination by modern workers of the nature and

fl

[32] The Rapprochement of Philosophy and Anthropology

179

operational validity of concepts aJ)d of abstracted propositions and constructs, a matter stressed here and earlier (Problem 8). Sometimes called
a "philosophic" tendency, it has been stimulated by increasing communication between anthropologists and specialists in philosophy, including the
"philosophy of science."
A scholar whose basic training had been in philosophy, David Bidney,
was particularly active during the mid-1940's in raising some of the main
issues involved. He coined the special name meta-anthropology for studies
of the philosophical postulates inherent in cultural systems: the "meta-"
indicating "beyond." Kluckhohn, who has already been mentioned as one
of the principal scholars interested in concept clarification, has also been
a leader in this area of thought. Another has been Kroeber, whose interests
have kept abreast of current ideas since the times of the early historicalists.
At the time of writing of this text, Kroeber is counted the dean of living
American anthropologists. Belonging to no one "school," his mind moves
boldly over the whole range of theory. His writings contain many highly
individual insights which a serious student cannot afford to miss, as in
his Anthropology (1948) and collected writings (1952). Kroeber emphasizes, for example, that while behavior is a matter of individuals, patterned
cultural behavior has an "anonymous" character. He views "patterns" as
the regularities of form and structure, falling into three classes: the universal pattern, as with Wissler's universal culture pattern; systemic patterns, as with the alphabet, monotheism, or use of th/e; plow; and totalculture patterns, the "overall quality, set, cast, organization, or grammar of
the whole of a culture or language-the direction in which it slopes, so to
speak" (1948, pp. 311-321). Cultural patterns, too, are pervaded by
values, or, as he puts it in another way, by the "affect-idea system" of a
culture. '
The major. problem zone which has drawn philosophy and anthropology into recent active ~ollaboration has been their strong common interest in the concept of "value." Kluckhohn's analysis of Navaho "values,"
which he also speaks of as: their "philosophy" (Problem 29), was, significantly enough, published in: a volume edited by the Yale-philosopher F. S. C.
Northrop. The derivationsl of the anthropological interest in values were
seen earlier (Problem 29) f
Current research approaches to value systems, drawing upon both
philosophical and behavioral science thought, may be illustrated by studies
in progress at the Labora~ory of Social Relations at Harvard University.
Here Ethel Albert, who re6eived her training in philosophy, has been working with a.nthropologists to illumine a concept of basic, or "focal," values
(1956). Florence Kluckhohn, a sociologist-anthropologist, as part of a
general theory of "value-orientations" (see Kluckhohn, F., Strodtbeck and
Roberts, 1955), has suggested that the dominant value profile of a culture

180

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

can be effectively explored in terms of a number of trichotomies (threedimensional categories). The view of life of a people may, for example,
be oriented primarily toward the past, the present, or the future; looking
on the universe as basically evil, as neither good nor evil (mixed), or as
good; toward seeing man as subjugated to nature, in nature, or over nature.
In the first category, for example, traditional Chinese values are strongly
oriented toward the past, Hispanic values toward the present, and American values toward the future.
Clyde Kluckhohn, her husband, has subsequently suggested (1956)
that key values might be weighted in terms of binary (two-dimensional)
contrasts. That is, judgments could be made by a specialist in a given culture, or by objective tests on a sampling of the people concerned, as to the
prevalent value emphasis: whether, in man's relation to nature, the universe is felt to be predominantly determinate (orderly) or indeterminate
(subject to caprice), unitary or pluralistic, evil or good; whether in man-toman relations the stress is on individual or group, self or other, autonomy
or dependence, active or acceptant, discipline or fulfillment (rather like
Benedict's Apollonian and Dionysian), physical or mental (sensuous or
intellectual), tense or relaxed, now or then; and so on to other possible
binary contrasts. An advantage of a binary system lies in tlie simplicity
of scoring tests with calculating machines. As an experiment iri such value
weightings he sums up tentatively five cultural systems being studied in the
American Southwest as a project of the Harvard Laboratory:
A Mormon group: determinate, unitary, good, group, other, dependence,
active, discipline, physical, tense, then, and so on
A white American homesteader group: indeterminate, pluralistic, evil,
individual, self, autonomy, active, fulfillment, physical, relaxed, tQen,
and so on
t
A Spanish-American group: indetenninate, unitary, zero-feature (mixed),
individual, other, dependence, acceptant, fulfillment, mental, relaxed,
now, and so on
/ A Zuni Indian group: determinate, unitary, gQ_od, group, self, dependence,
active, discipline, m~ntal, relaxed, now, and so on - ,
A Navaho Indian group: determinate, pluralistic, evil, individual, self,
dependence, active, fulfillment, physical, tense, now, and so on

Kluckhohn stresses that such categories and

weig~tings

are tentative only.

It will be noted that the attempt is made here to abstract from the specific

value manifestations of a culture a series of more general value constructs.

These mayor may not be explicit in the language and in the evaluation
system of the people concerned.
Another important program is centered at the University of Chicago,
where the anthropologist Robert Redfield and a philosopher, Milton Singer,
have been jointly directing studies of the value systems associated with

[32] The Rapprochement of Philosophy and Anthropology

181

"small" and "great" traditions. Among the "great" traditions reported on

to date are phases of Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations. Redfield's
viewpoints are particularly seen in three notable books: The Primitive
World and Its Transformations (1953); The Little Community (1955);
and Peasant Society and Culture (1956).
Anthropology was earlier viewed as winning a struggle to disentangle
itself from "ethnocentric" evaluations (Problem 14). Rigorous application to cross-cultural study led anthropologists to examine every culture
in its own terms. A people's standards and evaluations of behavior, as in
ethics, preferences, and desires, or, as usually spoken of, their "value system," came to be an increasingly important part of the ethnographic record.
But, anthropologists developing the objective view generally insisted,
one culture cannot be judged scientifically as better or worse than another
because no absolute measure or external standard of culture-free character
can be established. The "good," the "right," the "beautiful" do not exist
by themselves as objective or absolute entities, even though our language
of generalization sometimes seems to imply this. Rather, they relate to
behavior in a particular cultural tradition. Where a person trained in our
culture may be horrified by customs such as head-hunting or cannibalism,
people in another culture may look upon them as highly sacred acts of
great worth. What one defines as a ceremony of great beauty, another may
judge to be cruel or wasteful or meaningless.
A resulting stance emerged within anthropology/ which is usually
called cultural relativism or cultural relativity. This is a viewpoint which
looks at standards of behavior as relative to each cultural tradition. The
values expressed in any culture, the relativist says, are to be both understood and valued only according to how the people concerned set up their
view of life. This anthropological stance is associated more widely with a
philosophical position also rooted in scientific observation of value differences, and usually called "~thical relativity."
At an earlier point, cultural relativism was spoken of as a center of
controversy (Problem 10) i and the same statement is true of ethical relativity. The essential question is whether the relativistic position of scientific
objectivity is the final answer of science, and of knowledge more generally,
to problems of value comp~rison and evaluation. Does it give the intelligent
individual not simply a scientific tool but a total philosophy of life in this
field of experience? Is it "truth" for twentieth-century man that goodness,
beauty, and so on, can b~' subject to no standards except as this or that
culture defines them?
I
Beginners in anthropology are particularly likely to feel a shock in
facing a relativistic viewpoint for the first time by way of the study of other
customs. As one comes from the enclosing cocoon of one's own value
system, .there is even a temptation to swing toward the extreme of a cyni-

182

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

cally detached outlook on values. Those anthropologists, however, who

believe that such relativism can serve as an intelligent philosophy, give it
quite glowing credentials. Melville Herskovits, one of the main proponents
of what he calls "this tough-minded philosophy," says that it lays stress
on the "dignity inherent in every body of custom," and on the "need for
tolerance of conventions" differing from our own (1951, 1955).
During the last decade, however, the bald position of relativism as
an outlook on life not only has been called increasingly into question by
anthropologists but has come under attack from philosophers and others.
Redfield, for example, considers that the viewpoint of "ethical neutrality"
is an unrealistic one. He points out (1953) that anthropologists have been
comfortable enough in looking with equal benevolence upon all kinds of
values among small and remote peoples, but are hard put to maintain the
position, say, in the face of Nazism, or of a highly disorganized culture
where the individual may lose his "desire to live." Raymond Firth, following the same line of thought, says of such a view that "the affirmation that
we should have respect and tolerance for the values of other cultures is
itself a value which is not derivable from the proposition that all values
are relative." He adds, "An anthropologist may wish to hold such a position. But if he does so, it must be on other grounds" (1953, p.. 5).
Would such scholars, then, see any basis for "evaluating values"? One
very important area of common concern is assuming importance here,
namely, a search for cultural "universals" among the numerous alternative value systems in human cultures. Herskovits (1955), while ruling out
"absolutes," acknowledges the existence of such "universals" in the sense
that "certain values in human life are everywhere accorded recognition,"
even though expressed through different institutions from culture to culture.
He speaks of "morality," "e~joyment of beauty," land "some standard~for
truth" as universals in this sense. -Linton (1954-;) strikes out boldly by
saying that the values reflected in ethical systems appear to be "much the
same" in all cultures: e.g., a concern with "in_suring the perpetuation and
suc'cessful functioning of the society." Kroeber, however, moving more
cautiously, judges that how far values are "relative and variable or universal
and permanent . . . is a fundamental scientific question which will not
be answered soon" (1952, pp. 152-166).
This line of investigation promises to be particularly fruitful, not only
in discovering common denominators among value systems, but also -in
building bridge~ of understanding and common interest among peoples
under mddern conditions of culture contact. Though, for example, as many
interpretations of "truth" exist as there are cultures, a very great range of
phenomena are considered "true" in all of them, particularly connected
with the external world: night will follow day, man has a need for food"
aU men die. Less "universal" are standards of "beauty," though here, tod,
some matters of aesthetic form, such as sight ~nd sound rhythms, may b~

[32] The Rapprochement of Philosophy and Anthropology

183

universally appreciated. "Goodness" and "rightness," however, are notably

relative to particular cultural patterns. Here, if universals can be discerned,
they appear to be of very general nature: to be healthy and avoid sickness
is desirable, to reduce group and personal tension is good, to cooperate
with one's in-group fellows is good, to avoid mating with certain kinsmen
(the incest rule) is right, to kill or immobilize enemies of the group under
proper circumstances is right.
Comparison of cultures to find such universals, and additionally to
define the frequency distributions and weightings of cultural values which
may be widely or narrowly held, will undoubtedly be an important phase
of continuing anthropological study. The objective scientist defining universal or high-frequency values, and the philosopher or other humanist
evaluating values, or even calling some values "absolute," are likely to
find here increasing common ground. At best, however, such universals
are likely to be very general and limited in terms of needs for guidance in
any future way of life.
Another line of thought opens out here even for the relativist when
account is taken of the broad applications of anthropology to an understanding of contemporary affairs (Problem 83). The anthropologist, as
citizen, or in the service of some "applied" need or interest, takes pride
in being able to provide technical information on the basis of which a
practical problem can be solved more intelligently. Members of the profession have actively combated false racial ideas and p,rejudices, or thrown
their weight to the side of welfare as relating to underdeveloped peoples.
Explicitly or implicitly, the anthropologist traffics in values as he bends
his efforts in goal-oriented directions, or otherwise operates the "cultural
system" or "subculture" of his science. Moreover, he is likely to set up
graded 'series of more true and less true, more efficient and less efficient,
and so on, in working out solutions to problems.
On a wide scale, from his historical and cross-cultural studies, the
anthropologist is in a notably favorable position to provide much scientifically valid information! for the exercise of intelligent judgments by humanists, by men of actiol1, by himself in his citizen role. Even on matters
which fall short of provable knowledge, he might venture to supply tentative
technical data and hypot~eses.
Examining different; cultural systems, the anthropologist, working
with other specialists,' might fairly endeavor to establish how far the
premises underlying actioh in this and that culture correspond with proved
scientific truth or rest on mythical or other bases: as, say, in interpretations
of physical laws or of sickness. He might help to rate technological efficiency in terms of tool performance or resource productivity. He might
venture some grading of organizational effectiveness in terms of order and
disorder, decision making, and other criteria. He might note the relative
clarity of different symbol systems, or the contexts which favor or militate

184

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

against physical and mental health. Numerous statements, indeed, can be

turned up in anthropological literature which spell out or imply such grading of the artifacts and behaviors from group to group. But very little
systematic formulation of this kind yet exists.
Franz Boas, in a 1938 revision of his earlier pioneering work, The
Mind of Primitive Man, reviews various scales of worth of this kind. He
concludes that "objective criteria" for the evaluation of cultures do exist as
regards "technique," "intellectual pursuits," and "decorative art"; that
"advances" in these fields are closely interrelated, as they are dependent
upon "the general advance of technical skill and insight." Boas also suggests that "the gradual broadening of the feeling of fellowship" as civilization advances can be traced. But he lists numbers of cultural facets which
involve subjective judgments when such scaling is attempted, as, for example, "ethical concepts," "religious feeling," "artistic form." "Progress
in social organization," too, can be defined only in regard to "the special
ideal that we have in mind" (1938, pp. 199-206, 224). These ideas lend
themselves to a discussion.
A section of a later chapter on technological "progress" (Chapter
VIII, Review) is also relevant here. It is ultimately a matter of personal interpretation, perhaps, as to whether gradings of custom in terms
of truth or of efficiency can be done under the tent of cultural relativism,
or really imply evaluations of "values." A people, like an individual, can
still set a high or low value on "efficiency," on "decoration," or even possibly on the premises of scientific "truth." At least, technical data of this
kind, built up more systematically, can be used as a background for more
intelligent value judgments.
Moreover, the humanist, the action specialist, the citizen wanting tg
set directions or goals for behavior of men in the second half of the twentieth century, such as progress toward peace rather than war, order in
massive populations, tolerance for ethnic' differences, can also welcome
such data for use in the intelligent evaluation of- alternatives. Presumably
even ~he extreme relativist would not deny the right and duty of philosophers, statesmen, and others having a stake in the "evaluation of values"
to press ahead with testing the worth of the many alternative behaviors
which modern man currently faces. The objective viewpoint which fostered
cultural relativism provides an intelligent context of knowledge which makes
more realistic man's search for the "truest truth," the "best good," the"most beautiful beauty."
\

Exercise
Some thinkers have suggested that the accumulating body of scientific
"truth" forms a kind of cultural system or subsystem which has universal
validity, and is, of course, now penetrating cultures the world over. What
do you think of this idea?

Review

185

Review
In this section, the main currents of theory in social anthropology
have been presented, together with the major creative thinkers involved.
No student need be unduly discouraged by the fact that a number of approaches are current today. This is especially so if he sees each as having
validity in its own particular realm of problems. Only if he attempts to
impose anyone system upon behavioral phenomena beyond its own operational scope, or if his thinking lapses into a vague eclecticism in which
all theories are accepted uncritically, can the student come to intellectual
harm. Whether it is intellectually comfortable or not to realize the fact,
the last word has not yet been said on theory relating to human behavior
-our knowledge is still probably little past "infant" beginnings.
Certain tendencies may be noted, in closing this section, which fall
outside the scope of anyone theoretical approach. For example, studies
tend to swing back and forth between emphasis on larger wholes or great
generalizations and emphasis on specific units: traits, actions, interactions.
Where, too, earlier work stressed cultural dynamics, particularly longerterm cultural reconstructions, the functional and later viewpoints largely
assumed a kind of cultural statics in which behavioral traditions were held
at a single time level in the interests of holistic analysis. Bu) a fresh interest
in short- and long-term cultural development and change has been emerging, and this is so important that it forms the subject of a later chapter
(XVI).
It was seen that historicalists reacted violently against "the comparative method" as it was used by evolutionary theorists (Problem 25), in
which they uncritically took similarities to indicate historical connections.
Yet they, in turn, found making cross-cultural comparisons essential for
reconstructing the pathways of trait distribution. All subsequent schools,
too, matched culture against culture in the search for universal elements in
cultural behavior. Firth (195[a) states: "One of the broadest ways of describing social anthropology is to say that it studies human social process
comparatively"-or, as Ametican scholars would say, "cultural and social
process." Fred Eggan (1954) calls the critical matching of cultural traditions for analysis the "method of controlled comparison."
Still another general tl~read related to what was referred to in the
evolutionary critique as "psychic unity." Though the assumption of the
evolutionist that all peoples had the capacity for unilinear progress was too
vague, the "schools" which followed the historicalist reaction all had more
or less explicit assumptions as to the biological-psychological potential
common to man, e.g., "needs," "survival interests," "drives." As seen
earlier (Chapter III), these are considered to be both limiting and permis-

186

Theories Relating to Culture, Society, and Personality

sive, giving room for cultural and social alternatives. Of such alternatives,
too, we can only know at the present time what man's inventiveness and
capacity to learn have built up over the worlds of custom to date.
Social anthropology, by the 1930's, was bursting out of the conceptual
strait jackets of the older concepts of culture to take account of the social
and individual dimensions of behavior. The new thought trends lifted
theory out of a dangerous tendency to favor a kind of cultural determinism,
in which the individual appeared to be largely a passive matrix for cultural
impressions. With the analysis of status and role dimensions, and of interaction, including symbolic communication, the relation of group and individual became greatly clarified. The individual, though showing modal
tendencies which yielded constructs of personality or character, emerged
strongly "idiosyncratic": a "person" abstracting from the cultural and social
milieu, as Sapir put it, his own distinctive "organization of ideas and feelings," and in turn placing his impress upon his cultural and social milieu
through innovation and choice. Training in a culture in some respects puts
limits upon the individual. But it also has a vast range of permissiveness
for the individual in the form of alternative choices in behavior, and of
scope for personal creativity. While social anthropology still tends to emphasize the study of the patterned, the modal, the normative, in behavior,
its starting point must always be the varying individual-his 'or her individuality showing an interplay not only of genetic, habitat, cultural, and
social determinants, but also of personal variation in perception and decision.

Collateral References
Standard texts are often pervaded by 'the theoretical viewpoint of one
particular "school," or else by the individualistic approach of the author concerned, e.g., Chapple, E. D. and Coon, C., Principles oj Anthropology (1942),
represents an "interaction" approach, Gillin, J., 'The Ways of Men (1948), a
"learning theory" approach, Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology- (1'948), a personal
synthesis by this distinguished scholar. 'Perhaps more than any other general
work, the text by Rerskovits, M. J., Cultural Anthropology (1955), attempts
to present the varying theoretical approaches of past and present, to interrelate
them, and to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.
"
The most I important authors, and their creative works relevant to each I
theoretical system have been cited in the appropriate problem sections. For a
historical survey to the 1930's, see Lowie, R. R., History oj Ethnological Theory,
(1937). Evolutionism is notably exemplified by Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture
(1871), 'Morgan, L., Ancient Society (1877), and Frazer, J., The Golden Bough
(seen most conveniently in the one-volume abridged version, 1922). American
historicalism is similarly exemplified by Boas, F., The Mind oj Primitive Man

187

Collateral References

(1911), Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (1923), and Wissler, C., Man and Culture (1923). European diffusionistic approaches are seen in Smith, E. G., The
Migrations of Early Culture (1925) and Schmidt, W., The Culture Historical
Method of Ethnology (1939). For functionalism, see Malinowski, B., "Culture,"
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931) and A Scientific Theory of Culture
and Other Essays (1944), and also collected papers of Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.,
Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952). Sapir's pioneering ideas
are seen in papers edited by Mandelbaum, D. G., Selected Writings oj Edward
Sapir, in Language, Culture, Personality (1949). For American configurational
and related ideas a starting point can be Benedict, R., Patterns of Culture
(1934), and from this a profusion of leads opens out. Some reading suggestions are: Mead, M., Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
(1935); Linton, R., The Study of Man (1936) and The Cultural Background of
Personality (1945); Kardiner, A., Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945);
White, L. A., The Science of Culture (1949); Kroeber, A. L., The Nature of
Culture (1952); Redfield, R., The Primitive World and Its Transformations
(1953); Honigmann, J. J., Culture and Personality (1954); LaBarre, W., The
Human Animal (1954). British social structure theory may be approached
through Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Social Anthropology (1951), Firth, R., Elements
of Social Organisation (1951), and Evans-Pritchard and others, The Institutions
of Primitive Society (1954).
For more specialized reading on particular problems, the chapter contents
<:lnd bibliography have profuse suggestions. The Kroeber-edited volume Anthropology Today (1953) and the Thomas-edited volume Curren'! Anthropology
(1956) present together a kind of over-all inventory of theoretical fields. For
examples of works exploring technically the concept of culture, see Benedict
(1932), Kluckhohn (1941, 1951b), Steward (1951), and Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952). For value theory, see Kroeber (1949a), Kluckhohn (1951a,
1956), Wallis (1952), Bidney (1953a), Firth (1953), Linton (1954), and
Albert (1956). Contrasting views on "cultural relativism" are illustrated by
Herskovits (1951) and Redfield (1953). Personality theory is seen in Sapir
(1934), Bateson (1944), Beaglehole (1944), Dollard and Miller (1950), Hallowell (1950b), Spiro (1951), and Slotkin (1952). Critiques of "national character" studies can be found in Mandelbaum (1953) and Mead (1953). Learning
theory is exemplified by Dolldrd (1939), Murdock (1945), Whiting and Child
(1953), and Hallowell (1955). For relations between anthropology, psychiatry,
and psychoanalysis, see Malihowski (1927), Sapir (1932), R6heim (1950),
and Gpler, M. K. (1956). I,hteraction approaches are seen in Chapple and
Arensberg (1940) and Warner (1953). For the "folk culture" concept, see
Redfield (1947) and Foster ~1953).

I'

VII

Universals and Aspects

cif Culture
ANTHROPOLOGISTS, in comparing the numerous alternatives in custom over the world, have been on the watch for behavioral
categories and elements which appear to have universality. To the extent
that such cultural universals, constants, or common denominators, as they
have variously been called, have been isolated, they have challenged explanation. Most obvious here are so-called aspects of culture, which will
be made the basis of classification for the chapters which foll~w.

Problem 33 . The Universal Patterning of Culture

What are constants in culture, amid all its differences, and how can
such constants be accounted for?
Pioneer ethnological compilers found that human customs fell re~dily
into general categories which appear in fairly standardized form in early
books and bibliographies: language, government, law, religion, art, and
so on. Field workers have continued to break down the cultural wholes they
st'jdy into essentially these same classes or "aspects." This familiar frame,
gnd, or trelliswork of thought was built up, of course, from, the view of life of peoples who were using European language categories; and to a point
it has been arbitrarily imposed upon all other cultural phenomena. Questions have recently been raised, therefore, as to how far such categories
indicate genuinely universal elements in human behavior, essential to
cultural problem solving and to the wholeness or integration of any way
of life.
1
'
Froin his experience of sorting out materials for museum case displays
in the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he was
curator of anthropology, Wissler (1923), postulated what he called the
universal culture pattern. Its components, he stated, are necessarily present
I

188

[33] The Universal Patterning of Culture

189

in any culture and more widely they mark culture in general. His scheme
had nine categories:
1. Speech: Language, Writing Systems, and the like
2. Material Traits: a. Food Habits; b. Shelter; c. Transport and
Travel; d. Dress; e. Utensils, Tools, and so on; f. Weapons; g. Occupations and Industries
3. Art: Carving, Painting, Drawing, Music, and so on
4. Mythology and Scientific Knowledge
5. Religious Practices: a. Ritualistic Forms; b. Treatment of the Sick;
c. Treatment of the Dead
6. Family and Social Systems: a. The Forms of Marriage; b. Methods
of Reckoning Relationship; c. Inheritance; d. Social Control; e.
Sports anti Games
7. Property: a. Real and Personal; b. Standards of Value and Exchange; c. Trade
8. Government: a. Political Forms; b. Judicial and Legal Procedures
9. War

This pioneering scheme, with the problems of internal organization represented in its various categories, has been much discussed. For example,
one may note the lack of a focus for economic organization, or for cultural
transmission. Wissler's placement of "war" as a universal category became
particularly a center for controversy (Problem 56).
Kroeber (1948) compares such universal or constant categories in
culture to the "table of contents in a book." Kluckholln (1953) examined
the contents of ninety ethnographic reports published during the last twenty
years and found that they all followed "a stereotyped scheme," having
"numerous but comparatively minor variations." Such a field work handbook ~s that prepared by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the United
Kingdom under the title Notes and Queries in Anthropology assumes that
its instructions for study in the various aspects of culture have universal
application.
:
A typical class quesFon-and-answer exercise may illustrate these universal categories as they operate within our own cultural milieu. Some
newspapers and magazines are distributed as a basis for discussion:
Q.

What kinds of beha~ior are represented on the pages you are looking
at? Where would you place the item concerned within a universal
pattern of culture?
I have the society' page here. People are getting married. Some
women's clubs are Imeeting. There's a column on dress. Those might
be universal.
I
Good! What are the advertisements about?
Well, one shows cosmetics

A.

Q.
A.

190

Universals and Aspects of Culture

I'm at the "Houses Wanted" and "Houses for Sale" columns.

(from one of the readers.) What could the sports page show? (He's
partly trying to be funny-as so often happens as a reaction in analyzing one's own behavior.)
Q. What cultural category relating to sports do you think might be
universal?
A. Well, play .. recreation.
Q. What else?
AA. I have the food section . . . . Mine's religion: the church services.
. . . Here's a big political story on the front page about an international conference. . . . The stock market quotes; that's economic,
I guess . . . .
A. I've got a story about a murder in this magazine.
Q. Where would that fit in?
AA. I suppose every people dislikes murder, or at least killing one of
their own people . . . . Is that ethics? . . . Would law be a universal? Murderers have to be found and punished. . . I suppose
people in all cultures like stories that shock them. . . .
Q. Then you'd place the theme of the story somewhere in the rule or
value categories of culture such as law, ethics, or morals, and the
telling of such a story as part of literature or, where peoples haven't
writing, storytelling-sometimes folklore when tales are .remembered
from the past.

A.

A.

Such an exercise in due COurse produces a series of general headings

which, subject to variations according to the tastes of classifiers, group
themselves into something like, the following:
1. Material Culture: Food, .clothing, Housing, and so on
2. Economic Organization: Productio~, Exchange, Property Concepts, and
so on
3. Social Organization: Age, Sex, Marriage and Family, and ,so on
14 . Social Control: Law, Morality, Ethics
','
5. World View: Knowledg~, Philosophy, Religion and Magic
6. Art and Play
7. Language
.
8. Education or Cultural Transmission: either treated separately or with
Age or Family

This listing may be compared with :the categories used by Wissler and presented above.
A rather more simplified scheme has had some minor currency among
social scientists, including anthropologists. This views culture as an "adaptive system" which meets three basic problems of human existence, concerned with these relationships:

191

[33] The Universal Patterning of Culture

1. Man to habitat: especially technological and economic dimensions.

2. Man to man: especially the dimensions of social organization and interpersonal relations.
3. Man to the unknown: that is, the "world" of symbolic thought within
which knowledge, religion, and other conceptual dimensions of culture
build up.

The use of this threefold scheme is perhaps most elaborately shown in a

general text by Titiev (1954). The last category is least definite and
dubiously titled: it could be called man to symbols, man to mind, or some
other phrase to taste. The scheme, however, seems far too general for more
than popular classification. Other categories can easily be thought up such
as man to self (emphasizing the individual and his self-awareness, or "selfimage"), and man to child (cultural transmission).
By far the most elaborate attempt to develop an anthropological classification of culture which can have universal application has been that
worked on by Murdock and associates in what is called the "Human Relations Area File." This was developed initially in the Yale Institute of Human Relations from 1937 on, and is now an enterprise shared by a number
of American universities. It involves reproducing verbatim in a standardized
form all known sources on culture after culture. As a basis for classifying
the materials on each culture in a standardized way, the Yale group prepared an Outline of Cultural Materials. Revised three times up to 1950,
this has a numerical grid for a series of general categories (numbered in
tens) which break down into more specific categories (numbered in hundreds) ; these in turn are itemized and cross-referenced. The following selections show the rationale involved. First a sample listing may be given from
the 88 general headings or categories upon which the "outline" of cultural
material; is built up:
13

15
16
17
20
22
29
36

42

Geography
I
Behavior Processes and
!
Personality
Demography
i
History and Culture Change
Communication
Food Quest
Clothing
Settlements
Property

48
53
56
60
66

72
76
78
85

Travel and Transport

Fine Arts
Social Stratification
Kinship
Political Behavior
War
Death
Religious Practices
Infancy and Childhood

How such general categories are made more specific may be seen by taking
the last one, 85 "Infancy and Childhood." It breaks into
851
852

Social Placement
Cerem~nial during Infancy and Childhood

192

Universals and Aspects of Culture

853
854
855
856
857
858

Infant Feeding
Infant Care
Child Care
Development and Maturation
Childhood Activities
Status of Children

Again, the category 851 "Social Placement" can serve as an example of

how these categories are broken down further:
851 Social Placement-assignment of infant to a male parent (e.g., under
polyandry, in case of a posthumous child); public announcement of birth;
formal acceptance of infant into a social group (e.g., by family head or chief);
alignment with the supernatural (e.g., baptism); changes in marital status and
social relationships wrought by the birth of a child; etc. . . . For theory of
paternity see 842; for descent see 611; for affiliation of offspring of mixed marriages see 56; for naming ceremonies see 553; for concept of reincarnation see
775; for orphans see 736; for adoption see 597; for adult baptism see 795.

It will be noted how, at this level, the categories carry far beyond the scope

of being general universals. They become, rather, a frame of detailed reference in which the whole range of possibilities of human custom the world
over may (it is hoped) be placed and cross-referenced. Included are items
from alchemy to aircraft, from totems to taxes and television. The index in
this ambitious scheme shows well over 2,000 categories of behavior.
Between 1937 and 1943 the outline was used to build up comprehensive files on nearly 150 cultures. The latter have been in turn put to use
for "cross-cultural" reference by various scholars, as with studies of social
structure by Murdock (e.g., 1949) and of sex and reproduction by F.ord
(e.g., 1945). During World War II ~nd subsequently the file has been
strongly oriented toward the study of cultures of strategic zones of the
world, aided by grants from the United States armed services. The outline
is /undergoing the test as to whether it is comprehensive enough to cover
major nations as well as the original non-Western societies which were its
first sphere of reference.
In an important article titled "The Common Denominator of Cultures" (1945), Murdock spelled out the general theory which underlies
this analytical scheme. He points out that, going beyond broad items such
as are represented in the 88 general categories illustrated above, there are
"exceedi~gly numerous" resemblances between all cultures, e.g., the ,category of "funeral rites" always includes expressions of grief, means of disposing of the corpse, rituals to define the relations of the dead with the living. These universal similarities, however, do not carry down at any point
to specific detail of cultural behavior. Even such a universal category as

[33] The Universal Patterning of Culture

193

"incest" is subject to wide variations as to what particular kinsmen are

forbidden to mate. Murdock concludes that the true universals of culture
are not identities in behavioral habits, but rather "similarities in classification." While actual behaviors such as acquiring a spouse, teaching a child,
or treating a sick person vary enormously, few competent observers, according to Murdock, would hesitate to group these divergent acts under the
unifying categories of marriage, education, and medicine, respectively.
It is in such uniformities of classification that cultural universals lie.
A very interesting new lead into the subject of cultural universals is
developing in linguistics through the study of what have recently been
called "lexical domains," that is, the analytical categories into which
words in a language tend to group. Voegelin and Voegelin (1957) discuss
the sources from which this concept comes, and present a categorization
of the Hopi language in terms of its "domains." For this language, they
segregate out twelve main domains concerned with features of the physical
and biological world, mostly with various subcategories; another twelve
main domains concerned with physical attributes and activities of man,
similarly with subcategories; four main domains concerned with intellectual
and emotional expressions and values (these being Mentation, Emotion,
Values, and Religion); and five main domains concerned with man in his
interpersonal relations (Human Classification, Communication, Economic
Activity, Personal Satisfactions, and Houses and Domestic Activities). All
told, the Voegelins distinguish 137 domains within this Hopi scheme, nearly
all of which appear widely or universally applicable in human experience.
They note other domains with which they have not dealt in the study,
e.g., those of naming persons and objects, that of grammatical categories.
This type of lexical analysis and comparison, however, is merely at its
beginning.
Kluckhohn has summarized in a paper titled "Universal Categories
of Culture" (1953) the present status of discussion of the difficult question
why a universal pattern or framework of constants underlies all cultural
behavior. The materials in previous chapters have already covered many
dimensions of this problem. No one "determiner" or set of determinants
was seen as predominatibg. Some of the aspects of culture show clearly
marked derivations froni the constitutional nature of man: nutritional
needs, age and sex, being born in a kin group, play-to note a few of the
most obvious. Some are habitat-oriented, such as resource utilization,
housing, transport, and fr~quently the exchange of goods. Some show strong
marks stamped by the nature of the aggregated population or society, as
with ~ze, mobility, the I ratio of males to females, group identity, and
law and order. These factors were seen earlier as both opening out possibilities and setting limitations. Some are pervasive categories of universal

194

Universals and Aspects of Culture

experience such as the observation of what we call space and time, of

quantity and sequence (one or first, two or second, and so on), of positional
relations such as symmetry or polarity. Every language and every "world
view" meets in its own way the challenge that such categories offer.
Kroeber (1949b) exemplifies a tendency among some scholars to
account for cultural universals in terms of such biological, habitat, and
social factors alone. Such cultural constants as family, religion, war, or
communication appear, he says, to be "biopsychological frames variably
filled with cultural content"-that is, they are "mainly subcultural." He
also issues a warning that in some cases their apparent universality may
merely reflect the logico-verbal categories or compartments of our Occidental language traditions.
By contrast, strong tendencies have existed in anthropological theory
postulating that the "cultural" levels of behavior themselves involve universal dimensions. Malinowski, for example, considered that the "instrumental" and "integrative" (or "synthesizing") needs or imperatives were
distinctively cultural as over against the "basic" or "primary" biological
and other needs (Problem 28). In a posthumously published work (1944)
he tabulated as over against a list of "basic needs" a corresponding series
of "cultural responses," exemplified as follows:
'
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Basic Needs
Metabolism
Reproduction
Bodily comforts
Safety
Movement
Growth
Health

Cultural Responses
1. Commissariat
2. Kinship
3. Shelter
4. Protection
5. Activities
6. Training
7. Hygiehe

For Malinowski, such categories as economics, political organization, educazion are "instrumental" imperatives which must be represented in a
culture. It must also have "integrative" imperatives such a!? knowledge, religion, art.
Particular emphasis has been laid in theoretical discussion on '''symbolic" dimensions of behavior as involving distinctively cultural as over
against subcultural universals, i.e., as being dependent on the development
of human communication with its attendant meanings (Problem 70). Here
would come notably such categories as language, knowledge, religion, art,
in whicn constitutional, habitat, and demographic factors tend to play a
less direct or discernible role. It will be noted, however, that Kroeber in-'
eludes "religion" and "communication" in the reference given above as
tracing back to "biopsychological frames." This problem as to the relation
of constitutional factors to cultural factors in such categories of behavior

Review

195

will be discussed more fully as they are taken up for separate treatment
in later chapters.
The question whether culture itself has inherent constants or uniformities arising from its own characteristics, as apart from other types
of determinants, has involved not only discussion of the so-called universal
pattern as a kind of static and integrative framework. It has also been
coming markedly into focus in relation to studies of the dynamics of cultural growth and change. For example, Steward (1949) is strongly of the
opinion that there are constants in the form of institutional universals which
show regularities of development. In this sense the search is strongly on
for universals of cultural process, for "laws" in the sense of reasonably
predictable regularities relative to stability and change. As a very general
example, a hypothesis may be tenable that under certain circumstances of
breakdown in the premise and value system of a culture there is a strong
expectation that some reintegrative movement, cause, or cult will be generated (Problem 80). The problem as to how far cultural universals or
constants in this sense may be isolated will be dealt with in a later chapter
(XVI).

Review
This chapter, in dealing generally with the concepts of "universals"
and "aspects," serves as an introduction to the next eight chapters in which
the special dimensions of culture are taken up in turn. For each aspect the
relevant interplay of determinants involved will be commented on more
fully, e.g., as with the relation of biological factors to social organization,
of demographic factors to political organization.
The order of treatment to be followed needs a word of comment here.
Most analyses of culture in anthropological monographs and texts, after
giving any necessary initi~ orientation such as location, population numbers, and general history, :have started with "material culture." Followers
of Radcliffe-Brown have ~ometimes deviated by plunging right into the
"social structure". in acco'rdance
with
the emphasis of this "school." It
I
'
should be made clear, h9wever, that there is no primary or necessary
starting point to cultural delineation: approached through anyone aspect,
it will, as functionalism implies, lead the student on through the whole of
culture. An argument coufd be put up that "religion" or "play" or "education" are as essential points of initial penetration for an understanding of
behavior as the two zones' mentioned. In the following materials, however,
the order' of treatment will correspond closely to that listed after the
question-and-answer exercise set out earlier in the chapter, which approximates to that most traditionally used.

196

Universals and Aspects of Culture

Collateral References
For fuller discussion by Wissler of his pioneering concept of the "universal
culture pattern" see his Man and Culture (1923). Later general discussion of
universals and aspects of culture are exemplified by Malinowski, B., "Culture,"
in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (1948 ed.), and Herskovits, M. J., Cultural Anthropology (1955). For
other theoretical discussions see notably Malinowski (1944), Murdock (1945),
Kroeber (1949b, 1952), Aberle and others (1950), Firth (1951a), Nadel
(1951), and Kluckhohn (1953, 1954).
The Human Relations Area File system of cultural classification is found
in Murdock, G. P. and others, Outline of Cultural Materials (1950 ed.). Another comprehensive system is presented in the Royal Anthropological Institute
Handbook, Notes and Queries in Anthropology (6th ed. 1950). For the
"domain" concept, see Voegelin and Voegelin (1957).

VIII

Material Culture

MAN HAS BEEN seen as building up everywhere a secondary environment from the materials of his habitat. Certainly to a person
born in Manhattan in the twentieth century this secondary environment
might seem even more significant than the natural habitat-at least until
some major storm smashes in, or a drought causing water shortage occurs.
Material culture has the special distinction of linking the behavior of the
individual with external man-made things: artifacts.
Artifacts are created from raw materials by means of manipulative
skills: technology. Each artifact as a unit has form in a real, material sense,
and classes of artifacts tend to follow well-defined "patterns," e.g., the ax
and the adz, the wheel, the television set. In more valued artifacts, the form
is likely to include refinements of craft and design expressive of interest and
effort beyond the narrowly utilitarian (Problem 67).
/
An artifact also has function, or, in a further discrimination, use,
meaning, and function. If a people were suddenly to disappear, their artifacts could remain as externalized objects, but their behavioral significance,
connected with men's bodily actions, ideas, and values, would lapse. One
of the problems of museum specialists is to try, through diagrams, dioramas,
and other means, to give the spectator an idea of what artifacts mean in the
behavioral setting of the culture concerned.
A considerable amount of descriptive material has already been presented relating to material: culture. The archaeological story was heavily
concerned with nonperish~ble artifacts. Again, study of the distribution
of culture called for discussion of adjustments to regional and local habitats.
The further data selected Ifor presentation here can afford only sample
glimpses into ,the vast store. of information available not only in the anthropological record but also jin the rich literature on technology relating to
food, clothing, housing and architecture, transport, tools, and other artifact categories. The select~on is designed to show particularly the anthropologist's interest in the range of cross-cultural variation, and in the history
of artifacts and techniques which have been critical in cultural growth.
The discussion here can appropriately start with the fundamental and universal category '~Food."

197

198

Material Culture

Problem 34 . Food and Food Customs of Man

What is the range of human foods, drinks, and narcotics? How does
food enter into the larger contexts of custom?
Foodstuffs are obviously needed for nutritional maintenance. This has
undoubtedly been the prime stimulus for the vast array of inventions connected with food getting, of which cultivation of plants and domestication
of animals stand out. Additionally, food can have very great importance
in behavioral fields beyond the physiological: for example, in social interaction, political relations, religion, art, recreation.
Major sources of food have already been referred to extensively: wild
and cultivated plants and wild and domesticated animals of land and sea.
One of the best works which a reader could use to round out the picture
further is Forde's Habitat, Economy and Society (1934, and later editions) .
As noted, a people tends to concentrate diet upon a small number of staple
foods which give bulk, and (minimizing stimuli to allergies) are relatively
tasteless unless seasoned. But a wide range of other edibles may be used as
supplements. Significantly, every language appears to be rich iri verbal
materials relating to foods and associated activities.
'
Not the least interesting problem concerning food intake is the range
of diet that the human gastronomic system can be conditioned' to absorb
and apparently thrive on. In contrast with nearly all other animals, man
is omnivorous. Some hunters live almost entirely on meat or fish, though
when berries or fruits are available they will not be passed by. Occasionally,
a people is almost wholly vegetarian, though even the gleaners are rarely" loath to catch any game or insects that com~ their way'. People can live for
long periods on a monotonous sameness of diet, or again they can enjoy
with gusto a wide range of foods that do nbt appeal much to us: grubs,
beedes y snakes, lizards, or even ~ human steak in- the case of a cannibal
people. Sometimes obviously available foods are cut off be~all;se of some
taboo: for example, fish with scales were ~pparently not eaten.by the Tasmanians, just as pork is forbidden by certain religious faiths today. Anthropologists are now aiding nutritionists and other specialists in making
studies of food habits and dietary adequacy among non-Western peoples,
but knowledge of the physiological worth of different diets is still scanty.
Man needs not only "solid" foods but also frequent intake of liquid.
The study of beverages over the world, both for everyday use and for ritual
purposes, could occupy a volume in itself. Following on the mother's milk
(or modern substitutes), humans from culture to culture may variously
slake their thirst with water, with animal products-milk, and sometimes

[34] Food and Food Customs of Man

199

. . ".

. ..-------:-.. .-.-..
- ..

~
.~
~~

Bushman Filter Pump, Kalahari Desert, ,Africa. Water is drawn from

underground sources through a hollow reed with a grass filter at the
lower end. After Passarge.

blood, which is among some peoples an important ceremonial drink-and

with vegetable products such as coconut milk, fruit juices, tea, coffee, and
cocoa. Tea drinking seems to have originated in southeast Asia, and is
often linked with elaborate drinking ceremonies. Cocoa (cacao)
was taken
/
over from aboriginal Middle America, and coffee was developed in the
Ethiopia-Arabia region at least by the fifteenth century A.D.
Both animal and vegetable liquids were variously fermented in different parts of the world, bacteria being added where necessary in the form
of yeast or,often by chewing. Fermented mare's milk (kumiss) is widely
used among Asian, pastoralists. Brews made from grains include wheat
beer (known in ancient Egyp~ and Babylonia), the ceremonial millet beer
of Africa, rice beer or wine in south and east Asia, and maize beer in
South America. Fruits give grape wine (associated mainly with the Mediterranean world, and an uppet-class drink elsewhere) and also cider. The
sap of certain plants is also fe~mented by some, as with palm toddy (India,
Malaysia), sugar cane juice, ~nd maguey juice in ancient Mexico. Again
there are products like the kava of Polynesia (a peppery narcotic root)
and mead, or fermented honey. Distillation, a process developed in comparatively modern times apparently as a by-product of early chemical
searches for the "water of life:' (aqua vitae), is responsible for such liquors
as whiskey (from grains), rum (from sugar cane), cognac (from grapes),
vodka (from grains, usually rye, or from potatoes), and tequila (from the
maguey plant).

200

Material Culture

Mention can be made here of narcotics, which have had social and
often religious significance for some peoples. Tobacco is a notable example:
the use of cigarettes and cigars came to Europe from the Middle American
Indians by way of the Latins, while the Anglo-Saxons in contact with the
Indians of the north took over pipes. Other narcotics include coca, parica,
and peyote, also originating in the New World, the opium of Asia, and the
betel of the western Pacific. Narcotics are a notable feature of tropical
American cultures.
Whole books are written about the preparation of foodstuffs and consumption habits from people to people. Grains, for example, are variously
pounded or ground into meal-a laborious process, especially when done
by hand with pestle and mortar or grinding stones, though simplified among
some peoples by using animals and machines. Irritants or poisons have to
be skillfully removed from some foods to make them fit to eat, as did the
California Indian who leached his acorn meal with water. Fire has, of
course, been a main servant of man in making food more digestible and
appetizing, besides giving bodily warmth and furnishing a major tool for
clearing land, hollowing canoes, driving engines, and so on. It was seen as
used even by Peking Man (Problem 17). A very few peoples-!he Andaman Islanders and certain Congo Pygmies-when discovered by Whites
no longer knew how to make it, and hence had to keep their sources of
fire continuously going. The range of inventions involved in fire making
is shown by the fire drill, or stick spun in a hole (the ancient Near East,
Asia, Africa, America, Australia), sometimes with a bow to turn the drill;
the fire saw, or one stick drawn back and forth over a piece of wood
(Malaysians, some Australians); the fire-plow, or stick shuttled along a
groove (Oceania); the strike-a-light, with hard materials, such .as flint an9
steel (as in China, as also the Occident u\ltil the early nineteenth century) ;
and, finally, matches and other modern inventions.
Cooking varies according to the equipment and tastes of the ethnic
group concerned. People witho,ut fireproof vessels broiled or parched their
food, or had forms of stone or earth ovens for- 'baking apd steaming, as
with the pit oven of Oceania. 'For boiling liquids they could drop heated
stones into water-filled wood bowls, skin containers, or watertight baskets.
Bamboo tubes were used as cooking vessels in parts of Malaysia. Condiments and relishes vary widely, as witness the mustards of Europe and the
curries and spices of tropical Asia. Salt is for all peoples an imperative need
and often forms an article of trade from coastal to inland peoples. Storage
of foods m~y call for such techniques as drying, salting, smoking, pickling,
or fermenting.
Traveiers accustomed to a three-meal-a-day routine are frequently
surprised when they find that other peoples may have differing habits of
food intake. The French petit dejeuner or the British custom of "tea"

[34] Food and Food Customs of Man

201

. confuses their timetables as well as .the conditioning of their digestive organs. Many peoples, however, get along with two meals a day or one big
meal in the evening with snacks at other times. Others have no sharply
defined mealtimes but fit their eating to their appetite and the availability
of food; or they may do with an incredibly small amount on ordinary days
but make up by gorging hugely at periodic feasts. The poor among the
mountain peoples of the northern Philippines, for example, often have to
live mainly on the root and leaves of the sweet potato, but when ritual
occasions come along they have rice, chicken, pig, and other "feast foods."
It makes an interesting exercise for us to analyze consciously the food
habits of our own society to see how our physiological processes are culturally conditioned.
Perhaps in every culture distinctions are made between everyday foods
and ceremonial foods, such as the "feast foods" just referred to. The former
obviously meet the needs of physiological nutrition. The latter, as with
the example given of an afternoon tea (Problem 5), have functional significance beyond immediate appetite. The anthropologist in the field makes it
his business to be present when ceremonial food is being accumulated, displayed, distributed, and consumed in feasting. Even though his own rhythms
of food intake may make him a poor trencherman, he can learn a great
deal about cultural institutions and values by following up whatever economic, social, political, religious, individual prestige, or other ends are
being served. In our own cultural milieu the various ljnks of food and
religion are obvious. It is not unusual for a group to count worthwhile the
social or other gains of a major food display and feast, with its effects of
"conspicuous consumption" (Problem 44), even if they have to decrease
their food intake for some time afterward. In general, the effort put into
production of foods beyond immediate physiological needs has an additionally useful "function" of providing a kind of survival insurance margin of
supply over and above the fIlere subsistence level.
Exercise
What are the special pa'rty foods, or banquet foods, appropriate to some
of the important ceremonial occasions in our own society?
I

Seen in these anthropplogical perspectives, modern food technology

shows much that is old, fot foods and their handling comprise an area of
behavior marked by great conservatism (Problem 81). But there are also
striking new development~; product of the industrial revolution. Food
processing, storage, and distribution have recently been marked by tremendous technological changes. Dietary habits tend to change selectively,
with individuals, families, even sometimes classes and other groupings,
often showing great contrasts in their responses to new menu possibilities.
Cookbooks in our ow.n society are often best sellers.

202

Material Culture

A major question here is how far new food sources are being tapped
to widen the human subsistence base. Opinions range from pessimists who
see expanding populations already "plundering the planet" of its food and
other resources to a dangerous degree, to optimists who see man's technology as still outstripping his numerical growth. The anthropologist is
likely here to lean to the optimistic side. He traces. how human groups, moving over the world's habitats, have worked out new possibilities in food
sources again and again, and have adjusted diets accordingly. Modern
experiments in processing foods from cheap and readily available plant
sources, desalting sea water for irrigation and other purposes, utilizing food
resources of the ocean much more fully, and producing edible materials
by means of chemical and solar energy, are among the technological portents of possibly elaborate shifts in man's food production and diets over
the next few generations.

Problem 35 . Clothing and Personal Adornment

What are the main clothing types? What are the symbolic ~nd other
functions of dress and adornment?
Archaeological finds in such forms as scrapers, buttons, and bone
needles indicate that the use of clothing goes back to Paleolithic times
(Problem 17). Animal skins were used presumably for warmth, and beads,
necklaces, and other ornaments were worn. As an important element in the
"first technological revolution" (Problem 18) came the textile arts and the
possibilities of more elaborate and better-fitted garments in such fabrics
as linen, cotton, and silk. Use of metals extended the scope of personal
adornment to include jewelry of silver, go~d, copper, land other metals.
Theories of the origin of dress have variously stressed the factors of
protection, modesty, improving appearance; and social identification. Lowie
(1949) points out that the assoc:iation of modesty-with clothing: is probably
a result of wearing garments: many Australian Aborigine _and Tierra del
Fuegian peoples, for example, go habitually without clothing, and "modesty" to them takes other outlets. Some garments do strongly suggest an
origin in protection, like leggings, headgear, rain capes, wraps for warmth.
Ornament, too, may have emerged under a pleasurable or aesthetic stimulus: parallels were noted in ape behavior (Problem 12).
Comparative \anthropological study suggests, however, that the most
universal fuhction of clothing and adornment is to indicate status. It has
very high visibility that makes it an almost ideal medium for symbolism
-and, of course, the individual carries it around without effort so that
he can be identified wherever he is, even at some distance. It seems significant that practically all societies make a clearly visible distinction between

[35] Clothing and Personal Adornment

203

male and female clothing, thus permitting ready assignment as to sex. (In
some cultures, of course, a trousered garment can mark women's status
and a skirted one that of men, i.e., there are no universals in clothing detail.) Dress and adornment may also be indicative of age, marital condition, class, occupation, political group membership, and other statuses. It
may show the leader and his followers. Special clothing may mark religious
affiliations, and also differentiate ceremonial and other important occasions
from the everyday routine. The Australian Aborigine who may ordinarily
go nude will decorate his body most elaborately for a ritual activity. Nadel,
speaking of the Nuba hill peoples of the Nilotic Sudan (1947), says that
"personal accoutrements" such as dress and hairdos are the "one convincing reality" in marking off tribal affiliations; they serve as a kind of tribal
uniform for those counting themselves members. The use of clothing in our
own cultural milieu to mark off occupations and for many other purposes
may be thought through in this light, e.g., the police officer, the nurse, the
cleric.
Use of the human body for decoration appears to be a cultural universal. But it lends itself to an amazing variety of possibilities and alternatives. Head, trunk, limbs-all have been used as props for adornment,
subject to the conventions of the people concerned. In New Guinea, for
example, men show the most amazing variety of hairdos and headgear.
Even permanent markings may be included as part of bodily adornment
and manipulation, as most familiarly with tattooing. Thf1 body of a welltattooed Marquesan and the face of a Maori chief covered with incised
curvilinear designs which followed the facial contours were high works of
art. Some people have practiced what to our eyes are less aesthetic methods
of scarification, gashing themselves or raising artificial welts to show their
bravery or to exercise other social values. Other peoples have seen worth
in forms of mutilation like chopping off fingers, knocking out teeth, or
variously incising the genit~l organs. Or they took steps to change body
shape, e.g., flattening or lengthening heads, or binding the feet as with the
traditional Chinese woman. I In each case the ethnologist has to examine
the values or conventions ehshrined in the cultures concerned that cause
people to face often life-endangering practices, just as he would have to
analyze Western culture to/ understand why women of several decades
ago crushed their midsections with corsets and men today may wear
tight collars and, on occasions, a stiff shirt and tails.
Clothing usually reflects rather closely the habitat conditions in which
peoples live. A minimum wardrobe or light, loose-fitting garments, for
instance, are characteristic ~of hot regions, and head-to-toe clothing such
as that of the Eskimo is needed in the arctic. There are, however, some
marked exceptions, e.g., the Tierra del Fuegian peoples of the harsh southern tip of South America, who use minimal clothing. Two general styles

Material Culture

204

can be distinguished: (1) loose hanging garments like the Roman toga
and the waistcloth of tapa (bark cloth) in some parts of Oceania, and
(2) tailored garments fitted to the body. Within these two forms there
is very great variation in the details of dress from people to people,
or, indeed sometimes within the same group at different periods in history: men's styles in Western countries through the last few centuries
and women's styles nowadays even from season to season.
In accordance with current conventions, dress may show on the
one hand great conservatism (knee breeches at the Court of St. James's,
for example), and on the other great mobility (beach styles and other
fashions). Where types of clothing and adornment for any occasion show
distinctive patterning and a narrow range of variation, at least for persons
of the same status, they are likely to indicate important symbolic functions. The same is true where, in a mobile or changing cultural milieu,
elements show great persistence over time, as with the kilt and other
gear worn on symbolically significant occasions by persons of Scottish
descent.

Problem 36 . Housing and Community Settings~

What are the main varieties of housing, house furnishings, and community settings worked out by man? What are the symbolic and other
functions of housing and of architectural embellishment?
The earliest evidence of "housing" are the inhabited rock shelters
and caves which archaeologists find from Europe and Africa to China.
"Tectiform" (tent-form) drawings also occur in the art of Upper Pal~o\

Tectiform Paintings in Upper Paleolithic Caves. Such "tent-" or "roofshape" paintings may represent house-forms used in summers. From
the cave of Font-de-Gaume, a Magdalenian site in France. After Capi'_ ,
I tan, Breuil, and Peyrony. '

[36] Housing and Community Settings

205

lithic caves, possibly indicating types of houses used in the warm summers. For the Neolithic period, more certain evidence has come to light,
e.g., stone house platforms and walls, pile houses of the Swiss lake
dwellers, and semisubterranean pit dwellings in northern Europe and north
Asia, including Japan (Problem 18). Architecture involving adobe (sundried mud) and, later, artificially made bricks is characteristic of villages
and towns, notably in the dry Middle East zone.
The Yedda of Ceylon and the Bushmen of Africa are among peoples
who have habitually used caves as their homes into modem times, while
partial cave houses are customary in parts of northwest China. Australian
Aborigines and Philippine pygmies build a rough, temporary lean-to or
wind-and-weather break. The skin tipi of many North American Indians
and northern Asian peoples, evidently a housing type of considerable antiquity, is familiar to us. So too are the tentlike structures of Asian and
north African herders. All these are obviously forms of shelter suitable
for more or less nomadic food gatherers and pastoralists. Settled agricultural and industrial peoples have been able to build structures of greater
permanence in wood, bamboo, stone, brick, and, nowadays, steel, concrete, glass, and other materials.
The obvious function of shelter or protection is likely to come to
mind first in thinking of what makes housing a universal category of
culture. In addition to physical protection one may include the element
of social privacy-though by no means all human groups stress this as
important, as the anthropological field worker often ditcovers. We would
also probably add comfort in terms of such factors as space and furnishings, though this would also be much more limited in range as a prime
value, or else might be sacrificed to other values, particularly among
peoples for whom mobility is an essential. The shifting gardener who expects to move ~fter a season or two may put little effort into elaboration
of housing and furnishings; But the permanent village and town dweller is
in a position (if his cultural values run in this direction, as they usually do)
to build up heavy goods, such as strongly built houses, furnishings, storage
spaces for crops and gear? and places for livestock, in many cases with
well-developed architectural design.
Housing, like clothing, tends to reflect habitat conditions. It usually
is adjusted to climate, and before the days of extensive trade in building
materials it had to be fitted to the limits of immediately available resources. The ESKimo sno\vhouse probably comes readily to mind as an
illustration, or again the pile dwellings on the swampy coasts of Malaysia
and Melanesia. For housing materials the desert Pueblo Indians used adobe
in making their apartment-like dwellings, and the Egyptians, who were
also short of timber, concentrated on stone and brick construction. Within
such limits, however, there was always plenty of room for architectural

Material Culture

206

10 0

10 2.0

MILES

Variation in House Types, Northern Philippine Mountains. Each

ethnic area of the so-called non-Christians in this north Luzon Island
region has a very distinctive house type.

variation-giving scope for local conventions and ideals to find distinct\ve

expression. The large, highly ornamen~ed ceremonial structures of parts
of western Oceania, the skillfully carved meetinghouses that formed the
center of Maori village life, the pyramids and palaces of Egypt, the great
tem,rles of Greece, India, the "Far East, Middle America, and the medieval
European castles and churches are all reminders of the ~oc\ll elaborations
that man has worked out under function~l urges--economic, social, political, religious, and aesthetic.
Once housing is open to embellishment, it becomes another highvisibility medium through which status and other symbolic functions, connected with group and individual identification, may be expressed. Community structur~s for social, religious, and other purposes may be made
immediately recognizable by their architecture and perhaps by painting,
carving, and other decoration. The homes of leaders or members of an
aristocratic class may stand out, as may also those of, say, widows or
slaves. One may suspect, when moving through zones where people traditionally feud and fight, that distinctive architectural styles of houses, and

[36] Housing and Community Settings

207

layouts of communities, not only involve elements of defensibility but

also include functions of being identifiable even at a distance as to whether
a settlement is that of one's own group, or of a foe. Many characteristics
of housing and of the community in a physical sense in our own cultural
settings become meaningful when symbolic functions are considered.
Housing has a close functional relation to the habits of social aggregation of the group. An extended family household (Problem 49) will
require either a large structure, or else a cluster of related structures. More
specific social arrangements may affect the layout of rooms, furnishings,
sanitary facilities, and other elements in the physical setting. Furthermore, particular housing types may have special functions linked to regional and local customs, such as special cooking houses, a confined sweatbath structure, a menstruation house for women, and the numerous specialized structures of a modern urban community. The dead, depending
on local belief, may be "housed" in carefully patterned ways. The pattern of the house provides the basic social geography, so to speak, of
childhood. Metrqux and Mead (1954) postulate that focal "themes" of
French culture are understandable in terms of the foyer, a word not easily
translated into English, but referring to the intimate household "hearth."
The layout of housing to form a community in a physical or structural
sense also ties in with habits of social aggregation and helps to condition
each generation in specific ways. Every group tends to have a visibly
distinctive way of distributing living houses, together/with public buildings, traffic ways, fences or walls, and other community impedimenta. The
Dobu village, as described by Fortune (1934), is fairly circular, with
the ancestral burial plot in its center. Many villages in the central highlands of New Guinea are laid out as a single line of houses perched along
the razor edge of a mountain ridge. The Micronesian Marshallese typically
have their homes strung singly along the narrow edge of an atoll, so that
each family has access bqth to the inner lagoon and to the outer reef and
ocean. The larger a cOnimunity is, the more serious, obviously, are its
problems of organizing w~ter supply, fire protection, garbage disposal, and
general health, cleanliness, and security. In many village and small-town
communities, pigs and pobltry provide the main sanitary system, and waste
may go into the fields as essential fertilizer.

Exercise

I,

What status and oth~'r symbolism does housing have in your community?
For example, if you, come from a rural community, do barn sizes and
shapes have any significance? In a city, what kinds of houses are occupied
by "the best people," and where are they located? Do any minority groups
use housing as one of their measures of status, and, if it is not particularly
emphasized, why not?

208

Material Culture

CORBELED

ARCH

TRUE ARCH

Arch Forms. The true arch locks with a keystone at the top.

Distributional studies in anthropology have included a great amount

of material on housing forms, which, because of their variety in detail and
their marked tendencies to stylization, lend themselves to such analysis.
A classic example discussed in anthropology, notably by Kroeber (1923,
1948), is the development and distribution of the arch in architecture.
The true arch was not used by the Greeks, who employed columns with
crossbeams to span space. An early archlike form called the corbeled arch,
in which slabs overlapping inward are balanced one on top of'the other
to form an inverted V shape upon two pillars, apparently pointed the way
to the true arch with its curving sweep and locking keystone .on the top.
The corbeled arch occurs both in the Old World and in parts of Middle
America. The true arch was used widely in early Mesopotamia, but mainly
for tunnels and doors. Later it appeared in northern Italy among the
Etruscans, and in turn became elaborated as in Roman, Gothic, and
Moorish forms. No true arch appears in pre-Columbian America.
~
House furnishings differ greatly from group to IgrOUp, though only a
few glimpses can be given of their variety. For the roving hunter, a fireplace and perhaps skin robes or a bed of vegetation suffice. Over the world
today/probably more peoples sitand sleep on the floor, or at least on simple
mats and mattresses, than on raised furniture. Benches of snow are used by
the Eskimos in their snowhouses for squatting and sleeping. Married couples among the Bontok of the Philippines sleep in a kind of closed-in heated
box beneath their pile houses, while unmarried or unattached persons spend
the nights in small hut dormitories, each on a narrow and, to us, uncomfortable plank. Headrests of bamboo serve many peoples from Africa toOceania. Chairs and tables were long confined'mainly to the upper classes
in the Middle East, their apparent place of origin. Rugs, carpets, and rich
hangings lead back to Asia. In Europe, the stimulus to their use apparently
came mainly through the Crusades. Furnishing styles, too, tie in closely
not only with immediate functional utility but also with social, aesthetic,
and other factors.

209

[37] Travel and Transportation

Housing shows characteristics .of both variability and conservatism.

Sometimes the range of variation has marked room for individual and
household choices, but usually in a stable and homogeneous community
the basic patterns, at least, are expressive of status differences and other
functional meanings. Even under conditions of change, group pressures of
public opinion may keep a strong brake upon modifications in at least the
essential patterns. Health and welfare authorities trying to initiate improvements in housing and community layout, in overseas areas as also at home,
find it difficult to get response, apart from legal compulsion. Building codes,
indeed, tend to lag behind architectural developments. Housing often becomes a visible symbol of cultural identity in the face of outside pressures.
In contrast, a leader in a Pacific island village may build a European style
house to supplement his own where to do so gives prestige. Perhaps in all
societies where housing is symbolic of rank there exists an urge to upward
mobility in residence.

Problem

37 . Travel and

Transportation

What are the major inventions worked out to increase human mobility?
It has already been stressed at a number of points how vital in modern

cultural development has been the ability of people to move themselves

and their goods quickly from place to place by land and s~a. Early humans
moved at footpace over the land areas of the earth. Their material equipment was limited by the obvious fact that, beyond light-weight artifacts
which could be carried on back, head, or shoulder, or dragged, the accumulation of goods would become more of a handicap than a help.
Such limitations became reduced when domesticated animals could be
ridden, and could drag or carry packs. With wheeled vehicles, sleds, boats,
and, nowadays, mechanized modes of transportation on land, on and under
the sea, and in the air, man's spatial mobility has been progressively increased. Contact and intera,ction became keynotes of modern world history.
'
A starting point in thet travel category, though it could equally well
have been treated under "clothing," is the body of inventions connected
with jootgear. Most peoples,' even those ordinarily going barefoot, have had
some form of foot covering to use on rough terrain. Two major types, evideI\tly of considerable antiquity, were diffused widely: the moccasin, found
practically all over North America and along the northern portions of the
Old World, and the sandal, 'used in most of Asia and Europe, also in parts
of Middle and South America, presumably as an independent invention.
The modern shoe may have features from both types. The riding boot
appears to have been diffused from central Asian horsemen, along with

210

Material Culture

bridle, saddle, stirrups, and other elements of the equestrian complex. The
snowshoe in various types is characteristic of North America and east
Asia, and the ski of northern Asia and Europe.
The knapsack of the modern hiker is one derivative of what are
evidently very old modes of transporting goods by direct human effort:
packs, tumplines, baskets, and so on. Even here conventions may enter:
of three adjacent peoples among the non-Christian mountaineers of the
northern Philippines, for example, one considers it best to use the head
for transportation, one the shoulders, and one the back. With domestic
animals, especially strong animals such as the horse and camel, goods can
be transported more easily: by packing directly upon them, by using the
travois (two poles tied to the sides of the animal and trailing on the ground
behind, with the load strapped across them), and by harnessing the animals
to sleds (dog sleds, reindeer sleighs, and so on) or to wheeled vehicles.
The wheel, an invention fundamental to all machinery, and thought
by many to have been derived from the principle of the roller, such as is
used to launch boats or move other heavy objects, seems to have been
worked out in Mesopotamia somewhat before 3000 B.C. Diffused widely
throughout the Old World; it was unknown in the New World until the
period of European contact. The first carts doubtless had solid 'wheels, still
found in some places; later came refinements of the principle' as exemplified by swift-moving chariots with their spoked wheels and efficient axles.
The movement of wheeled vehicles, at least in rougher terrain, required
roads and often bridges. Former foot trails or pack roads had to be widened
and graded, necessitating organized labor and engineering skill. Once built,
improved roads became potent channels for trade and other forms of cultural interaction. They helped to make possible the maintenance of wiger
political units (e.g., the roading enterpr~ses of imperial Rome), and tended
to spread peace, because those building the roads wanted to make them
safe from petty raiding and banditry. The road has always been a major
ins~rument of civilization. Rflilroads, motor vehicles, and 'other modern
features of land transportation are familiar elements of th~ <;ontinued story.
There are many special skills connected with land travel, as is realized
if we try to ride a camel, or drive a dog team Eskimo-fashion. Water travel
perhaps involves even greater technicalities, especially in' the open ocean,
where navigation depends on knowledge of stars, winds, or man-made instruments. A few peoples over the earth appear to have been unfamiliar
with boat~ of ariy kind, at least when discovered by Whites, as were desert
Australian Aborigines who were away from navigable rivers or large bodies
of water .. By contrast, some peoples, through historical and geographic circumstances, have had their cultural development especially associated with
the sea-for example, the Phoenicians in the early Mediterranean world,
the Vikings, some coastal Arab peoples, the Malaysians and Oceanians,

21l

[37J Travel and Transportation

the coastal Chinese and Japanese, .and the American Indians of the Northwest. The Polynesians are among the world's most remarkable navigators.
Inland waterways, added to by construction of canal systems, have also
been vitally important to many ethnic groups, as in China and Europe.
Two fundamental types of watercraft have been developed: rafts, with
low specific gravity, made of wood, bamboo, rushes, or skin, and true
boats, having air buoyancy. Of the latter, the earliest forms were perhaps
large hollow pieces of bark such as are still used among some Australian
Aborigines living on waterways, and crude wood dugouts, found widely
over the world where large enough timber trees exist. Plank boats introduce complexities of technique in making them watertight, as does the use
of skins or bark over a frame. Balance and stability may be aided by an
outrigger or by lashing two canoes together, both types widely known from
Asia to Polynesia. Most of us would find difficulty navigating a round
coracle of basket or skin work, such as was known in Babylonia, ancient
Britain, and among some of the Plains Indians. The earliest recorded seagoing vessel, with oars, mast, and sails, is represented in an Egyptian picture.
The compass, which revolutionized sea travel, is based on a Chinese
invention used mainly in divination and magic. Whether it was also emMarshallese Navigation Chart. Made of wooden sticks, with shells to
mark locations of islands, and shapes to indicate distfmces, channels,
and other navigational conditions. This chart, about 3 ft. 4 in. long,
shows 27 of the small Marshall Islands which are in Micronesia. A map
of the group, with names, is put alongside to show the degree of accuracy (initials on stick chart are first letters of island names) .

.~

BIKINI

< UJELANG
UJAE

tl.

NIIMORIK

j~JAWIT

KILl

'" EBON

IIil
MILl

212

Material Culture

ployed for navigation, or was converted to this use by the Arabs, is still
uncertain. Charts and maps as we know them go back at least to the classic
world of the Middle East. But directional aids are also found among nonliterate peoples, as with drawings of natural features on Australian Aborigine message sticks, and the stick charts of the Micronesian Marshall
Islanders. A map made by Ptolemy in Alexandria about A.D. 150 even shows
fairly accurate representations of India and southeast Asia. But it has been
in the last hundred years that engineering and science have built so vastly
upon these earlier inventions of transport that crossjng three thousand
miles of ocean is a speedy and everyday occurrence, instead of being
fraught with hazards and hardships. Aircraft and undersea craft have
added to the revolution in man's travel mobility. Humans are no longer
exclusively land, or even earth-surface, animals.

Problem 38 . Tools, Weapons, and Machines

How has man put his tool-using potentialities to work?
A visit to an ethnographic museum is likely to give a strong impression
of man's warlike character on the basis of the amazing array of offensive
and defensive weapons he has developed. Tools in the aggregate, howeyer,
show a preponderance of peaceful uses, especially as connected with the
particular types of resource utilization characteristic of the group concerned. The term "tool" is used here in the narrow and familiar sense of
an artifact which adds primarily to the efficiency of the hand. Anthropological classifications often deal with this material culture category under
the rubric "tools, utensils, and weapons." Here" too, embellishment often
gives clues to other functions which the artifact may perform beyond the
purely utilitarian; the highly ornamented ax in the New Guinea highlands _
used for a "bride price" mid the gold cup _awarded in our own society
are examples.
_
The shift from crude Paleolithic tools to the finer tooling of stone
implements in the Neolithic (Problem 18) permitted in turn the better
tooling of wooden artifacts, including machinery such as plows and looms.
The subsequent improvement of wooden machinery and the conquest of
metals by pr,ecision machining methods are at the base of our modern industryr Along with this development moved the harnessing of power to, .
tools, as with treadmills, windmills, watermills, and ultimately the great
power sources of today. The great importance, too, of containers and other
utensils for resource handling, storage, transport, and other purposes in
technological history is self-evident. They range from shells, gourds, animal
horns, and other natural forms to the complex apparatus of a modern
factory or scientific laboratory.

[38] Tools, Weapons, and Machines

213

Each type of tool used by modern man has its own particular history
and distribution, usually traced in the archaeological and ethnographic
literature. Human creativity shows in all kinds of complex processes of
manufacture, as, say, in the variety of ways in which a stone ax or adz was
hafted, or a hole was bored in some very hard jade. Students of archaeology
have in some cases learned to make equivalent tools so as to get to understand the processes and length of time involved. Modern man has an exceedingly varied tool kit, from delicate precision instruments to huge
machines, but most of them are elaborations of general mechanical principles which were worked out by early human groups. Special skill seems
always to have been devoted to the making of implements associated with
prestige and with war.
Here it must suffice merely to sample some of the tools and weapons
which have had special interest for ethnological analysis. Hand-to-hand
combat was considered most fair by a few peoples-the Maori of New
Zealand, for instance-so that they concentrated upon such weapons as
clubs, axes, quarterstaffs, and swordlike thrusting implements. But the great
majority preferred, to try to get at the quarry before actually engaging at
arms' length. These people variously employed such projectile weapons
as spears, boomerangs, harpoons, throwing knives, bows and arrows, slings,
catapults, bolas (i.e., three weights connected by cord), and blowguns.
This type of weapon, of course, reaches its highest complexity in the mobile
and devastating weapons of the twentieth century. D~fensive inventions
include the shield in numerous patterns, and armor of fiber, wood, or
metal. Bows and arrows appear to have been known to every people the
world over except the Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines; but among
some, including certain of the Polynesian and African groups, they were
relegated to the status of children's toys. Although without the force and
accuracy of the, modern rifle, the bow and arrow has the advantage of
being silent as well as less expensive, and so has by no means been displaced everywhere. Among' elaborations of the simple bow were the compound bow (Egypt, Asia, and parts of North America), usually made with
several pieces of wood gltied together or else wood strengthened with
sinew; the crossbow (Asi'a and Europe); and the repeating crossbow
(China)., The blowgun witp poisoned arrows is centered in Malaysia and
tropical South America. The sling is a very widely spread projectile weapon.
The spear thrower, or athltl, an ancient device which gives extra hurling
force, was known to paleolithic Europe, the Australians, the Eskimos, and
in South America. The ha/poon has a detachable head which lodges in the
victim.
Firearms are usually attributed to the Chinese. Historical records indicate their use of "gunpowder"-propelled rockets in defensive actions as
early as the twelfth century A.D. But its main use was in "fireworks" for

214

Material Culture

ritual and pleasure. The development of gunpowder for propelling missiles

from guns was completed by the Mongols.
Exercise
In the way a person completely outside our culture might see them,
i.e., as an ethnographic record of material culture items, examine the
sections of a standard mail-order catalogue which deal with tools and
weapons. What are its categories? What is the range of its contents?

Problem 39 . Ceramics, Textiles, and Metallurgy

What are the histories, the central features, of these important crafts?
This sketch of the fundamentals of material culture may be rounded
out by examining three major techniques of processing resources of the
physical environment: pottery making (ceramics), weaving and plaiting
(the textile arts), and metalworking (metallurgy). The first two, it was
noted, are marks of Neolithic times, and the third, of the Metal Ages. The
functional significance of -the manufactured objects is likely ~to be clearly
discernible, at least in terms of immediate utility.
Pottery objects would not be of much use to a nomadic people because
of their weight, bulk, and liability to shatter. For settled peoples, however,
they could be exceedingly important as utensils for cooking, storing, brewing fermented drinks, and other uses, as well as giving media for artistic.
expression. Pottery was not known to the Australian Aborigines, and was
either not known or had no utility for American Indian peoples of the extreme north and south. The Polynesians, too, made no pottery in Jh~ir
relatively clayless islands, though th~ir Malaysian ancestors presumably
knew of the technique. Otherwise it is found fairly generally over the
world. Not every place has suitable clays, however, so among the potteryusing peoples tra~e channel~ ~ave customarily b.een opened betw.een those
wIth access to sUItable depOSIts and those lackmg thegt .. Sometlmes particular families, or even whole communities, have concentrated on the
pottery crafts, this evidently being one of the early forms of economic
specialization.
The forerunner of fired pottery was presumably sun-dried mud as,
for example, in adobe construction. The ceramic arts at their best involve ,
complex technIcal processes, and are the subject of a very extensive literature. Ch{y, to be suitable for earthenware, has to have a certain mineral
content (silica and aluminum oxide, with usually a little iron), must be
workable and not sticky when wet, and must not crack when drying out.
Because natural clays are mostly subject to cracking as they shrink with
heat, ingredients usually have to be added to temper the material: sanq,

215
pounded-up earthenware, lime, quartz, and even blood are among those
used in different places. In making the most widely known forms of earthenware-"pots" of various shapes and sizes-either the hands may be
used (by modeling directly; by molding, as over an old basket or pot; by
making a long "sausage" of clay and coiling it in spiral form; or by combining these techniques), or some form of the potter's wheel may be employed. This last invention had a much more limited distribution, having
been developed in the Near East about 4000 B.C., and not being known at
all in the New World. The essential, and most difficult, process in the craft
is the firing of the clay, which changes its structure when subjected to a
high temperature. The crudest method is to put the dried-out clay objects
in an open fireplace. But many peoples learned to enclose them in a heated
furnace or kiln, which gives greater control and higher temperatures. Rough
brickwork involves less careful craftsmanship than the finer ceramic materials.
Pots may have various elaborations in the form of handles, legs,
and other useful or decorative additions. The expert in ceramics may extend his activities to other types of artifacts: tiles, tobacco pipes, statuary,
and so on. Such earthenware may also have additions in the form of varnishes or glazes, the latter being glasslike coatings, often in color. Glazing,
a technique possibly originating in Egypt, not only adds to the appearance
but also waterproofs the otherwise more or less porous pottery. The technique calls for adding a thin coat of clay containing su,eh minerals as lead,
salt, or even gold. This is usually done through a second firing. The most
remarkable development of glazing was worked out by the Chinese, who
produced porcelain; in this, the glaze, variously white or colored, instead
of just coating it, impregnates or penetrates the whole of the clay, making
it translucent and glasslike-hence the popular name "china" applied to
such wares.
Textiles, or artifacts made by the systematic interlacing of materials
(plaiting, weaving, knotting, and so on) have an important place in the
equipment of many peop~es. A very few isolated ethnic groups appear to
have had no knowledge of the textile arts until recently. They depended on
dressed animal skins, on 1"bark cloth" made by beating out "bast" (the
inner bark of trees), or oh bundles of grasses or fiber for clothing, drapes,
curtaining, tenting. Nearly always, however, the basic idea of interlacing
materials had been acquired or worked out in the course of making carrying bags, traps, nets, b6dy ornaments, or other artifacts-a laboratory
ape, indeed, may reprodhce this basic idea, perhaps using the bars of its
cage as a grid. At least 'by the Mesolithic period, this technological lead
was beginning to devel~p systematically (Problem 17), and in both the
Old and the New Worlds it became an important field of craftmanship
and of art.
[39] Ceramics, Textiles, and Metallurgy

216

Material Culture

The essential feature of the textile arts is that two elements are systematically intertwined. Where materials have a degree of width and stiffness they can be handled by plaiting, the loose elements being crisscrossed
in and out: the coconut and pandanus baskets and mats of Oceania demonstrate this, even fine textile work being achieved. When the elements are
narrower and softer, weaving is a more advantageous technique. Here the
warp threads, one set of elements, is held rigid, and the weft or woof threads,
the other set, is interwoven. This may be done within some form of weaving
frame, or else on a loom with a shuttle or a heddle or both. ( A heddle
is a rod which shifts the warp so that each thread is alternatively above and
below as the weft passes across.) Knot making is the basis of knitting, tatting, and braiding.
Flax fibers, possibly the first materials to be used in weaving, have
been found in neolithic sites. Others include bark, cotton, silk, the wool
or hair of animals, and nowadays laboratory-produced chemical substances.
The vegetable and animal products here listed cannot be used in their
natural state, but have to undergo appropriate technical processes, especially that of being spun into a long and strong thread. Such spinning indeed is done, too, by peoples unfamiliar with weaving-the Australian
Aborigines, Polynesians, and some African and American p~oples-for
it is the universal method of making thread, string, or cordage for fishing
lines, bowstrings, binding for adz handles, and the like. Some peoples spin
by the simple method of twirling the materials between the' hands, or by
rubbing upon the thigh, adding new elements as the lengths build up. Others
use a spindle or stick weighted with a whorl like a flywheel. In modern times
spindles were mechanized by use of water power and other power sources,
as in the spinning jenny. Cloth of one kind or another is always made frqm
spun threads. The loom or frame on which the warp is stretched varies
in its complexity of arrangement-among many peoples in southeast Asia
and western Oceania, for example, one end is tied, say, to a wall, and the
othe! is held taut by a strap which passes behind the weaver's back. Here,
too, modern invention has made vast improvements so that today the
textile business is one of the great mechanized mass industries of the world.
Nevertheless, products of craftsmen who worked on less elaborate looms,
such as the rugs of central Asia and the fabrics of ancient Peru, vie with
the best of recent work.
A further word can be said about basketry. Though students of this
craft use varying classifications, these generally admit three major techniques: pzaiting, or weaving, where elements are crisscrossed (check, twill,
and the like) ; wrapping and twining, where pliant strands are plaited on to a
frame of more rigid materials; and coiling, in which a basis of a woOden rod,
splints, or grass, equivalent to the warp, is stitched together or "sewn"
with a spiraled woof. Each of the main types has numerous subtypes vari-

217

[39) Ceramics, Textiles, and Metallurgy

TWILLED

CHECK

TWINED
8ELOW: WRAPPED-TWINED

WRAPPED

COl LED

Basketry Techniques. Though classifications differ somewhat, the basic

techniques recognized are plaiting or weaving (first two illustrations),
wrapping, twining, and coiling, some types of which are shown here.
Twilling involves crossing each element over two or more other elements.

ously localized over the earth. Wickerwork, for instance, is familiar to all
of us. Sometimes basketry vessels are waterproofed, as with pitch or clay.
A considerable variety of objects can be made with basketry techniques:
bowls, trays, hats, cradles, fans, shields, religious images, to give only a
few examples. Furthermore, some of what are often regarded as very
"primitive" peoples are particularly expert in such manufactures, as were
many western American Indian groups who used basketry containers,
particularly for storage of wild seeds and nuts.
Animal wool and hair, instead of being woven, is made into felt by
some peoples. The felting technique apparently originated among the central
Asian herders, and altho*gh the industry was diffused to China, India,
Greece, Rome, and so to Europe, the felt of the originating peoples is still
of foremost worth. The w'ool or hair is made into fabric by being rolled,
pressed, and beaten while 'it is packed tight and kept wet; when it is finally
laid out in sheets of the right thickness and dried in the sun, it forms a
cloth warmer than any woven fabric. It has had a central place in the
material culture of such p'eoples as the Turks and Mongols.
The working of metals, or metallurgy, was known in both the Old
and the New Worlds (Problem 19). Students of the subject distinguish
between the use of metals in the raw or native state and the smelting of
metals from ore: Some believe that gold was the first to be put to human

218

Material Culture

use, since gold nuggets are likely to catch the eye and are readily shaped
into ornaments. Silver and copper were also used in this way. Probably
copper led the way to smelting, as it has a low melting point. Guessers
have suggested that the metal was in the first place accidentally smelted
from some copper-bearing rocks used probably as hearth stones, and this
led to elaboration of the technique, along with associated processes of casting, forging, and alloying.
Copper, when used alone, is relatively soft. The real advance came
when the making of alloys was discovered. This presumably occurred either
through the unintended presence of impurities in the copper or the experimental fusing of other metals with it. Bronze, the great alloy of the early
world, usually has from 2 to 30 per cent of tin fused with the copper. History records how the search for tin led peoples of the eastern Mediterranean
to Spain and then to Britain. Zinc, gold, and certain other metals can also
be used with copper to make bronze, but tin is easily the most satisfactory.
Iron is still harder than bronze. But in the early world the toughness
and unprepossessing appearance of any that came to hand in the raw state,
as from meteorites, did not lead to its extensive adoption for ornaments.
Moreover, the smelting of iron ore called for techniques of producing a
very high temperature (about 2,700 0 F.). The smithing craft, with its bellows, anvil, and other elements, is among many peoples a ceremonious
and honored occupation.
A disadvantage about iron in early times was that although it could
be wrought or melted from ore and worked through hammering, it could
not at first be molded or cast. It remained for the Chinese to discover the
technique of doing this latter; with the development, too, of blast furnaces
in modern Europe it became possible to fuse or weld pieces of iron toget~er.
Finally, mention must be made of the discovery of an alloy of iron which
plays an exceedingly important part in modern tec!:mology: steel. This is a
combination of iron with a small percentage of carbon, and can be tempered
by ?eing heated and suddenly cooled. Steel led the way into the complex
metallurgical technologies of our contemporary civilizati~n.,

Review
This chapter has been primarily concerned with specific ways in which
man over the earth has manipulated the raw materials of the habitat, the
things he I makes. It is clear that a study of material culture involves far
more than examination of the artifacts themselves, their techniques of
manufacture, and their history and distribution. Every artifact has its particular functions within the culture concerned, these variously economic,
social, religious, aesthetic, and so on. A dynamic account would need to

219

Collateral References

trace not only the facts, so far as known, of the invention of this and that
artifact, but also what it has come to mean in the life of each ethnic group
touched by it the world over. Material culture is particularly interlocked
with economic organization, the topic of the next chapter.
In some respects, the field of material culture lends itself particularly
well to theories concerned with "progress" or "improvement." Though
each isolated people will on the whole be contented enough with its own
technology, especially where this enables a delicate adjustment to be made
to some specialized habitat (getting along in a desert, as a hunter, and so
on), it has been demonstrated again and again that groups will readily take
over many new material things when these appear to serve better their
values and tastes. This will be discussed more fully under the subject of
culture change (Chapter XVI). In the larger perspectives of history, men
have rather uniformly discarded stone for metal tools, wild foods for culti~
vated foods, foot travel for animal or vehicular travel. Judgments of relative
utility or efficiency appear to be expressed here regarding many such arti~
facts, and would ,seem to provide a kind of empirical demonstration by
humanity at large of a scale of "progress" or "improvement." This appears
most fully in what are in the broadest sense "tools" or "techniques" such as
are involved, for example, in transport, utensils, weapons, agricultural im~
plements. From the food-producing revolution, man is now moving on a
world-wide front to the industrial revolution, with its machines, and its
"machines to run machines" (automation).
/
In other respects, however, material culture elements do not easily
lend themselves to such evaluation. Peoples maintain, for example, highly
di"Je!'i>ined diet.". Granting fue food needs of man, nutritionists are hard put
to say tha~ diet, say, based predominantly on wheat, beef, and dairy
products, is better than another based predominantly on rice, fish, and
fruits. Again, a value scale for varying types of clothing would be hard to
find among the many hum~n tastes, and so, too, for architecture. How far,
in art and craft work, anyi scales of worth as represented by standards of
efficiency or beauty can be located which transcend ethnic tastes will be
discussed in a later section I(Problem 67). In zones of materia} culture such
as these, human groups a~e likely for an indefinite time to go on valuing
and embellishing their ow~ particular traditions.
J

Collateral

Referenc~'s
I

Studies of material culture are more stressed in general texts by American

authors than in' those by British authors. A good general introduction to the
field is Sayee, R. U., Primitive Arts and Crafts (1933). An up-to-date review of
tools, food, and other material culture categories is given in Beals, R. L. and

Material Culture

220

Hoijer, H., An Introduction to Anthropology (1953). Another careful survey

is Lowie, R. H., An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (1940). Highly
useful ethnographic cases, with general discussion, are given in Forde, C. D.,
Habitat, Economy and Society (rev. ed. 1950). Boas has an important long
article on "Invention" in the book edited by him, General Anthropology (1938).
Examples of more specialized works in this field are Mason (1895),
Oakley (1950), and Weltfish (1953). Appropriate categories in standard
encyclopedias may usefully be consulted. Good technical monographs concentrating on material culture are exemplified by Buck (1930) and Osgood (1940).
For the earlier history of tools and other artifacts, the general references given
in Chapter IV are a starting point. The artistic facets of material culture are
discussed in Chapter XIV, with an appropriate bibliography. Problems of
technological change are reviewed in Chapters XVI and XVII, also with references. Observation in museum collections relating to archaeology and ethnology,
where feasible, can illuminate greatly the study of this aspect of culture.

IX

Economic OrBanization

THIS CHAPTER turns from the "goods" which are valued

in different cultural settings (i.e., material culture) to the systems by which
they are produced and consumed. Economic organization has been cited
as a universal aspect of culture. Yet the institutions and values making up
the facets of production and consumption vary enormously from culture
to culture.
The question arises as to the relation between the anthropologist and
the professional economist in studying this field of human activity. The
social science of economics, emerging in the late eighteenth century, has
been developing a body of theory capable of encompassing in a general
way all human economic behavior. It has also monopolized the study of
the highly technical economic systems associated with the major Old World
civilizations. But the task has fallen to the anthropologist to document the
numerous economic systems elsewhere over the earth as well as the longer
perspectives of economic history.
Huge as the anthropological literature now is in this field, most studies
to date have been limited to description. They make little technical reference to the taut concepts and operations characteristic of economics as a
discipline. Yet social anthropologists have also offered some generalizations
about economic behavior by way of the comparative point of view. Collaboration between anthropologists and economists, almost nonexistent
until recently, is now a stirring front of activity. This is notably so in the
burgeoning field of "econotnic development." In the so-called underdeveloped areas, the subject matter which is the anthropologist's specialitythe world of non-Western peoples-is under strong impact from the major
subject matter of the economist-the machine-age economy. The economist
must here work with the anthropologist in mastering the unfamiliar contexts
of custom and value. It may be expected that intellectual traffic between the
two sciences will produce a more comprehensive understanding of comparative economic behavior, including clearer conceptions of economic universals or constants.

221

222

Economic Organization

Problem 40 . Economic Behavior in the Total

Perspective of Culture
How does the anthropologist approach the study of economic systems?
What is the relation between his material and studies made by economists?
Firth, an anthropologist with extensive training in economics, describes
(1951a) economic organization as a "type of social action" which emphasizes "disposal of resources." The original Greek derivation of "economics,"
oikonomia, meant literally "management of the household." Its significance became extended to the "housekeeping" affairs of a state, as in the
older conception of "political economy." With Adam Smith's Wealth of
Nations, published in 1776, the modern concept and science of economics
began to assume its present shape.
The core of modern economic theory is concerned with problems of
choice (varied technical means) among alternatives in the possible uses
of limited available resources. Material culture items and economic organization are parts of a total system of such choices relating to goods and
services in any given culture. Every group, and every individual, in facing
such choices, brings to bear a more or less stable system of values, or ends,
and of wants arising from them, which is characteristic of that culture.
Choices, for example, may be among possible production decisions
(e.g., which job to undertake, how long to work). Or they may involve
consumption decisions (e.g., which goods to acquire in what qualities at
what price, what time an item will be most useful). Production decisions
may be modified by consumption values, and vice versa (e.g., wheth~r to
work an extra hour for so much income, what toluse and what to market,
whether maximum input effort is justified in the face of a possible output
surplus). Choices, while open to alter-natives, are also limited variously
by; such factors as the natur~ of the habitat, the availability .of accumulated
technical knowledge, the size of the group, -and the l~cal value system.
All such factors, too, may !approximate to a stable system, or they may
be dynamic.
Economic theory, at least as it relates to Western peoples, is in a position more or less to take for granted the general milieu of cultural and
social behavior. An economics text can plunge directly into its distinctive
technical concepts and analytical models relating to capital, labor, money,
banking,1 price, and other topics. By contrast, the anthropologist, being on
unfamiliar ground when he is examining this or that non-Western group,
has to start right from the beginning by analyzing the structure and working
of economic groups in the society with which he is dealing: what they count
as "wealth" and consider worth their effort to produce and to acquire, the

[40] Economic Behavior in the Total Perspective of Culture

223

degree to which they mayor may not organize, exchange, have something
equivalent to money, count value in individual possession, encourage competition, and 'i,O on. ('Ihe 'i,tin relatively few economi'i,h who 'i,tudy nonWestern areas have come to realize that they, too, face the laborious
research problem.) The anthropologist in addition may try to fit this particular local development of economic behavior and philosophy into some
larger comparative system of reference.
The longer-term perspectives of economic growth, as revealed primarily by the archaeologist, have been examined already. A healthy suspicion
has also been cultivated of any overconfident theories of economic origins
and sequences of development. For example, some nineteenth-century
theorists asserted that early man and the most primitive peoples have had
no "economy" at all, merely searching for food individually like animals
in a "pre-economic" way. This, it should be apparent from previous discussions ~f food getting, is quite false. Also unsound, it has been seen, was
the atteml't of evolutionary thinkers to read from the various tYres of economies over the wqdd a series of stages in economic evolution. Rather, each
local economic system represents a more or less unique aggregation of
experience built up partly through progressive innovation by the people
themselves as they have adjusted to their local setting, and partly through
adoption of artifacts and ideas from neighbors, i.e., diffusion. As Forde
says (1934): "People do not live at economic stages. They possess economies."
/
It must also 'be considered a mere device of scientific analysis to treat
economic organization as a distinct and separate compartment of human
living. Actually, an examination of the economic system of any people
quickly reveals that behaviors relating to production, exchange, property,
and consumption all tie in functionally with social organization, and with
political, legal,. religious, and aesthetic behaviors. Emphasis has already
been laid upon the differences in social structure that go along with different
forms of economy from the small hunting band to the vast aggregations
of a metropolitan center. Among most peoples religious rituals or magical
practices are counted essehtHll if their economic enterprises are to be successful. Songs, festivals, arid the like may heighten work effort. These wider
linkages show especially inj matters relating to prestige or ceremonial goods,
in contrast to everyday subsistence goods. All such correlations between
economics and other phases of culture must be traced in any ethnographic
study.
The anthropologist ~ees great differences in what may be called the
economic philosophies (i<,ieals, values, goals) from group to group. Those
found in the different constituent traditions of Western civilization represent only one historic accumulation, and, although normal in our eyes,
they are to many other peoples abnormal, even absurd.

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Economic Organization

As stressed already, there is a very great range in the goods which

different ethnic groups want, and so make the object of their choices and
efforts. Again, what are sometimes rather vaguely called the "standards of
living" of a people vary tremendously. We must always be careful about
measuring the ways of living of other peoples by our own. What we think
is wealth or poverty, security, comfort, thrift, indolence, and so on, does
not always correspond to their ideas: each ethnic group has its own standards of value. We may, for instance, believe an Australian Aborigine to be
very badly off on his parched deserts, living on whatever kangaroos and
other game he can catch. But he certainly would not thank us if we took
him into a Park Avenue mansion. To him it would probably be much like
a prison, and the foods, crockery and cutlery, tables and chairs quite
"foreign" and unappealing. He would doubtless pine for his open hunting
grounds and the joys of life in a country where so-called civilized men, for
all their knowledge, would quickly starve. In seeking "standards of living"
in an economic sense, or an economic philosophy, the student of comparative culture must take note of what each group considers as its essential
values in terms of material goods and services. These, at least, must be the
starting point of any exercise in trying to establish more widely distributed,
or possibly universal, standards, or choice indicators, such as' perhaps a
tendency to accept laborsaving devices, or to favor activities which advance
prestige.
A striking impression gained by studying the varied economic systems
is that the material needs of man may be satisfied by amazingly different
organizational techniques. Whether, for example, cooperation or competition, individualism or mutual aid and collectivism, is stressed is a matter
of local economic and other values. A comparative series of studies _~m
"cooperation and competition;' edited by Mead (1937) showed that the
Kwakiutl Indians of northwest Americ~ are highly competitive, the Bathonga Negroes of south Africa and the -Samoans highly cooperative, the
Esk}mos of Greenland exceedingly individualistic, to take rsome of the
extreme cases. Yet even the most group-oriented: societies known have
individual ownership and use' with regard to some things~ ~hile the most
competitive and individualistic band together for certain tasks better done
by larger groups. Competition for possession or use of the ibasic resources,
however, seems almost wholly lacking in some systems; personal assertion
there finds outlet through channels other than those concerned with essential human maintenance. By contra'st, there are societies in which economic
activity provides the dominant motivations of the culture. In some, a few
people may monopolize wealth and economic power, while a part of the
population may always be on the verge of starvation, as in numbers of
Asian agricultural societies.

[41] Systems of Production

225

Problem 41 . Systems of Production

What do cross-cultural perspectives reveal about such matters as
division of labor, economic leadership, and work habits?
Extensive reference has already been made to the part played in human life by the physical environment, and also to the means used by various people to produce the particular kinds of goods and services they value
as meeting their needs and tastes. These means are in many instances
highly technical processes. Practically every ethnological monograph gives
an account of food getting, housing, tools, and other material categories,
as being basic to the culture concerned. If at all complete, it tells in detail
of their seasonal or yearly cycle of economic activity, of the time and
effort they spend in this and that form of enterprise, and of the organization involved. For our purposes here attention can be focused on this last
as breaking new ground in our study.
Every known group has some form of division of labor, that is, of
specialization in economic activity. This may variously be based upon such
factors as sex, age, family connections, rank, class or caste, and special
craft skills. Even in those societies with the simplest known economic
organization there exists such a division of labor, based notably upon sex.
In our own society, under conditions of the machine age, specialization
along sex lines has tended to become somewhat blurred, and girls and
women today may engage in activities from which even their mothers were
excluded; but in most societies there is still a sharp distinction between
the work spheres of males and females, this usually reinforced by religious
and moral values (Problem 47).
Other factor~ may influence division of labor, such as class and age.
The former, minimized in some societies and of paramount importance in
others, will be discussed later (Problem 53). The latter obviously is rooted
in physiological differences (childhood, youth, maturity, age, senility) but
it also is shaped from placelto place by social custom. In aU societies, as
would be expected, much of the education of young people consists of
formal and informal training that prepares them for adult economic responsibilities-economic organization always has an educational side.
This is especially necessary in the case of the more difficult craft skills
and "professions." These -w,ere referred to above as one of the bases for
division of labor. The long 'training or apprenticeship required to become
an expert, together with the exacting nature of such work (say, that of a
seagoing canoe builder, a priest or medicine man, or a blacksmith) makes
it necessary for the society to provide some means by which the experts

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Economic Organization

concerned can be fed and otherwise have their needs met through the
work of others. Often such crafts run in family lines, and indeed may be
restricted by hereditary right.
There are still many societies where occupational specialization is
minimized and every man is likely to be a jack-of-all-trades. At the other
extreme is our modern industrialized civilization in which division of labor
may be carried to the point where an individual is a specialized worker
on an assembly line or tends an automatic device. The machine age has
broken down older forms of economic activity and organization-the spinning wheel, for example, at one time in every home, is now a museum
piece. An economic historian, W. H. Hamilton, writing on "Organization:
Economic" in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), summarizes
in telling fashion how in less than a century the "economy of small farm
and petty trade was transformed into the great industry." The machine, he
says, "got the run of the workship," making a factory out of it and stripping
the worker of his skill. Man "escaped" from his place in the home with its
domestic occupations, and "found a refuge in the office, store or factory,"
and "after a decorous period, woman began to follow him." The farmer
perforce had to turn businessman. Out of a "casual bargaining" grew an
"intricate and articulate structure of markets, credits and accounts." Selfsufficiency gave way to minute division of labor in which a living might be
sought from "the ends of the earth." In turn, "among the folkways of
industry," dynamic changes are under way relating to quantity production,
forms of organization, the "distribution of the equities in property," the
use of leisure, and other matters. "The iron man and the adding machine,"
Hamilton concludes, "go their restless way; and with them things established must patch up the best truce they can."
_
Economic leadership has to be studied as it operates in different economic systems. It may be traditionally the prerogative of one or the other
sex as regards this and that occupation, or it may be based on hereditary
rights possessed by individuals, or groups, or on age, rank, class, or experience and training. In some instances the leadership in a given operation
may be shifted from person to person~ or group to group: (family, clan,
and so on); in others it may be more or less permanently vested in one
person or in one group. The leader may merge into the activity and swing
his weight equally with the others in the common task, or his functions may
be segregated out as a planner or director of operations. Superordination
and subor~iinatidn reach their most extreme form perhaps in the masterslave relation. Sometimes the leader holds his job only in relation to the
economic purpose concerned-as does, say, the executive of a modern
business; at other times, as in the case of an Iroquois chief, he assumes economic direction along with political, religious, or other responsibilities. In.
our modern industrialized society the emergence of distinctions between

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[41] Systems of Production

those owning the means of productiol1 and directing economic operations

and those providing the labor has brought strains and stresses relatively
unknown in many societies less differentiated in economic function; the
adjustment of such relations is among the foremost problems of our times.
The status of craftsmen of various kinds differs from group to group.
An activity that may be valued highly in one culture will have a lowly position in another. Thus among some of the Polynesians, fishing was regarded
as a more humble occupation than agriculture (the Maoris and Marquesans); among others the opposite was true (the Tahitians and Samoans).
It depends on the traditional values of the peoples concerned. So, too, does
the question whether certain types of workers or experts may rise to high
social position if they are successful: in some aristocratic societies a person
must be born to economic rank and importance while elsewhere a man's
personal strivings and accomplishments may take him to the top. The
concept of reward or "payment" for services (salary, wages, and so on)
may be stressed or minimized. Such emoluments are fixed and impersonal
in some societies, especially where there is close division of labor. In others,
the return may assume the form of food and ceremonial gifts, or else of
reciprocal services when needed, and the idea of an exact equivalent for
the task performed is not stressed. Under the highly organized conditions
of modern industry, we all know, the mass of "workers" tend to emerge
as a special "class-conscious" group, more or less organized into unions
based on craft or industry, and struggling to improve tyeir status and
security.
One of the most fascinating lines of study in comparative economics
concerns different philosophies and values regarding "work." These have
already emerged to some extent. What, it may be asked, is the motivation,
what are the incentives, behind labor in this and that culture? Why do
people work? Is the ideal to work hard or to do as little as possible? To
what extent is a competitive ,spirit involved? Is work done according to
regular rhythms, as with our clock-and-calendar system, or in broken
rhythms? Is it an individualistic affair or marked by cooperation? What
special stimulants if any are u~ed to get work done as efficiently or as painlessly as possible? What magical and religious aids are called into play?
What happens to those unfit to work or unwilling to carry their share? As
a help to ethnologists in exploring this field the Royal Anthropological
Institute's handbook Notes 'and Queries on Anthropology says:

Even in simple societies man qoes not work solely to satisfy primary needsthere are other objects of work besides the securing of food, clothing, and
shelter. Consider the chief interests of the [people] in work and the accumulation
of wealth; the acquisition of wealth for utilitarian satisfaction; for social purposes--rlisplay, feasting, destruction; the acquisition of objects of non-utilitarian
interest-ornaments, things of religious or ceremonial importance, heirlooms.

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Economic Organization

The main incentive in work may be to obtain goods; to acquire wives, fame, or
rank, to enter secret societies, or to stand well in the eyes of the community. Note
any special efforts made with such ideas in view, and any correlation of achievement in work with social prestige. Are there any titles of fame to be gained
through work? Does skill or industry in economic affairs help to gain a wife, or
special privileges? Note public opinion of laziness, and proverbs connected with
this [5th ed. 1929, p. 133].
EXAMPLE.

HOPI WORK HABITS

Beaglehole (1937), reports on a field study of the work habits of the Hopi
Indians of southwestern United States. Though the primary motive of much
Hopi work is to satisfy physical needs, the activities concerned are culturally
complex and overlaid with other motives which draw strength from tradition,
religion, aesthetics, and the power of group opinion. Tradition sets the molds
for work, teaches its techniques, and sets up standards as to what is expected
from each individual. The desire to have a part in cherished ritual observances
sets up other norms of work and gives "cultural respectability" to varied types
of activity. Again, the desire to win social approval is a notably strong motive
in such a tightly knit society in which "merciless ridicule" is heaped on the
individual or household which prefers laziness to economic self-sufficiency.
Besides these more generalized motives, a number of factors operate to help
make work pleasant and relieve its monotony. The working party provides
pleasure through group activity marked by joking and laughter, gossip, singing,
and perhaps recital by old people of folk tales.

The types of motivation pictured here for Hopi work extend widely,
and doubtless in some respects universally in human societies. Rhythmic
songs and chants, for example, with which work can be synchronize~, are
widely known. Some peoples use drug~ or other forms of physical stimulants
as aids-the South American coca, tobacco, or the coffee break. Religion
and magic may also be invoked to rally work effort.
/
It has already been indicated that some peoples set great store upon
maximum work effort and achievement, this ideal' often born of the necessity
of living in crowded or climatically inhospitable regions. Others take the
view that work should be minimized, and that the worth of individuals should
be measured in other terms. This contrast has come out clearly as Western
peoples have penetrated indigenous areas where the latter ideas prevail.
The Western~r, on the one hand, tends to look at the local people as "lazy,"
"indole,nt," incapable of sustained effort, unreliable as workers, perhaps
even biologically deficient in these respects, because they do not strain
themselves in what by Western standards are counted worth-while and
profitable enterprises-and especially because they may not be willing to
labor for wages in the white man's enterprises. The local people, on the
other hand, far from seeing profit in such new lines of activity, may actually

[41] Systems of Production

229

be secretly pitying the white man f<?r having to work so hard for his living,
regarding him as a kind of economic slave caught in the toils of time clocks,
factory whistles, and the like, and being the more thankful that they themselves have a less hectic pace. True, the Western institutions and values
are now being increasingly diffused. At the same time, in Western countries,
the trend is toward shorter hours of work, and the Westerner is having to
learn what many so-called pre-industrial peoples have been adept at: how
to relax and utilize leisure time.
A question-and-answer exercise relating to why a given group works
will usually evoke both rueful and amusing leads:
Q. What makes people work in our society?
AA. They want to get on. . . They want better jobs.. They have
Q.
A.

Q.
A.

Q.
A.
Q.
A.

families to support. . . .
Couldn't you take life easy and get along without having to strain
yourself? People do.
It's a status question. To be counted a success you have to have
money. That means work.
Why do people feel guilty if they are not working between 9 A.M.
and 5 P.M. weekdays?
Most everyone else is. It's habit, I suppose. We don't like to be seen
on the streets or around home doing nothing because we think people
will talk about us.
Do you think all peoples have to work as hard as/we do?
Lots of people seem to take it much easier. But some probably work
much harder, even though they get less.
Are people happier if they work more, or work less?
Most of us wouldn't know what to do with our time if we didn't
work.

To the study of modern American industry Warner, Chapple, and

others have been applying anthropological theory relating to social structure and the interaction of individuals (Problem 31). This has included
"applied" studies which a~e being sold by Chapple and others serving as
consultants to industrial firms. How an industrial organization looks when
put under the objective ssrutiny of the anthropologist is revealed in a recent paper by Harding on "The Social Anthropology of American Industry" (1955). He stre~ses two major significant lines of study: first,
identification of the "sy~bols important to the people who make up the
organization," and second, delineation of the "network of relationships"
which comprise the social:system. Because, he says, an industrial institution
is "one organized to process materials and assemble parts," it is possible to
outline many basic relationships by "following the objects as they are being
made." All individuals on the line must be continually adjusting themselves

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Economic Organization

to one another and to the requirements of the work process; the foreman
is immediately in charge of the work flow; more levels of supervision
pyramid up to the plant manager. In addition to the two main systems of
relationships involved here, "those of the production line and those of the
supervisory hierarchy" there are other systems of relationships such as
those concerned with maintenance, supply, research, sales, and unionmanagement negotiation.
As regards "symbols," Harding says, those concerned with "status"
in general relate to the position in the supervisory hierarchy. Yet status
differences, as in seniority and skill, are also present on the line. Besides
the "formal" relationships of the organization itself, individuals have their
own social needs, which are met through "informal" relationships both
within and outside the industrial organization. All these elements comprising the "social system'" of the plant concerned "tend to reach an equilibrium." But many dynamic forces are also present, such as managerial
desires to increase output, and union and employee pressures to improve
conditions, which may produce disequilibria even to the point of breakdown. Industrial organizations also "function in and are part of the society in which they exist" so that industrial-community relation_ships and
other wider social networks also form parts of the total pictu,re. Other
aspects of the machine-age economy which supplement Harding's picture
were referred to earlier, including what was called a kind of industrial
'
nomadism (Problem 20).

Exercise
Discuss, and if possible make a brief case study of, some economic unit
familiar to you, such as a factory, a store, a bank, a farm. What are tl}_e
main lines of social structure involved? What particular interests and
symbols are shared by owner or owners? management? workers? What
relationships extend out into the community and possibly beyond?

Problem 42

Systems of Exchange

What is the range of custom as regards transfer of goods between

groups and between individuals? How universal are commerce, money,
and related usages?
In small isolated societies goods are likely to be used directly by the
group or individual producing them. Yet some will surely pass from hand
to hand, perhaps to spread the benefits of a particularized individual or
group skill, but often to consummate social, religious, and other ends beyond those of immediate subsistence wants. Transfers of goods are also
likely to occur where interaction goes on between neighboring groups. Such

231

[42] Systems of Exchange

exchanges, inside and between small .groups, adumbrate the complex institutions of trade and commerce characteristic of contemporary civilization. How far having an exchangeable surplus is a casual or a systematically
planned matter would have to be looked at for each society.
Some isolated peoples appear to have lacked entirely the idea of impersonal trade and commerce-at least until the arrival of Whites. Transfer
of goods among them took the form of personal or group gifts and exchanges, often of a highly ceremonial nature and having primary functions
of validating traditionally defined relationships or customs such as kin
ties, marriages, settlement of feuds or crimes, and the entertainment of
visitors. A good example of how such movements of property may take
place-in this case at first sight seemingly in a useless and uneconomical
way but on deeper analysis noted as serving important social functionsis provided by the exchanges of the staple food product, yams, among the
Trobriand Islanders in Melanesia, as described by Malinowski (1935).
EXAMPLE.

TROBRIAND YAM EXCHANGES

A Trobriand household grows yams in its gardens not wholly for its own
use but substantially for use by the husband's sister's household. A large part
of its own yam supply comes from the household gardens of one of the wife's
brothers. Each household, therefore, is working and watching the crops in order
to offer the best tubers harvested to a "third somebody" who may not even
live in the same village. This transfer is expected to provide tbout half of the
amount needed for household consumption for the year. As a further complication, once a recipient has received this harvest offering, he has to redistribute

1
Ceremonial Display ofj
Yams, Trobriand Islands. I
The yams, passed over to:
a chief by his wife's male
relatives, are publicly dis-;
played in a decorated ya~,
storehouse.
I

Economic Organization

232

some of it among his nearest kinsmen. The giver, too, after he has presented
the best part of his harvest to his sister's household, has still a number of minor
gifts to distribute to other relatives. Further complexities of distribution exist,
especially for men of rank. Such gifts are formally displayed-yams are stacked
up in public view-and the whole community is ready to voice its praise or
criticism of their quantity and quality.
It can be sensed that functionally such a system would bind kinsmen together in potent bonds of cooperation and obligation. The social pressures pervading customs of this kind provide powerful incentives to work effort. Such
noncommercial transactions also exist in societies where commercial dealings
have become customary-as with the ceremonial gifts and exchanges so prominent in Japanese life, or pertaining to birthdays, Christmas, and other occasions
in our own milieu.

The mistake is often made of calling objects of ritual exchange

"money": for example, the "shell-money" of Melanesia, the "stone-money"
of the Caroline Islands, the fine mats of Samoa, and cattle among the Bantu
of Africa. Money, in the true sense, is some form of common denominator
or medium of exchange of fixed value against which the worth of other
goods can be objectively equated. Actually, the use of money did ,not extend
much beyond the centers of Asian and European civilization until modern
times, though simpler commercial transactions which can be called barter,
the direct interchange of goods, are much more widespread. Barter may
even take place through force of need between groups hostile to one another, as occurs when the "beach" people and the "bush" people in Melanesia exchange their respective products of the sea and the mountain interior. The method sometimes used is silent trade, or silent barter, by which
one group puts down its goodslin an agreed spot and retires, and the oth~r,
if the goods are acceptable, substitutes ip. their place what it considers an
equivalent amount of its products. -

EXA~PLE.

BUSHMAN EXCHANGE SYSTEMS

How even what are considered to be exceedingly primitive groups may engage in exchange is illustrated in a description by Schapera (1930) of some of the
Bushmen peoples of Africa. A whole system of barter relations exists between
different groups, especially from north to south, with interlinking ones acting
as intermediaries. Eggshell beads and tobacco are standard articles for barter,
and may even have a fixed value. A 'group called the Auen gets from its neighbors, the Naron, skin garments and bags, and in turn supplies them with wooden
dishes and spoons which it makes, and also metal pots, spearheads, knives, trade
beads, and other goods which it has obtained from groups further north. The
Naron also exchange their skin goods, and formerly also ivory and ostrich
feathers, with the Batswana for tobacco and millet. A small number of men,
and 'Nomen go to the camp of the band with whom they wish to exchange,

233

[43] Property Concepts

goods, laying down their weapons
given, and the barter proceeds.

b~forehand.

Permission to enter is' then

In marked contrast to such simple exchange systems is the development of what is the nerve center of many a community the world over,
the market, with its social and often festive atmosphere, and its noise,
bustle, and promise of profit and high adventure. Anthropological studies
of market centers are available, notably from Africa, Asia, and Middle
America (Herskovits, 1952). Under the mobile conditions of modern
civilization, of course, trading has assumed vast proportions, and an ex:"
traordinarily large part of the population in such a country as the United
States is engaged in "middleman" or distributive occupations.

Problem 43 . Property Concepts

What customs surround rights in goods in different societies? "ownership" and use of real and personal property? inheritance?
The economist working in our own society can largely assume as
given the customary property rights inherent in such concepts as capital,
interest, rent, wages. By contrast, the anthropologist has to make explicit
the specific property customs of the society with which he deals.
The concept of property is a cultural universal. For a group to utilize
the natural resources at its disposal with some degree/of security and
continuity, it must have adequate definitions as to rights of ownership and
use. Rules regarding the possession, handling, and disposition of property
are found in all cultures; here economics links most fully with law (Problem
58).
The 'human scene shows all degrees of emphasis from an extreme
stress on individual "private" property rights to "communal" or "collective" holding of property, this variously by families, clans, communities,
states. But no society seems! to carry individualistic ownership to a point
where no one but the persoq concerned has jurisdiction over goods (think
of taxes, housing 'regulations, and similar controls over what is counted
private property in our system), while among the most fully collectivist
groups individual ownershi~ of certain goods, if only used clothing, has
a place. Again "the handbook Notes and Queries in Anthropology may be
j
quoted:
Ownership is best defined not' in virtue of any supposed ultimate or exclusive
possession, but in terms of the sum total of rights and privileges which various
persons in the community hive over the object in question. It is essential to
get the native point of view. . . . Terms such as "communism" or "individualism" . . . gloss over the complexity of the relations involved [and are deceptive
labels unless a full description of local property usages is given]. . . . In all

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Economic Organization
societies there exist both individual and collective ownership. . . . Ideas of
property are not restricted to material objects but are extended to incorporeal
things such as myths, songs, dances, prayers, magical formulae, etc. . . . or
again there may be "ownership" of heavenly bodies, natural phenomena, and
whole species of animals and plants [5th ed. 1929, pp. 135, 158-162].
Where an item of property is held "collectively," the title may be genuinely
vested in a group, as is a forest area or a waterway. But it is much more
likely that the rights and equities of interested individuals will also be defined carefully and specifically as participants, i.e., the system would be
one of multiple-rights rather than of a vague collectivism.
Exercise

Locate some item of property in our own society which is "collectively

owned." How far, on further analysis, does it involve multiple rights of
individuals and perhaps of groups, and what are they?
The ownership of land and other natural resources, that is, of "real
property," is always a fundamental aspect of economic organization, and
meticulous definitions generally exist as to both ultimate authority over
them and their use. Besides its economic significance, landholding is likely
to involve political, religious, and sentimental factors, especially where the
land has been an ancestral heritage long occupied by the people concerned.
The average European or American of today tends to assume that his own
particular property usages, with their attendant paraphernalia of maps,
theodolites, fences, trespass signs, title deeds, and laws forbiding theft,
have a kind of universal existence or validity. Yet this individualistic and
legally complex system of Western countries is in many respects a comparatively recent growth. It took form particularly from the sixteenth
century, when the "enclosure movemen_t" and its accompanying peasant
revolts, together with the emergence of an increasingly,large landless class,
signalized the main stage in transforming European feudalism and collectivism into private ownership in the modern sense: The customs of landholding before this were in many respects parallefto those _fo!Jnd widely
among non-Western peoples.
.
In some regions of limited resources and expanding populations, cultural values favored a close subdivision of the available territory among
indigenous communities, kin groups, households or individuals, with
boundary lines that Imight be closely guarded. In other areas, human units
of this kind fO,und it best, in the face of rigorous conditions such as pressure
of hunger or enemies, or else, where resources were bountiful or not easily
divisible, to hold their lands more collectively, under some form of multiplerights system in which individual interests merged with those of others.
The first was most usual among sedentary agricultural groups, and seems
to have been one of the invention complexes of the food-producing revolu-

[43] Property Concepts

235

tion. The second is frequently found all).ong peoples who have led a more
nomadic existence such as Plains Indian hunters, and fishing peoples like
the Ainu of Japan. Here, however, the lack of individual definition of
ownership in real property is likely to be counterbalanced by strict rules
as to the use of the resources and the individual disposal of game and other
produce, or of herded animals. In many instances both types of landholding
are practiced side by side in the same community: living sites and cultiva~
tions are elaborately defined as to ownership and usehold, but forest hinter~
lands, pastures, sea and river frontages, and their like are held more or
less in common.
Political considerations may also be important, as, for example, when
title to land becomes vested in some ruling overlord, property holders may
have to pay him tribute and may be more or less subject to his will for
their use of resources. This linkage of land and politics is still more com~
plex where the conception of the state or nation emerges, along with the
idea of "sovereignty." Moreover, even in the simplest societies the people
occupying a territorial unit might take steps to enforce what is presumably
the oldest and cruqest law of tenure: defense of their possessions by force
of arms. "The prime causes of war," runs a Polynesian saying, "are women
and land."
A final point to be noted is that, among most if not all groups, land~
holding is a source of social prestige and importance, so that the title to
property is cherished apart from any direct utilization in jthe economic
sense. This has been,so in Europe with the landed nobility. In some societies "prestige rights" pyramid up from local leaders to central rulers.
Many spots, too, may be hallowed by mythical, historical, or religious associations: a mountain may be sacred or a river may have run red with
the blood of. battling ancestors.
Man-made goods, the "mobile" forms of wealth usually called personal property, arC also invested with individual or group rights. As regards
a given class of goods, all metribers of some recognized group may have
equal interests, or there may b'e different degrees of right or privilege for
different persons. A tool posses~ed by a certain individual for example, may
be potentially available to rela~ives or others should they want it; as such
they may be able to take it ",/ithout any idea of "theft" being involved.
Often there are distinctions in a society between the types of property
appropriately owned by males land by females; property may also be used
to differentiate other statuses, las already seen in clothing and housing.
Because material property may survive the death of its owner, every
society has a special set of rules dealing with inheritance. Peoples vary
amazingly in their ways of passing property. Some stress primogeniture,
passing on the heritage primarily to the first-born; others take account of
sons or daughters only; still others take in both sons and daughters equally

236

Economic Organization

or else in different proportions; or different types of goods may go to

different heirs. When there are children counted illegitimate, or the heirs
are minors, or there are no heirs at all, or a widow or a widower has to
be provided for, further complications exist. Some groups made a practice
of burying or destroying goods of a person at death-another challenge to
the field worker to look into the beliefs and values involved.

Problem 44 . Systems of Consumption

What distributive mechanisms get goods and services into the hands
of consumers? What differences show between everyday goods and prestige
goods? How is wealth used to consummate wider social purposes?
Anthropologists take careful account of the consumer: how goods
get to him through distributive mechanisms, his disposal of such goods in
terms of use values, what is his "income." Here, too, in contrast to those
economists who deal with Western culture, and so can assume a knowledge
of the familiar consumption habits and tastes of the population group, the
anthropological worker can take nothing for granted in local custom.
Distribution, in the sense of the particular allotment of goods, either
for direct consumption or in terms of exercising power over their disposal,
is a kind of bridge between production and consumption. In some small
groups which lay great stress on cooperation and collectivism, all households may receive about equal shares proportionate to their size, or at least
all individuals are assured of their basic subsistence needs. No one will
starve unless all are starving-as in time of scarcity-and in time of
plenty all may participate in the feastings and rejoicings. There appears
to be about every degree of variation from this tal the other extreme in
which some dominant individual, family~ or class, because of hereditary
position, forceful assumption of power, Dr success in competition, may
cont~ol or at least exercise prestige authority over all of the wealth, and
there may be a larger or smaller part of the population in a state of deprivation and dependence.
The anthropologist follows up the mechanisms of distribution in the
societies he studies-say, how a catch of fish or a harvested crop is divided,
the rewards pertaining to leadership or special skill, the rights that other
people may have over whatever a person or group produces, the duties
which custom imposes on a man' or woman toward different kinds of
relatives o~ others with whom he has economic relations. Mead, in the
comparative study of "cooperation and competition" cited above (1937),
presents useful illustrative cases of which one, the New Zealand Maori, is
summarized below.

[44] Systems of Consumption

EXAMPLE.

237

ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION AMONG THE POLYNESIAN MAORI

Maori economic enterprises were carried on usually by groups of kinsmen,

large or small, under the direction of their chiefs. Though chieftainship was
based essentially on aristocratic rank and primogeniture, the position was validated and exercised through handling of important wealth. Without well-supplied
storehouses at his command, a chief could not engage in the public display
and liberal distribution of goods, as at marriages and funerals, or when guests
were being entertained, which was essential for the maintenance of his prestige.
A chief's adherents gained social stature from these ceremonious activities. Correspondingly, if the chief was not in a position to exercise them, the disgrace fell
upon his adherents as well as on himself. It was imperative, therefore, that
people actively cooperate to keep the coffers of the chief, which were in a kind
of trusteeship sense those. of the kin and community, filled with food and other
appropriate goods. It was also essential for the chief, if he was to retain respect
and adherence, ta gille appropriate leadership and ta auild up his reputatian far
unstinted giving to his followers and guests.

This case account goes on to say that, when a Maori chief failed in
his responsibilities, his followers would be likely to displace him or transfer allegiance to some other chief. This is a reminder that economic unrest
and conflict may assume various forms. They tend in general, however, to
be marked when some members of a group believe themselves to be underprivileged, oppressed, or inadequately served by those in power, and are
in a strong enough position to do something about it: the various agrarian
"rebellions" in European history, and the ground swells of economic readjustment in many countries today are familiar examples.
Consumption, in the direct sense, refers to the utilization of any object
for the purpose for which it was designed-a canoe for fishing, a watch for
reckoning time, and so on. Obviously some of what man produces is immediately used or put to work. Very frequently, however, he finds it more
satisfactory to save and store goods for later consumption. The Paiute
Indians collect nuts and seeds to carry them over the winter months, the
farmer has his barn, and {ve may buy an annuity for old age. In some
tropical areas where perish'able foods are hard to keep, the people use a
system of living storage by putting a taboo on the trees or plants concerned
until such time as their products are wanted.
Accumulation of surpluses over and above immediate needs may have
the object of carrying the gioup over lean periods, or ensuring them against
possible emergencies. But, :as already seen, it may also serve personal and
social ends far beyond the economic sphere. Every society appears to have
a distinction between subsistence goods and ceremonial or prestige goods.
What the latter are, and do, in any society is a matter of research which

238

Economic Organization

will undoubtedly lead into many "noneconomic" aspects of the cultural

system. The example of feast foods (Problem 34) is a case in point.
In some cultures, saving, frugality, canniness, and the like are highly
valued and bring honors. In others, little stress is placed upon them-the
gods, perhaps, are regarded as giving or withholding, or easy come, easy
go is the general sentiment. The contrast is probably most marked in attitudes toward individual accumulation of wealth. In the United States, for
example, it is widely customary to measure economic, and to quite an
extent social, "success" in terms of being able to acquire money and goods
through striving and saving within our more or less elective and competitive
system. But to many other peoples-the old-time Hawaiians, for instance
-the idea of such concentration of wealth in the hands of separate individuals would appear niggardly, stingy, and even unethical. No reminder
should be needed that the anthropologist is describing value systems, not
judging worth here.
Where peoples may not see importance in the ability to accumulate
and monopolize goods, they may set great store upon assembling them
for display and ceremonious distribution. The case cited above of the
Maori chief and his followers, with their ostentatious flourishing. of possessions, illustrates this. In our own culture the "Golden Horseshoe" at the
opera, and Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So's elaborate wedding or reception could
be cited as examples. Probably all peoples have occasions on, which large
quantities of food, ornaments, ceremonial objects, and the like are brought
together, giving social and aesthetic satisfactions of a real kind. Mead and
others have shown how in Samoa on all sorts of occasions-births, deaths,
visits, completion of a house, a religious ritual-the family, the kin, the
community, or the district will assemble huge amounts of pigs, taro, fis~,
fine mats, scented oil and other wealth. There is an' ostentatious and ceremonious display of what has been given by whom; and then it is passed
on to the group which on that occasion is-the appropriate recipient, or for
somet types of occasion redivided once more proportionately among all
those participating. It may be a cultural universahhat hum_an~ get aesthetic
satisfactions from heaped-up piles of food and other goods. To the outsider, such a display often appears useless, wasteful, foolish, and purposeless. But to the people concerned it is a grand exercise in'reaffirming the
goodwill and interdependence, the privileges and duties, associated with
group membership, in demonstrating the status and prestige of everyone
involved, perhap~ in cementing new bonds, in exulting in a feeling of wellbeing, and,' of course, in providing an occasion of heightened economic and
social activity, and of feasting, dancing, and other ceremonious behavior
without which life would be a dull and spiceless animal existence.
Perhaps the most extreme form of emotionally charged consumption
behavior to be noted by anthropologists is the custom among some peoples

Marine Resources. Examples of utilization of oceanic products by

Pacific Islanders: above, a Micronesian fish pond built of rock in a
shallow lagoon; below, a turtle pond in the Lau Islands, Fiji. These
can be used for live storage.

240

Economic Organization

of demonstrating their wealth and prestige, or reacting to such a crisis as

death, by a deliberate ritualized destruction of property. A classic example
of this came to light among the American Indians of the Northwest Coast
area centering around the so-called potlatch.
EXAMPLE.

THE NORTHWEST COAST INDIAN POTLATCH

The Kwakiutl can be used to exemplify the potlatch and its cultural context. This salmon-eating, village-living people have a social organization marked
by tremendous rivalry for prestige among chiefs and their adherent groups.
Ceremonial goods and festivals were, so to speak, the weapons with which they
contested. Notable items of wealth which validated rank were blankets, copper
plates, boxes, and oil. A potlatch was a property bout in which a chief, backed
by his followers, tried to rise in rank by shaming another chief whom he has
challenged. At his accession to a chief's rank an aristocratic heir must distribute
a considerable quantity of blankets among important men of another family line
in the presence of the whole community. Each recipient is obligated to accept
the property, and must be prepared to repay it at the end of the year with 100
per cent interest. Should he fail, he falls in social status, while the victor rises
another rung in the social ladder. By subsequent successful potlatching, ~ person
of rank accumulates increasing renown, as well as more property with which to
engage in showier bouts. At a potlatch the contending parties have numerous
institutionalized means of "attacking" their opponents in the attempt to exhaust
their resources, as, for example, by ritual destruction of copper 'plates and
of oil. Once challenged by a rival to competition, the leader concerned has to
reciprocate or lose the all-important prestige which serves as a driving motive
in Kwakiutl society. Of the extensive literature on the potlatch custom, perhaps
the most accessible source is an account in the Mead-edited volume (1937)
referred to previously in this chapter.

Review
/
Neither habitat nor biological capacity imposes rigid limitations on
economic behavior. Man clearly IS, for example, free to stress competition
or cooperation, individualism or collectivism, according to what he values
as best. He can live on a largely day-to-day basis, or elaborate wealth far
beyond the immediate requirements. If so-called primitive economic systems may not have :;my considerable cpntribution to make to the elaborate
arrangements pecess'ary for carrying on economic life among mass populations and on a world scale, it may well be that they can contribute some
important understandings to civilized man in terms of economic philosophies and values.
Firth (1951a), in reviewing the potential of developing general propositions relating to human economic behavior through combined efforts of

241

Collateral References

economists and anthropologists, state.s that "the principles of economics

which are truly general or universal in their application are few." He
therefore doubts that any elaborate superstructure of technical theory
awaits discovery through such collaboration. Anthropologists, however,
can help the economist not only by providing a realistic picture of nonWestern economic systems, but also by applying their special research
methods to the study of Western economic institutions, such as an industrial
plant or community. Furthermore, they are supplying knowledge of the
Western culture and society in its totality, including its potentialities for
change.
In turn, economists, through their technical skills, can help the anthropologist to achieve greater precision in documenting the economic
dimensions of any culture. Working together, they are in a position to
provide coordinated techniques in international and regional programs
of economic development and technical assistance around the world. More
generally, both can contribute to an understanding of the economic facets
of social and cultural change, to be discussed in the final chapter.

Collateral References
Standard textbooks nearly all include a section on economic organization.
Notable works discussing this topic in a comprehensive way are Thurnwald, R.,
Economics in Primitive Communities (1932), Forde, C. D., Habitat, Economy
and Society (1934, rev. ed. 1950), Mead, M. (ed.), Cooperation and Competition among Primitive Peoples (1937), Firth, R., Elements of Social Organization (1951), and Herskovits, M. J., Economic Anthropology (1952). A Boasedited volume (1938) contains useful papers on subsistence by Lowie and
economic organization by Bunzel.
Examples of ethnographic studies emphasizing the economic aspect of
culture are Barton (1922), Malinowski (1922, 1935), Beaglehole (1937),
Evans-Pritchard (1940), Firthl (1940, 1946), Wagley (1941), Foster (1942),
Holmbefg (1950), Tax (195~), and Oliver (1955). Anthropological studies
relating to the contemporary Western economic system are assessed by Harding
(1955) and by Keesing, Siegel, and Hammond (1957). Redfield characterizes
isolated and peasant communities (1947, 1955, 1956). Economic change will
be discussed from various poihts of view in Chapters XVI and XVII, where
bibliographic references are given.

/'

Social Organization

THIS CHAPTER is concerned with the aspect of culture

through which people are organized into social systems, or society. In a
broad sense all cultural behavior has a personnel, or social organization
facet. That is, persons are interacting in patterned ways, interpersonal relations are more or less formalized into a social structure. Relationships of
"man-to-man" type have been seen in economic organization. They will
also appear in later analyses of how people organize to carryon the activities of government, law, religion, art, and play. It is possible, indeed, to
view, as British social anthropologists tend to do, all behavior in terms of
conceptual operations relating to social structure rather than to culture
(Problem 6).
There are, however, a special series of man-to-man relations which
anthropologists customarily group together as a kind of core under the
rubric "social organization." These are the cultural answers to certain
spatial, biological, and social universals or constants which underlie all
group life. Social groups in which spatial, locality, or residence principles of _
organization are a major element are exemplified by, the "household," or
cluster of persons who assemble in one place regularly for cooking, eating, sleeping, and other intimate living, and also by the neighborhood and
the cqmmunity. Biological or constitutional principles are exemplified by
organization based on age, or the cycle of the individual life, on generation
and seniority of birth, on sex, and on kinship, that is, the complex network
of parental, child, brother-sister, and other relationships into which any individual is born. Social or group aggregation constants in the sense of conditions necessary for interpersonal organization and continuity are exemplified by the needs for some form of "family" to care for young children, for_
group loyalty and social order, and for hierarchical or rank-order arrangements, as in' leadership and other allocation of power and responsibility.
Fortes (1953) speaks of the totality of social relations as "ties and cleavages by whkh persons are bound together or divided from one another in
social life." This is the field in which anthropology links most closely to
sociology.
242

[45] Anthropological Approach to Social Organization

243

At earlier points a number of references have been made to characteristic locality or residence groupings such as mobile bands or camps,
hamlets, villages, and urban centers. Spatial-social units, whatever their
local character, provide the broad term "community." Under the topic of
housing, the physical layout of varying types of community was touched
upon briefly (Problem 36). An increasing tendency shows in recent anthropological field work to make the locality grouping or community the
organizing principle for research: notably, "village" studies in various parts
of the world, and, to an increasing extent, urban studies, e.g., Warner's
studies of American cities (Problem 31). No separate problem section will
be included on this topic, but further references to locality factors, including community organization, will be made at relevant points. The important general understanding here is that locality or residence provides
one of the major principles of organization in all societies.

Problem 45 . The Anthropological Approach to Social

Organization
What concepts and research techniques are used? What is the basic
relation between population characteristics and culture?
Analysis of a social system must start with the essential
demographic
/
and ecological facts: the number of persons in the population, their age
and sex composition, their household and community distribution, their
degree of mobility, and other relevant data. Taken together with a record
of kinship, marriage, and other social ties, this basic inventory is often
called a sOfial census. The anthropological field worker, regardless of the
nature of his research problem, needs such information to guide him in his
contacts and in judging the adequacy of his sample of informants.
Three related lines of app'roach
have been used by field workers in probI
ing social organization furthe~. First is what can be called the biographical
method. In this the life history of individuals provides the key. The student
here examines the special happenings connected with the "crises" of life,
or as one scholar, van Gennep, called them, the rites de passage, such as
birth, naming, puberty, inidation into adult status, marriage, sickness,
death and mourning, as well, as more everyday events that befall the individual and influence his socialization.
From such individual cases the
j'
observer can build up recurri,ng features of rights and duties, attitudes and
sentiments, which define or ll1ap out social alignments.
A second approach is in terms of establishing the more formal patterns
of group activities, or institutions. The student investigates, for example,
the household, the community, leadership, perhaps ritual drinking, and sees

244

Social Organization

how they are constituted and what they "do," that is, their form or structure, and their function. Key clues to such "institutions" are provided in
language terms by which the organized group life is classified, as with
kinship terms, names for "family" groupings, classes, or castes.
A third approach may be made in terms of interaction behavior, the
interpersonal relations among individuals. In small groups where many
or all of the people may count themselves kinsmen because of close intermarriage and the remembering of genealogies or affiliations by descent, the
ethnologist can make important use of what is called the genealogical
method. By starting from specific relationships of birth, marriage, adoption, he builds up a picture first of the network of kinship and then of the
larger social patterns.
In this third approach by way of social ties, the investigator is unremittingly inquisitive as to the behavior of persons toward one another to
see how far it involves socially prescribed activities and values. His basic
reference points for analyzing a social system are sometimes called social
dyads, that is, the patterned interaction of two individuals (Problem 31).
Especially he may note the modes of behavior on more formal and ceremonious occasions-who is and is not allowed to take part, who does this
and that, what persons are free with one another, who are restrained, who eX"ercises authority. The texture of human relations here involves a wide range
of informal and formal possibilities from love to hate, from intimacy to
avoidance, from dominance to submission. It may be noted that every society has forms of etiquette and manners which channel the difficult business
of social intercourse, especially among strangers or nonintimates; etiquette,
so to speak, oils the joints of desired interaction.
An important concept for understanding social organization is that
of status, with its accompanying action tenp. role in the sense of playing out
a status. Every society has an established and well-defined set of social
positions or statuses relating to age, sex,' kin, leadership, perhaps class
and o,ccupation, and other categories, to which expected behaviors, beliefs,
sentiments, and often rankings attach. As they come and go _in each generation, individuals get assigned to some of these statuses, and choose, or
compete, for others.
The personal history and attainments of each individual, therefore,
may be looked at in terms of the statuses he occupies, the roles which channel his activities. Some statuses, and the groupings of people associatedwith them, twill b~ important and vital to him, but others will be quite
marginal to his concerns; as regards many groups he will have no status
at all, though he may know of their existence. Gaining status in some groups
may involve no effort or difficulty. Indeed, the individual may be born to
such a social role or otherwise attain it without his volition, as with his sex
or age position: it is an ascribed status. In the case of other groups he may

[45] Anthropological Approach to Social Organization

245

have to compete or otherwise expend. effort, as, say, in a profession or lodge:

this would then be an achieved status.
A status position is likely to involve prestige that may fluctuate and
so needs frequent exercising; it may even have to be struggled for constantly. The compelling effect of the desire to keep and improve one's
statuses, at any rate in the groups along the lines of one's active interests,
is a major force in goading individuals to work, to "keep their noses to
the grindstone," to behave in ways that the society prescribes as right and
good: in other words, it is a prime force of social control. Most of us
doubtless at times envy the hobo, the beachcomber, or other persons who
apparently have moved aside from the struggle and are social flotsam and
jetsam more or less without status, and at least maintaining the pose of not
wanting it. Yet the ambitions and values to which we have been trained,
the social pressures that are brought upon us, keep the great majority of
us pressing in what the culture defines as the upward direction, seeking bigger and better statuses. It can be realized why status and role are vital categories of social analysis.
Exercise
Make a list of the important statuses you have occupied actively, the roles
you have played, in the last twenty-four hours.

Humans have always been interested in trying to know the origins of

their social institutions. Peoples usually have elaborate myths or other explanations to account for their more critical customs. In our own society
such a body of tradition and belief is behind the "sacrament of marriage."
As the scientific attitude developed, early scholars tried to reconstruct the
history of the different social customs they were finding over the world. This
effort reached an early peak in the work of the evolutionary anthropologists
and also of sociologists who made use of their materials. In addition to
anthropological "classics" such as those of Morgan and McLennan (Problem 25), mention may be m~de of such major sociological works as Herbert
Spencer's Principles of Soci'ology (1896) and Graham Sumner's Folkways
(1906), and the writings of the Durkheim school on early society (Problem 31). With the twentieth century, social structure emerged as an increasingly technical field 6f study, notably the rich embellishments of
kinship to be seen below. Of modern works, volumes focused on social organization by L~wie (194~), Murdock (1949), Levi-Strauss (1949), and
Nadel (1957) are outstanding.
A theoretical problem inherent in the study of social organization is
the nature of the basic rela;tion between the numerical and other characteristics of <I: population and the cultural arrangements represented in its
social structure. Such demographic and ecological features as the size of
a group, its age and sex composition, the rate of turnover through births and

246

Social Organization

deaths, the degree of mobility, the spatial distribution of individuals in

households and communities, both shape and are shaped by cultural patterns. A population of some two hundred persons isolated on a Pacific
island obviously does not have the numerical scope for the differentiation
of all the social groupings and cultural behaviors which marks a large
nation. Elaborated clan and class arrangements, and marked occupational
specialization, require what Fortes (1953), among others, has called a
"middle range" of population size. A group with few old people has different bounds for organizing the upper age levels from one with numerous old
people, as in our own society. An immigrant group which has brought few
women with it cannot transplant its habitual marriage patterns. Rapid
growth or decline in population, or shifts from migratory to sedentary behavior or vice versa, pose problems of social reformulation.
On the whole, anthropologists have discussed less systematically at a
theoretical level these over-all relationships between the nature of an aggregated group and cultural patterns than they have the constitution-culture
and habitat-culture relationships examined earlier. Among examples of
sporadic analyses in the literature are a brief discussion by Kroeber (1948)
of the "influence of size of society" on culture, studies emphasizing the relation of social structure to population characteristics by Goldschmiqt (1948),
Fortes (1953), and Steward (1956), and a series of papers by Willey and
others (1956) on prehistoric settlement patterns in the New World.
The demographic and ecological conditions which are present at any
given time in a group set limits upon the further elaboration of cultural behavior and institutions, as in the instances cited above. But there is also the
factor of permissiveness, of very great flexibility in possible cultural alternatives, e.g., a monogamous or a polygamous marriage system, reckoni!_!g
descent by way of the father, or the mother, or both Iparentallines. As with
constitution and habitat, the population characteristic:s pose problems which
may be solved in different ways. They also provide instrumentalities, in the
senstf that there are certain types of people to be organized. Looked at in
turn from the side of cultural factors, these exercise shaping .infiuences on
demographic and ecological characteristics. This process has been well
shown in the chapter on cultural growth, as where new technological inventions change patterns of aggregation from mobile to settled communities.
It can be further illustrated by, say, shifts in living groups connected with
political realignments or the rise of a new religion.
-.
Population characteristics thus' provide a further class of determinants
of culture, 'though of course not a sale or prime determiner in the oversimple sense criticized in earlier chapters (III, V). An established social
system represents a particular equilibrium of population-culture relationships which is only one of the many possible in terms of the demographic

[46] Age and Generation as Organizing Factors

247

and ecological conditions inherent in the group concerned, and in terms

of the potential inventiveness of the group's members.
The study of social organization has no generally agreed upon entry
point. Some ethnographic reports start with kinship structure, others with
the community, still others with the life cycle. The last-named is made the
starting point here. Though we shall be considering the general organizing principles one by one, it must be remembered that in real behavior they
do not stand apart but weave together to make the complex fabric of a
society.

Problem 46 . Age and Generation, or the Cycle of

Individual Life, as Organizing Factors
What do cross-cultural perspectives show?
Age, in the sense that the lifetimes of all individuals follow a biologically defined cycle, is one of the important constants or universals upon
which social organization builds. Every ethnic group has a set of cultural
arrangements and values concerned with the growing children as they pass
from dependent infancy to the stage where they become full-fledged participants in adult activities. These differ considerably as regards such phases
as birth customs, naming, infant care, puberty ceremqriies if any, formal
education, and initiation into adult spheres. At the other end of the life
cycle there are varied arrangements and values concerned with old people
as they may pass into more or less helpless dependency, and with death
and the dead. Between are the main body of adults who usually bear the
brunt of practical activities.
An ethnographic description is here likely to start with conception and
the behavior of the moth,er and kin group during pregnancy. Birth is in
every society a cultural arid social crisis; care has to be provided; a whole
set of new kin ties is created in relation to the child; the newborn infant
starts on the bottom rungl of a complex status ladder: Popular opinion to
the contrary, birth is by rio means always "easy" among so-called primitive peoples, and mortality of mothers and especially infants is usually
very high by our standardk. Complex customs are likely to surround childbirth. A classic example is the couvade, practiced even in remote parts of
Europe, by which the fatlier retires to bed; everyone knows who the mother
is, but who the father is may be less certain-so here is a way in which a
"father" may signalize publicly his acceptance of responsibility for the child.
The-organic cycle of life sets a pattern which all individuals follow at
a roughly similar rate: weaning, walking, puberty, young adulthood, "mid-

248

Social Organization

dIe" age, old age, senility, death. Upon this constitutional age grid, however, amazing variations in social organization may be constructed. Childhood may be classified in different ways and foreshortened or prolonged.
Adolescence, marked by the changes of puberty, may be glossed over or, at
the other extreme, magnified by highly elaborate ceremonial. Adulthood
and old age may be culturally defined in terms of widely contrasting values,
and become the focus of differing statuses and roles. Death, another major
crisis for the group as well as for the life cycle of the individual, is apparently in every culture a high point in religious as well as social activity.
Relations are defined in many different ways between the living and the
dead, as will be seen shortly, and also between the living and the unborn.
Societies differ in the extent to which they have marked "discontinuities" in the cultural experience of the individual in passing from child to
adult. Enculturation in some societies mayan the whole proceed smoothly
and consistently from infancy to adulthood, with a continuity of premises,
values, and goals. More usually, however, there tend to be more or less
sharp breaks where expectations and training methods assume a new focus.
From sheltered infancy, the child may, for example, come to be treated as
a nonentity or even a kind of pariah existing with his or her age group
around the fringes of adult life. How the particular setting and learning of
childhood are vital in laying down a basis for adult personality has been
seen in cases cited earlier (Problem 30). Various papers in a volume edited
by Kluckhohn and Murray (1948) discuss and exemplify continuity and
discontinuity factors.
\..
Around puberty may come initiation, which graduates the child from
the family circle to more mature status. Such a social and possibly supernatural hurdle may be marked by elaborate instruction and by drama_!ic
symbolism even to the point of physical torture. This period may involve
a sharp shift from childhood to adulthood without any recognized intermediate or transitional zone such as is implied in the term "adolescence."
Or 1jhe transition may be very prolonged-in the Arunta tribe of Australia,
to take an extreme instance, some twenty years are-required before the rituals
to make a man from a boy are completed. In modern-Western society
adolescence is interpreted as a kind of social weaning from the family home
setting with an expectation of religious maturity coming early ("confirmation"), political capacity much later ("voting age"), and legal responsibility (no longer being a "minor") variously in between. Among the
warrior Masai of east Africa a man is defined as being at the prime of life
between tll.e ages of about eighteen to twenty-six, after which he transfers
into the older age group. We may like to be called "youngish" when still
in the fifties. It is often said that American society is youth-oriented rather
than age-oriented, as are so many other societies.
A pattern of mutual interrelations has always to be worked out among
I

[46] Age and Generation as Organizing Factors

249

persons of the different age levels .. Children may be closely disciplined by

their elders or be indulged by them, may have to wait upon adults or be
served rather assiduously by them, may be brought extensively into adult
activities or be left much of the time to their own age groups and their own
devices. Very old people may be considered rather superfluous-perhaps
even abandoned when they become dependent, or at least have no very
active position and influence-or they may be counted as the prime leaders
of the group, repositories of the ancestral wisdom and experience toward
whom all those younger look for direction. Frequently authority in a large
kin group or a community lies in the hands of the oldest living males and
(in women's spheres) females. A "council of elders" is central in the sociopolitical organization of many peoples.
The modern industrial society and small-family system tends to have
little functional place for elders, ironically enough at a time when medical
science and other factors are at work to prolong life and so greatly expand the proportion of the total population in the "old-age" group. Correspondingly, an active front of innovation exists relating to old people, including governmental social security provisions, organized settings for
leisure, and marriage of elderly couples who have lost spouses.
In some societies more marked strains and conflicts tend to emerge
between younger and older persons than in others. Lowie (1920) says:
"To transcend the limitations of one's years requires an effort of the imagination almost beyond the reach of genius." An organjzing device found
notably among certain African and American Indian groups has been to
establish clear-cut divisions of the society in terms of age grades or age
classes. From childhood on, each age grade is allotted special privileges
and responsibilities, and age mates graduate, so to speak, from one grade
to another as they reach the appropriate age. Among the Bor of the Nilotic
Sudan a man taking a bride must secure the approval of his age-grade
fellows, for the latter when ,visiting him can expect to share his wife's sexual
favors.
:

1
EXAMPLE.

AGE VILLAGESi IN AN EAST AFRICAN TRIBE

Monica Wilson, in a jbook significantly titled Good Company (1951),

described a unique system of "age villages" among the Nyakyusa people of
east-central Africa, in which the age-grade principle is made the basis of the
local settlement pattern. A 40zen or so youths of the same age grade will start
a new settlement away from the parental one, and will build up their families
there. Later a sprinkling of:individuals of approximately the same age may be
admitted, but in due course the "membership" is closed, and the oncoming age
group will branch out in another settlement. Some of the housing schemes of
our own society in which young married people congregate bear resemblances
to the Nyakyusa community.

250

Social Organization

Generation is a related constant which arises from the basic turnover

of biological life. In the scheme of kinsmen a person has a parent generation one step above him, a grandparent generation two steps above, and so
on through ascendant lines of ancestry; below, actually or potentially, are
the generations of children, grandchildren, and other descendant levels. Under normal circumstances some four generations will be represented at any
one time in a living relationship group, as a student can readily plot out in
a diagram.
All peoples have more or less strict customary definitions of the kinds
of behavior that persons of different generations should observe toward one
another. For example, children may show respect toward parents, but be
rather indulged by uncles and aunts or by grandparents. Among some peoples remote ancestors are remembered, and groups may claim relationship
to one another in terms of genealogical connections traced to some common ancestor. Generation becomes an especially important principle of
social organization among many peoples, as witness the long lists of who
begat whom in the Old Testament.
Seniority or order of birth is also a biological constant. Children are
born in temporal succession, even in the case of twins. As a result, the
distinction between elder and younger children emerges. Many societies
take meticulous note of seniority, and, with some, primogeniiure (being
first born) has been of key importance in defining rank, succession, inheritance, and other social rights and responsibilities, as with European aristocracies. In such a society the status of the eldest child in the kin group
would be very different from that allowed a younger child. The first born
would have a senior position in affairs, especially if he were a boy, and the
others graded down to the youngest. In American society, by contrast, !_ith
its egalitarian values, this basis of orga-\lization is minimized; at least it is
not anything formally demanded by custom.
/ Exercises

at

1. In a Chinese family, a newly married wife is the beck and call of her
husband's mother, but as she grows older and has m'ale children she
becomes in turn the "matriarch" of the kin group. Discuss this and
other cycles of age progression known to you, appli<;able to women or
men, including examples from our own society. What are the special
points of advantage? of friction?
_
2. Discuss !the situation and problems of aging and of old people in the
changing society of today. Include consideration of the statistical data
on proportions of suhadult and old-age groups as shown in recent
censuses.

Death tends to be a high point of emotion, tension, and dramatizatio?

in every culture. Generally speaking, a fear of dying appears to be uni-

1/

[47] Sex as an Organizing Factor

251

versal; so, too, do such elements. as bereavement and mourning. But detailed customs, as with methods of handling dying persons, funeral customs,
and interpreting relations between the dead and the living, vary enormously.
Under culturally prescribed conditions, death may even be welcomed or
courted, as with the Islamic zealot who runs amok, or the dutiful Indian
wife who accepts suttee at her husband's funeral pyre, or the Fijian elder
who might prefer to enjoy his own funeral and then submit to ritual strangling
by his kinsmen. Some isolated Amazon peoples eat their dead ritually.
Radcliffe-Brown (1952a) postulated that the function of funeral rituals
is to restore the balance of human relationships which has been disturbed
by the loss of one of the society'S members.
Among many groups the beliefs of the peoples regarding death are
such that the ancestors are not considered to have passed on beyond to
spheres out of reach of the living. Instead of being "dead" in our sense, they
are cherished and counted as taking a more or less active part in practical
affairs from the vantage of their spirit spheres. They may be given foods
and other appropriate offerings, especially on ritual occasions, and called
upon for help in times of difficulty. In other words, no study of such societies would be complete without taking full account of their "activities"
and "influence." Though deceased, they are in a real sense still participating members of the social group. By contrast, beliefs and emotions regarding
death in other societies may be such that the dead are feared, shunned, or
ignored.
/

Problem 47 . Sex as an Organizing Factor

What statuses and roles do males and females have in different societies? How is the consorting of the two sexes regulated?
The biologically given factor of sex has already been the subject of
discussion (Problem 14) 1 In every group the physiological differences between males and females~ and the mating and procreative drive are constants, entering deeply intb sociocultural patterns. The sex factor cuts every
society approximately int6 two halves.
This phase of life is/inescapable--even if we wanted to escape. Each
society has its own more or less unique systems of relationship between
males and females, between females and females, and between males and
males. Differing clusters ~f beliefs, values, and sentiments surround the matter of sex, sometimes plaCing one sex as superior to the other, sometimes excluding one or other sex! from certain spheres of activity such as religious
ceremonial or political leadership, and always providing a body of prescriptions and proscriptions (do's and don'ts) to regulate the consorting of
males and females and the business of procreation. Sex is always a subject

252

Social Organization

of high interest, and is likely to be dramatized and surrounded with tension and sentiment; it is obviously associated with group continuity, yet
has in it dangerous and complicating possibilities of disrupting other valued
social relations. So deeply does this aspect of human life run that man tends
to extend the sex and parental principles to his interpretations of inorganic nature and of deity, speaking, say, of God the Father, or The Earth
Mother, and in some societies considering mountains, rivers, and other
natural phenomena, and even symbols, such as word forms, as having male
or female characteristics.
WORTH OF A VOW IN TEMPLE SILVER SHEKELS

(One shekel
Age
Under 1 month
1 month to 5 years
5 years to 19 years
20 years to 60 years
Over 60 years

Leviticus 27: 1-7

65 cents, U.S.)

= approximately
Male

Female

5 shekels
20
50
15

3 shekels
10
30
10

Age and Sex in Early Hebrew Society. A measure 0/ status values

which still influences our contemporary behavior.

The question is often raised as to how far sex customs, as, for example,
in the sexual division of labor, are tied to physiological factors. A student
of comparative custom might well claim that the two have little significant
relation: women in many societies do heavy work which we would' consider appropriate to men; a craft such a~ weaving or pottery carried on in
one society by females may be done in another society by males; the modern
father can even bottle-feed the infant wliile his wife stays comfortably in
bedl As an emphasis, however, a widespread tendency does appear to assign
the heaviest physical labor to males, especially when it calls for heavy exertion over short periods. More6ver, tasks are likely to be put'in male hands
where they have required constant attention, great mobility, or emergency
action, and so could not be delayed or slowed down while a woman took
time out for childbirth or for monthly privacy where menstruation is surrounded with s~cial restraints. Th,is may account at least in part for the
generally predominant roles of males in government and defense. Some
tendencies here may, however, be constitutionally more fundamental: male
dominance is widely characteristic of mammals.
By and large the specific social arrangements and values surrounding
the sex dichotomy in different culture settings are a matter of local convention. How much this is so is illustrated by the fact that during our own life-

147] Sex as an Organizing Factor

253

times the configurations of Western culture as regards sex are being greatly
modified. In situations where a girl might once have conveniently fainted
she would not now dare to faint! The anthropologist is constantly intrigued
by the contrasts from society to society in the roles of the sexes and in sex
ethics. Among the Australian Aborigines, for instance, females are excluded from religious spheres (rituals, secret societies, and the like), but
among the Great Lakes American Indians male and female shamans participate without distinction in the medicine lodge, while among the Isneg
non-Christians of the northern Philippines religious and magical matters
are largely handled by female priestesses or seers. In our society males
and females eat together, but in some they eat apart. Among some peoples
sex is a matter to be dealt with and talked of freely and openly, or even
to be elaborated publicly in art and ceremony, as in Polynesian societies
generally. But with others it is played down, as with the Chinese, and surrounded with taboos and verbal subterfuges that in some cases out-Victorian
the Victorians. In every society the specific statuses and roles of males and
females tend to be defined and reinforced by religious definitions, popular
sayings, and other explicit devices.
The pairing of persons of opposite sex during the reproductive age
period, particularly in mating, tends always to be narrowly channeled by
stringent rules and sanctions. It is a complete misreading of anthropological
data to consider so-called primitives as a whole to be very free in sex relations, or to postulate early man to have had anything lik\} the "promiscuity"
which some nineteenth-century theorists alleged. Even subhuman animals
are likely to have their sex associations considerably patterned. True, the
sexual morality of some peoples has permitted and even encouraged what
by our standards is judged to be great freedom between the sexes. In some
cases this has applied to unmarried persons but not to those married, in
others to married persons, and in still others to married males but not to
married females. But closet examination of the behaviors concerned reveals
that there are rules to the g~me. For example, Sex play and experiment may,
as among most Polynesian; groups, be counted as a prelude to selection of
congenial mates; yet it must not occur within forbidden degrees of kinship.
Trial mating (or "trial rriarriage") may become highly institutionalized,
as among numbers of Ma~laysian groups, where it occurs in special houses
under publicly prescribed and supervised conditions. But sex adventures
outside this approved pattern are counted illicit and destructive to the moral
order.
I'
In contrast to cultur~s marked by sex behaviors and attitudes that appear very free, there are 'many which go to the other extreme, having restraints that by our standards would be counted as excessively prudish. Men
and women may go largely about their own business in the society, always
keeping beyond arms' length of each other in public. An American Indian

254

Social Organization

or a Chinese is shocked by couple dances that to us are perfectly decorous.

Sometimes a husband and wife may not live in the same house, meeting
only surreptitiously, perhaps outside the village as in examples to be discussed shortly.
A point which will hold us up from hasty moral judgment here is to
remember that, if by our standards such sex customs are sometimes shocking and immoral, the people concerned would count some of the customs
which to us are normal and right as being correspondingly shocking and
immoral. Samoan society, as Mead showed (1927), has allowed great
premarital sex freedom, yet has imposed a strict taboo on any social contacts between a brother and a sister, so that for them to even converse with
one another after about the age of ten would bring down the strongest disapproval of the community. Again, an adolescent girl in the Manus Islands
has been expected to spend much time in the men's bachelor house, but
once betrothed she carries around a garment that has to be put over her
head if any male kinsman of her betrothed is in the vicinity-engaged girls
of our society are, by Manus ideas, committing grave moral offense in
visiting the homes of their husbands-to-be.
In all societies deviation from sex rules is likely to evoke h~avy penalties. If ethnOlogical perspectives show that there are many altt';rnatives in
sex customs and values, they also indicate just as clearly what'may be expected to happen to persons who choose to deviate from, the particular
rules laid down in their own society-a matter to be discussed in later
study of the legal aspect of culture. Comparative study may teach tolerance
but it does not offer any encouragement to license.
Anthropological studies of sex behavior are of increasing importance
in medicine and social work, notably in the fields of mental health and
social deviation and adjustment. Tl!e anthropologist is able to contribute
technical information from other settings on what we would judge to be
sexual abnormalities. Some societies bring what we would call sexual
de~iants out into the open and provide statuses and roles for' them, as with
the custom of berdache among many North American Indians and some
Siberian peoples, that is, the taking by a man of womeri's clothing and
occupations (see Benedict, 1934, pp. 243-244). One of the many extreme
points in the great arc of sex behaviors is represented by some groups in
the Australia-New Guinea area, among whom the physiological role of
the male in propreation is not known, or at least not publicly acknowledged
in terms of the moral code, so that the birth of children is associated with
supernatural influences rather than with mating. An area of study not yet ,
well understood is how the different customs and attitudes on sex from
place to place affect personality characteristics among the people concerned.
A well-known study by Mead of "sex and temperament" in three New
Guinea societies (1935) is an important demonstration of the way sex

[48] Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

255

statuses and related customs set v.arying marks on personality. Her characterization of Arapesh men, for example, indicates that they cultivate
some characteristics which we would associate with "femininity"; Arapesh
women show some that we would count "masculine."
Exercise
Discuss the statuses and values which pertain to males and females in our
society. What are their historical roots, as in Hebrew and Greco-Roman,
and Christian traditions? What changes have been occurring in recent
decades, and in what directions does our society seem to be moving in
regard to sex customs?

The anthropologist finds it necessary to make a distinction between

mating in general and marriage in particular. In the latter, personal factors
are supplemented by, and often subservient to, wider social influences:
that is, marriage involves more permanent consorting of two persons of
opposite sex with the recognition and approval of their society, especially in
relation to the welfare of any children forthcoming.

Problem 48 . Marriage: The Various Forms

It May Take
j

How is marriage defined, and how universal is it? What is the range
of custom surrounding the marriage tie?
Every human group apparently has some form of marriage in the sense
of a public or legal recognition of a more enduring pair relationship and
responsibility. A couple may never have seen each other before, as in a
traditional match among some peoples of India, or they may have been busy
for some time with a "courtship," or again they may have been living together for a long period a*d there may even be one or more children from
the union. The actual wedding may be a highly formalized affair with high
religious or other ceremoJies, feasting, and passing of wealth; at the other
. extreme, it may be by out ideas virtually nonexistent, as where a pair of
lovers in some Melanesia~ groups deliberately allow daylight to steal upon
them so that parents and community can see them consorting openly and so
take cognizance of their' a~sociation. The essental points are that the union
has social recognition and'sanction, and the "bride" and "groom" publicly
acknowledge the obligati6ns that the particular society prescribes for mar. d status.
I
ne
Some theorists have considered the marital association to have originated from the need for channeling the physiological sex drive, and this is a
significant function in many marriage systems in the sense of limiting com-

256

Social Organization

petition for sexual privilege as well as defining responsiblity for its consequences. Judged, however, by the extent to which among many groups sex
finds outlet, often in highly institutionalized ways, other than within the
marriage bond, this explanation alone seems inadequate. Anthropologists
generally consider that the prime function of the stabilized marriage union
is to provide a secure setting in which children can be socially identified,
nurtured, and brought to mature status. This ordinarily involves responsible participation by both a female and a male as the parties who will
acknowledge "parenthood" and, subject to variations in custom to be seen
below, will bear the brunt of child care. In this connection we can note that
nearly all, or perhaps all societies, distinguish more or less between legitimate children (i.e., of sanctioned matings) and "illegitimate" childrenthough the latter are accepted by some societies with much less discrimination than by others.
Marriages may also consummate additional functions from society.to
SOCiety. To a notable degree it channels the handling of property, as will be
seen below. Widely, though not universally, it provides an intimate "home"
group for eating, sleeping, working, and relaxing together. Marriage in most
groups symbolizes attainment of adult status. Each union, moreover, links
together a more or less extensive group of people-the kinsmen and' friends
of the bride and of the groom-into some new relationship and interaction,
which is a main reason why in nearly all societies parents, relatives, and
acquaintances of young persons have a large say, and in some groups the
dominant say, in choosing their partners. When your sister marries, for
Exchange of Goods at Marriage, Yap Islands, Micronesia. The groom's
side (right) gives coconuts, fish, bananas, and certain "money" types
(one of shell, in front, the bundle which is of betel nut fiber containing clothing). The bride's side (leit) gives stone mon~y and taro. The
bride's father is grinding betel in a wooden bowl for cheWing. From a
drawing by a ninth-grade Yapese schoolboy.

[48] Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

257

example, you have to behave as a brother- or sister-in-law, an uncle in

relation to any children, and so forth; hence it concerns you intimately.
Marriage may be used as a political or economic instrument, as where alliances or property holdings may be consolidated through the marriage of
leading families.
This wider concern of the community and kin with marital choices
brings into existence customs of anticipating actual marriage unions by making preliminary arrangements for matches. Families are encouraged or required in some societies to betroth their young people or children ahead
of marriage, perhaps even at birth or in early infancy, in order to ensure a
match strategic in political, religious, or other terms. In most'cultural settings, the betrothed couple are allowed to express a preference later, to
ensure compatibility, but in some they are not. Elopement in some cultures
forms a more or less institutionalized means of escape from such arrangements.
All societies have more or less institutionalized a set of rules governing the selection of spouses. The anthropologist, by uncovering the customary requirements 'and preferences, and also noting the alternatives and
exceptions, is able to build up his model of the marriage system among any
people he is studying. Marriage rules, for example, frequently assume some
form of reciprocal or of chainlike relationship. A marriage system is counted
reciprocal where the preferential unions involve two groups exchanging
spouses, as, for example, men exchanging sisters as wivys. A chainlike
system occurs where a larger number of groups intermarry, so that the
spouses pass from group to group, with the first group perhaps receiving
spouses from the last. Levi-Strauss (1949) calls the direct exchange type
echange restreint, and the more general exchange type echange generalise.
A marriage' system which involves a balanced give-and-take of spouses of
either immediate or ultimate character is called symmetrical. Otherwise, it
is asymmetrical, as where the flow of spouses fails to complete a reciprocal
or chain pattern. Some of thelfurther principles inherent in marriage rules
will ap_pear below. Analysis and comparison of varying marriage systems
provide a current major intere'st in social structure studies.
Subject to the general fr~mework of customary marriage rules, great
variation may exist in the group and individual standards by which marriage
partners are selected. Personality characteristics (charm, reliability, beauty,
and so on) would probably come to our minds immediately in this regard,
along with economic, educati6nal, religious, and other factors. For another
society, the criteria may range in other directions: "Has he or she valuable
family connections?" "Is he a:good worker?" "Are her legs sturdy for carrying loads?" "Has she proved her ability to bear children [in experimental
mating]?" Varying social forces may also be brought to bear upon unmarried persons to shape their choices. Though we tend to assume that we have

258

Social Organization

freedom to elect a marital partner, our family and perhaps especially our
friends are likely to bring strong pressures to bear, as in making opportunities for us to associate with particular persons, or commenting on our
choices for "dates."
Among some peoples the emphasis on marital partners tends to be
"proscriptive," that is, the rules say whom a person shall not marry, and
then leave freedom for selection outside this forbidden circle. American
custom is of this kind: a "table of consanguinity and affinity" is provided,
though here, interestingly enough, some variations occur in the proscriptions laid down by law from state to state, and also between these and
ecclesiastical precepts of various denominations as to forbidden marriages.
To marry within the forbidden degrees of kinship is to commit incest. Other
people have similar prohibitions, though there is great variety from culture
to culture as to what persons are forbidden to marry. To the old-time Hawaiians the correct spouse for the eldest son of a highest or "royal" chief
was his eldest sister, so as to knit together the prestige and sacredness that
were believed to come from their direct descent from the gods. Brother-sister
marriage also occurred in ruling families of ancient Egypt, Persia, Siam,
and Peru, and is referred to widely in mythology, though usually with warnings of its very exceptional character.
'
Among all peoples marriage is forbidden within some well-defined
"incest group" of kinsmen. Various theories have been put forward to account for incest prohibitions. These range from the older idea that it arises
out of an "instinctive horror" (Westermarck) to the functional thesis that
it is necessary to "keep sex out of the family" if the latter is not to be disrupted (Malinowski), or again that it comes from the gains in alliance,
property, and other benefits to pe obtained from mating outside the intim~te
group and so expanding the scope of socia,l ties (Tylor, Fortune, and others) ,
By contrast, many societies stress a "prescriptive" principle. That is,
they indicate whom a person shall marry.'The most widely known arrangeme~t of this kind is known ,as "cross-cousin ,marriage." A:s used here,
"cross-cousin" implies a change or crossing over-of sex, ~at is, a person's
mother's brother's child or a father's sister's child. Such cousins are normally
members of different households and may be from different communities.
By contrast, a person's father's brother's child or mother's sister's child is a
"parallel cousin," and in many cases would live close by or even in the same
household. In a ,cross-cousin marriage the preferred or required union for
a man may be with his mother's brother's daughter or else with his father's
sister's daughter. When the emphasis is on one side only, it forms an asymmetrical cross-cousin marriage. If the man can choose either cross-cousin,
the marriage is called symmetrical. A particularly inwoven pattern is provided by a double cross-cousin marriage. Here a man, in marrying his
mother's brother's daughter, is at the same time marrying his father's sisII

[48] Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

259

II

MALE

FEMALE

h
t::l.

BROTHERSISTER

=0

HUSBAND-

WIFE.

1
=

Cross-Cousin Marriage. The type shown is a symmetrical or double

one. By following the lines of relationship and the marriage unions it
will be seen that a man, in marrying his mother's brother's daughter,
is also marrying his father's sister's daughter. Note: lines indicate blood
relationships, and equal signs indicate marriages.

ter's daughter. This can be followed in the accompanying diagram. A man's

son marries the daughter of his sister, the latter being the wife of his own
I
wife's brother.
Cross-cousin marriages of varying types were favored among many
Oceanic groups, among numerous peoples in Asia and Africa, and more
rarely in aboriginal America. It will be seen shortly, however, that this
does not always mean the union of what we call "first cousins," for by a
"classificatory" system of relationship, of which more shortly, the "crosscousin" need not be such close blood kin.
A much rarer type of, prescribed marriage relation involves a union
of parallel cousins. This is lfavored among many Middle Eastern peoples.
Murray (1935) says of the Bedouin that every youth has the right to marry
his bint 'amm, that is, the! daughter of his father's brother. This right is
"absolute," he notes, and if fa father wishes to dispose of his daughter otherwise, he must first obtain, and pay for, his nephew's consent. The vast
majority of first marriages (every Bedouin marries several times) are of this
type [po 179].
'
Two further examples of prescribed marriage may be cited. One is
the levirate, familiar through the Old Testament, by which at a man's death
his widow is expected to be taken over by his younger brother or equivalent
kinsman. Its opposite is the sororate, by which a man may take, or sometimes has to take, an additional wife or wives from among the younger
sisters of his wife, either at her death or while she is still living.

260

Social Organization

The proscriptive and prescriptive emphases are, of course, not mutually exclusive. How they can be combined is shown in the "marriage
class" systems of many Australian Aborigine groups. By "classing" men
and women as marriageable and nonmarriageable, these systems, through
strict taboos, may shut off the great majority of the men and women of
the community from being mates; the remainder, however, are all potential sex and marital partners.
EXAMPLE.

AN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINE MARRIAGE CLASS SYSTEM

The Kariera, as described by Radcliffe-Brown (1930), have four marriage

classes, these named Banaka, Burung, Karimera, and Palyeri. Of these Banaka
and Burung are intermarrying pairs, and so are the Karimera and Palyeri. It
works this way: (1) a Banaka man must always marry a Burung woman, and
any offspring belong to the Palyeri class; (2) a Burung man must always marry
a Banaka woman, and the offspring are Karimera; (3) a Palyeri man must always marry a Karimera woman, and the offspring are Banaka; and (4) a
Karimera man must always marry a Palyeri woman and the offspring are
Burung. Such a system automatically rules out unions between immediate kin,
though it can be combined with cross-cousin marriage, as is favored by the
Kariera. (See diagram below.)

What of the rather well-known terms exogamy and endoganiy, which

have extensive usage in social science literature? The first of these, literally
"marrying out," is applied where marital customs in a society demand that
the individual marry out of some given group: for example, a clan or marriage class. Endogamy is the opposite rule which requires members of a
group to "marry in": say, a caste or an exclusive religious group. To a point,
The Kariera Marriage Class System.
Showing
the web ot intermarrying
,
\
pairs and the status of their children- over two generations.
___
B~A,,-~_A_K_A_...JI

3A

BU

PALYERI
PA

KA

BAN AKA

BUR U N G

8U

= SA

KARIMERA

KA
L::.

I I

P~LYERI
KA'

PA

KARIMERA

BURUNG

BANAKA

KA

BU

BA

L::.

b.

PA

BURUNG

Do

SA

KARIMERA

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PALYER'

[48] Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

ENDOGAMY:
IN - MARRIAGE

261

EXOGAMY:
OUT-MARRIAGE

: Q
~
\x~
"'~-O J;/
I

INCEST

CASTE

GROUP: ,

....

EXOGAMOUS .... ~__

-----

~~....

'"

/ ' GROUP:

ENDOGAMOUS

Endogamy and Exogamy. The lower section shows how both may
operate within the same social system (dotted line).

the terms describe opposite facets of the same phenomenon. In being

exogamous as regards one form of grouping, a society is endogamous as regards others. But the former tends to emphasize the "don't" or proscriptive
side and the latter the "do" or prescriptive. At least the mi~take must never
be made, as early theorists often did, of saying vaguely that a certain society
"practices exogamy" or, alternatively, "endogamy." It is essential to go
deeper to define the more specific groupings and rules concerned.
Marriage and its preliminaries in betrothal may be marked by exchanges of property and services, and by other utilitarian and symbolic acts
which exercise, dramatize, and validate the new social and individual relationships being created. A ~idespread type of transaction is the so-called
bride price or wife purchase. ;The name refers to property which is given by
the groom, usually in association with his kinsmen, to the parents and
relatives of the bride. Though this looks like a commercial transaction in
which the groom's people "~Iay" the bride's family for the loss of a valuable worker and for the trou~le of having reared her only to have her pass
to another group, it is likely to involve more the establishment of an institutionalized linkage of tights and obligations between the groups concerned: one has the girl, the other wealth. More specifically it may serve
as a kind of "insurance" that the marital partners will behave responsibly
in the new family situation! Some groups have the opposite direction of
property transfer, namely, a dowry to go with the bride, as in European
tradition. In areas of bride price, women are likely to be regarded as
"workers," while in areas of dowry they are likely to be thought of as

262

Social Organization

"dependents." Still other groups have equivalent exchanges of property

and of services to signalize the new reciprocal bonds being created.
EXAMPLE.

BRIDE PRICE AMONG A SUDANESE PEOPLE

Among the Tullishi, one of the Nuba hill tribes in Nilotic Sudan, as reported by Nadel (1947), it is the accepted rule that one pays for a girl as much
as had previously been paid for her mother. The bride price, called "wealth of
marriage," is mostly calculated in cattle, though equivalents to the same amount
can be given in other livestock, and occasionally grain, or special tools and
weapons including ceremonial spear points and hoe blades. The highest recorded
price was somewhat more than four times the lowest. The bride price is paid
by the bridegroom's father, or, if he has no living or recognized father, by a
paternal uncle. It goes to the girl's father, or failing that to male relatives who
are in line to inherit his wealth. Should the wife die, or the union otherwise
break down, the bride price has to be returned, partly or in whole according to
circumstances. The bride carries to her new home a dowry of utensils, foodstuffs,
some livestock, perhaps some land. These remain the wife's property until bequeathed to sons or daughters for division at death.

Another example of the many conventionalized behaviors associated

with the crucial matter of passing marital partners from group to group is
the so-called marriage by capture, in which even violence l}nd woundings
may have an admitted place. Earlier theorists were tempted to see in this
the survival of a former "stage" of marriage custom in which brides were
captured forcibly from hostile groups. The modern view of such cultural
patterns (and they assume numerous forms) is that they provide a public
dramatization of the emotional and other factors involved in the transfer
of the person concerned, including the anxieties that the marriage will
succeed. In Western tradition, such- usages as the l "shower" for the bride,
the wedding ring, the "best man," the throwing of rice have their historic
and functional place in the marriage complex..
,
I Marriage may involve one male and one female (monogamy) or multiple partners (polygamy). Monogamous systems involve ,widely different
expectations of permanence, hence of turnover in partners. Some peoples
encourage, or even insist on, a union of life-long duration-the Andaman
Islanders, for example, expect a marriage to be permanent. Other peoples
may permit the bond, under certain prescribed conditions, to be broken
by divorce, so: that the partners' may make new alliances more or less
freely. Tlie chief's eldest son in old Samoa might take a succession of wives
in order to make strategic alliances for his kin group, usually sending one
back to her community as the next one is arranged for-a kind of chain
marriage, or "brittle" monogamy, not unknown in certain circles of our own
society. Divorce may be a highly formalized affair, with unraveling of prop-

[48] Marriage: The Various Forms It May Take

263

erty and other mutual ties. Or it may just be a matter of one partner ordering the other out or giving public notice that the union is over-a Hopi wife
merely puts her husband's things outside her house door. The grounds for
divorce, too, vary greatly from society to society, one of the widest known
being the fact that children have not been forthcoming.
Polygamy is a blanket term covering a great many specific varieties
of marriage systems in which, with public approval, a person may have
more than one marital partner. If some form is involved in which a man
has more than one wife, it is called polygyny; if a woman has more than
one husband it is polyandry; and if two or more husbands are married
jointly to two or more wives it is group marriage.
Polygynous types of marriage have been practiced widely over the
world, and are perhaps most familiar to the Westerner through accounts
in the Old Testament. Polyandrous marriage types are very rare, being
found notably among peoples in south India and Tibet, but also in a few
scattered societies elsewhere. Often polyandrous unions are fraternal-a
group of brothers married to one woman. A society may even admit both
the polygynous and polyandrous principles.
EXAMPLE.

POLYANDRY IN THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS

The Polynesian Marquesans of the eastern Pacific practiced polyandry extensively, but also had rare cases of polygyny in chief's h9useholds. Secondary
husbands and secondary wives were called pekio. Handy (1923) associates
polyandry here with (a) female infanticide, so that men greatly outnumbered
women, and (b) the use of fermented breadfruit as a staple food, requiring hard
male labor for its preparation. A chief, in marrying a girl, might take into his
household her lover as a pekio, and other pekio might attach themselves to his
service. 'A high-born woman would take a number of unrelated men as husbands. A chief might also take in female pekio as secondary wives.

Group marriage is tery rare, being reported particularly from the

Himalayan region. It is usually "fraternal," involving a group of brothers,
sometimes married to a g~oup of sisters. Some theorists have called group
marriage "sexual commuJism," but closer investigation has shown that in
every known case there i~ a more or less sharp definition of rights and responsibilities among the consorts, and in relation to children.
The actual number ~f multiple unions in any society which practices
polygyny or polyandry tepds to be limited by the fact that the ratio of the
sexes is likely to be abou~ even. Usually a proportionately few persons are
able to have more than one marriage partner-perhaps individuals of high
rank or wealth, whose large households may have much more work to be
performed for maintenance and in order to keep up their social standing,
so that extra wives (or, alternatively, husbands) are eminently useful.

264

Social Organization

There are groups, however, among whom younger brothers or even all
younger men, are forbidden to marry-they must find their sex outlet in
less formal associations-so that the older brothers or older men can then
practice polygyny.
Sometimes in polygamous arrangements all marriage partners live in
the same household. In other instances, each wife is given a separate dwelling, as in the African kraal, and brings up her own children rather separately. In any case, so as to minimize strains such as competition or jealousy
might engender, the society will need to combine appropriate training with
precise rules as to the interpersonal relations and the relative statuses of the
multiple partners. The personality adjustments and social values involved in
such marital groupings are very different from those familiar to us as a
result of our marriage system. The wife of a rising young leader among
the Isneg, a remote Philippine mountain people, complained bitterly to the
writer's wife because her husband was too lazy to go out and get a second
wife so as to help her with the household.
The locality or residence principle in marriage also lends itself to
variation; this has been noted already. The most typical procedures are for
either the bride to go to live with, or in the same locality as, the hu~band's
people, so-called patrilocal ("father-place") residence, or the husband to
go to the bride's locality, that is, matrilocal residence. But the system may
require, instead, residence first with the bride's family and later with that
of the husband (matri-patrilocal) , alternating residence in both places
(bilocal or ambilocal), or residence at the home of the groom's maternal
uncle, that is, one of his mother's brothers (avunculocal). The married
couple may also, as in the modern urban society, set up a home apart from
the parents of both: neolocal ("new-place"). Where a local residential
group normally marries "in endogamous faspion" so th'at all members are
kinsmen, Murdock (1949) has called the resulting community a deme,
after an old Attic Greek term. Kroeber (1938) has pointed to the importancli' of common residence as il basis of social action.
Exercise

Characterize our own marriage system, using as appropriate the categories

and terms reviewed here. How far is it sharply patterned or open to elective
behavior?

The materials presented here kno~k the props from under oversimple
theories put forward by early students as to the "evolution" of marriage.
These claimed that the initial stage was one of general "promiscuity," out
of which came various early stages according to taste, such as group marriage and marriage-by-capture; then came an emphasis on the maternal
side (the so-called "matriarchate") out of which developed an emphasis on
the paternal side (the "patriarchate"). Evidence from subhuman animals

[49] The Significance of the Concept of "Family"

265

on sex regulation and familiality (PrQblem 11) suggests along with the
comparative cultural data that man from the first has been a pairing animal
making relatively permanent alliances. Again, no clear evidence exists that
social structure principles which emphasize the wife or mother role are older
in human history than those in which the husband or father role is stressed.
The classic concepts of "matriarchate" and "patriarchate," that is, of societies dominated by females or by males, have little reality when the social statuses and roles of females and males in such societies are carefully
studied. Nevertheless, many of the alternative types of marital structure we
have reviewed are evidently old in human social history. They represent
either chance local innovations, or deliberate choices among possible solutions to sexual, residential, economic, and other problems. Lowie (1948),
Murdock (1949), and others have been trying to establish the meaningful
relations between such forms of social structure and the different economic
and other conditions and values with which they may coexist, e.g., polygyny
and prolonged care of children by mothers, or burdensome work assigned to
women.
The tendency among social anthropologists today is to minimize the
battery of formal terms with which earlier theorists systematized the study
of marriage and related behavior, such as exogamy, polygamy, patriarchate. The danger here is that by reducing the exceedingly diversified arrangements which mark different groups to such simple types their full
significance will not be realized and that oversimple theories/will result. Instead, the modern theorist or field worker concentrates on the realistic detail of local marriage systems, the functional place of each within the culture and society concerned, and the cross-cultural perspectives which emerge
from making comparisons. Once the vast heterogeneity here glimpsed is
realized, a more adequate classification of marriage types becomes possible,
and the way is opened for sounder historical and distributional reconstructions, and for identification of the internal consistencies of particular types
of systems. The most ambitioJs general works along these latter lines are
by Levi-Strauss (1949), Murdock (1949), and Nadel (1957).
!

Problem 49 . The Signlficance

of the Concept
I
of "Family"
How is it defined in diff~rent
societies? What alternative forms can
I
family life take, and what are their strengths and weaknesses, including
those of our own family system?
The term "family" may well have lapsed by this time in the reader's
mind into considerable vagueness as a result of the complexity of alternative marital arrangements cited above. Because of this indefiniteness, and

266

Social Organization

./

, ,""'--- .... ,,

,,

,I

I
I
I
I

,,

,,

CONJUGAL FAMILY:

CONSANGUINEAL FAMILY: \

HUSBAND:- WIFE- CHILDREN

(LINED ELLIPSES)

MOTHER - MOTHER'S BROTHERCHI LOREN (DOTTED ELLIPSES)

Alternative Family Alignments. Schematic representation of the conjugal (legally conjoined) child-rearing group and the consanguineal
(blood-based) child-rearing group.

also because the word tends to call to each person's mind the particular institutional setup familiar to him and which he may make the mistake of assuming to be universal or at least "normal," some students have suggested
that the term "family" be abolished from the scientific vocabulary~ At least,
whenever the word "family" is used, it becomes significant only when an
exact definition is given of what this grouping is and does in the culture
concerned.
Our own institutionalized family system is an example of what is often
called a conjugal type of family, one based on the marriage tie and consist- ing normally of a father and a mother bringing up children within somekind of household. But there are other-ethnic groups where the family, if
we want to call it so, does not bring a father into the scheme of things nearly
so fully. The living group is rath~r a consanguineal type of family in which
ties of "blood," or descent, dominate. Because the- latter is generally un
I
familiar, two examples may be gIven:
'
EXAMPLE

1.

THE MINANGKABAU FAMILY SYSTEM, SUMATRA

This Sumatra group has a large ancestral house in which girls around .
puberty are given a!sleeping apartment. A boy sleeps at a "men's house" until
he makes a marriage liaison with a girl and so joins her at night. By day, males
are active members of their own ancestral households, working, eating, and
having their other obligations there. A woman may rid herself of a husband
by putting his things out of her room. Her children grow up as members of her
own household. A man's responsibilities are not to his own children, but to
children which his sisters and other female household members bear.

[49] The Significance of the Concept of "Family"

EXAMPLE

2.

267

THE NAIR (NAYAR) FAMILY SYSTEM, SOUTH INDIA

In some groups within this warrior caste of south India, the daughter or
daughters in a household at about eleven years of age go through a formality
of "marriage" with a high-caste young man. After a few days, the bride or
brides are formally divorced, without physical consummation of the union,
and the groom, dismissed with presents, does not come into the picture again.
As the girls grow up, they make temporary or permanent liaisons with young
Nair men, or with younger sons of local Brahman groups (who are not permitted to marry legally). The male consort has no status whatever in the household in which his children are being brought up. A child belongs entirely in "his
mother's group, and a man's responsibilities are to children born by his female
blood relatives.
The zone extending from India to Melanesia, from which these cases
are drawn, is particularly marked by variants of the consanguineal family.
In numbers of Borneo and west New Guinea societies, a husband must creep
-into his wife's quarters at night and be out before morning, or else a couple
must meet cland~stinely outside the village. The prime adult male figure in
a child's life here is not a "father" but a mother's brother.
Consanguineal arrangements such as these have to be taken into account in any theory as to the nature of the family. It will be noted from
the cases cited that marriage need not form the basis of sex relations, or of
a household, or of the child-rearing unit, as in our society, and that the
family need not have relation to marriage, or to the fole of a father.
The theorist is forced to the position that seemingly the only universal
definition of a family is that it is the group which rears and gives status
to children. As Goldenweiser (1930) has said, the family is the "transfer
point of culture, . . . a bridge between the generations."
Two further categories of family groupings can be distinguished, variously stressed in different sO,cieties. In the first, what is called by different
writers the nuclear, immediate, primary, elementary, or simple, family,
ordinarily consisting of parents and children, has a separate identity. In
the second, such a group me'rges more or less into an extended, joint, multiple, or great, family. Some have used the term "biological family" for the
first grouping, but the term is bften factually dubious or incorrect-adoptions
and stepparents come to min'd as variants, and fathers in a biological sense
are not always so identifiable as mothers. Where the nuclear family, as we
shall call this grouping here,!lives in a separate household it is spoken of as
an independent nuclear family.
Practically all human groups in past and present have had some form
of extended family household system of which nuclear families form constituent units. Such a system has been characteristic of Western society
until the last few generations, and is still widely familiar, especially in rural

268

Social Organization

areas. The marriage patterns seen earlier make possible many alternative
types, as with the numbers of marriage partners involved, and the locality
of residence; so, too, do the choices of people of different generations and
degrees of relationship as to how far they elect to live together in multiple
groupings or to scatter out.
In general, within such larger groupings, there have to be meticulous
definitions and rules governing the behavior of individuals. The voluntary
and personally tempered ties exercised in small-family arrangements would
here tend to produce confusion. Young parents take their place among a
number of persons working collectively, and are usually subject to direction
by the elders to the point where, in terms of our values, there is no personal
freedom and initiative, little privacy, and slight authority over their ,own
children. Over against this, they enjoy economic and status securities in
such a larger group which young parents in the modern system rarely have,
and so the tensions which are so marked among youthful fathers and
mothers struggling to make their way in our own setting are minimized. At
times of crisis such as birth, sickness, and death--events which usually disorganize, stun, and bewilder the modern small family-the situation is likely
to be met with little fuss and fumbling, for such events are much less unusual
and there are many hands to help. Children have the security of a large kin
group, and a wide range of persons participate in their training. As the
old people die off and parents become grandparents, they in their turn attain to authority, responsibility, and prestige. In the modern family situation
we endeavor to build up eqUivalent extended relations through other social alignments; among them congenial friendship groups, the baby-sitter
to look after children, the nursery school, the club.
An independent nuclear family system is a rarity in human societies.
It occurs in a few settings where subsistence and other hazards make it inexpedient to rest essential family functions on a gro,up larger than parents
and children, e.g., Eskimo groups which scatter out for hunting, some of
the ~unting and gleaning Indians of the arid Great Basin in western North
America. An extreme form of' an independent nuclear family system has
emerged within Western social organization, particularly ,in recent industrial and urban settings, but also in the course of frontier expansion; as
in the modern American West.
EXAMPLE.

THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FAMILY

Perhaps nev1r before in huma~ history have socioeconomic conditions

called for so much family mobility. A young couple today is expected to be
able to rear children without a wider circle of relatives who act as mutual
helpers and who, in the case of old people, are either dominant or dependent.
Larger family ties, to the extent that they are exercised, have become rather a
matter of opportunity and personal choice-and they are a familiar butt for

[49] The Significance of the Concept of "Family"

269

jokes. Where individuals have to go aft~r jobs, the risk could hardly be taken of
insisting that any vital functions relating to the family should require the presence of kinsmen beyond a father and a mother. Correspondingly, social relations within the modern nuclear family itself have become intensified to a point
apparently never reached before in family organization. This is the more
marked in that the trend, at least until recently, has been toward smaller families,
many couples allowing themselves one or two children only. The one-child
family is perhaps the most deviant family phenomenon that has yet appeared
in human society.
Present-day statute law has bound the independent nuclear family around
with very exact legal definitions as to the relations of husbands and wives and
of parents and minor children. Such regulations reveal the intense interest of
the society in seeing that such intimate units work out with tolerable success.
Seemingly, too, they are a measure of the highly experimental nature of the
modern family. Any social worker knows well the strains and stresses which
may arise between husbands and wives as they try to adjust to one another and
work out a successful home life. Under the best circumstances, husband-wife
relationships may perhaps be evaluated as richer and more intimate than could
possibly occur in a larger kin grouping and composite household. But often two
individuals who marry cannot rise to the demands and possibilities of such a
monogamous, close-living unit. Where their religious beliefs, finances, and personal situations allow it, increasing numbers make use of legally sanctioned
mechanisms for separation and divorce.
For children, too, the independent nuclear family situation offers what
some evaluate as both strengths and weaknesses. Some homes show a record
of rearing well-adjusted children, and shelves of books could/be assembled purporting to show how it is done. Other homes suggest in terms of their results
that the small family may be a difficult if not dangerous social grouping in
which to rear children, especially if it is a one-child family living in close quarters in a neighborhood without age fellows for the child. The young child may
possibly hiwe intensive contact with few persons other than those two alwayslooming giants, his father and mother. While very intimate interaction with
parents may, for some children, make for well-adjusted personality characteristics, the difficult behavioral i tendencies and problems which may emerge in
modern family settings are familiar enough to educators and social workers.
Even though the situation is iricreasingly being met through the development of
institutions which can take the child out of the house at a very early age and
provide a wider range of socializing experience, its implications seem hardly to
be realized by a generation fot whom such small families have already become
I
pretty much the norm.
Children under this syst~m are probably in a more vulnerable and insecure position than has been ~o under any other form of family organization.
Parents may neglect or overprotect their children, or they may run against each
other in their methods of chlJd handling, or quarrel and "get on each other's
nerves," and so the child's personality development may be adversely affected.
If they separate or get a divorce, the child usually has one half of his intimate
contacts cut away. Both parents may die, so that the child's parental world can

270

Social Organization

collapse entirely. At the same time such great risks can reap great rewards
where parents are successful in their child-rearing techniques. Many extended
family systems, moreover, push children, so to speak, to the social margins by
treating them as of little importance and handling them by methods which we
would count as "neglect."
It has been suggested by some observers in the recent decades that the
family system under modern circumstances is breaking down and due to pass
out of existence altogether. What has led them to this judgment is the trend away
from the family organization characteristic of early European and American
life, with its largely self-sufficient economy, male dominance, strict attitudes on
sex and the status of women, and elaborate social, educational, religious, recreational, and other activities. Though such larger families are by no means a
thing of the past, especially in rural districts, it is true that the type of modern
family pictured in the previous paragraphs has shed most of these characteristics. Its members go outside to earn a livelihood, the children are educated in
schools, social and recreational activities are provided by other agencies, disciplinary functions are extensively assumed by the state, the members may even
go out for their meals instead of eating together at the family table, and girls
and women have a degree of freedom and equality with males that shocks
conservatives. Even so, the. nuclear family continues to be the child-rearing,
status-giving group and in the changed functional setting its internal bonds and
the enculturation it gives have tended to become intensified. It ,continues to
provide intimate and continuous personal relations in what is 'otherwise an
increasingly impersonal setting of institutions with changing faces. Moreover,
in the present generation of young Americans, there seems to' be some swing
from the extreme nuclear family independence spoken of above. Earlier marriage, earlier parenthood, more children, longer technical training, more working
wives are among the factors that seem to .be setting a new trend to re-evaluate
larger family cooperation. There seems little to indicate, therefore, that modern
civilization will cease to have a place for "the famil}( even though its historic
activities may continue to undergo modification.

An individual ordinarily grows up in the parental family, and then at

mriage establishes in turn, another family for the rearing of children.
Warner has called these two family types the family of orientation and the
t
family of procreation. The modern small family illustrates this distinction
particularly clearly. The period in which young people, much as they may
be attached to their parents, are realigning their social, relations toward
establishing a family of their own, is likely to be one of considerable tension and uncertainty. A Chinese scholar, Li An-Che (1937), was startled
when, studying Ithe matrilocal Zuni community in the American Southwest,
he discerried the reverse of the situation familiar to him in patrilocal China:
among the Zuni it was the husbands who showed, like Chinese 'wives, the
tensions of fitting into their spouses' households in setting up families of
procreation, while the Zuni wives had the comfortable continuity of resigence which the Chinese husbands enjoy.

[50J Kinship

271

The cohcept of household has appeared at a number of points. Here

the principle of organization shifts from marriage and kinship once more to
that of locality: the persons who customarily live together spatially, that is,
as we say, "under one roof." An extended family system, as such, may be
somewhat elastic, with kin members scattered over different households and
meeting in smaller or larger groups according to the occasion. A household
group, by contrast, may include nonrelatives such as persistent guests or
servants. Essentially the household is the unit which eats, works, and otherwise congregates together in daily living. The expression "under one roof"
must be interpreted broadly, as with, say, apartments in a skyscraper, a
campfire group using windbreaks, or a living unit which requires several
house structures to lodge different functional activities.
On all kinds of occasions the everyday household or family group
may be augmented by the arrival of visiting relatives. Here the anthropologist is able to see the working of more marginal kin linkages and to assess
how far the range of effective kinship ties carries in the society he is studying. Economic needs, war, high points in the social round, such as marriages, sickness and death, festivals, and religious ceremonies, may set into
motion the more distant bonds. A Polynesian Maori warrior captured in
battle might save himself from providing a meal for his cannibal conquerors by uncovering a kinship tie with them. Many groups have among
the most prominent of their expert professions the keeping of genealogical
relationships so that the ramifications can be followed }rom generation to
generation and the duties and privileges pertaining to such linkages can be
adequately exercised.

Problem 50 . Kinship
How do ties by "bloo,d," marriage, and adoption enter into social rela!
tionships?
Kinship has been called the "core" of social organization. In every
society ties by "blood" I(biological descent) and by marriage tend to
be the basis for . building the
more intimate and essential social relations.
I
This is particularly so wi~h consanguineal links, which are ascribed-we
cannot choose our ancestors and blood relatives. In many smaller communities and societies kinship is the paramount factor in organizing group
activities-this among sq-called civilized, as well as nonliterate peoples.
Furthermore, the ideas, sentiments, and loyalties associated with such kin
linkages are frequently carried over beyond the sphere of actual ties, as with
the mother superior of a convent, a fraternity brother, or a whole nation
calling its ruler "Father."
Kinship ties fall into three categories: (1) ties of biological ancestry

272

Social Organization

(consanguinity), (2) ties of marriage (affinity), and (3) fictional ties

(that is, socially defined equivalents, as with adoption, godparents, belief
in common descent from some animal totem). We are justified in including fictional linkages in discussions of kinship where, socially speaking, the
behavior and sentiments involved are essentially of the same character. In
some societies social ties do not correspond at all exactly to biological ties
-the person who is "father" to a child may not always be the actual progenitor; children may be given away, children or adults adopted.
Two main principles of structure can be distinguished in kinship systems. The first involves looking outward over the contemporary generations
to see the range of kinship connections, especially of effective or socially
active linkages, among the living. The second involves looking backward
through past generations to see lineage, descent, genealogy.
The ethnologist investigates in detail for any given society the nature
and functions of kin ties, also how far the behaviors and sentiments involved are merely a matter of personal choice or are more or less patterned
or rigorously demanded. The prescribed interaction between any given
pair of kinsmen may be marked by such features as restraint or intimacy,
propriety or freedom, strictness or indulgence, superordination or subordination. Such kinship arrangements differ vastly as regards the'types of
kinsmen so linked, and the degree to which their relations are' fixed or
elective. Also differing is the degree to which kinship systems tend to work
smoothly or to foster tensions such as rivalries and jealousies; a sense of
limitation in personal freedom, or even factionalism and conflict. The reduction of the many alternatives found in kin behavior to type systems is one of
the most complex problems in anthropology.
A few classes of kin behavior appear to be more or less universal, a~,
for example, sensitivity to parents-in-law. I,n view of our particular complex
of attitudes regarding mothers-in-law, -it perhaps appeals to us to know
that among the American Indian Arapaho a-man and his mother-in-law may
never }ook at or speak to each o~her. By contrast, among the Bari of Nilotic
Sudan, a mother has great affection for her son~in-Iaw ~ecause, as she
might say, the son-in-law is "able to support her and give her gifts." Restraints are also widely called for between brothers- and sisters-in-law: in
traditional Chinese custom they could not join hands. A particularly wellknown class of kin behavior found in widely separated areas is a relationship of patterned verbal license, usually spoken of as a joking relationship,between certain kinds of kinsmen. This seems to be primarily a kind of
emotional dfety-valve device. It gives overt recognition and expression to
sanctioned intimacies-say, as between males where kin arrangements
could generate points of high tension, or between men and women who
are potentially intermarrying pairs but are unlikely to marry. The most
convenient source for seeing major types and variants in kinship behavior
is Murdock's Social Structure (1949).

[50] Kinship

273

Ethnographers, as a standard practice, compile the words in local

languages which express in explicit symbols the significant kin relationships.
It soon became apparent to recorders that the list of kinship terms current
in the English language (father, mother, cousin, aunt, and so on) provided
an inadequate filter through which to pass the kinship systems and terminologies of other peoples. English, indeed, is probably one of the least adequate
languages for this purpose because of the general obsolescence of kinship.
ties in English-speaking societies beyond those of the immediate family.
For example, many groups separate out in various ways the eight different
relationship categories which we class together as our "first cousins": father's sister's sons, mother's brother's daughters, and so on. Again, some
groups class together under one term of reference relatives that we label
separately, as did the old-time Hawaiian who spoke of "grandfathers" and
"grandmothers" and, indeed, all ascendant progenitors more than one generation above them as kupuna ("ascendants").
Kinship terminologies may have a "descriptive" or a "classificatory"
emphasis. A descriptive term refers to one specific relative, as "husband,"
"father." A classificatory term covers a group or class of kinsmen standing
in the same relation. The Hawaiian word which offhand we may translate
"sister" refers not only to the female children of one's own parents (as in
our system) but also to one's father's brother's female children, one's
father's father's brother's son's female children, and so on over a large
range of more or less distant female relatives in collateral (side-by-side)
family lines.
The existence of a classificatory term does not mean that the people
concerned fail to distinguish between the individuals within that kinship
class. There are varied ways in which a speaker can segregate out a particular person from his class fellows. This individual is likely to have a
specific term of address such as a name or nickname, even when the term
of reference is classificatorY;1 or he may be singled out by a combination
of terms, as by saying "the third son of my mother's eldest brother"; or
he may be noted by pointing \the finger or by such a phrase as "my brother
over there in the house." Moreover, though patterns of behavior and sentiment may be carefully laid ~own as between two kinsmen standing in a
certain relationship, the per~ons concerned may not exercise them with
the same warmth and thoroughness. Normally one keeps active only those
kin ties out of his many potential linkages which enter effectively and usefully into his life: mostly thdse with kinsmen living in his own and nearby
communities, but occasionally more distant ones whom he visits or who
visit in his group.
I
When students first examine kinship systems they may discern what
seems to be a catch in the nice exactitude with which formal structures and
rules are usually worked out in the literature. Brothers are noted as exchang:ng sisters in marriage-but what if a brother actually has no sister to carry

274

Social Organization

on the arrangements? Under a classificatory system the solution is usually

simple: a more distant "brother" may be drawn in to fill in the gap, taking
over socially the role that is not filled biologically. Yet even when a specific
relative is needed, he or she will almost certainly be provided, perhaps by
some more or less formal system of adoption or some other fictional device.
An example of such kinship substitution is the yoshi system of the Japanese
whereby a family without a son will adopt the husband of a daughter to
take the family name and carry on the ancestral line.

Problem 51 . Descent or Ancestry as a Principle of

Social Continuity
What different forms can organization based on this principle take?
Many Westerners are puzzled by peoples, such as the Chinese, the
Polynesians, and the Bantu, who deliberately keep a record of their lines of
ancestry, and retain the identity of large descent groups: it is an unusual
American, at any rate, who knows his ancestors beyond his grandparents.
Study quickly shows, however, that these are neither mere embroidery to
living nor superfluous mental exercises. Maintaining lines of ancestry can
have important functions in defining status in a society, as with rank or
authority; it channels succession and inheritance; and it can serve as a blueprint for the interdependence and mutual relations of living kinsmen.
We have seen how "dead" ancestors may be counted as still having ,
some role in the activities of the "living." So-called ancestor cults, though
associated with religious beliefs, 'have at least as much of a place in a discussion of social organization as of religion. Persons or families of highest
rank are likely to keep their genealogies most meticu;lously, as having the
greatest use for such kin linkages. Corresp<mdingly, only those individuals
amon!} the ancestors who were illustrious or impOl:tant, as with eldest sons,
may be remembered as organizing points for descent groups. Other peoples, by contrast, may let the memory of ancestors slip away (rapidly, and
keep track of their worth-while kin connections by learning about and exercising them in each generation. Growing children are told who their relatives are, act in the prescribed fashion, and in turn pass the information on
to their children.
Exercise

What groups in American society stress keeping genealogies? Why should

individuals want to claim descent from, say, Pocahontas, the Mayflower
migrants, or the Dutch settlers in New York?
Between the extremes of remembering individual genealogies and of
minimizing the ancestry principle lies a whole range of social devices the

[51] Descent as a Principle of Social Continuity

275

study of which have been a major. preoccupation of students of social

structure. These are systems of "bookkeeping," so to speak, on ancestry
through which individuals in each generation are assigned to descent categories or classes, so that only the social group categories need to be identified, and not individual ancestors unless so desired. As Fortes puts it
( 1953), "rights over the reproductive powers of women are easily regulated
by a descent group system."
Every individual is descended from two lines of biological ancestry:
his father's group and his mother's group. Some societies use the male line
of ancestry to carry the continuity of inheritance, succession, naming, and
other functions, while some utilize the female line. That is, they have unilateral ("one-sided") or, as some prefer to put it, unilineal ("one-lined")
descent. To the extent that the father's side or line is emphasized, the society
is spoken of as patrilineal. To the extent that the mother's side or line is
emphasized, the society is matrilineal. These terms correspond to the old
forms "father-right" and "mother-right," respectively. In still other societies,
-the individual counts as his kin group relatives on both his father's and
mother's side, without marked unilateral differentiation. This is called the
bilateral type of descent reckoning.
In practice, few, if any, groups using patriliny exclude an individual
completely from participation in some phases of the life of the mother's
kin group. Where matriliny is used, too, there is likely to be some form of
active relationship as well as ties of sentiment between c;hildren and their
father's group. As the matrilineal Hopi put it in a saying: "A man is a member of his mother's group but a child of his father's group." Fortune (1934)
describes the Dobu father in Melanesia as being able to give his son a good
line of yams or an effective magical formula, even though the son's main
Unilineal (or Unilateraf) Descent. Showing how patriliny and matriliny
operate over generations. I

MATRI LINEAL

PATRILINEAL

~
I.R

MARRIAGE
INTO ANOTHER
DESCENT LINE

~
~
0

..e-

276

Social Organization

OWN KINDREO

Kindreds in a Bilateral System. Each offspring is the reference point

for a kindred alignment, and will participate in numbers of kindreds
in the course 0/ his Ii/e. The curved lines each encompass a kindred.
(This diagram has been simplified by the omission of collateral lines of
descent.)

status will follow the matrilineal principle. In bilateral systems, too, even
where social theory holds that an individual has equal rights in both parental
groups, practical behavior tends to veer toward a unilateral emphasis. A few
systems are bilineal ("two lined")-that is, they formalize both patrilineal
and matrilineal lines of descent, an individual being a member both of
the father's (patrilineal) group and of the mother's (matrilineal) group. In
such double descent, as it is called, different types of property and other
rights may be received by way of each unilineal principle.
Recognized members of a bilateral d~scent group are called collectively
the kindred. The kindred, in taking account of both the father's side and
the mother's side, represents a social ramification of the nuclear family. Its
actu membership is always d(;!fined with reference to an individual: a son
counts as his kindred the two kindreds which were" conjoinec!. by the marriage
of his father and his mother.
.
Members of a unilateral (unilineal) descent may be linked by a specific
genealogical connection through a remembered line of ancestors. They are
then called a lineage. Fortes (1953) makes a detailed analysis of lineage
groupings, particularly in Africa, where they are widespread. He speaks of
a lineage as a selfLperpetuating "corporate group," linked by a genealogical
charter, and capable of serving many economic, political, religious, and
other functions, e.g., the control of valuable property, definition of authority and leadership. He and others note that rather than grow indefinitely
in size, lineages tend to undergo fission or cleavage so that the likelihood
is that any lineage will go back only a few generations to some selected nota-

[51] Descent as a Principle of Social Continuity

277

ble ancestor. Lineage systems appear to be most developed in what Fortes

and Evans-Pritchard (1940) and others have called segmentary societies,
in which the social structure is particularly subject to fission while retaining
an over-all sense of identity.
A unilateral descent group can have a more general character and
membership: as such it is usually called a clan. A clan will over arch lineages
if they are part of the social structure. A clan system assigns a number of
individuals in each generation to a common descent category or class which,
by the unilateral principle, may be either patrilineal or matrilineal: what
Murdock (1949) has usefully dubbed a patri-clan or a matri-clan. (He also
proposes to call a patrilineal family a patri-family and a matrilineal one a
matri-family, and correspondingly a "deme" or related community a patrideme or a matri-deme.) The clan has been called a form of great family,
extending either in the male or the female line, this grown to proportions
where actual genealogies have usually been lost, but nevertheless based on
a belief of the members that they have common descent from an original
progenitor. Such a progenitor may be human or else a spirit being or "totemic" object of the animal or plant world.
Lowie, in an important early work on social organization (1920), applied the old Anglo-Saxon term "sib" to the unilateral grouping here called
"clan." At the same time he tried to restrict the use of the term "clan" to a
matrilineal descent group only, and introduced a further term "gens" (plural
"gentes") for a patrilineal descent group. This complication is mentioned
here because these terms are used by a number of writers. Such restriction
of the more familiar term "clan" has generally failed to take hold, and its
use as discussed above is fully current.
A matri-clan consists historically of a real or supposed female ancestor,
her children male and female in each generation, and the children of her
female descendants through the generations. Males marry wives from other
matri-clans, and their children take clan status from their mothers, so
- that male descent lines are !cut off generation by generation. The opposite
is the case in the more fami~iar patrilineal pattern.
Clan membership usually regulates marriage by way of clan exogamy
("out-marriage"). It draws' members into corporate activities, and inculcates sentiments of loyalty ~nd interdependence. Often the clan possesses
. a name, symbolic paraphernalia and other forms of material property, and
special myths and rituals 'bound up with its origins and history. In some
groups it stands out sharpl{as one of the main units of organization in the
community, with very spec~fic functions; in others it is vague and the unilateral principle barely competes with bilateral factors. Obviously, only
by defining specifically what functions such a grouping as a kindred, lineage
or clan perform in the particular society concerned does the term come to
have real meaning.

278

Social Organization

In some instances historic clan or sib groupings have become divided

into smaller units or subclans validated by some particular tradition. Frequently, too, they are linked into larger interrelated groupings, as are the
Wolf, Dog, and Deer clans of the Menomini Indians of Wisconsin; out of
some twenty clans, these were historically associated and worked together
in certain ritual and practical affairs. Such a superclan unit is technically
called a phratry, from the Greek phrator, "clansman." Sometimes a social
system, whether or not it has clans, is divided into two groupings or sections, each called a moiety from the French moitie, or "half." Such "dual
organization" may serve varied functions, as, for example, to provide a basis
for exogamous marriage, occupational specialization, or ritual activities.
EXAMPLE.

THE TLINGIT INDIAN MOIETY SYSTEM

Among the Tlingit Indians of the Northwest Coast there are moieties
respectively associated with the Raven and the Wolf. A Raven moiety man
must always marry a Wolf woman, and the children by matrilineal reckoning
are of the Wolf moiety; the sons, as Wolves, take wives from the Raven half
and their children are Raven; and so on through the generations. A son here
looks primarily to his mothr's -brothers for his personal training; a Jather is
meantime responsible for the welfare of his sister's children. A Chris,tian missionary wishing to convey to such a people the sentiments which are associated
in our minds with "God the Father" would have to translate the concept as
"God the Mother's Brother" to be understood.
'
Fortes, in an important article on "the structure of unilineal descent
groups" (1953), suggests that they are characteristic of a "middle range"
of societies, in terms of size and, complexity of social structure. Unilineal
groupings, he says, have little scope to develop among peoples living invery small groups, with rudimentary tecl).nology and little durable property.
They also seem to break down when a moqern economy with marked division of labor, productive capital, and money exchange takes over. The
middle! range, where unilineal systems appear to l?e concentrated, may be
herding economies, as in many sections of Africa, or'agricultura~ economie~,
as in various zones of the world where a fair-sized group has relative homogeneity, yet considerable technological sophistication and dur~ble property ..
Here specific lineage groupings, and wider clan groupings, have organizational scope for cementing a sizable society.

Exercise

Delineate, in main outline, our own system of kinship reckoning in terms

of such factors as residence, descent, inheritance, and succession. What
patterns of relationship, in your experience, are likely to be most active
beyond the immediate family? What is a "second cousin"? (Any group of
Americans is likely to be split on the question as to whether second cousins

[51] Descent as a Principle of Social Continuity

279

are on the same generation lev~l, as are first cousins, or involve a generation difference. Look this up in a good dictionary; see also "cousin
once removed.") What, too, are the fullest extensions of "brother-inlaw" and "sister-in-law"?

A spectacular phase of social organization, discussed extensively by

earlier theorists, is totemism. The word refers to various systems of belief
and action having as their common feature a postulated "social" relation
between humans and animals, plants, or inanimate objects. Typically,
the relation involves supposed common ancestry and pertains to a descent
group such as a clan or lineage. But the term may also be applied where
other linkages occur, e.g., where a political unit or all the members of one
sex might have a totem. Even an individual may possess a totemic guardian.
Radcliffe-Brown (19S2a), in a well-known functional theory of totemism,
considers it to be one of the alternative ways in which man has interpreted
his relation to nature. Totemism involves a whole system of special "social
solidarities" between men and natural phenomena similar in certain respects
- to "the relations established within the society between the human beings
themselves. "
A totemic linkage is frequently objectified in symbolic paraphernalia
such as totem poles, masks, and insignia, associated with appropriate ritual.
These have been compared in some respects with the heraldic symbols of
the European escutcheon, or the use of the eagle or the maple leaf as political emblems. A totemic group is often known by the name of the totem,
as with Wolf and Raven above. Frequently the beliefs are such that the
person or persons associated with a totem cannot use the plant or kill the
animal concerned--or else it can only be done with appropriate ritual,
when a formal apology must be offered. In Australia, where totemism is
strongly developed, the totemic units of certain tribes carryon elaborate
magical rites to ensure the fertility and increase of their totemic collaterals
even though they themselves! may be forbidden to eat that particular species.
That is, because of their sp~cial relation to the totem, they are expected to
ensure plenty of that product to the rest of the group.
!
EXAMPLE.

TOTEMISM IN IN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINE GROUP

How rich the world of 10temic thought can be is shown in an account by

Elkin (1933) of the Karadjera of northwest Australia. Each small local hunting group has associated wit~, it one or more totems. As in so many Australian
Aborigine languages, the wdrd for "totem" also denotes the "long-past time"
when the culture-heroes and /totem-ancestors lived on earth, creating its natural
features, and instituting tribal laws and rituals. The word, as is also frequent,
has the additional significance of "dreaming." Where cult totemism is concerned, that is, totemism associated with secret myths, rites, and sanctuaries,
the question "Wh~t is your dreaming?" is equivalent to asking "What is your

Social Organization

280

totem?" and is answered with the name of the cult totem. A person's totem
links him to the great "dreamtime" and gives him a sense of participation in it.
Before a child's birth a father dreams which special one out of the totems of his
group the child will belong to, and this determines his totemic affiliation when
he grows up. Elkin, in a wider review of Australian totemism (1948), notes that
a group may have individual or personal totems, sex-linked totems, and totems
of moiety, clan, marriage section, and locality-a rich totemic pantheon indeed.

Problem 52 . Voluntary, or interest, Associations

What weighting is given in human societies to groups based on friendship, common interest, and other elective principles of association?
For the smaller societies, and undoubtedly throughout the social history of man, kinship, with associated age and sex principles, has been the
dominant or central factor in social organization. It is biologically given,
and tends to be socially safe and familiar. Yet room has also existed apparently in all societies for voluntary associations, that is, groupings based
on elective choice. One of the most striking developments of modern civilization has been the loosing of kin ties other than those of the nuclear family,
and a vast increase in interaction based on such voluntary associations, both
highly institutionalized and on casual and personal levels.
Lowie (1948) reviewed in notable fashion the place of voluntary
associations in nonliterate societies. They may include neighborhood and
friendship groupings, participants in play activities, groups for economic
cooperation, social clubs, religious and political associations, to name some
familiar categories. Lowie selects for special comment the wide distribution of secret societies, which are present also in the/Western social milieu:
witness lodges and other closed associations. The organization and functions of all such groups have to be studied-in local ethnic terms.
!
EXAMPLE.

A MELANESIAN SECRET SOCIETY

The Dukduk secret society of the Bismarck Archipelago in Melanesia

takes into its lower grades of membership virtually all male members of the
communities in which it is established. Parents wish their sons to belong for
the prestige and privileges it gives. A man who stays outside would almost certainly fall foul sooner or later of one of its secret rules, and so be subject to fines
amounting FO moie than the "fees" which entrance caned for. The higher grades
of the society, however, with their closer relation to the "great mystery," are
reserved for the aristocracy. Entrance and passage through these grades become
progressively more difficult and expensive, especially in terms of ceremonial
wealth distribution. The innermost circle comprises the most important leaders
in the area. The Dukduk conducts elaborate private and public rituals, notable
for their masked figures. It has been described as a kind of "in~ernational law-

281
[53] Hierarchical or Rank-Order Principles
society" in that it tends to overarch with common rules a series of communities which have no ties other than the periodic arrival of the masked Dukduk
figures.
.
Amusing delineations, amounting perhaps to caricature, have been
offered by the British psychologist-anthropologist Gorer (1948) of such
organizations among men and women in American society. In small, personalized communities, so typical of human aggregation, a book titled How
to Win Friends and Influence People would cause amazement. But in the
intricate, mobile, and impersonal "Great Society," ability to participate in
voluntary groupings and win status within them becomes a maior element
in personal and social adjustment.
Exercise

Make a list, and then tryout a classification, of the voluntary or interest

associations in your community or neighborhood. What, by and large,
are their purposes? Who form their leadership and membership?

Problem 53 . Hierarchical or Rank-Order Principles

How universal are class, caste, and other organizations based on superordination and subordination? How is leadership worked ~mt in different
societies?
,
The concept of "status," which has pervaded the/discussion to this
point, perhaps always contains an element of rank order, that is, of being
higher or lower, superordinate or subordinate, valued as superior or inferior.
This is often summed up in the term hierarchy.
Thi~ facet of social behavior was noted as going far back in organic
life. Many types of animal aggregations, as a basic factor in their survival,
have leaders which emerge to power and authority, and members of the
group tend to fall into an o~der of dominance or of followership. In human
societies, individuals and groups of different ages, sexes, kin linkages, occupations, tend to assume la graded order when questions of precedence,
authority, seriation (goingl in succession) are raised. Elders may order
younger persons around; f~)Od may be distributed first to more important
individuals; diplomats walk in an apparent order on public occasions.
Every human society puts power and authority into the hands of leaders.
Where hierarchical relationships are more set and socially defined, we
can speak of them as representing rank. Rank order can be an organizing
principle both for individuals and for groups, placing them in a higher or
lower status position, and assigning appropriate functions to them. It is
likely to be a focus for symbolism, as with insignia or special linguistic terminology (Your Majesty, His Excellency, Sir). Many societies have placed

282

Social Organization

authority in the hands of individuals whose paramount rank is ascribed

on the basis of seniority of descent, as with the historic European aristocracies. Others leave rank more or less open to individual achievement and to
group choice. Among many American Indian peoples, the supernatural
dream revelations which a man received, or his success in war, tended to
shape rank on a highly individual basis. The military forces represent examples of elaborated hierarchical systems in our own society.
Some groups, such as the Eskimo, minimize in their cultural arrangements the principle of rank, though always there must be individuals taking
special responsibilities of leadership. For other groups, the Northwest Coast
Indians, for example, the exercising and reinforcing of rank become a dominating configuration in the culture. In modern Western society, with its
exceedingly numerous organizations and their "offices," there is vast scope
for hierarchical arrangements, even while egalitarianism is a major value.
The field worker, in studying different ethnic groups, has to analyze for
each society the particular principles underlying the ranking of its members,
and whatever special activities, beliefs, sentiments, paraphernalia, and other
elements pertain to each difference in rank.
Where a whole social system falls into ranked segments, it is spoken
of as organized in terms of social class, or class. We may say of an individual, "He is of the middle class," or "So-and-So is a very' class-conscious person." Members of a class feel a sense of their common unity and
correspondingly of their apartness from the rest of the society: The basis for
class membership may vary: it may be descent, occupation, property, war
conquest, or some other valued factor of association. Classes, so to speak,
tend to become closed corporations banded together to protect the rights
and foster the interests of the members. Often they cultivate distinctive
manners and linguistic usages. Warner (1953) has been a leader in analyzing the classes in American society, which have been popularly described
as "highbrow," "middlebrow," and "lowbrow," or, in terms of Warner's
coinages, "upper-upper," "upper-middle," and s_o on down. 1;'he American
clas~ system, however, though'it is fairly identifia_ble in terms of sources of
income, residence, informal ~ating together, and other factors, is rather
fluid and for the most part not very significant in a functional sense; most
Americans assign themselves to a vague "middle class."
A class ordinarily has a certain fluidity in membership, accepting
new members and losing others, who become declasse. It is likely to have
more or less competitive relationships with other classes. But segmentation
and stratification may have crystallized to such an extent, and become so
reinforced by religious and other sanctions, that competition has been eliminated and the whole system has become immobilized in terms of status and
personnel. Such a fixed class is labeled a caste.

[53] Hierarchical or Rank-Order Principles

EXAMPLE.

283

CASTE IN INDIA

In India, the classic land of caste, there are four general caste categories
(varnas) which some judge to have been based originally on occupational, or
else ethnic, distinctions: the Brahman or religious category at the top, the
Kshatrya or warrior category next, the Vaishya or landholders and merchants
below them, and the Sudras or cultivators and menials in the lowest category.
Within the broad caste categories there are numerous castes or subcastes, each
of which is normally an endogamous (in-marrying) group or else marries according to prescribed linkages with others. Below these four categories, which
comprise indeed only about one-tenth of the people in India, are the Pariah,
popularly called "outcastes," including many groups of castelike character
(officially known as the "scheduled castes") outside the four varnas. The
many "tribal" peoples of more isolated areas can also be categorized as outcastes. Mohammedan Indians, although they have put aside the traditional caste
system, have developed somewhat similar divisions and rankings.

To round out this review of hierachical arrangements, something more

can be said about leadership and authority. Chapple and Coon (1942) define a leader as a person who initiates action in a group with high frequency. He may also be looked at as a specialist in decision making, communication, negotiation, and the molding of public opinion. Societies differ
in the degree to which they place authority in the hands of fixed persons (for
example, hereditary rulers, those with dream revelatiops, trained specialists) , or else allow it to be competed for by ambitious, dedicated, or otherwise motivated individuals, families, classes, or other special groups. Again,
some social systems tend to concentrate all types of authority into the hands
of the same person or group such as a "chief" or a general council of elders,
while others like our own are marked by specialization in leadership as
regards varied ,activities. In an earlier chapter leadership, as it relates to
economic spheres, was discussed (Problem 25), and more will be said of
it in connection with the pblitical, legal, and religious aspects of life. Carrying authority calls for exertion of effort, initiative, taking of risks, the assumption of responsibilities. In turn there must be rewards or incentives.
Societies, therefore, "bait'[ positions of leadership with perquisites, so to
speak, as with honors, ceremonial property, special privileges. The full
weight of supernatural approval is also likely to be aligned along with
social support to back up the authority of a leader.
The important leader' is usually the organizer of the group, assuming
the worries, and seeing that his followers are protected and their interests
fostered. He is expected to reflect to the highest degree the important values
of the group-so that the study of leaders is a key to the definition of cultural
values. He cannot have the lighthearted attitude toward the day that the

284

Social Organization

ordinary person may show, for duties and responsibilities weigh upon him,
and when things go wrong he is likely to get the blame. His behavior is
circumscribed, for he is always in the limelight-more than anyone else,
perhaps, he is subject to exact rules and restraints. He may have had to go
through some rigorous training in preparation for his post, even starting
from babyhood where leadership status is ascribed. In many respects he
might be judged less "free" than the slave who may work for him.
Under normal circumstances there is a high degree of reciprocity or
equivalence between chief and subject, ruler and citizen, leader and follower, high- and low-ranking person. If he is on the receiving side of the
arrangement the leader is served by his followers, perhaps becomes the collecting point and storer of valuable goods, is placed in the limelight, receives respect, and exercises special influence on decisions, but he has to
be reciprocally the trustee and servant of his followers if he is to retain their
support. From the side of the follower there are advantages in the form of
protection, responsible direction, the sense of pride in having a good leader,
perhaps aesthetic enjoyment of pageantry. In other words, when the visible
and invisible linkages are fully assessed, the position of leader and adherent
normally represents a sort of complementary arrrangement, and power carries with it social responsibility.
'
From this view, a popular idea of the primitive ruler or chief as often
being capricious and arbitrary does not usually bear up under ethnological
analysis. Yet it is a fact that ideally reciprocal arrangement's can go awry
in practice. Individuals or groups may usurp by force what the society
defines as rightful authority. Persons or groups may use a privileged position to enhance the benefit side beyond what is traditionally allowed, or else
shed the responsibilities correctly required of them. Folk tales often give
accounts of such happenings in nonliterate groups, the events being remembered as "news." A younger brother ril~y have displaced his older brother
in the position of chief, an illferior branch of an aristocracy may have set
up,. new dynasty, a ruler may have been considered oppressive and incompetent, and perhaps even have 'been killed by his followers <_?r ~t least deserted
by them. In our modern setting, with its extensive breakdown of ascribed
status positions and its constantly expanding opportunitie~ for individuals
to gain power and enhance their status through competitive struggle, disequilibria in the field of authority are particularly marked. At the same
time, the challenges and rewards of leadership, and the degree to which leadership is widely distributed among individuals, are probably far greater
than in any previous society.
The opposite extreme from vigorous pursuit of higher status and power
is seen in some of our voluntary organizations where rewards are few and
a call for people to assume office meets with reluctant response. Only when,
someone has a sense of duty is a "leader" forthcoming. The philosophically

Collateral References

285

minded have often proclaimed the worth-whileness of nonentity and

anonymity, or the escapist has extolled the easy life of social irresponsibility.
But presumably for most of us, considering how the values underlying our
particular form of social organization are oriented, happiness and security
will be visualized as being best achieved through vigorously pursuing a
"career" and attaining for ourselves and our children some form of "higher"
status through which our fellows will label us "successful."

Review
The "man-to-man" relationships examined here involve the development of amazingly different cultural solutions to meet basic conditions laid
down by the characteristics of individuals and populations. This personnel
aspect of culture is in many respects the core of ethnological analysis. In
chapters which follow, other specialized forms of social aggregation relating
to government, religion, art, and language will be studied.

Collateral References
In addition to sections in all standard texts, three book-length works give
broad analyses of social organization: Lowie, R. R., Social Organization (1948),
Murdock, G. P., Social Structure (1949), and Nadel, S. F., The Theory of
Social Structure (1957). A fourth book may be added for students who read
French: Levi-Strauss, C., Les Structures Eiementaires de la Parente (1949).
This author's important ideas may also be seen in briefer form in English in an
article o~ "Social Structure," in the Kroeber-edited volume, Anthropology Today (1953), and in one on "The Family" in the Shapiro-edited volume, Man,
Culture, and Society (1956). The last-named work also has a useful article by
Mandelbaum, D. G., on "Social Groupings." Approaches of contemporary
British scholars to social organization are well illustrated in Fortes, M. (ed.),
Social Structure: Studies Pre!fented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (London, 1949).
Of early works on social organization, Morgan's Ancient Society (1877)
could profitably be looked :over as being an outstanding classic. A student
might compare this with a work by Schneider and Romans (1955) covering
some of the problems currJntly being studied relating to marriage and kinship. Examples of other techpical works dealing with aspects of social structure
analysis are Kroeber (1938)1, Chapple and Arensberg (1940), Bascom (1944),
Goldschmidt (1948), Glucktnan (1951), Radcliffe-Brown (1952a), and Fortes
(1953). Sex behavior is analyzed comparatively by Mead (1949), and by
Ford and Beach (1951); Whiting and Child (1953) and Mead and Wolfenstein (1955) do the same for child training. The intricacies of social organization among Australian Aborigines are rendered coherent by Radcliffe-Brown
(1930), and those of Western Pueblo Indian groups by Eggan (1950)-these

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Social Organization

being good examples of regional comparison. Among well-known field studies

of social organization among nonliterate peoples are those of Mead (1927,
1935), Malinowski (1929), Fortune (1934), Bateson (1936), Warner (1937),
Evans-Pritchard (1940), Fortes (1945), Lowie (1945), Wilson (1951), Gladwin and Sarason (1953), and Oliver (1955). Studies of social organization in
Western countries are exemplified by Arsenberg and Kimball (1940), dealing
with Ireland, and by Warner and associates (1941, 1949, 1953), and by Vogt
(1955) for United States communities.

/
-

XI

Political Organization

ANTHROPOLOGISTS see in all settings of custom certain

categories of behavior which they discuss collectively as the "political"
aspect of culture. They are, basically, the cultural arrangements by which
a group shares rights in a territory and organizes for mutual services including defense of thanerritory.
Characteristic features of political organization are a common membership and loyalty, shared traditions and symbols, an internal government
for group control and welfare, and a system of external relations. Except
for elaborated tradition and symbolism, these features are found roughhewn in subhuman animal groupings. A central concept is that of the exercise of power. Radcliffe-Brown (1940) speaks of political organization
as "that aspect of the total organization which is concerned with the control and regulation of the use of physical force." Nadel (i942b) characterizes the political organization of the smaller societies as "essentially an organization for . . . war without and peace within."

Problem 54

Anthropological Perspectives on Political

Organization

What is the relation 6f the anthropologist's approach to that of the

political scientist? What a~e the character and the range of political life,
seen cross-culturally?
Social theorists since classical times have tried to explain the development of politika, the "affairs of the state." In so doing they have freely used,
and abused, ethnographic ~erspectives. Early man and the "savage" have
been variously pictured as/;he "man of nature" living in a golden age; as
"lawless and unbridled," following individual whims; as caught in the
"slavish" fetters of social/habit and constantly under shadow of "superstitious fear"; or as ordered by instinctive drives such as "gregariousness,"
"consciousness of kind," or tendencies to "imitation." The "State" or "Nation," some thinkers insisted, emerged from "Race," "Blood," or "Folk";

287

288

Political Organization

or else by conquest from a "primordial" state of anarchy and warfare, as

the German theorist Oppenheimer claimed; or else more rationally from
a social compact or "contract." Maine (1861) pictures early societies as
organized upon a "blood tie" basis, i.e., on kinship, with the "territorial tie"
emerging in modern political form with the city-states of Greece.
Concepts like "political organization" and the "state" can be defined
in such a way as to include only the larger territorial units and the more
complex systems of government, and this is often done by political scientists and others. But it is clear to the anthropologist that these systems of
political behavior have their counterparts in all societies. Unfortunately,
in the past, there has been all too little collaboration between political scientists and anthropologists in studying this aspect of culture. Yet some interchange and sharing of ideas is occurring, for example, in such fields as the
study of national character, leadership, and opinion formation.
Some excuse, perhaps, exists for the cavalier treatment given by
political specialists to the cross-cultural viewpoint, apart from the dragging weight of inadequate older theory. The non-Western political unit
may not have such familiar trappings as a seat of government, policemen,
code books of law, a flag, and other recognizable symbols. A Columbus
could easily plant his country's flag on newly "discovered" soil with complete lack of a sense that it might be covered by pre-existing rights of eminent
domain. Yet Gluckman could point out (Evans-Pritchard and others,
1954), that the organization developed to hold together the thousand
or so Polynesian islanders of Tikopia is "almost as complicated as that
which rules a city like London." To get at the essential facts of political
behavior, and place our own institutions, and values in perspective, it will
be necessary to do some ethnological sptdework.
_
Even mobile food gatherers such as t\le Eskimosl the Australian Aborigines, and the Andaman Islanders occupy a defined territory or locality.
Each band, camp, or horde, as their tiny -groupings have been variously
called( has its customary range ,or "sovereign" area, to which 'it is linked
by practical economic considerations, by history and sentim~ntl and usually
by mythological and religious associations. The use of the region and its resources by members is subject to well-defined rules. So, too, are the relations of the group to neighboring units, including in some instances certain
limited rights of hunting or otherwise using one another's territories and
resources.
I
In the forested Andaman Islands each little band of forty to fifty persons occupied an area of roughly sixteen square miles. On more barren sections of Australia the territory of a band was necessarily much larger, perhaps as much as a hundred square miles for twenty people, but was also
carefully defined. Among Eskimos the seasonal rhythms are important in
shaping the travel, the settlement localities, and the periodic scattering out

[54] Anthropological Perspectives on Political Organization

289

and coming together of groups within their wide territories. Least fixed territorially appear to have been those peoples depending on migratory wild
herds like the buffalo and caribou, for the band then must seek or follow
them over a rather indefinite range. American Indian tribes of the Plains
form a particularly interesting case; in winter they would scatter in tiny
bands, but in summer when pastures were lush and the buffalo concentrated
in large herds they would come together for large tribal assemblies.
Much the same picture applies, with local variation, to herders who
move fairly continuously or seasonally upon traditional pasturelands. Peoples among whom agriculture is a minor occupation, and who still emphasize
food gathering, or whose cultivation involves periodic shifts to new clearings, may also give an outward appearance of having no clearly marked
territory; yet closer study shows that there are well-defined rules among
themselves, and among their neighbors as to rights of eminent domain.
Such territorially based groupings have had systems of organization
for defense and aggression. They have also had a leadership, with centralization of the powers of direction and coercion. Over and above the heads
of families, special individuals assumed an agreed measure of authority
and control over common enterprises. Recognized qualifications could
differ considerably here-perhaps, singly or in combination, exceptional
personal qualities, age, seniority of descent, wealth, bravery in war, special
job training, or demonstrated competence in dealing with supernatural or
other factors.
/
Among Negritos of the Malay Peninsula each camp had an acknowledged headman who gave the lead in matters of common concern. Among
the Eskimo of the Bering Strait region men of superior courage and ability
were likely to attract to them a group of adherents whose social, economic,
and ritual life they regulated. The Yukaghir of northeast Siberia had a somewhat more specialized system of delegating authority. Camp affairs were
directed variously by an "old man,"
who was the senior member of the
I
dominant clan; by a shaman or practitioner in things supernatural, also of
the clan; by a "strong man," who with his warriors conducted the tasks
of war and did not need to be a member of the clan; and by a "first hunter,"
who with his companion hunted provided food and skins, also chosen for
skill rather than clan membership. Customarily, however, in all such small
intimate groupings, through general discussions and informal interchange,
there was opportunity for the' opinions of all participating individuals to
be taken into account in matter~,of government.
Unfortunately the territoriaI factor here seen to be present in the organization of even the smallest, least stable groups tended to be passed
over by the earlier untrained observers, preoccupied and fascinated as they
so often were by unusual kinship and other social arrangements. This left
the path open to oversimple theories denying to so-called savages any ter-

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Political Organization

ritorial tie, or political organization, and counting this a comparatively

recent product in man's history. It is true that in many such units the territorial group corresponded closely to some "blood" group, such as an extended family or clan. Their leaders would exercise political power along,
perhaps, with economic, religious, or other activities. Such personal relations and intimate intercourse among relatives would call for a minimum of
formal machinery of government. The mistake of the evolutionists was in putting the kin and political-territorial principles into a historical sequence
instead of seeing them as facets of culture which tend to merge functionally
in the roles of leaders in such societies.
Herding peoples of Siberia like the Mongols, for example, are normally divided into patrilineal clan groups, the head or prince of each
being its senior elder. Even where this is so, however, there is sometimes
a larger organization based on factors other than kinship, as where the
heads of such Mongol clans may meet to discuss matters of common concern. Furthermore, units may occasionally be found where kin does not
enter as an important principle of organization, running directly counter
to Maine's theory cited at the beginning of this section. Among the reindeerhunting Chukchi and Koryak'of northeast Siberia families join forces for
longer or shorter periods on the basis of congeniality and the exchange of
gifts; their camps typically have a "strong man" at the head who 'is prominent as a war leader, and some slaves captured in war may be included
along with his "camp-companions."
,
Turning now to the more sedentary herders and to settled cultivators,
we find the size and permanence of the group becoming more important.
The ethnologist finds villages and towns, tribes, kingdoms, and even empires in miniature. The term tribe is the most widely used political conceptin anthropological literature, though its m~aning is often rather vague and
elastic. Broadly speaking, it is a group of fair size wnich is bound together
by common loyalties and usages, and occupies a territory outside of which
peopl~ are regarded as stranger~ and potential enemies. The tribe does not
need to reside in a continuous settlement pattern,. and indeed is typically
scattered out in bands or in small communities. At some poirit not clearly
definable, though obviously greater in size and complexi~y, the nation
appears as an appropriate label.
The mythological or historical record of many nonliterate communities
tells how the original settlers were a group of relatives or friends whomigrated to jtheir present location because of population pressures or other
dynamic conditions. Their descendants multiplied, some marrying out,
others hiving off to form new settlements. People from outside also married
in, or else were accepted as members for other reasons. Though in the
present-day community certain more nuclear descent groups, such as extended families, clans, or classes may hold the center of the political stage,

[54] Anthropological Perspectives on Political Organization

291

the whole is a sociopolitical unit which transcends purely kin lines. Perhaps
the descendants of those who moved out to form new settlements continue
to retain political affiliations with the ancestral community. This was noted
as typical of the Bantu-speaking cattle herders of east and south Africa
so that a widely flung group of kraals (local settlements) may be organized
in a hierarchy of importance, with the heads of senior family lines pyramiding up to the highest chief or king, who rules from the ancestral center.
Sometimes larger political unities have grown out of marriages between
neighboring groups, or the needs of common defense, or as a product of
conquest.
EXAMPLE.

ZULU POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

In the Zulu kingdom, Gluckman notes (1954, pp. 77-78), the armed
power of the king maintained over-all authority. Yet the king did not exercise
this authority through a single structure of administration. All subjects had a
direct loyalty to him, but through three lines of linkages: through provincial
chiefs, through royal princes, and through age-regimental commanders. Differing groups of men were banded together in these differing links with the king.
Their various leaders engaged in intrigue and tried to win adherents and control
power; princes even struggled for the kingship itself. Struggles and rebellions
actually in this way confirmed the over-all unity of the Zulus and the authority
of the king. Gluckman suggests that possibly a periodic civil war was a necessity for preserving national political unity and the royal power. /'

The emergence of larger communities and territorial aggregations

called for more elaborate institutions of government. Local organization
has to be supplemented by over arching structures, and the powers and responsibilities' at each level of the whole defined. That this elaboration has
not been an easy one is attested to by the fact that many groups show inconsistencies and conflicts between the more localized organizational structures and those of wider chara~ter, as the history of any modern state will
reveal.
In some instances, the extension of political institution~rhas been made
easier by the continued existenhe of kin linkages, real or fictional, which
enabled the principles of family order to be carried over into tribal forms
of government; indeed, they niay even operate in the case of a modern
nation, as with Japan today. In other instances kin has entered into the
lower levels of government only; and other bases of authority have emerged
at higher levels such as decisioh-making
skill, military prowess, wealth, or
J
religious leadership. A number of the small Islamic states in Malaysia, for
example, have at their heads politico-religious dynasties counting descent
from the prophet Mohammed by way of the missionary leaders who converted and took control of them about the fifteenth century A.D. What are

292

Political Organization

undoubtedly the most spectacular political developments in the so-called

primitive world, the great empires of Middle America, also illustrate corporate principles beyond those of kinship.
EXAMPLE

1.

THE INCA EMPIRE OF PERU

The foundations of the Inca Empire of Peru comprised various tribes and
petty states which, between A.D. 1100 and 1400, became consolidated under a
dynasty of warrior-administrators. At its height somewhat before the first Europeans arrived, it covered an area of about 380,000 square miles, or more than
the combined areas of France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium. The
pyramid of Inca authority led up by heads of households through a hierarchy
of increasingly important officials said to have been in charge of approximately
every ten, fifty, hundred, five hundred, thousand, and ten thousand households,
thence to provincial officials, called "they-who-see-all," supervising jurisdictions
containing forty thousand households, and so up to four great "viceroys," each
in charge of one quarter of the empire and forming a kind of imperial council;
finally at the peak of the system was the supreme and godlike Inca. The internal
ordering of this "monolithic" state, as Vaillant calls it (1941), forms a fascinating story of political experimentation that contrasts at many points with our
own.
EXAMPLE

2.

THE AZTEC STATE

The Aztecs of Mexico showed an extreme version of what some political

scientists have called the "garrison state." They drew much of their inspiration
from the earlier civilization of the Mayas and Toltecs, who built now ruined
cities and temples, and had a strongly theocratic system of government. The Aztecs, characterized as a "brusque, and warlike people," established their capital
at the present Mexico City soon after the middle of the fourteenth century A.D.
All the men except for a few of the priests, were soldiers, and they are said to
have been arranged in ranks and given -honors according to their war record.
The people as a whole were divided into "great houses," apparently military societie;; but in political terms sOf!lewhat equivalent -to the wards ,of a modern
city. Chiefs were elected from the most distinguished warriors for an indefinite
term, and a council of chiefs conducted the general government. Chiefs could
be removed if they did not measure up to requirements, but there was a tendency
for the positions to become vested in certain powerful famili~s which formed
a military aristocracy. At the head of the state was the supreme war chief or
ruler whose position had become hereditary by the time Whites arrived to tumble
the structure.
-

Problem 55 . The Emergence of the Modern State

What do anthropological perspectives show?
With the development of larger sociopolitical units, government necessarily became more impersonal and coercive. Th(f gap between the leader or

[55] The Emergence of the Modern State

293

ruler and his dependents or subjects widened. In large groups most

of the people would get to see him only rarely. Elaborate institutions of
government, garnished with ceremonial and symbolism, tended to crystallize,
and political tasks became more specialized, calling for the services of experts.
In the simpler systems of organization what we distinguish as the legislative, executive, and judicial functions all tended to be concentrated into
the hands of the same individual or group of individuals, such as a group
council. In larger groupings they tended to become segregated out, and the
office rather than the person was to the fore. It is impossible here to begin
to describe the many forms of ritual, pageantry, symbolic paraphernalia
and other devices through which sentiments have been rallied and the dignity and importance of political units, their governments, and their leaders
have been expressed and exercised. The ethnologist notes, for example, the
so-called golden stool of the Negro kings of Ashanti in west Africa, the
dramatics and taboos of the high chief's court in central Polynesia, the ceremonies and sacrifices of the Inca and Aztec empires. At this point the line
between what conventional terminology counts as "primitive" and "civilized" becomes thin indeed.
The archaeologist, on reaching in his studies the city-state type of organization, was seen to have handed the task of further political analysis
to the historian. In the same way, the ethnologist leaves analysis of the
detailed structure and functioning of modern states to the specialist historian and political scientist. He takes note, however, of certain broad perspectives which stand out from comparative study. Wherever, too, questions arise as to the place of political behavior in the larger cultural and
social lllilieu the viewpoints and findings of social anthropology are meaningful.
The most obvious characteristic of the modern period has been the
vastly enlarged territorial and numerical scope of many political units,
sometimes taking in millions !of square miles and tens of millions of people. This has called for exten~ive new inventions in organization, symbols,
and sentiments. A vast hierarchical machine of government has been needed,
with elaborately defined rUl6s and crystallized institutions to order the
whole, from the central auth9rity and its leaders through to the local unit
and the individual citizen, Necessarily the governmental powers of constituent groupings-families, 'estates and corporations, guilds, ecclesiastical
bodies, local communities-Jere curtailed, and functions of concern to the
body politic in general vest~d in central authorities. The nineteenth century had as its dominant type what some political scientists characterize
in a broad construct as the "negative state" or "police state," emphasizing
laissez faire. The twentieth century, however, has seen the emergence of the
"positive state" or "social service state," in which the general government reaches out to' improve health, livelihood, education, and other phases

294

Political Organization

of welfare among its citizenry. Technical discussion of these trends as they

relate to national and international organization may be appropriately left
to the historian and political scientist.
One important zone of increasing collaboration between anthropologists and political specialists may be noted here: the study of leadership as
it works out in political elites, and their roles in public opinion formation
and decision making. The anthropologists are in a position, for example,
to make clear the functional importance of symbolic and ceremonial behavior, in some respects apparently universal as in tendencies to express
rank by publicly visible order of walking, seating, and distributing food, by
honorific address and other often elaborate language distinctions, by surrounding the status of the leader with privileges and restraints, and often
with supernatural sanctions (Problem 53). The anthropologist may show
the texture of communication, negotiation, and decision making in societies
with small and large membership, aristocratic and democratic orientation,
or other contrasting characteristics. He can give a behavioral realism to
concepts such as "authority" and "freedom" by studying the zones in which
members of a given society accept coercion or else value elective or "individualistic" behavior. His comparative and holistic studies can give
understandings of leadership in situations of culture change (Problem 82).
Among anthropological works which illustrate these leads are. {studies by
Mead (1937, 1949), Firth (1949), and the Keesings (1956).
At the beginning of this section mention was made of the thesis of
a German political theorist, Oppenheimer, as to the origin of the "state."
He considered it an institution forced by victors on a defeated group to consolidate its conquest and exploit the vanquished by way of a ruling class.
He draws his evidence from studies of the beginnings of elaborate politi<;_al
organization in the early Mediterranean, world, in Inorth Europe, and in
Asia. This had sharpened the ideas of several theorists who saw the body
politic as taking form out of a "primordictl state of war" supposedly characteJjstic of the prehistoric an1 primitive worlds.
Such a view is challenged by the anthropologist, 'at leas~ a~ a universally
valid interpretation of the way in which larger political entities have taken
form. Important as conquest and external control may have been in bringing into existence fresh political inventions and larger organization, it is not
by any means the whole story. Field research studies by anthropologists
show as unrealistic Oppenheimer's initial picture of primitive societies as
merely "anarchic antecedents of the state proper," a "violence wracked
dark soil of the animal." It has been stressed that even the simplest groupings foreshadowed the ordered elements that comprise the modern state.
Moreover, conquest has not been the sole instrument for building ruling
classes and larger political entities, even if a major one. Lowie, in a pioneering book, The Origin of the State (1927), points out that ruling classes
I

295

[56] War and Peace

may arise through the opposite process, namely, a group from outside voluntarily placing itself under the protection and patronage of a leader or a
stronger group. Or again, a class system may grow up within a group apparently apart from conquest, as with certain African aristocracies; the
molding factors here may be an emphasis on lineage, seniority, and the
intermarrying of persons of highest birth who form a chieftain class or caste.
A factor of "economic exploitation," stressed by Oppenheimer, may not
be at all marked.

Problem 56 . War and Peace

Is war a cultural universal? What have been the functions of war in
human societies, and how far are they still operative?
The extensive literature extant relating to war sometimes contains
assertions that it is not only a universal factor, but even a biologically determined factor arising out of human nature. Wissler, in developing his concept of the "universal culture pattern" (Problem 33), included war in his
list of general cultural categories on the grounds that group violence for
offense and defense was to be observed in every society covered by ethnographic records.
Wissler's position became a subject of considerable scientific and other
controversy at the time. Anthropological arguments, however, centered on
the question as to whether all societies did practice such organized violence as part of their patterned custom. Cases were cited of Eskimo and
California Indian groups which appeared to have no tradition of intergroup war in the sense of community or mass action; though individuals
might kill, lor seek vengeance for killing, such events appeared to be sporadic
and without group participation. To the extent that this represents ethnological fact, and not incomplete information, it would break the concept of the universality of waf, as defined in these terms at least.
The problem here is, of course, one of indicating what is meant by the
concept of war. With the emergence of the functional viewpoint, this became
approached much more realistically through asking questions as to what
specific significance war has to given peoples, what war does in different
cultural traditions. From this came a realization that war, even apart from
the many contrasting fonns if may take-mass fighting, sporadic forays
of small parties, battling of trained experts, and so on-serves no general
purpose common to all soci~ties, but has an amazing variety of meanings
according to the culture in which it exists. Clearly, it is part of the body
of learned habits, a cultural Instrument through which certain needs current
in the particular societies concerned are met.
Among many groups, military activities have as a main purpose ensur-

296

Political Organization

ing the territorial integrity of the political unit; this is uppermost in our
own conception of war. Yet for some groups no such need exists, for supernatural or other factors limit territorial expansionism (Problem 57) . Another
widespread motive was provided where fighting could be, in terms of the
values of some peoples, a kind of game or competition or chivalrous exercise in which physical combat, man to man, or group against group, defined
success and enhanced prestige for the victorious party. War was the prime
career for males, and in some places females, too, were trained at least for
emergencies. Very often warring peoples have had clearly defined rules
laid down between them as to what was and was not permitted: the Maori
tribes, for example, did not carryon war during harvest time, and, where'
an enemy might lack food, were known to have sent it to them so that they
would be strong to fight; in like manner we have today a body of international regulations backed by public opinion and more or less observed.
Among North American Indian tribes of the Plains, "points of honor"
could be scored not only through killing but even by touching (making a
"coup" upon) an enemy. Sometimes two groups would stake their political
status and prestige in a prearranged combat between one or more picked
fighting men, or even replace physical combat by other compet~tive activities such as composing vilifying or glorifying songs. Some peoples, as in the
history of Islamic expansion, held beliefs that counted war something of a
religious rite, making them unafraid to die in combat. With low value on
peace and security, violence could be the enthroned ideal and war an adventure with high rewards-spiritual, and, if success came, material, and
social. Always, however, there would be the in groups of kinsmen, friends,
or allies among whom violence was not allowed. Early missionaries were
often puzzled by the so-called "dual nature of savages"-tender, consid~r
ate, cooperative, loyal among themselvtis, yet "fien'ds incarnate," "devils,"
toward outsiders: this of course is an~ inconsistency prevalent enough in the
modern sociopolitical order.
/
EXAMPLE.

WAR AMONG

TH~

WEST AFRICAN TALLENSI'

Fortes (1945, pp. 238-239) describes warfare among the Tallensi, a

Ghana people of West Africa. Unlike the more consolidated kingdoms in parts
of the continent, .this group is segmented into clans and into communities without a central political leadership. War alliances could occur between related
clans and settlements, so that fightiI1g could become widespread. But it had no
objective Of political or territorial aggrandizement, or even of personal pillaging. Wars typically arose out of impulsive acts of retaliation by groups and individuals who felt themselves injured or slighted. No regular military organization existed. Able-bodied kinsmen turned out in a mob with their weapons,
their women urging them on, carrying water, and dragging away casualties,
Fighting consisted of uncoordinated sorties by individuals or small parties"
mainly shooting unfeathered poisoned arrows which called for close approach.

[57] Localism, Nationalism, and International Organization

297

These sorties would continue all day. "in spasms." At nightfall the men retired
to their settlements to feast, dance, boast or lament, and rest. After two or three
days at most, peace would be made.

The values of some, if perhaps a small minority of nonliterate peoples,

for example, the Arapesh of New Guinea, define war less as a pleasurable
and profitable pursuit than as a duty, a nasty but necessary activity. Again,
some peoples have carried their desire for personal safety, if not outright
dislike of war, to the point where this activity becomes a task for specialists
-a warrior class or paid mercenaries. Nonaggressive, their military contingents tend to become more and more a protective police force. Even
among groups who continued to value military ideals and who built up
large kingdoms or empires as in west Africa, Middle America, and Malaysia,
peace and security were seen to be useful. Rulers, merchants, travelers,
religious leaders, and others wanted order and stability in their countries
so as to be able to govern, transact business, move about more safely, carry
on religious activities, and so on. In internal affairs, at least, the employment of force and violence, even to settle personal disputes, became increasingly taboo for individuals, being limited to the public authority. Theological and ethical values extended the concepts of "arbitration," "peace,"
and "love" to cover wider units, and in some faiths to embrace all Humanity.
Individual and group assertion, aggression, and competition had to find
other outlets (e.g., games, craft skills, artistic achievement) than through
killing or despoiling fellow members of the body politic. /
Here again the line between "primitive" and "civilized" tends to disappear, and it has remained for historical and political science specialists to
fill in the details of the modern picture. The anthropologist is likely to be
an optimist to the extent of saying that war and peace, being part of learned
custom, of cultural institutions and values, are man-made. No one of the
many forms of organized group violence is "a necessary condition of existence," or an expression of ':human nature," and alternatives are available,
as through judicial and other procedures. It still remains, however, for
human agreements to be rehched in a comprehensive enough way to ban
this venerable form of hum~n interaction. Certainly few of the group and
personal values which war ~erved in past human cultural history can be
furthered by the mass hostilities of an atomic age .
. J

Problem 57 . Localii'm, Nationalism, and International

Organization
How has man moved toward greater political integration?
Man has been called a "local" or "tribal" animal. Many theorists have
even questioned his biological capacity to appreciate horizons beyond those

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Political Organization

which are traditionally regional. Anthropological materials are helpful in

getting this matter into perspective. Particularly significant here-and the
most important zone of current interplay between anthropological and political science specialists-are studies of so-called national character in
which ethnic differences are looked at as total systems (Problems 29, 30).
Many small groups were seen as spread from necessity in a scattered
pattern of residence because of limitations set by resources. They could not
afford to rest survival and maintenance upon any larger organization-the
hazards of getting together would be too great. Government officials, for
example, have found it most difficult to marshal gleaners or hunters into
central points for administrative and welfare purposes-at most they are
likely to stay only so long as food is handed out. Even in the case of settled
agriculturalists, advantage is rarely seen in consolidation beyond the practical boundaries of necessary trade and travel zones.
What the anthropologist comes to realize on examining the ideas,
sentiments, and beliefs of such peoples is that their values have not run
in the direction of seeing worth and advantage in wide peaceful consolidation or in territorial aggrandizement. Warfare, to such groups, has been
seen as based upon other motives than conquest of neighboril}g lands;
in fact, for many of them to stop fighting would mean-and has me/ant nowadays as the white man's soldiers and battleships have come in to enforce
peace-a fundamental disorganization of traditional ideals, rit~als, leadership, and social order generally. "You have to have someone to fight," an
informant may say: that is, in this way alone can economic, social, and
supernatural requirements be met. Similarly, the idea of taking over the territory and resources of an enemy beaten in combat, or again of conquering
them for purposes of economic exploitation, has been for many such peoples simply inconceivable.
I
An Australian band or horde, for instance, with its~ close religious attachment to an ancestral locality, could hardly dream of taking over the territory
of another band or horde; such an area would be satu,rated with' alien spirit
and totemic forces, and altogether undesirable. Among the I1on-Christian
mountain peoples of the northern Philippines there are dozens 'of independent village communities each of which until recently was usually hostile
to its neighbors. Here, head-hunting was counted an essential activity, for
heads had a key place in agricultural and other rituals, and the taking of
heads was conseqpently one of the ,main preoccupations of the villagers.'
Through cel}turies: of raiding and warfare, therefore, no attempt had been
made to create larger political unities other than a few neighborly alliances
of convenience, or to destroy enemy villages and ricefields, or to dominate
in economic terms a rival community. In the same way, the social philosophy
of the Oceanic peoples was such that, even on minuscule islands, each village
or tiny district mightbe politically independent after generations of warfare;

[57] Localism, Nationalism, and International Organization

299

or, at most, leading families of one gr,oup might attain through conquest a
shadowy overlordship or prestige superiority over another. Feuding in many
parts of the primitive world had as its ideal keeping the score even; an eye
for an eye, and so on. In all these situations there was normally a balance
of power in miniature among an array of tiny independent units.
The values associated with larger political consolidation and territorial expansionism appear actually to have been comparatively late products
in human history. The prime centers in which they emerged and were tested
were the early urban communities of the Near East. Doubtless they were
stimulated by population increase and the advantages to agricultural development and trade of having peace over a wide area; improvements in methods
of communication and in military "tools" seem also to have been important
factors. Here emerged the loyalties of being a "citizen," codified law, many
of the more elaborate institutions of government, and tendencies for states
to expand into empires. In turn, the new political techniques and values
spread selectively to other areas, sometimes fostered by people in the zone
concerned but undoubtedly carried more usually by conquerors.
Here and there in the world of nonliterates, what are apparently independent inventions along much the same lines are found, though only rarely
and sporadically. The outstanding examples are the states and empires of
Middle America; here, too, it is notable that the elements involved thin out
among the agricultural and hunting tribes to north and south. In Polynesia,
the Tongans, unified under a succession of powerful chiefs, are recorded in
the oral histories as establishing control about the eleve~th century A.D.
over neighboring island groups, notably Fiji and Samoa; but later their imperial venture petered out. In parts of west Africa secret societies have
been a factor in creating some degree of superlocal organization, drawing
~embers of otherwise independent groups into common loyalties. The
"Confederation" of Iroquois "nations" in the eastern United States was a
notable example of consolidation, but in this instance it is not certain how
far early white influences may have provided a stimulus.
The significance of nati?nal character studies in relation to political
behavior is generally obviousl in principle, even though the synthesizing of
general propositions about given cultural and social traditions offers major
problems of method and int~rpretation (Problem 30). The French, Russian, Chinese, and American I peoples look out upon others the world over
with the same tendencies to ethnocentric judgment as do the Aborigine and
the isolated villager upon nei~hbors within their horizons: the outsider is a
stranger (Problem 10). Ma~y political scientists, therefore, have become
just as interested as the anthropologist in the significance of total-culture
studies, both for their better understanding of distinctively political behavior
in societies with which they are concerned, and for the development of solutions to relevant politically oriented problems of the day. To change any po-

300

Political Organization

litical system fundamentally calls for modifying basic premises, values, goals
of the total culture and personality milieu concerned.
What, then, of "international" organization? In spite of the anthropologist's sense of the deep-seated localism in the political loyalties of man to
date, he cannot be other than an optimist in sensing the wide potential of
human creativity in this field of behavior. For the long pull of human history,
sociopolitical aggregation did not go beyond groups reckoned, so to speak,
in tens. The first technological revolution opened the way to institutional
inventions and extensions of loyalty which consolidated tribal and community groupings numbering hundreds and in time thousands. Urban development and earlier empires carried organization with reasonable efficiency into the millions. The second, or industrial, revolution has carried the
integrative trend in some modern national states well beyond the hundredmillion mark, and has extended communicative, economic, religious, and
other structures in complex networks among the two and a half billion humans now living. Massive political power is now in the hands of a few major
nations and their leaders.
The anthropological viewpoint can give no credence to the existence
of any biological or other limitation which of necessity would prevent national groups from continuing this integrative trend. As in the f!lpidly accelerating consolidation of recent centuries, it is a matter of appropriate
cultural and social invention in structures and sentiments, and the acceptance of these innovations at large. Such invention is going on' continuously
in details before our eyes: international postal agreements, whaling regulations, World Health Organization conventions. Yet regional conservatisms
and countertendencies are also part of the scene. Anthropologists cannot
predict that man has the will to move toward world-wide political integr~
tion, but he may predict with confidence that, subject ,to processes relating to
cultural stability and change to be discussed later, ,he undoubtedly could
create a reasonably orderly integration of the political aspect of culture on
such/a comprehensive world basis.

Review
Anthropologists discount views which dismiss the political institutions
of so-called primitives as "simple." Their studies open many different vistas
of human experiment in this aspect bf behavior.
Particularly worth while will be the development of closer collaboration between cultural anthropologists on the one hand and students of political science and of political history on the other. The former have extensive case materials, such as are sampled here, and resulting understandings,
which could enrich political theory. The latter scholars have formalized

Collateral References

301 .

approaches to the study of government and its ramifications which could

undoubtedly bring many comparatively unexamined problems into the anthropologist's field of view. In the next chapter, a further aspect of behavior extensively associated with political action will be more fully discussed, namely, "law."

Collateral References
Apart from chapters on political organization in most standard texts, a
dearth exists of general works. A pioneer study is Lowie, R. H., The Origin
of the State (1927); this author also brings his ideas up to date in his Social
Organization (1948). A chapter by Lips, J., on "Government" is included in a
volume edited by Boas (1938). Chapple and Coon (1942) essay an analysis of
political behavior, including leadership, from the viewpoint of interaction
theory. Thurnwald (1952) discusses political organization in functional terms.
Steward (1956) makes a comparative study of "band" organization among food
gatherers, and Redfield delineates political as well as other characteristics of
"little" and "peasant" communities (1955, 1956). A notable work edited by
Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E., African Political Systems (1940), can
introduce the reader not only to the rich literature on political organization in
Africa but also to the theoretical viewpoints of British social anthropologists
in this field. A later useful review of African governmental systems is by Gluckman (1945). A study by Keesing and Keesing (1956) discusses political leadership and decision making in cross-cultural situations.
/
Every fUll-length ethnographic study of a culture will include data on
political behavior. Examples of works which stress political organization are
Evans-Pritchard (1940), Hoebel (1940), Nadel (1942a, 1947), Lowie (1945),
Thompson, L. (1952), and Oliver (1955). Anthropological studies of national
character and of the more complex civilizations generally (Problems 29, 30)
have assumed a growing importance in modern political theory, e.g., Mandelbaum (1953, 1956), Mead (1953). For a cross-cultural study of war
see Turney-High (1942). Nationalistic movements and other facets of political
change, and also the applications of anthropology to governmental problems,
will be discussed in ChaptJrs XVI and XVII, with appropriate bibliographic
references.
I

,
I

/'

XII

Social Control

EVERY CULTURE has a normative aspect. It provides more

or less unique standards and value!> as to the kinds of behavior the society
concerned counts "normal," "good," "right"-as regards property, sex,
marriage, rank, government, and so on throughout behavior. As a requisite
for social order and integration, members of the group are expected to fit
their actions into established norms or rules. These latter are backed up,
according to how vital they are, by sanctions, that is, by validating and enforcing mechanisms.
In the English language we class this aspect of culture variously in
such terms as "standards of conduct," "values," "ideals," "moral order,"
"ethics," "law." Here the anthropologist overlaps in his comparative studies
not only with other social scientists, but also with philosophers, theologians,
and specialists in law and jurisprudence.

Problem 58 . Anthropological Approaches to Social

Control
How has the field of values and standards in behavior been dealt with
in apthropological studies? wqat is the distinctiveness of morality, of ethics,
and of law?
."
_
Not all culturally defined behavior is equally flavored' with the commanding "thou shalt." At one extreme there are customs like eating at noon,
or having one's hair arranged in a certain way, in which direct social compulsion is minimized-you "can" or "may" so behave if you wish. There
are even zones where eccentric or otherwise deviant behavior is respected,
as with the temperamental artist or the inventor. In turn, behaviors range
through "should" or "ought" categories to the "must" categories-that
is, conduct demanded by the society, so that disobedience arouses widespread moral indignation, even horror, and calls for severe punishment.
We go so far as to speak of some possible behaviors as "unthinkable",
(Problem 8). Ethics, or morality, and law are obviously concerned with,
I

302

[58] Anthropological Approaches to Social Control

303

more compulsive categories in co~duct, relating to such concepts as right

and wrong, good and evil, duty, justice.
In every human group there are tension, stress, and conflict over
many of its culturally defined rules. As both child and adult the individual
chafes at various points against established ways. Personal desires exert a
pull toward evasion, circumvention, or even direct breaches of rules, and
there are those who succumb. Adultery, incest, theft, neglect of kin obligations, carrying on evil magic, and whatever else may be counted "delinquencies," "crimes," or "sins," come to light even in the most tightly knit
societies. Social control must therefore always include institutionalized
means of dealing with possible breaches of the established rules, e.g., policing, apprehension of rule breakers, judicial deliberation, and punishment.
Anthropologists reject a number of older stereotypes, some of which
we have criticized already. These stereotypes include the lawless or unbridled savage without curbs on his individual impulses, the idealized savage
whose life is ordered by a social contract or compact, the fear-ridden savage
beset by taboos, the group-oriented savage driven by gregarious instinct,
or by collective consciousness, the precarious savage at the mercy of the
chance whims of his chief or ruler, or the habit-driven savage obeying automatically the social rules. Even works as late as Westermarck's The Origin
and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906-1908) or Hartland's Primitive Law (1924) hardly escape this type of behavioral unreality.
- Meantime, within the ethnographic record, information bearing on
social control steadily accumulated. A favorite subjec{, dealt with usually
in the religious category, was "taboo," taken from the Polynesian word
tapu, meaning "sacred" or "reserved." Here the concern was with rules
which had supernatural sanctions behind them. A taboo puts restraints both
on the individual and on the group, hence tends to be a powerful force
for social order.
More secular factors of social control were also coming to light. The
North American Indians 9f the Plains, for example, were shown to have
well-institutionalized polic,ing systems which ordered big tribal gatherings.
Many African societies were seen to have elaborate courts and other judicial
procedures, and there we~e parallel institutions of more or less elaborated
kinds in other societies. )Vhere the region was one marked by so-called
colonial administration, these and other factors of social control were of
practical concern as having to be integrated with the judicial institutions
and codes of the ruling c6untry. Dutch anthropologists, for example, compiled vast records of the do-called adat or local "customary law" of what is
now Indonesia, then under Dutch control. One of the notable pioneering
studies was Barton's "Ifugao Law" (1919), which revealed how these
Philippine mountain people, numbering approximately one hundred thousand, and scattered in hamlets through terraced rice fields, share a quite

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Social Control

formalized and explicit body of rules regarding property, marriage, public

safety, and other common concerns.
The first comprehensive attempt to develop a body of theory relating
to law and other facets of social control in their total cultural context was
made by the functionalist Malinowski. In his Crime and Custom in Savage
Society (1926a) and in later works (e.g., 1931, 1936), he takes the
viewpoint that every institution or established custom has as one of its
facets a "charter" or "constitution" which gives it validity in the eyes of
the group concerned. That is, it involves rules, backed by sanctions of
social, and perhaps of supernatural, opinion and action. This rule-andsanction facet of behavior, in his view, constitutes the "legal" aspect of
culture. He places law in this broad sense as one of the derived or instrumental needs or imperatives required for the existence of a culture (Problem 28). "At the core of most prescriptive norms," he says, "there is usually found some fundamental tendency of the human organism." The great
body of rules in all cultures deals with "sex, property, and safety."
Stimulating as Malinowski's view is, it tended to interpret law so
broadly as to make little discrimination between moral or ethical rules in
general and a legal system in particular. Subsequent theory relating to soCial
control, which is still all too inadequate, has put stress sometimes to the
side of morality or ethics, and sometimes to the side of law.
Anthropologists have on the whole talked about general standards
of conduct, or the normative in culture, much more under the rubric of
"values" than in terms of "morals" or "ethics" (Problem 32). Firth
(1951a) in one of the few theoretical discussions addressed directly to the
moral order, says that "by the moral attributes of an action are meant its
qualities from the standpoint of, right and wrong. Morality is a set of princ..ipIes on which such judgments are based." The existence of a social system,
he notes, necessitates "a moral system-for its support." He adds that ethics,
in the sense of an abstract philosophical examination of the basis of right
and lrong, is not the concern of anthropologists.
Some of the other theorist's in this field have,used the term "ethics" in
their discussion of the values, or philosophical basis, of a way of life.
Kluckhohn, for example, has explored the concept of ethical relativism
in his discussions of the value emphases of different cultures (Problem 32).
Goldschmidt (1951) treats an ethical system as part of the ideology of a
society, linking it to sin and guilt, and stressing its religious facet by speaking of the "ethiccireligious" system bf a culture.
I

EXAMPLE.

ETHICS OF NORTHWEST CALIFORNIA INDIAN GROUPS

Goldschmidt, in the study cited, compares the ethicoreligious system of .

northwest California Indians with that of Europe as interpreted by Max Weber

,j

[58] Anthropological Approaches to Social Control

305

in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930). He isolates three
fundamentals within the ethical pattern of the Indian tribes concerned: the
moral compulsion to work and approval of the pursuit of gain; the moral demand for self-denial; and the individuation of moral responsibility. Despite the
wide socioeconomic differences between such food-gathering peoples and the
urban-industrial way of life, the ethicoreligious system of both, he asserts, are
closely parallel, e.g., work as a moral act; asceticism in appetites, food, and sex;
the concepts of sin and guilt; the personalized relation between the individual
and the supernatural.

A number of students of child training and personality development

have stressed the ways in which the individual is trained to the moral
order (Problem 30). Mead (1943), Benedict (1946), Hsu (1953), and
others distinguish two broad tendencies in normative enculturation. One
conditions the individual to develop "internal control" or "self-responsibility" of a "repressive" type by learning to respond to his own evaluation of situations with approval of conformity and guilt as to possible deviation, i.e., "conscience." The other conditions the individual to "external
control" or "other responsibility" of a "suppressive" type by learning to
respond to the approval of others when he conforms, and to feel shame
about possible deviation. The cultures which foster these respective types
of training have been summarized by some psychologists as well as anthropologists as having a "guilt sanction" or "shame sanction" emphasis. Mead
(1940) was seen as delineating American society a~ historically guiltoriented ("the Puritan mode"), but with strong contemporary tendencies
for shame-orientations to emerge as parental authority gives way to peer
group organization among young people. Hsu (1953) pictures east Asia
societies as "shame"-oriented or, as he prefers to put it, subject to suppressive group control, rather than individual repressive control. As noted
previously, however, these are modal tendencies of great generality, and
both may be operative in, different zones of conduct within the same society. They must be treated with caution as predictable for particular
facets of behavior or for particular groups and individuals.
When we move from this general atmosphere of the normative in
culture to the more specifi category of "law," we see anthropological theorists struggling to align th~ir cross-cultural insights with the immense fund
of ideas on this subject as interpreted by students and practitioners of jurisprudence. The great majority of jurists would follow Roscoe Pound in
confining the sphere of l~'w to those phases of social regulation which are
carried on through "systematic application of the force of politically organized soci.eties." This latter view takes one explicitly and comfortably
through the realm of law in modern Western settings, and back to the Romans and Greeks or even to the Code of Hammurabi, which dates about
2100 B.C. But how far does it apply under other cultural circumstances,

306

Social Control

including governmental settings which are without the institutional forms

familiar to us, as with the judiciary, courts, written codes, police, and
prisons?
Anthropologists recognize that all societies tend to spell out in wellstandardized rules what conduct contributes to public order and what causes
trouble. Law, from the viewpoint of codification, is concerned with rules
which are explicit enough to permit "offenses" to be measured, "defenses"
to be marshaled, and punishment to be meted out. From the viewpoint of
action, it can be looked at as a formalization of the ways of dealing with
trouble cases, so that the working of these techniques is clear and explicit,
and authority to handle them is delegated, with more or less continuity, to
some person or persons acting for the group. A person serving in such a
judicial capacity, whether differentiated occupationally or not, is a "governmental" or "political" agent in the broad sense developed in the last
chapter.
Law and the judiciary, as so defined, appear to represent a universal
category in culture, though they show many different degrees of explicitness and assume many contrasting forms. Hoebel, an American anthropologist who has specialized on the study of law, speaks of this aspect of
a group's life as its "law-ways." His book, The Law of Prifrzitive Man
(1954), is the most ambitious attempt yet made to integrate anthropological approaches with those of the specialist in jurisprudence. An important experiment in combining ethnographic methods of investigation
with the "case" methods familiar in modern legal analysis is a study of
Zuni Indian law by Watson Smith and J. M. Roberts (1954).
EXAMPLE.

ZUNI INDIAN LAW

Zuni law, according to these investigators, pro~ably falls into a middle

range between societies with little or no concept of 'law as a distinctive "institution" or even as an explicit "set of rules," and one with a well-elaborated
lega} system. The legal system, as working today- among this group of some
2,500 people, living in one large pueblo, combines 'eleme~ts I both from the
traditional Zuni setting and from American acculturative influences. The
materials analyzed include 97 legal cases occurring between about 1870 to 1952.
These were identified through court records and oral memories, and were
handled in traditional fashion by authorized members of the Zuni priesthood
and by the modernized Tribal Council. Cases fell into the following principal
categories: witchfraft (18 cases cited in all); offenses against the person, including murder (2 cases, both before 1900 and then handled by the Tribal
Council); rape (4 cases); fighting (5 cases); slander (6 cases); offenses against
the community, including drunkenness and drunken driving (12 cases); breach
of peace (1 case); offenses against property, including theft (16 cases), but
otherwise minor in terms of the elaborateness of property law; property settle-,

[58] Anthropological Approaches to Social Control

307

Status, Ritual, and Social Control in Zuni. Membership in numerous

fraternities and other status groupings, and participation in an elaborate ritual life, are important forces in securing conformity to the established way of life. Shown here is a dance of the arrow order of the
Great Fire Fraternity. After Stevenson.

ments after death or divorce (22 cases); domestic relations (almost no cases
I '
except for divorce settlements).
Zuni legal procedure, though largely implicit, is "surprisingly well developed." Regularities show in pretrial investigation, the conduct of trials" the
summoning of parties, testimony of witnesses, rules of 'evidence, the use of precedents, and posttrial procedures. A distinctive Zuni practice is to require a "fourfold affirmation"-that is, key questions may be repeated four times, with the rationale that the parties should be permitted to think and decide before being
committed to an answer. "There is nothing at Zuni corresponding to the relationship of lawyer and client." A party usually pleads his own case, but others
may speak in his behalf. The sanction system in cases of civil action, as in the
Western legal practice, consists mainly of damages which compensate for injury,
with the occasional additiorl of punitive damages in aggravated cases. Criminal
cases have been similarly fuet with damages. The amounts are fixed by the
"judge," and compensations or fines may take such forms as jewelry, clothing,
livestock, or, nowadays, nioney. Imprisonment is a modern institution, and
corporal punishment has been resorted to in cases of witchcraft and for revealing
religious secrets.
In a final review of Zuni values as expressed in law, the authors note that
the prestige or reputation df judges, plaintiffs, and defendants is deeply at stake
in any trial, as, generally ~peaking, it is "not desirable for any Zuni to be involved in public controversy or to be found guilty of an offense." Other deeply
involved factors are kinship, sex in the context of reproduction, health, environ-

308

Social Control

ment as related to water, animals, and other habitat factors, and "beauty," i.e.,
sensory and dramatic patterns. In each of these value categories, a distinction
is drawn between "religious-legal" cases comparable with modern "canon law"
and tried by religious authorities (for example, witchcraft, theft of ceremonial
property) and "secular-legal" cases tried by secular authorities (fighting, rape,
and others). Because Zuni culture is focused on religion, which is the area of
greatest behavioral elaboration and interest, the "religious-legal" body of law
tends to be the more elaborated field of social control. "Not only are the Zunis
personally interested in their legal system," the authors conclude, "but they consider it of great importance to the community."
This unusually full case has been cited here because it would appear
to clarify as well as illustrate many of the interrelations between law and
the larger sociocultural context of which it is a part. It enables us to understand why anthropologists would resist any attempt to categorize as fundamentally different the legal behavior of so-called primitives and that of
modern civilized peoples.
Extending the discussion outward once more to social control in general, it is clearly recognized, of course, that the rule and sanction systems
in large societies have become much more complex than those of smaller
and more homogeneous groups. The tendency in the latter was for precise
and set rules to be developed, explicitly or otherwise, governing all essential behavior, with little tolerance of innovation and deviation outside a
usually narrow, accepted range of permissible variation. Only when changed
conditions, such as modifications in the environment, or shifts in relations
with neighbors, or diffusion of new cultural elements to their borders,
evoked new necessities or opened the way to choices was there likelihood of
marked shift. The would-be innovator, nonconformist, or rebel had usually
to submit to the conventions, at least in overt behavior; otherwise he might
be told to get in a canoe and sail away, or climb up ~ high tree and jump off.
Under such conditions, the legislative facet, the making of new rules or
changing of older ones, was at a-minimum, anq even dealing with nonconforlnity tended to be a rather 'sporadic business.,
The large modern socie~es have become vastly more complex in these
facets of behavior. Elaboration of rules has occurred, ranging through internationallaw, constitutional law, statute law, case law, ecclesiastical law,
multitudinous bylaws, administrative regulations, school rules, and so on to
generally less formal expectations like family codes or gang understandings.
All rules applying to larger groups have tended to become formally codified and impersonal. The machinery for lawmaking, law enforcement, and
handling those who break rules has correspondingly become elaborated and
highly institutionalized, especially as regards the control exercised by states
over the conduct of their citizens. The army of parliamentarians, policemen, judges, lawyers, and other specialists, along with the capitols, police

[59J The Forces of Social Conformity

309

stations, courts, prisons, and their ~ttendant rituals, is barely foreshadowed

in the smaller societies. Moreover, the alternatives in conduct, and the
possibilities of transgression and social disorganization are vastly multiplied as compared with conditions in the close-knit groupings characteristic of primitive societies, and of our own a few centuries ago.
The dynamic condition of modern civilization is particularly manifest in a vast acceleration of the rule-making, or legislative, process. We have
come, indeed, to treat as normal the yearly proliferation of laws which require whole new professions for their making, handling, and interpreting.
It has to be remembered, however, that the legislator or other code
builder does not invent these accretions out of thin air or imagination. He
holds as closely as he can to what he judges to be the current needs, tastes,
and values of his constituency. In other words, if new or reformulated codes
are to be more than mere formalities, or something imposed from above,
they must evoke within the society the personal and social forces that lead
to conformity.
It is a familiar enough fact that written codes and elaborate machinery of enforcement do not in themselves ensure social control. Evidence is
ample-witness the Eighteenth Amendment-that if the formal law gets
unduly out of step with what any large segment of public opinion counts
as fair and right behavior, it will fail to work. Under such conditions, should
the apparatus of enforcement and punishment be brought into play, it produces the opposite effect of what is intended-in our soci;ty the opprobrium
falls upon the policeman and the judge, not on the transgressor, and what
was planned as retributive action brings glory and martyrdom. This lack of
correspondence between formal law and local standards of conduct has
been particularly notable in the course of Western expansion to the extent
that the,white man's code has been forced upon other societies, and again
as regards immigrant minorities who have to conform to alien codes, often
conflicting with their own., People here are likely to be jailed for carrying
on what to them are right/modes of behavior. As a result, they feel themselves victimized and judge those who jail them to be unjust and foolish,
I
even immoral.
\

Problem 59

The F orees of Social Conformity

opera~e

What factors
to produce obedience to behavioral norms,
rules, laws?
Why, then, do humans, whether primitive or civilized, obey the customs and rules developed in their local groups? What are the forces making for conformity? A question-and-answer discussion of this problem in a
class might commence somewhat as follows:
I

310

Social Control

Q.

Why do you and I keep the customs of Christmas, or salute the flag,
or avoid wearing bathing suits in church?
A. It is our custom. (This is a stock answer to questions by field workers in other cultures!)
A. Our society has had such rules for a long time, so it is a matter of
training and habit.
Q. Is a person punished for not keeping up Christmas customs?
A. He punishes himself. He'll become unpopular.
Q. What about saluting the flag?
A. There is strong sentiment behind this custom. Anyone showing public disrespect would soon find out.
A. (Asking question.) Aren't there laws dealing with that? He could be
fined or something.
Q. What about clothing in church?
AA. Religious customs are always strong. . . . Isn't there a kind of supernatural disapproval?
In systematizing thought of this kind the first obvious factor is that
every individual throughout life, but especially in pre-adult enculturation,
undergoes a training experience of a more or less formal character which
conditions him to the particular rules valued in his society. Conformity,
therefore, becomes in this way a product of prolonged training and so of
habit. A large part of human activities are systematized and ritualized to a
point where they are accepted without thought or questioning. We take
off our hats in the house because our early experiences in household and
family molded us to this behavior. We keep to the rules of a game because
we have learned that by adhering to the accepted standards we can par- .
ticipate effectively with others in the activity. It would be simple enough
to break them, or amend them, but doing so is unlikely to occur to us, and
could "spoil the game." In the s'ame way other peoples may learn to leave
certai~ taboo foods alone or to carryon a ceremony, as part of the given
data of the culture concerned. There is no more reason to invoke here the
results of some mysteriously instinctive reaction or group consciousness or
other special formula any more than with ourselves.
A number of special factors also operate to facilitate all such training,
and also to keep the individual toeing the line. Familiar enough is the accumulation of moral tales, proverbs, myths and legends, and other verbal.
materials which h~ve been beating constantly upon men's minds to define
good and bad, right and wrong. These point clearly the way to gain praise
and reward. They demonstrate what we should feel ashamed of or hate.
Today we see similar devices at work in "codes" relating to books, motion
pictures, and television.
Social sanctions associated with public opinion provide pressures in

[59J The Forces of Social Conformity

311

all societies to keep conduct within the rules. Forces in this category operate
with particular effectiveness in the more intimate and personal groupings
of family, neighborhood, and friends. But they are also of a more diffused
nature. Everyone knows the particularly deadly force of gossip as a curb
upon conduct. Individuals, without necessarily being aware of it, are constantly being judge and jury to their feJJows. The conformist receives praise
and popularity, the breaker of rules is met with dislike, hostility, and ostracism. In the modern city, and along other social frontiers of the world of
today, it is probably more feasible than at any time before in human history
for the unconventional person or nonconformist to escape pressures of this
character. He may either lose himself in the social jungles of nonentity, or
join some congenial minority group which will in turn have its codes. But
in any society, if the rule breaking is of appropriate character, the individual may gain a following even on his home ground as an innovator
(Problem 82), especially if the society concerned is becoming skeptical of
its traditional norms.
.;:)
A related factor making for conformity is enlightened self-interest. As
Malinowski put it, "obedience to rules is baited with premiums." The growing child soon comes to realize the advantages of conformity as regards his
comfort and in his early struggles for status. He finds himself caught in a
net of social relations within which he gets generously only by giving willingly, and if he fails to fit into the norms of behavior he loses out correspondingly. This social give-and-take, often called reciprocyy or equivalence,
continues throughout life. Sometimes the rewards of conformity are immediately visible-people are polite, or obedient, with expectation of gaining
tbeir objectives right away. In otber instances a person may 100k to distant
goals. A young person may willingly serve the titled leaders and elders of
his kin and community in the hope and expectation that later he will attain
similar privileged status. Students subject themselves to college disciplines
so as to advance their lateli careers. Rewards may range from highly institutionalized benefits to the sense of pleasure and security gained by fitting normally into the social system and being well regarded by relatives,
friends, and that potent if vJguer entity, the public. All this, of course, represents the more deliberate ~ide of habituation spoken of before.
The fear of punishment, while not so pervasive as some theorists have
asserted, must also be take;n fully into account. Most of us are anything
but indifferent-whatever we may profess verbally in the matter-to social
opprobrium and ostracism, !whether or not supplemented by formal penalties, such as property deprivation or bodily punishment. Negative social
sanctions, as some call thJm, are powerful. Law and the judiciary were
noted as the lodgment of more explicit action programs embodying such
sanctions.
An interesting feature in many societies is that means are provided

312

Social Control

by which certain rules may be broken without the normal consequences

being forthcoming, that is, there are rules for circumventing rules. In old
Hawaii an offender could head for a "place of refuge," usually a temple
center, where he would be rendered immune to punishment by fulfilling
certain rituals. Certain types of Australian Aborigine ritual allowed a kind
of general blowing off of social tension by permitting sex rules to be broken.
The Saturnalia of classic times provide a matching example.
Exercise
How far, in our own society, are "rules for circumventing rules" a feature
in legal theory and practice, or in normative behavior more generally?

Along with social sanctions making for conformity, important rules

tend to be marshaling points for religious sanctions, bringing to bear a
kind of supernatural opinion. This has already been noted in our discussions of ethics and law. As will be,_:.seen, one of the universal characteristics
of religion is that it validates critical elements in behavior (Problem 63).
Among many peoples, mythology asserts that the deity or deities in the
beginning dictated their important customs directly or else through revelations to special individuals. So-called canon law, or ecclesiastical law, may
give explicit codification in this sphere.
Yet here, too, danger exists of exaggerating, as superficial observers
have often done, the negative fear elements in such supernatural sanctions
as over against the more positive desire to "build up spiritual treasure,"
get heavenly rewards, or be in harmony with what are believed to be the
sources of power through right behavior, thought, and sentiment. The
fear of supernatural retribution, postulated by some as the controlling fo~ce
of custom among primitives, is undoubtedly a powerful deterrent against
l
rule breaking, but probably not !Dore so than among many civilized
groups who believe in hell-fire, unsatisf~ctory reincarnations, bad luck, or
similar retributions. A Polynesian Maori, discussing the concept of taboo
with the writer, said: "Because the people k~ew clearly what the taboos
were, they had no fear of them unless they were broken: ,do your people
go around constantly in fear because of policemen and law books?"
The sanction systems here seen to be behind rules are likely to be
reinforced in human societies by specific security arrange'ments which help
in practical fashion to curb impulses which persons may have toward transgression. West~rn culture has locl}s and bolts, burglar alarms, police forc-es,
double wedding rings, and that now vanishing institution, the chaperone.
Some groups have kept their women closely guarded, even spatially secluded.
All cultures appear to include visible material symbols to mark security
or restraint, as with clothing design, or signs on the doorway or along a
trail. A verbal curse or magic spell is used among many peoples to fore~

[60] "Crime" and the Criminal

313

A Magic "Lock" in a Garden, Yap Island, Micronesia. This would put

a dire curse on any individual stealing the taro. The coconut shell, the
word for which also means "skull," stands for the skull of a dead relative of the thief; the bone of a pig or dog stands for the bones of all
his dead relatives; and so on. From a Yap schoolboy drawing.

stall evildoers. In all societies, probably, there is a close tie between the
moral order and art, so that right and wrong behaviors are symbolized and
communicated through literature (already mentioned), drama, dancing,
and often the graphic and plastic arts. Policing may b,e institutionalized,
as was so among the Indian tribes of the Great Lakes at the time of the
wild-rice harvest, and in tribal gatherings of Plains Indians, while valuable
objects may have special guardians or keepers.
Exercise
How could a belief in witchcraft, so widely spread in human societies, act
as a force of social control? Could it serve as a positive as well as a negative sanction?
:

I
Problem 60 . "CriJe" and the Criminal
How far are they a jatter of constitutional predisposition, or of culI
tural definition?
Established rules an~, broken in all societies. Words such as "delinquency" and "crime" are ih a general sense universal categories for classifying breaches of rules of ~different degrees of seriousness, and appear to
have their equivalents in all languages. At the level of specific behavior,
however, they are definable only in terms of the norms of the culture con-

314

Social Control

cerned. A "crime" is a breach of a major rule, particularly one which is explicit, as in criminal law, and which arouses strong public reactions as undermining group order.
Modern anthropologists have talked more of abnormality (Problems 8,
30) than of criminality. Yet anthropology had in the late nineteenth century
a strong subfield called "criminal anthropology." Much work was done,
nearly all in European countries, trying to establish characters associated
with supposed "criminal" types, e.g., as with Lombroso's study of the
ears of criminals. Interest, however, became dissipated, partly through
failure to establish any constitutional typology of this kind, and partly from
a better understanding of the relation of individual conduct to culture pattern as discussed here. Only one prominent anthropologist has followed
up this type of study strongly in the modern period, the late Earnest Hooton
of Harvard University (1939).
Hooton's interpretations of the patterning of crime among various
"Old" and "New" ethnic groups in the United States involved a tendency
toward racial determinism by underplaying the dimensions of cultural adjustment. For this reason they met with widespread criticisms by colleagues. Variations in the incidence of different forms of rule breaking,
such as drunkenness, sex crimes, or homicide, become meaningful when
their respective sociocultural settings are studied, as, for example, what
the attitudes of different groups are to the deviant behaviors concerned,
and the special influences bearing in upon the deviant individual by way of
family and other factors. On the biological side, nevertheless, persons who
are born so defective physically or mentally that they cannot learn or be
conditioned to a reasonable minimum of desirable behavior may fall short
of conformity. But they are not "delinquent" or "criminal" except as cultural definition make them so.
I
Moreover, as noted earlier (Problem 14), individuals may vary in
their constitutional characteristics along lines which might predispose them
to fap foul of particular kinds of rules if such exist in the sociocultural systems concerned. Potentially energetic, restless, and aggressive individuals
may find difficulty in becoming socially adjusted within- s6cieties which
have particularly repressive rules and puritanical codes, or which value
passivity as a personality trait; hence such individuals may provide a
greater proportion of deviants. By contrast, more placid and sensitive people might be those counted delinquent in a group which values forcefulness and violence~ In a motion-picture record of the initiation rites for youths
in an Australian Aborigine group, one of the boys, unable to stand up to a
grueling test of pain, bursts out crying, to the vast chagrin of his relatives,
and the derision of others present; it would, of course, be remembered
against him always. Such possible correlations between types of delinquents
and types of rules are as yet little investigated. Meanwhile it would be an

[61] The Responses of Society to Breaches of Rules

315

unwarranted judgment, in this highly complex matter, to take the short cut
of assuming that rule breaking is any direct expression of biologically deterministic tendencies to crime and delinquency, general or particular.

Problem 61 . The Responses of Society to Breaches

of Rules
How are rule breakers apprehended and dealt with in different cultural contexts? What is the significance of "punishment"?
When a breach occurs, group sentiment and action are loosed proportionate to what is counted the seriousness of the offense. What "procedure"
is brought into play varies from society to society, as do also the kind and
amount of punishment meted out. The Zuni case has already illustrated
these matters vividly.
In some situations the offender is known, and so can be dealt with
directly. In others he has to be discovered and apprehended. Nonliterate
peoples often have devices comparable with modern lie detectors by which
a group of suspects or even the members of the whole community are put
through some ordeal with a view to testing guilt or innocence. Nearly always
in such a "trial" the presence of supernatural powers is invoked: the
Bedouin, for instance, is called upon to swear an oath that he has no connection with the wrong done, while the Samoan must place his hand publicly upon a sacred object (nowadays upon the Bible) .
EXAMPLE.

THE ORDEAL AMONG THE IFUGAO, NORTHERN PHILIPPINES

Bart~n (1919), in his notable study of law among the non-Christian Hugao
people of the northern Philippine mountains, gives a careful account of use of
the ordeal. It is resorted to, he says, in criminal cases in which the accused persistently denies his guilt, and 'sometimes when disputes cannot be otherwise reI

solved. The challenge to an ordeal may come from either the accuser or the
accused, and refusal to accept a challenge means a loss of -the case. The ordeal
itself may consist of getting ~ pebble without haste from boiling water, taking
hold of a hot knife, a duel with eggs, grass stalks, or spears, or a wrestling bout.
H the accused comes unscath~d from the ordeal he has the right to collect from
his accuser a fine for false accusation. An ordeal is conducted in a juridical as
well as a ceremonial atmosph~re, and the gods are invoked to assure that justice
will prevail.
In practice, faced by aJ?Y such ordeal, it would appear that nearly always
the accused, if he is the real culprit, breaks down and identifies himself. The
fear of supernatural retribution outweighs the qualms about secular action by
the society. Some types of ordeals, however, put the innocent person in a precarious situation, to say the least. An ordeal may also prove effective where two

Social Control
316
parties in a dispute both claim to be in the right. Faced with religious sanctions,
the one who is in the wrong is especially likely to confess.
In a small society such as a band or village, anthropologists usually
find the judicial functions lodged initially in the family and kin leadership, and beyond this in the same "council" of influential persons and the
same individual leaders to whom other types of important decision making
are assigned. The range from this little-differentiated type of "judiciary" to
the elaborated institutions which Western countries have built up-judges,
courts, juries, lawyers, and so on-is of course very great. How far, in any
given sociocultural system, a "court" or other differentiated legal body or
procedure exists has to be ascertained in the course of ethnographic analysis.
Africa, particularly, is a zone where courts are characteristically elaborate,
and the people are habituated to bringing trouble cases to trial before the
ruler or chief and his advisers acting in a judicial capacity. As seen in the
Zuni example, breaches in the realm of the sacred may be handled by the
religious leadership.
EXAMPLE.

THE TSWANA

~OURT

SYSTEM, SOUTH-CENTRAL AFRICA

Schapera (1953) describes the court system of the Tswana;, a series of

tribes in south-central Africa. Before the intrusion of Western governmental
authority, every local division of a tribe from the "ward" (a patrilineal kinship
group forming a settlement or group of settlements) upward had its own court,
with the headman as judge, and these are still operating with limited powers.
The "lower" courts of the ward and village had full jurisdiction in "civil" matters, i.e., private rights of people regarding status, property, and contracts. But
if the judge found any case too difficult he would refer it to a "higher" court.
A "criminal" case, even if reviewed at lower levels, had to go to the tribal
chief's court, e.g., bloodshed or sorcery., Courts met as cases occurred. All
those concerned gathered early in the morning at the judge's council place. The
judge and his advisers sat facing the parties directly involved; behind the latter
were the interested spectators. After the judge had briefly introduced the case,
he faIled for statements by the plaintiff and then, by the defendant. Anyone
present could serve as a witness or ask questions. The judge's advisers then debated, one by one, the merits of the case, after which the judge made a final
summary of the evidence and delivered the verdict.
At this point note may be taken of a theory of law developed by
Radcliffe-Brown (1933), which emphasizes his concept of "social integration" (ProBlem 28). This scholar distinguishes two types of rule breaking, whicI:i he calls public delicts and private delicts. Groups vary, he says,
in the extent to which they count offenses as of concern to the group as a
whole, or, merely to the private parties directly involved. Correspondingly
they are likely to lodge procedures and punishments in public or in private.
hands. In our own system of social control there are many kinds of wrong-

[61] The Responses of Society to Breaches of Rules

317

doing which do not come within the purview of the formal judiciary, being
dealt with perhaps by the family, the school authorities, or the church.
Certain other breaches of rules are concerned with "civil law" in the sense
of private conflicts and adjustments. Still others run foul of the "criminal
law" in which the more serious public rules are transgressed. The distinction made by Radcliffe-Brown somewhat corresponds to this. "Public delicts" arouse the moral indignation of the group as a whole-for example,
incest, murder, sorcery, or sacrilege-and lead to formal retributive action
by the community. "Private delicts" are actions calling for justice and
restitution between private parties-as with theft, wounding, or adultery
among many groups-though here, too, general sentiment and action may
be aroused if the offense is counted serious enough to be of wide concern.
Small societies, with their tendencies to personal intimacy, are likely
to assign many forms of transgression in the first instance to the latter more
private sphere, especially to the appropriate family or kin group. Among
many peoples, indeed, the group of kinsmen is held responsible rather than
the individual for offenses that are committed. By the legal theory of the
Tlingit Indians of the Northwest, for instance, a crime was never perpetrated
against a person as such, but was regarded as an infringement by one kin
group against the other. In some Australian tribes the matter is somewhat
more specific in that when any subordinate member of a family transgressed, his elder brother or even his father held himself responsible.
Two alternative courses might be pursued, according to custom in the
area. On the one hand every effort might be made to inend the situation
by conference and settlement "out of court." Among the Bedouins a respected man would act as intercessor and had to go through a standard
ritual. Everywhe:t:e procedures of this kind tend to be of a highly formal
character. According to the nature of the offense, the indemnities called for
might involve some ceremonial restitution like giving a public show of
humiliation (which perhaps would be spoken of and remembered for years
or generations, hence its seriousness), or passing valuable property, or even
handing over the offender to be disposed of by the aggrieved party. As an
alternative, direct action ~ould often be launched without any such consultation. This usually takes the form of seeking to balance the injury, with
violence if necessary. The lfrequently reciprocal character of such retribution is indicated by the phrase "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
The score may be evened by taking equivalent action against any member
of the offender's family or ~close kin rather than by seeking out the offender
himself. Restitution may be sought, instead, through directing curses, magic,
or other supernatural sanctions against the offender and his group-a very
widespread practice, and one that can be really effective provided the other
group is in the same network of understandings, hence believes that such
action is going to be effective (Problem 64).

318

Social Control

Considering now derelictions which are counted crimes or sins against

the group as a whole, a wide variety of sanctions may be brought to bear
against the offender. Already we have noted the forces of ostracism, ridicule, supernatural disapproval, and the like that can affect the social status
of nonconformists. Nearly always, too, there are more formal punishments
against property or the person, these directed either against the individual
as such or upon his relatives. Some groups even favor ceremonious destruction of houses, gardens, and other property of the kin group to which
a serious offender belongs, while the individual himself may be banished
from the district, maimed, or even killed. In some societies a person guilty
of certain breaches has to undergo some form of ordeal spoken of above,
such as having spears thrown at him. Or again, he may have to be purified
or purged of the evil through a public confession or some other prescribed
ritual activity. Where the crime or sin carries the death penalty he may be
disposed of publicly or privately, or social pressures may be brought to bear
to make him commit suicide, or, in the case of a shore-living people, he
may be placed in a canoe and left to drift at sea.
.
Western penal systems have tended to concentrate punishment increasingly into public rather than private hands, to direct it upon the individual
rather than upon his kin (though to have a criminal in the family is still
a reproach), and to have exact definitions of the penalties th~t pertain to
each crime. Yet they have by no means lost what Radcliffe.-Brown in his
legal theory considers to be the prime function of penal sanctions, namely,
to restore the balance of social control and relationships, and to reinforce
the moral sentiment and the sense of interdependence disturbed by the
breach.
It was said above that a main objective of negotiation or "venge{ul"
action in the case of private delicts was to even the score. So long as this
was not successfully achieved, a dis~quilibrium; of relations would be
created which might indeed continue for a long time, as indicated in such
wo}'ds as "feud" and "vendetta." So, too, as regards offenses against the
public order and morality, the community gets outlet for its resentment, has
the satisfaction of seeing "justice" done, and takes more or less active
steps to rehabilitate the offender (if he is not to be disposed of) and to restore him publicly cleansed and penitent to a place in the (society. As Radcliffe-Brown puts it in his theory of law referred to above, the "immediate
function" of the reaction to an offender is to "give expression to a collective
feeling of moral\indignation" and so to "restore the social euphoria," that is,
the feeling of identity and well-being of the group. Its "ultimate function"
is to "maintain the moral sentiment in question at the requisite degree of
strength" in the individuals who comprise the community concerned.
Such an interpretation helps us to understand better what appear tQ
Westerners as anomalies in the justice of peoples in other cultural traditions,

Collateral References

319

In some societies, for example, little distinction is made between offenders

who commit a wrong intentionally and those who do so by accident, e.g.,
injuring a person or breaking a taboo. The point is that a breach has occurred and an unbalance has been created which must be restored. Again,
when a wrong is done to an unimportant person, the reaction of the group
may be not nearly so great as where a chief or leader is the aggrieved party:
the latter is a public figure and so a transgression against him is regarded
as affecting the whole community. From the opposite viewpoint, a chief may
be able to do with relative impunity things which, if done by a person of
lesser status, would upset the equilibrium of other more important relations
and sentiments.
An interesting development in many systems of social control is the
idea of a so-called scapegoat. Through some appropriate ritual, the delinquencies of the individual or the community are transferred to some outside sin-bearer, whether human, animal, or deity. This action lifts the
sense of guilt or sin from the persons concerned, and restores the moral
equilibrium.

Review
We have been dealing here with social control in the sense of systems
of norms or rules on which social action is based. For ~he individual they
become the basis of "ethical" or "moral" judgment relating to other individuals. They form what Firth (19S1a) calls "a social cement between individual means and social ends." In group organization they may be
systematized into law, with more or less differentiated governmental institutions to handle enforcement and adjudication. Important rules are
likely to have marshaled behind them not only social sanctions but also
religious sanctions, to be examined in the next chapter.

I
J

Collateral References

I
This category of cultu~e is given cursory treatment in most standard texts.
An exception is Hoebe\, E. A., Man in the Primitive World (1949); this author
also presents the most comprehensive analysis of law in cross-cultural perspective: The Law of Primitiv~ Man: a Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics
(1954). Institutional aspect~ of social control are treated in Lowie, R. H., Social
Organization (1948), and I'Moral Standards" in Firth, R., Elements of Social
Organisation (1951). For a discussion of social control in small isolated societies, see notably Redfield, R., The Little Community (1955).
An early classic on legal theory is Maine, H., Ancient Law (1861). Early
twentieth-century ideas are exemplified by Westermarck, E. A., The Origin and

320

Social Control

Development 0/ the Moral Ideas (1906-1908) and Hartland, E. S., Primitive

Law (1924). The legal theory of Malinowski was first crystallized in his Crime
and Custom in Savage Society (1926), and elaborated in later works (1936,
1944). Radcliffe-Brown's theory of law can be seen most conveniently in two
articles, "Law: Primitive" and "Social Sanctions" in the Encyclopaedia 0/ the
Social Sciences. Gluckman combines theory with field data in his Custom and
Conflict in Africa (1955).
Among the still rare field studies of non-Western legal and ethical systems
are works by Barton (1919), Malinowski (1926a), Hoebel (1940), Goldschmidt (1951), and Smith and Roberts (1954). Anthropologists often discuss
normative behavior, both in specific cultures and in larger theoretical contexts,
under such rubrics as premises, values, and goals (Problem 29).

XIII

World View: KnowledBe

and Belief

FROM "MAN-TO-MAN" relations, we now turn to the aspect of culture which emphasizes what some have called the problem of
"man and the unknown," or what might perhaps better be looked at as man
in relation to ideas, to thought, to the universe as each people conceptualizes it. Anthropologists frequently speak of the total system of ideas which
a cultural group holds about the universe as its "world view."
The story of cultural development can be seen from one facet as involving increased knowledge. As we put it in language, he "knows," "commands truth," "exercises scientific control," "has self-awareness," and so
on. Yet there have always been vitally important areas of experience beyond knowledge, which even our present scientific age ca~not yet answer:
the ultimate meanings of the universe and man's existence in it, the selfconsciousness of the living individual, the crisis of death, the apparent
capriciousness of good and bad fortune. Here man invokes more the moods
of philosophy, where the emphasis is on externalized and intellectual speculation, and of religion, where it is on faith, emotional involvement, and related action. To the believe~ inside the system, of course, these are also
counted part of a total system of truth.

Problem 62 . The ldLtional Dimensions

0/ Culture

What is common to the, thought worlds of man? What insights has anthropology as regards knowledge, philosophy, religion?
Anthropology texts r~rely have a separate category dealing with
"knowledge." It is assumed limplicitly, as a definition by Malinowski of an
institution puts it (1931), that every established custom involves not only
people, activity, a charter, and purpose, but also "a body of knowledge"
-that is, it implies intellectual awareness and control, a conceptual apparatus to manipulate action. A survey of a culture is a record compounded

321

322

World View: Knowledge and Belief

from informants' knowledge, as well as from the anthropologist's observation.

Even an anthropological work which has included a section on knowledge and science, as for example a text by Lowie (1940), is likely to deal
with very specific forms of intellectual and technical control. The materials
may cover knowledge of physical and chemical properties (e.g., levers,
poisons), methods of reckoning time and distance (e.g., the calendar),
engineering skills, and the origin and distribution of mathematical symbols (e.g., the systems of counting, which vary considerably, the zero
sign, the "place" system). These topics have their speCial literatures in
ethnology. Such information, however, is usually obtainable from the more
comprehensive encyclopedias in greater detail than could be presented
here, so that no specific inventory will be attempted. More pervasively,
a culture is interpenetrated by knowledge in the form of explicit or implicit premises, assumptions, axioms, tenets about the "certainties" of life.
These latter form a bridge between scientifically verifiable knowledge, on
the one hand, and philosophy and religion, man's concern with the larger
views and "Why" questions of life, on the other. As between philosophy
and religion, too, a distinction- is not always made by anthropologists. The
category of "philosophy," indeed, appears quite rarely in anthropological
texts, though it is found in recent work on value systems (Problem'32) and
in the title of an interesting earlier book by one of the historicalists: Paul
Radin's Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927). By dictionary definition,
"philosophy" involves a mood of secular and rational speculation, even of
conscious intellectual search. How far, in any given cultural milieu, this
emerges as a category distinct from religion, as has been so in Western and
Asian civilizations, especially from the time of classic Greek and Chinese
scholarship, is a matter for investigation. In the easel of China, it is often
said that Chinese intellectualism leans strongly to th~ philosophical rather
than the religious.
Tfe following is an example of what may happen initially when this
" '
matter is raised in a discussion group;
-

Q. What do you see as the distinction between "religion" and "philosophy"?

A. Philosophy is something intellectual. Religion is more serious, at least
for many people.
'
A. Religion has to do with beliefs in God. The philosopher stands off and
looks at life from outside.
I
A. Philosophy is a !matter of ideas, while religion is concerned with feelings.
Sometimes fear, but not always of course.
Q. Is the behavior involved much the same or different?
A. Oh no! Religion involves taking action-praying, attending church,
baptism, and so on. The philosopher is likely just to stay in his study and
read and think-and write.

[63] Religion

323

Q. Would a belief in God, as one of Y0!l put it, be part of a universal definition of religion?
A. Probably not, because we hear of peoples with a lot of gods or spirits.
I suppose, however, that there isn't a people without beliefs of this
kind-that is, they worship something.

On the whole, anthropologists find any sharp distinction between the

philosophical and the religious facets of behavior rare in cultural settings
outside the "great traditions" of Western and Asian civilization. Some
might be prepared to say outright that the fully secular, rational, consciously
intellectual search for larger meanings represents an invention in the realm
of thought limited until recently to these latter cultural traditions. In speaking of the "philosophy" of a people, recent theorists such as Kluckhohn,
Opler, and Redfield have been concerned primarily with the premises or
themes which the anthropological analyst may abstract from the consistencies in ideas and actions. These are sometimes "unconscious" in the sense
th~t the people concerned do not formulate them verbally; or if they are verbalized it is not in intellectually oriented propositions but rather in moral
admonitions, statements of religious faith, training formulas for child conduct, and other fields of meaning. Redfield (1952) has tried out a general
characterization of the "primitive world view."
It would be possible to recognize an intellectual arc here by using a
hyphenated label such as "philosophical-religious." Instead, we'shall follow
for simplicity the general anthropological practice of using/the term "religious" alone from now on to cover all propositions which a people hold
about the ultimate "Why" questions. As will be seen, the concept of "religion" has in its turn been separated out by some theorists into two distinct categories, "religion" and "magic": the first broadly a mood represented by wonder, awe, worship, prayer; the second one of "knowledge"
and of automatic manipulation of the supernatural. A similar interlocking
between these categories has led to use of the cumbersome "magico-religious"; but most anthropologists also comprehend both under "religion."
Seen in its entirety, the arc of ideational experience runs from the knowledgeable to the philosophical to th~ religious to the magical. Pervaded, too, by
affectively charged values, this arc traverses what has been called the
world view of the people concdrned.
,

Problem 63 . ReligiOnf,
In what sense is it a udiversal aspect of culture? What can be said
about the origins and functions of religion?
In the broad sense indicated above, religion is clearly a universal aspect of behavior. E~ery known culture includes an elaborate set of beliefs

324

World View: Knowledge and Belief

which represent for the people concerned effective answers to the "Why"
questions of life, and also provide for organization and action appropriate
to those beliefs. Row far, however, universal statements about religion can
be made significantly has been a controversial question. Evans-Pritchard
expresses doubt that such generalizations can be made [Evans-Pritchard
(ed.), 1954] and suggests that anthropologists should concentrate on more
specific regional or problem studies. Nearly all anthropologists, like other
students of religion, feel that some broad characteristics are shared by all
religious systems.
It is a comfortable exercise for us to follow the anthropologists through
their many descriptions of religion in nonliterate societies, though some
may be jolted by the more exotic associated customs, such as bodily mutilation, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. When, however, they and other
social scientists venture to analyze the nature and development of religion
as a general category of human experience, the mental ground becomes
more slippery. Such discussions take in tacitly, if not always openly, the
great contemporary religions, to one or other of which we may adhere, and
the objective viewpoint is then liable to be distorted by emotional factors.
To touch a person's religion in the sense referred to here is to impinge upon
his fundamental premises of living, his basic axioms, assumptions, expectations, and fears.
This difficulty may nevertheless be circumvented if the bounds of the
scientific approach to this aspect of experience are re-emphasized. The
mood of science does not go further than to describe and seek general
propositions about religion. It does not purport to evaluate particular religious systems, and certainly not to explain away so universal a phenomenon. Nor can it document religion at all completely. Its techniques
of observation can hardly compass to the full, for example, the ecstasiesof a saint or the agonies of a sinner.
What it can offer is a realization of the- vastly differing ways in which
humary groups over the earth have met their need for basic orientation;
what fundamental patterning can be discerned common to them all; the
validity of theories put forward to account for the origin ana development
of religious systems; and what religion does in social and individual life
to make it so universal and central a phase of culture. As such, the work
of anthropologists links with that done in some schools of religion along
the lines of "comparative religion" and "sociology of religion." No better
statement of the anthropological viewpoint may be given, perhaps, than
that offered by the part-Polynesian anthropologist Buck (Te Rangi Riroa) ,
in his small book, Anthropology and Religion:
I

As an anthropologist, I see religion as an essential part of the culture of any

people. . . . The things man has created with his mind and worshipped in the
spirit are as real to him as the material things he has made with his hands.

[63] Religion

325

The "Sorcerer" of Trois

Freres Cave. An Upper
Paleolithic painting suggesting a bearded elder
dressed in an animal skin
as part of a magic rite.
After Breuil.

The belief in the supernatural and in the immortality of the soul must be accepted as real facts that have led to action and results. I am not concerned as
to whether [they] can be proved scientifically. As a student of the manners,
customs, and thoughts of peoples I am concerned with their beliefs. [1940, p.
94.]

The development of religion has been traced in outlirie earlier. Archaeological records of religion must depend on the appearance of artifacts
in which belief is objectified. It was seen how paleolithic cave men were
concerned with manipulating supernatural power, and even Neanderthal
man in burying his dead may have linked the act to a system of belief
(Problem 17). It has even been suggested by some that what appears like
wonder or awe in the behavior ~f apes in the face of the unknown may foreshadow the religious mood in man (Problem 12).
No facet of "primitive" culture was more discussed by early social
thinkers than religion. Christdn missionaries were particularly active in
reporting the "heathen" or "pa1gan" beliefs and practices which they were
seeking to replace. The intrusi~m of J1}.odern science upon the older theological systems made religion a: central topic of scholarly discussion, especially in the nineteenth centur~. The evolutionary literature dealing with
religious origins is in the aggregate much larger than that on any other
aspect of culture. In modern ethnographic literature it perhaps yields barely
to social organization tn terms of bulk. Of recent general works in anthropology, books focused .on religion by Lowie (1924, with a revised edition 1948), and by Howells,( 1948) stand out.
Speculation by anthropolOgists and others as to the origin of religion

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World View: Knowledge and Belief

has produced a wider choice of distinctive theories than that on any other
aspect of culture. Space does not permit more than tabulation of the principal earlier ones with a brief comment on each:
1. Animism. Tylor, in his Primitive Culture (1871), developed an
influential theory that man's early need for understanding dreams, hallucinations, sleep, and death led him to believe in a soul or indwelling personality, and to extend this animistic idea of "spirit beings" to cover animals, plants, even inanimate objects. This theory assumes an origin on the
basis of intellectual reasoning.
2. Animatism. Marett and others felt that animism was preceded
by a "pre-animistic" stage. Here, from a sense of wonder before the unknown, the idea developed of an impersonal "power" or "spiritual force"
comparable with the mana of the Oceanic peoples to be discussed shortly,
i.e., they were animated with a life force. This, too, involves an intellectualistic emphasis.
3. Manism, or Ghost Worship. The sociologist Spencer suggested
that the names of heroic ancestors became capitalized in language, so to
speak, and considered godlike. With ancestor worship was combined a fear
of ghosts (i.e., in Latin manes, or "shades"). This combines an intellectual
with an emotional approach to origins.
4. Failure of Magic. Frazer, in his famous Golden Bough series
(18 90ft.), attempts to show how early man, failing to control the external
world in a magical manner, postulated that unknown capricious forces
existed with greater powers than his. These he approached through worship. This is a kind of intellectualistic action theory.
5. Disease of Language. A linguist, Max Mliller, saw in man an
innate tendency to personify and revere all awesome and old phenomena.
From saying "something did this," he moved by ~ linguistic error (or a
"disease in language," as Muller puts it) .. to sayingl "SOMETHING did this"
and so to believe in external gods. This is again intellectualist;c to a point.
/6. Primeval Stupidity. ,Preuss and some others see early man's
blunders leading him to believ,e there were forc~s beyond -hi~ control. This
pictures an origin in a kind of incompetence.
7. Fetishism. Developed by folklorists, including, early "naturemythologists" as long ago as the eighteenth century, this view saw man as
attributing spirit qualities to the sun, moon, stars, and other objects in
nature, a kind ~f "psychic pagan~sm" or "anthropomorphic pantheism,"
somewhat related to the animistic theory.
8. Religious Instinct. The idea of a psychological drive which brings
religion into existence provided easy and brief formulas for many scholars.
It is formulated in various ways: "fear," "ghost fear," "primordial dread
and anxiety," "self-preservation," "personal harmony," "mystic experience." These suggest a dominantly emotional basis.

[63] Religion

327

9. Social Integration. Durkhl?im pictured early man, supposedly like

an Australian Aborigine group, worshiping its totem, and in so doing worshiping a symbol of itself-hence contributing to the maintenance of its
collective identity (Problem 28). This view foreshadows a functional explanation of religion, to be examined shortly.
10. High God. Father Schmidt, a leader of the German "diffusionist"
school (Problem 27), considered that the earliest "culture complexes" involved monotheistic worship of a single or "high" deity. This earliest human insight was later elaborated into polytheistic beliefs. Little attempt
is made to show the origin of the insight.
11. Dying God-King. The English diffusionists (Problem 27) correspondingly considered the basic element in early religion was the theme of
a god, personified by a king, being killed and then restored to life.
12. Projection of Infant Experience. Freud's mythical picture of
an original parricidal ("father-killing") act, from which totem, taboo, and
other religious elements originated (Problem 30), was supplemented in
later psychoanalytic theory by the idea that religion represents a projection
or extension into adult experience and cultural institutions of the basic
training situation of infancy, e.g., disciplining father: god who rewards
and punishes. (Inevitably this is a very great oversimplification of the
psychoanalytic approach, but it hints at a point of view to be discussed
below.)
When, in 1924, Lowie, one of the outstanding American historicalists
of the time, wrote the first edition of his Primitive Religion, he used much
of his space to undercut practically the whole gamut of these theories. He
and others have pointed out that no proof exists as to whether animism or
animatism came first. Almost invariably a society which holds some beliefs
relating to manlike spirits also has other beliefs in which impersonal power
is emphasized; they are not mutually exclusive, but matters of emphasis
in spiritual theory. In the same way, magical practices and worship of
deities may exist side by side, with no indication of one being earlier than
the other. Neither overintellectualistic assumptions as to the thought of
early man nor short-cut ~xplanations involving psychological drives fit
adequately the biological-psychological picture analyzed earlier (Chapter
III). At most, such theori6s point to some of the psychological characteristics and experiences whi~h may feed into religion in various ways. Diffusionistic speculations, too? cannot be demonstrated back to beginnings.
Infantile determinism, as in the last-cited theory, is too much a one-way
street from child to cultur~ and society (Problem 30).
Lowie, in the work mentioned above, is content to see religion as a
realm of experience in which the supernatural is opposed to the natural,
i.e., a kind of supernaturalism apparently originating from the "awe" or
"wonder" of ea~ly man in the face of the unknown. This primarily de-

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World View: Knowledge and Belief

scriptive approach was also taken by many other students who posed
similar dichotomies: the sacred and the secular, the extraordinary and the
ordinary. Such viewpoints obviously had the danger of implying that religion
was a sort of separate half compartment of life, and had nothing to do with
what was known, or with everyday affairs.
Again it was the functional viewpoint of Malinowski which broke up
this log jam of ideas. Apparently starting in part from Durkheim's ideas,
he asked explicitly the question which was generally implicit in the work
of previous theorists: What does religion do? His answers, developed in
various theoretical and monographic works, come out most clearly in a
brilliant essay titled "Magic, Science and Religion" (1925). Although the
discussion in the immediate paragraphs which follow arises rather directly
out of Malinowski's viewpoints, it also incorporates additional ideas from
other scholars who have followed up the same line of thought.
Religion has, first of all, explanatory functions. For all ethnic groups
it answers systematically the over-all "Why" questions, these relating variously to existence, the nature of the world and man; power, the dynamic
forces in the universe; providence, the maintenance and welfare functions;
and mortality, the life and death of individuals. The need to ask and seek to
answer these "Why" questions, that is, to synthesize and unify accumulating
experience conceptually, seems to lie in the higher brain development of
man, i.e., to be constitutional.
Second, it has validating functions. It supports with powe'rful sanctions all the basic institutions, values, goals, which a society counts as
righteousness, as being important to personal conduct and to social order
and continuity, as in such matters as sex, family, leadership, property, defense. "Supernatural" sanctions of this type have already been viewed at
work in earlier discussions of such topics.
I
As such, religion does not stand at one 'side of culture as a specialized
compartment. It tends to interpenetrate all important and valued behavior.
The strong ties between religion and economics, for example, range from
the old /emperors of China ceremonially tilling the,symbolic field at the
Temple of Heaven in Peking to ensure supernatural support for good crops
to the Iowa farmer's "Give us . . . our daily bread." On the political side,
statecraft and religion are functionally interrelated in numerous ways which
a little thought could make clear, e.g., prayers for the leader and for the
state. Aesthetic activities can also link with religion by way of symbols,
music, dancing, representative art. Even recreation may have ties with
religion, as where American Indian tribesmen may play lacrosse at the
burial ground,. and the "wake" may be an occasion for feasting and games.
Religion ,comes into especially sharp focus at points which are crucial
in group and individual experience, especially where these involve anxiety,
, uncertainty, danger, lack of knowledgeable control, a sense of the "super-

[63] Religion

329

natural." Every people has to grappl~ with suffering, with "luck," with
problems of good and evil. Such factors reach perhaps their most universal and poignant focus in the crisis of death, which in all cultural systems is surrounded and cushioned with beliefs and practices relating to sickness, the passing of "life," handling of the body, and beliefs regarding the
afterlife. Other important points of social and personal reference may
also become organizing points for religion, such as pregnancy, birth, puberty,
initiation to adulthood, marriage, tensions and cleavages in descent systems.
For an agricultural people the growing cycle of cultivated pla~ts is likely
to have high points where religious activities come into focus, as at planting,
transplanting, ripening, harvest. The weather, safety of craft, and size of
catch rally religious effort for fishermen. So, too, for herders there are the
birth season, pasture conditions, and other points of crisis. Some high
points of anxiety, as suggested here, may be cyclic and capable of anticipation, as with the individual life history and with seasonal changes, hence
met with systematic preparations. Others may be irregular, as with death
or the stampeding of a herd. Kluckhohn (1942) emphasizes this facet of
religion. Its basic function, he states, is that of providing a sense of security
in a world which, "seen in naturalistic terms, appears to be full of the unpredictable, the capricious, the accidentally tragic." By giving "consistency
and reality" to experience, the religious system carries man over areas of
life "beyond control of ordinary techniques and the rational understanding
which works well in ordinary affairs." Benedict (1938) correspondingly
speaks of it as "the social life at those points at which it 1s felt most intensely."
Malinowski, in attempting to place religion in a system of needs, speaks
of it as one of the "integrative" or "synthesizing" imperatives. In other
words, by virtue of the qualities examined to this point, it has broad integrating functions. Malinowski (1925) presents a case for this particularly
vividly in a functional interpretation of funeral and mourning practices.
Religious ritual, he says, "counteracts the centrifugal forces of fear, dismay, demoralization, and proyides the most powerful means of reintegration of the group's shaken solidarity and of the re-establishment of morale."
Radcliffe-Brown, in functional; discussions of religion (1952a), also stresses
the contributions which belief and ritual make to social integration. In
later discussion of culture c~ange it will be postulated that cultural and
personal disorganization tends to be greatest where religious beliefs break
down or become inconsistent II (Problem 81).
Firth (1951 a, 1951 b) emphasizes not only the social functions of
religion but also its symbolic character. He summarizes an important analysis
in the following points: (1) it is a strong positive element in the maintenance and transmission of the social organization; (2) it provides authority
for belief and action; (3) it provides meaning for social action in allowing

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World View: Knowledge and Belief

pattern and order to be reinterpreted in terms of ultimate ends; (4) it

allows for expression of concepts of imagination and aesthetic creation;
(5) it is a major force of personal adjustment. This, he says, is much more
than just an emotional experience of awe or sense of the supernatural.
Rather, religion embodies a "conception and projection of the most fundamental human needs and problems." The solutions it provides are in part
"technical," as where prayer releases tension. But in the main its elements
are "symbolic," with interpretations which are projections of human experience. As a "comprehensive hypothesis," Firth suggests that religion is
"a form of human art." Notably it provides a frame for dealing with
fundamental problems of social organization: rendering relationships coherent, reducing uncertainty and anxiety, justifying moral obligations. Without symbolic solutions beyond those provided by empirical knowledge, he
concludes, it would be impossible for human society to exist.
EXAMPLE

1.

THE TODA TEMPLE-DAIRY, SOUTH INDIA

A classic case in ethnology of the relation between religion and the wider
cultural context is provided by the Toda people of south India. As reported by
Rivers (1906), this buffalo-herding people considers the dairy to be virtually
a temple and the dairyman only one remove from a priest. Because the buffalos are sacred animals, their whole care is surrounded with ritual; so, too, are
the milking and churning operations. A man who has acquired any specific
uncleanness, as through breaking a taboo, cannot tend the animals in field or
dairy, or even approach those who hold office in the higher grades of the
dairyman-priesthood. Women are rigidly excluded from all these pursuits and
also from the dairy itself; in approaching the dairy to get milk, which is handed
out to them, they must keep an established path. During certain dairy ceremonies the women must leave the village altogether.
,
EXAMPLE

2.

FUNERALS AMONG THE KOTA, SOUTH INDIA

-

Th~ functional significance of funeral ceremonies -is notably discussed by

Mandelbaum (1955) in connectioq with another people of south,' India, the
Kota. These villagers hold a first funeral, in which the body of a deceased person is cremated, and a second funeral in which all those who have' died during
the year are finally sent off to the afterworld, and mourning for them officially
ceases. A bone taken from each initial cremation pyre is recremated in the
second ceremony. An important ritual element at both funerals is bowing to
the remains of the debeased, and often ~hen those claiming kinship with the
deceased press torward to bow severe quarrels arise over their right to do so.
Mandelbaum, in analyzing this high tension point, discusses the "world view"
of the Kota in terms of their relations to the supernatural, to nature, and to
one another. He concludes that the funeral, in this setting, becomes above all a
focus for demonstrating kinship and status rights of very sensitive and delicate

[64] Magic, and Its Relation to Religion

331

character, in which the individual is eyer wary and defensive. The second
funeral, too, removes those affected by death from the ritual pollution which
has impaired their normal social contacts.

A psychoanalytic viewpoint was mentioned in the tabulation of theories of origin. Mead and others interested in national character delineations
have stressed a hypothesis that a consistent relation exists through a cultural milieu from infant training on to adult behavior and to the institutional
patterns, including those of religion. Without granting a primacy to infant
experience which would make religion, in the psychoanalyst Kardiner's
terms, a "secondary projection" of the world of the young child (Problem 30), such a consistent relation appears to exist at least in a homogeneous
and culturally stable society. Case materials illustrating this viewpoint are
cited elsewhere from Mead's studies of Samoa and Bali (Problem 30).
Here the behavior of gods appeared to be consistent with the behavior of
men.
The significance of the anthropological analysis of religion as reviewed here could b~ the subject of much further discussion, particularly
as it applies to our own heterogeneous and mobile situation regarding organized religious systems. Is it possible, in such terms, for an individual,
even a professed "atheist," to be really nonreligious? Is religion as a facet
of experience really so compartmentalized and thinned out as is implied
by much popular thinking, e.g., observing Sundays, going to church, being
married by a minister? How far, even with competing and c9nfiicting faiths,
do we still share common belief assumptions, symbols, programs of action,
and so on? What, going back to an earlier point, is the implication of "having a philosophy," as supposedly something apart from "having a religion"?
There are groups and individuals in our own society who, like isolated peoples whose cultures provide a single coherent religion, show complete adherence to one system of faith, and show tight social or personal integration. But typically we now face a variety of religious alternatives, so that
theological and other choices ih belief and practice become more conscious.
Practices of organized religio~ have become less publicly compulsive and
more a matter of family and personal behavior, and the way is wide open
for any prophet or leader to se~k a following for a sect or cult purporting to
have new explanations and vaFdations (Problem 50).
I

Problem 64 . Magic, hnd Its Relation to Religion

!

What are the distinguishing characteristics of magic? How far does

civilized man practice magic?
As already indicated, the degree to which a separation should be made
between religion and magic is controversial. In its technical sense, "magic"

332

World View: Knowledge and Belief

{I}
I
H

,!.
-,

I~
-.

-.:.l.~I:.~ ~&j>
~-

--

RELIGIOUS MOOD
WORSHIP

--

=_--

__(J~~
L~

MAGICAL MOOD
COMPULSION

Religion and Magic. Their respective characteristics are symbolized

here. Compelling natural forces by magic is a deep-seated theme in
folklore.

is a term which summarizes a variety of methods by which man purports to

influence automatically the course of events by mechanisms that touch the
supernatural. A magical act is a rite carried out to twist nature in a
spec~fic way to satisfy human desire. It comes into play in those areas of
experience not mastered by knowledge.
Frazer and others have called magic a primitive science. In its technical operation it supposes a cause-and-effect relation comparable wi~h a
scientifically controlled experiment, in which the "laws of nature" are
predictable. But science implies the known, while magic operates within
what is defined in the culture as the supernatural. Therefore the concept of
its }'eing primitive science is rejected by many _modern anthropologists.
Yet magical practices, if they are to survive, must really "work" at
least to quite a degree; that is, they are put to the pragmatIc test of action,
and if not apparently effective will be discarded. At least, when magic is
made, animals are likely to continue to breed, plants to grow, enemies to
be conquered, love to stir in members of the opposite sex who have been
cold hitherto. The anthropologist writes that, if you live in the same world
of understandirigs and beliefs as 'a person who is making magic affecting
you, and 'you actually get to hear that the magic is being brewed, it is going
to have some effects since you will believe its influence is potent. Unless
you set in motion some countermagic it will actually "get" you. It is no
idle tale that healthy persons, being informed that magic, sorcery, or witch;craft is being directed against them, have passed into a decline and died.

[64] Magic. and Its Relation to Religion

333

Magic may take a great variety of forms, but its essentials appear to
be a body of beliefs that validate it, a mechanism of operation through rites,
magical objects, or verbal formulas, and one or more practitioners, often
specialists such as are variously labeled "magicians," "wizards," "witches,"
"sorcerers." Magical rites and aids are frequently a part of medical practice.
The primitive magician or medicine man employs many types of ritual,
and in civilized countries people may go to magical specialists rather
than to doctors, or swallow various physiologically more or less harmless
but (thanks to advertising and other factors) psychically potent medicines
-or expect magic from their doctors. Many peoples carry amulets, "medicine bundles," or other magical objects along with them-an extension of
their tools when engaged in economic activities, war, and other enterprises.
The mere recitation of certain verbal spells or incantations may be regarded
as having vast power to affect the course of events. Magic may be privately
owned, and sold or inherited. Such matters could be illustrated almost indefinitely from groups the world over, ancient and modern.
Regarding magic in contemporary life, Benedict, in an article on
"magic" in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931) offers some
pungent comments as to how "secularization" has proceeded "at the expense of religion . . . rather than at the expense of magic." Those who
consider themselves to be sophisticated and free of traditional forms of religion, she asserts, often "swell the ranks of the various divinatory cults
based on the fundamental assumptions of magic." A clientele of Wall Street
investors depends upon the verdict of astrologers; airplane pilots skilled in
the latest triumphs of mechanical science guide their acts by signs. There
are, she said, "innumerably more subtle beliefs" in modern civilization
that are "essentially magical"-those which are "partially discarded" are
easier to isolate than those which are "still accepted." The traditional American scheme of ,education is "distinctly magical" in its intellectual postulates
and expectations. Modern society "still acts magically" with most of "the
difficult problems that ha~e to do with sex." Property is the "most characteristic" area so surrounde~. Benedict does not mention the health field,
though perhaps it would I be the one most likely to occur to a reader as
marked by magical faith~ and nostrums. To many people penicillin and
snake oil are on a par. I
Magic can be either beneficent ("good" or "white") or malevolent
("evil" or "black"). The latter, as Evans-Pritchard points out (1937),
may emphasize personaltzed spirit entities, as with the familiars of witchcraft, or action influences, as in sorcery. In general, beneficent magic is
public, group-oriented, sbcially approved, legal. Malevolent magic, by contrast, tends to be private, secret, socially disapproved, subversive, illegal.
This is especially so when directed against members of one's own group.
When, however, it is projected against outside groups, witchcraft or sorcery

334

World View: Knowledge and Belief

may take on a beneficent aspect to its practitioners. In the large historic

literature on magic it has usually been separated into three types: imitative
or homoeopathic ("same-influencing"); sympathetic; and contagious. Imitative magic is based on the theory that like produces like so that the ritual
reproduces or gives an analogy of the desired activity or objective. A
hunter, for example, will set up an effigy of the animal he wants to kill and
then spear it. Or it may be sympathetic, in which the magic is directed
toward influencing the person or situation through a secret sympathy or
exercise of power. Finally, it may be contagious, based on the idea of contact, so that the magician seeks an actual object pertaining to the one to be
affected-for example, a garment or lock of hair, or even excreta-and
works magic upon it, or again casts a spell over food that is to be eaten
by the victim. A useful compilation and analysis of magical practices has
been made by Webster (1948).
What, then, of the relation of magic to religion? Some theorists have
preferred to make a very clear demarcation between the two. Magic, they
say, involves direct action without seeking to work through third parties
in the form of supernatural agencies or beings that have to be propitiated,
or occasionally cajoled or threatened. The marked distinction b~tween
what is known as "magic" and religion would support this view, though
of course an individual or group may still operate its religious tenets and
practices in a magical fashion. Most anthropologists feel, however, that no
clear-cut .distinction can be made without developing too narrow ~ concept
of religion. They consider that magic is part of the total body of beliefs
and practices, hence represents operationally one phase or segment of religion. Benedict, for example (1938), prefers to see techniques for handling
the supernatural as ranging between the extremes of "compulsion" on the
one hand and what she calls "rapport" on ,the other. Recent discussions
of magic have emphasized its strongly therapeutic function as being cathartic, or tension-relieving, in relation to group and individual. In a world
be~et ~i}h impon~erables, ~ot only in knowl.edge but in human 'r~lation
ShIpS, It tends to gIve very dIrect and automatIc release to the ~mptlOns. In
practical settings, some anthropologists haye expressed the view that it
would be dangerous for human mental health to destroy or forbid the exercise even of black magic where this still holds a people's faith. Short of
more confident substitutes provided by a modern scientific knowledge, it is
argued (as, for instance, valid explanations of disease and means of treating it), the forced cessation of magic-if it were indeed possible to legislate
or police it out bf existence-would leave a people psychologically defenseless before the 'unknown. Fortune (1934), in analyzing the Melanesian society of Dobu, which emphasizes sorcery, and where social relations are particularly saturated with hostilities, attacks quite vigorously the official policies
pf the area which involve suppressing sorcery.

335

[65] Religious Systems

Exercise

List some popularly held magical beliefs of our own society. Who practices
them? Are they "white" or "black"? What functional significance do they
have? What do you think about Benedict's ideas on pervasive magic in
contemporary life?

Problem 65 . Religious Systems

What are the characteristic features of myths and other religious beliefs? What are the main types of religious organization and ritual? How
do new religious systems arise?
Every religious system shows a universal framework, consisting of
categories which are familiar enough. They may be organized as follows:
_ 1. Belief or dogma. The ideational facet as expressed in origin myths,
theology, and other tenets.
2. Group organization. The personnel dimension, a further facet
of the social organization in its larger sense, covering such matters as membership, special leadership, individual participation.
3. Ritual or rites. Patterns of action, often highly symbolic, such as
forms of worship, sacrifices, avoidances.
4. Religious objects or paraphernalia. The material culture dimension, such as religious housing, altars, robes, images.
5. Linguistic behavior. Verbal symbols and formulas, as in sacred
literature, hymns, magical spells.
6. Affective or emotional elements. These, generally strongly rallied
in religious 'experience, may variously emphasize "awe," "love," "fear,"
"ecstasy," "zeal," or other affective states.
I

Out beyond these special categories are, of course, the group and
personal action patterns of the total life context as sanctioned and validated by the particular faith doncerned. Space permits only the most selective discussion of these categories here. Stress will be laid on terminology
and understandings which have had special importance in the anthropological literature. For the rich coritent of the very numerous religions worked
out creatively by man outside! the "great faiths" of civilization the reader
would need to go to ethnologipal literature such as is recommended in the
bibliography.
:
First, it will be noted that the nonevaluative term belief has been used
to this point. The scientific mood eschews the judgment-laden word "superstition," and recommends that it be withheld from the vocabulary except
perhaps with the narrower meaning of bits and pieces of popular belief

336

World View: Knowledge and Belief

surviving from the past, e.g., throwing salt over the shoulder, not walking
under ladders. Application of this term to the cherished beliefs of other
peoples has fed social prejudice at a point where it particularly hurts. Some
anthropologists have used the term "dogma" as applied to propositions
which have no empirical proof, but this term popularly implies an evaluation of rigidity and possibly of falsity.
The belief systems of a people always rest upon a foundation of explanatory sacred tales relating to the past, called myths. In its technical
sense, "myth" has no connotation of being true or false, so that anthropologists apply it-sometimes to the unhappiness of religious fundamentaliststo the body of tales in Genesis and the background stories of the other great
faiths.
Myths are likely to be rather sharply distinguished from the ordinary
body of lore, such as every people build up for pleasure, as a historical
record, and even to document miraculous happenings or moral conduct.
They are primarily the revelations of things supernatural, of ultimate reality: creation and cosmological myths, accounts of supernatural power and
deity, formulations of law and ethics, instructions as to the correct ritual
and organization for the society, and so on. Benedict in an article on "Myth"
in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), calls myths "the articulate vehicle of a people's wishful thinking . . . [a recasting by man of] the
universe in human terms." At least we must see them in the scientific spirit
as, for this or that people, the best body of hunches or interpretations that
they have been able to work out in realms where knowledge and science
fail to carry. The prime function of myth is to codify, support, and validate
the traditional belief and behavior. Malinowski, whose small book Myth
in Primitive Psychology (1926b) is a milestone in the understanding of
folklore, says that myths are not mere interesting tales or supposedly historical accounts. They are, to the people concerned, a statement of "higher
truth," of "a primeval reality," which provides the pattern and foundation
of contemporary life. Knowledge of the mythical past gives incentive and
justi~cation for rituals and moral action, and also,guides to the correct performance of sacred acts. Kluokhohn (1942) speaks of myth as "the response of man's imagination to the uncharted areas of human experience."
The myth system of a people typically provides a cosmology, or total
explanation of the universe, and a cosmogeny, or account of origins. Folk-,
lorists study these and other phases of myth content not only in terms of
the tales as wholes, but also in te'rms of specific myth incident or myth
theme. Many of these elements have wide distribution over particular regions or even sporadically in cultures over the world, as, for example, the
building up of nature through union of male and female sex elements, an
early destructive flood or other natural crisis from which a few survive,
a "culture hero" who mediates between deity and man, a "trickster" who

(65) Religious Systems

337

plays capricious jokes, guardian spirits. Myth themes frequently show inconsistencies, both as regards behavior incidents within the myth tradition and as between mythical conduct and accepted contemporary codes.
Though myths are typically old and set, every culture apparently has
a kind of growing front of mythlike stories relating to important people
and events. We may find the term "myth" applied to the supposed incident
of George Washington and the cherry tree, or to Rockefeller's handing out
dimes. The history of a people, a community, a family group, because it has
important explanatory and validating functions in relation to identity, tends
to become structured selectively in memory and to take on something of
a sacred atmosphere. With the complexities of modern knowledge, a great
deal that comes under the terms "history" and "science" is accepted by the
majority of people in the mythical spirit. The general knowledge of the layman on any technical subject is likely to include much mythlike material,
perhaps long since discarded by the experts in the field. Under conditions
of culture change, mythmaking tends to be accelerated as each generation
reinterprets the past in terms of its own current premises and values.
Exercises
1. Locate, analyze, and compare some old myth within our own tradition,
and some currently developing "myth."
2. Books for young children maintain almost without exception the fiction
of happily married parents, and the divorce situation almost never enters. Is this an example of "myth"?
/

Explanations of natural phenomena and man's relation to them usually give major themes in myth material: for example, totemism (Problem 51). Man himself, his "living" component, his body at death, is another main focus. As regards external power, he may attribute primacy
or even omnipotence to one deity, as in monotheism, or visualize multiple
gods, as in polytheism, together with a major population of good and evil
spirits, saints, ancestral ghosts, and other lesser beings which influence the
living in specialized ways. ;Universally man has tended to project his conceptions of himself upon th+ supernatural, with resulting anthropomorphism.
As regards "superstitions" jin the sense of fragmentary popular survivals in
our own belief system, a class will readily list several dozen, relating to
good and bad luck, forms of wishing, kinds of haruspication (omen reading) or other prediction by/supernatural means, influencing events by magic.
The classic concepts Iof animism and animatism have already been defined. Shorn.of their evolu~ionary mumbo jumbo, they may be used as broad
classifications of belief types which are widely spread, and often found in
the same religious milieu. Benedict suggests that the distinction here comes
from application by man to spiritual theory of his experience respectively
with persons an? with things. The animatistic emphasis is illustrated by the

338

World View: Knowledge and Belief

ANIMISM

ANIMATI5M

Animism and Animatism. A people such as the New Zealand Maori

may apply both types of interpretation to natural phenomena.

well-known concept of mana in Oceania, by which an important person, a

good weapon, a productive tree, can acquire spiritual potency of impersonal
character. Among North American Indians the terms wakan and orenda
are among those expressing the same idea.
Turning to religious organization, the anthropological literature usually differentiates, much as in popular speech, a religion as an established system of belief and practice, a sect as one subtype of such a system, and a cult
as a deviant and usually new religious grouping. Where professional specialists form an organized leadership, with a separate group identity, they
are called a priesthood, and individually, priests or p~iestesses. Where praCtitioners or adepts operate alone, they are called shamans or, less satisfactorily, medicine men and medicine women. A society may have various
specialists, particularly when it is shamanistica!ly oriented, ~s with seers,
hear'ers, experts in haruspication or omen readi!1g, sorcerers, agricultural
"technicians. "
- ,
EXAMPLE

1.

MAORI PRIESTHOOD TRAINING

A notable example of "higher learning" and priestly tradition outside the

civilized systems was the Polynesian Maori institution of the Whare Kura. This
was a "house of learning" or priestly' society for the training of neophites in the
elaborate Q'ody of religious lore. A special house was given over to the use of
these young men, who were carefully selected, usually from the aristocratic
families. Some five years were spent in their instruction, which apparently
covered mythology, the exacting prayers and rituals, magic, sleight of hand,
ventriloquism, and, perhaps, hypnotism. At "graduation," each newly initiated'
priest gave a public exhibition of his power.

339

[65] Religious Systems

EXAMPLE

2.

THE CHUKCHI SHAMAN

Siberian cultures are particularly noted for shamanistic practices. Shamans

among the Chukchi of northeast Siberia, for example, are described by Bogoras
(1909) as likely to be individuals of "nervous and highly excitable temperaments." Some with whom he talked appeared to be "almost hysterical," and
might fly into a rage on the slightest provocation. Some had nervously twitching
faces, and were given to violent gestures; one woman shaman had a record of
insanity. Such tendencies, he suggests, were congruent with the type of religious
practice which Chukchi shamans use for healing, seeking supernatural revelations, and other professional activity. This favored violent singing and drumming, followed by trance states. Persons most susceptible to such psychological
tendeneies in childhood were likely to be pressed through public opinion as
well as personal "revelation" into the shamanistic calling.

On the side of ritual, or patterns of action, the magical practices of com_ pulsion have so far been emphasized. By contrast, what Benedict calls the
mood of rapport, or identifying oneself with power, tends to be expressed
in acts of worship, and accompanied by strong affective or emotional nuances. Religious action is usually conducted in an atmosphere of sanctification, which distinguishes it from secular or everyday activity. Many methods
are used to create and in turn destroy this special atmosphere, such as rites
of consecration and purification, perhaps using fire, water, and other symbolic elements to make crisis points. A typical element in'religious action is
summed up in the word "taboo," which comes from the Polynesian tapu,
so striking to Captain Cook and other earlier voyagers. This may have the
dual emphasis of being "sacred," and of being "reserved" or forbidden-the
latter a ~ind of supernatural "law" which involves control by abstention.
Webster (1942) has compiled in a useful volume customs relating to taboo.
Numbers of other familiar terms define particular types of religious acts such
as prayer, involving the inpuence of words; sacrifice, or influence by gift;
fasting, or influence by food abstention; divination, or control through foreknowledge; and healing, usually involving what has been called a "materia
I
magica."

EXAMPLE.

THE SWEATLODGE AMONG PLAINS INDIANS

A well-known case ofl ritual behavior is the practice of "sweating." For

the Crow Indians of the P1lains, Lowie (1948) describes the sweat lodge as
being associated with making pledges to the sun deity. The occasion might be to
heal sickness, to seek success on a war raid, or to acknowledge some dream
vision. The lodge was a small dome-shaped structure, made of willow and
covered with blankets, in which the participants gathered almost naked. Red-hot
rocks were placed in a central pit in which water was poured. Sweating was
done in a series o! four, a sacred number, with cooling-off intervals. Each stage

340

World View: Knowledge and Belief

was accompanied by a prayer formula. Participants announced any dream

revelations gained in the course of their profuse perspiring. At the end, all
dashed to the nearest stream to cool off.

All religious systems are objectified in some material respects. The

sacred is usually considered dangerous or overpowering in relation to everyday life, so that special places and buildings are usually set aside for religious
activity, perhaps with special seating, altars, and other distinctive arrangements. Because of the strong values involved, religious objects often become
foci for artistic elaboration. The human body provides one medium at hand,
as with religious clothing and ornament, perhaps special hairdos or body
scarification. The use of images (the word "idol" tends to be charged with
adverse judgment) of deities and ancetsors is frequent, as in the case of the
giant stone statues of Easter Island. An old word in anthropology is fetish,
which refers to some object, man-made or otherwise, which is directly associated with, or "possessed by," an animate being or power. An amulet is
correspondingly an object which possesses inanimate power. A modern
ethnological museum shows the amazing range of ways in which man has
objectified his beliefs.
Material objects here have the high visibility which allows quick recognition of a sacred setting or occasion. A new cult usually emphasizes fresh and
prominent symbols. In some of the interesting cases of rapid religious change
noted by anthropologists, the crisis tends to be marked symbolically by the
public rejection or destruction of material paraphernalia; for example, the
Hawaiian aristocracy in 1820, after several decades of contact with Westerners, ordered temples and images destroyed even before the arrival of
the first missionary group. Religious phases of culture change, including the
rise of new cults and sects, will be discussed in a later chapter (Problems
80, 81).

ReView
Religion has been seen here as much more than an individual intellectual or emotional experience. Study of its functions within cultural and
social settings shows it to be a central aspect of behavior concerned with
explanation, validation, and integration-the core, so to speak, of a people's
view of the world. It comes into special focus at points of social and person31
crisis, lack of knowledgeable control, marked tension. It also shows polar
tendencies toward direct manipulation of supernatural power by compulsion
(the magical emphasis) and toward seeking rapport through the affectively
charged mood of worship (religion in a narrower sense).
Perhaps as a distinctive new set, in the realm of thought, the specula-c
tions of civilized men have taken a special turn toward a philosophical

Collateral References

341

mood of more secular and intellec~ualistic character. Correspondingly, organized religion has had a tendency to become a more compartmentalized
and distinctive sphere of cultural behavior, and subject to many alternative
interpretations.
Its integrating role in culture and personality becomes correspondingly
less pervasive and consistent in group and individual life. Nevertheless, for
the devout believer within a particular religious system, it continues as a
prime integrative force. Furthermore, problem zones still exist in experience
for which no answers are yet available other than by way of religious tenets.
The distinctive values, too, which have been inculcated by widespread
religions tend to be as pervasive as ever in all phases of contemporary life.
Exercise
What areas of life and of individual experience are still not covered by
sure knowledge, so that they are continuing focal points for "faith," and
for wide dependence on religious interpretation? What differences in
response appear when members of a group are asked the question: What
beliefs do you hold about death?

Collateral References
Practically all standard texts have sections dealing with religion, though
few deal more broadly with knowledge and philosophy. Notable works concentrating on religion are Malinowski, B., Magic, Science and'Religion (first published as an article in 1925, reissued as a pocketbook in 1948), Radin, P.,
Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin (1937), Lowie, R. H., Primitive
Religion (rev. ed. 1948), and Howells, W. W., The Heathens: Primitive Man
and His Religions (1948). Radin has another work dealing with the wider context of human ideas: Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927). A long article by
Benedict, R., "Religion," in the Boas-edited General Anthropology (1938) is
well worth reading.
I
Classic early studies focused on the origin and development of religion are
Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) and Frazer's The Golden Bough (singlevolume edition 1922). The! many other works absorbed with this topic are
exemplified by Lang (1901)! Marett (1914), Durkheim (1915), Freud (1919),
and Schmidt (1931). More Igeneral analyses of religion as a field of experience
include Benedict (1923, 1931), Wallis (1939), Buck (1940), Kluckhohn (1942,
1944), Webster (1942, 1948), and Firth (1951a, 1951b). Examples of field
studies are works by Boas ;p930), Fortune (1934), Evans-Pritchard (1937),
and Barton (1946). The anthropological literature on religious cult movements
is exemplified by Mooney ('1896), Williams (1928), Linton (1943), and Wallace (1956). For the concept of "world view" see Kluckhohn (1949b), Redfield
(1952), and Mandelbaum (1955). A study of the "worlds" of thought and
value in African societies is presented by Forde and others (1954).

XIV

Art and Play

ART AND PLAY represent predominantly recreative and

self-expressive aspects of cultural and personal behavior. They are areas of
experience which are marked by elective or voluntary interests, and have
important communicative, creative, aesthetic, integrative, and therapeutic
functions. They show a very wide range in their degree of structuring, from
highly patterned and conventionalized arts and sports to doodling, humming an improvised tune, and relaxation even to the point where one says,
"I am doing nothing."

Problem 66 . The Relation between Play and Art

,

What are their common characteristics as fields of recreation and selfexpression, and what differences mark them off?
Specialists in animal behavior have attributed to mammals and to some
extent other types of animals a tendency to "play." In doing so they read
from human behavior a type of activity in which such organisms shift from
the routine of utilitarian survival activities t.o more "free," "nonpurposive,"
sometimes "mischievous," often f::ompefitively friendly, frequently random
and "irresponsible"-looking behavior. This-activity is accompanied variously py manifestations of "pleasure," "relaxation," "curiosity;" "amusement," and sometimes "simulated" anger or struggle.
_ I
Typically it is the young of'mammals which "play" most.'Adults may
play or "show off" at times of courtship and mating; some domesticated
dogs and cats, for example, may be playful throughout life. Yet the majority of adult animals tend more to "rest" as an alternative to purposive use
of energy_
Exercis~

From your own observation of animals, both in the wild and as pets, what
weight would you give to various factors such as are listed here for defining
their "play"? What would be important differences between animal play
and human pl~y?

342

[66] The Relation between Play and Art

343

Animal play at times assumes a r.hythmic or otherwise patterned form,

as though such regularities in themselves gave sensory or kinesthetic pleasure. Cries may follow patterns of sound. Body movements can have the
appearance of "dancing." A group may take up some cyclic or other repet-'
itive motion, as with a "school" of fish. A nest may not only be neatly made,
but also "decorated." Laboratory apes, exposed to elements of human
culture, may respond to musical rhythm, decorate their bodies, "paint"
with lips, hands, or even artists' brushes, "build" up structures with boxes
(Problem 12). Even where biologically triggered, and centrally concerned
with survival, many such behaviors appear to have near aesthetic or protoaesthetic significance.
Kroeber (1948) presents a notable discussion of animal play and its
relation to human play and so to culture. The organic play impulses, he says,
in "rechanneled" form, have motivated "great areas of human behavior and
important achievements in culture." He cites not only games and sports
but also the influence of curiosity, the desire for variety, and "mental restlessness" in the arts, sciences, and fashions. Songs, poems, or philosophies,
as being superutilitarian, pleasurable "outlets for excess energy" rather than
responses to actual needs, are rooted in "impulses akin to play, sublimated
as well as matured."
With the appearance of man's artifacts, tools here and there take on
an appearance of shape and finish, which goes, as Lowie (1940) says, beyond the immediately utilitarian. An extra margin of symmetry and of neatness in flaking, for example, shows even in occasional tools from the Lower
Paleolithic. Red ocher in Neanderthal burials suggests body adornment.
The Upper Paleolithic, as noted earlier, is marked by an extraordinarily
elaborate flowering of graving, painting, and sculpture. Some scholars see
in certain crude representations of humans an attempt to depict dances or
other types of group ceremony. Stone or bone counters come later into
archaeological sequences as evidence of "games," though we could excusably infer from the widespre~d practices of sporting with weapons or of
wrestling and other body com,bat that "amusements" considerably antedate
this. Domestic animals may De found buried with humans in a way which
suggests they were pets.
I
With these perspectives i~ mind, it is no wonder that analytical discussions of "art" and of "play" show a strong tendency to say the same things.
The two categories can range from highly structured to minimally structured behavior. Both give p1leasure-as some put it, they have strongly
"hedonistic" elements. Both provide relaxation, or "re-creation." They are
highly marked by elective benavior, usually allowing a wide range of alternatives for self-expression. They are integrative in group and individual life,
and make for high morale. They tend to channel off conflicts, hostilities,
aggr.essions, sex s~resses, the tensions of risk taking, and so have therapeutic

Art and Play

344

The "Venus" of Willendorf: an Upper

Paleolithic Figurine. Carvings of this general type are characteristic of art of the
Upper Paleolithic. The exaggeration of
sexual features suggests association with
fertility cults. Such figurines are found
from Europe to Siberia.

significance. They can be used as important media for learning and cultural
transmission, notably in the case of children, and for reintegration where a
way of life becomes disturbed, e.g., an emphasis on art as part of nationalistic aspiration. They frequently have highly symbolic significance. Like
magic, they can have "white," or publicly approved facets, and "black,"
usually private facets, as with salacity, pornography, and obscenity.
By now, the reader should be able to analyze such propositions and
illustrate them from his own experience. Many of these points come out in
a functional analysis of recreation offered by Malinowski in an article on
"Culture" in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931). Recreation,
he says, does not merely "lead man away from his ordinary occupations";
it also contains "a constructive, a creative element." The "dilettante in
higher cultures" often produces "the best work and devotes his best energies to his hobby." In "primitive civilizations," too, the "vanguard of
progress is often found in works of leisure and supererogation." Innovation~ are "allowed to filter in through the playful activities of recreation."
He notes, however, that some types of play have "a different cl;iaracter, being
"entirely nonproductive and nonreconstructive" such as round games,
competitive sports, and secular dances. While they do not possess this
creative function, they "playa part in the establishment of social cohesion."
"In primitive communities," he says, "there takes place often a complete
sociological recrxstallization during big ceremonial games and public per:"
formances.:' In Civilized communities, too, the "type of national pastime
contributes. effectively to the formation of the national character."
Where, then, -does the distinction lie between "play" and "art"? Bateson, in a volume published jointly with Ruesch (1951), considers play to
be "one of the great creative fields of human communication," marked by
propositions of the general type contained in the statement "I am lying."
That is, it is a field of behavior in which fictional, or non truth premises
I

[66] The Relation between Play and Art

345

hold sway, by contrast with those fi~lds dominated by truth, reality, rationality. The psychiatric patients which he and various collaborators have
been studying in hospitals often fail to make this vital distinction in logical
types or frames of reference, and so mix nonreality or fantasy and reality.
Through analyzing a game he demonstrates what is meant by "I am lying"
propositions. Those participating in the game set up "as fictions" its particular rules, including perhaps the convention that the players are opposed and
in competition. Gains and losses may also be symbolized through fictional
devices of codification. Yet, "As we say, 'It's only a game.' "Bateson's further
elaborations of this theory of play are proving important for psychotherapy
(e.g., 1954, 1956).
Bateson's viewpoint here is obviously a penetrating one. As is familiar
enough, two spring lambs or autumn football players may bunt, bruise,
submit to injuries, in the name of play and perhaps with the benign spectatorship of parents and others in the social group. The nontruth atmosphere
lends itself to blowing off steam, facing hazard (as in gambling), joking,
boasting, pretending, flirting, striving, submitting, not cooperating, escaping, engaging in orgies, and many other dimensions of conduct which might
not meet with approval in a reality-governed action sequence. Status may
be put aside without threat to its integrity, responsibilities forgotten. Prodigies of energy may be expended beyond that of the everyday "work" situation. Innovations may receive the minimum of resistance (Problem 77).
The concept of playas fictional, however, is not th~ only approach to
play behavior. In our categories of thought we speak of being "in a playful
mood," "having leisure to play," "taking a holiday"--expressions which
emphasize breaking the routine of "work" or other regularized serious activities. We talk of "playtime" and "playgrounds," similarly indicating its separateness 'as a field of experience. The "workful" and the "playful" or
"recreative" are broad classifications of activity comparable with the
"sacred" and the "secular.j' Moreover, the characteristic in play of great
expenditure of physical energy suggests a relation to the need which Kroeber
calls, in the quotation above, "outlets for excess energy." Modern specialists
in mental health and social service work are well aware of the therapy of
play. A military man might say that "recreative" activity is in general the
major "unrestricted area" iln culture.
The social implications of play are also important. They are stressed
in a characterization by SJotkin (1950). Where individual play tends to
make the person self-sufficient, he says, group play "increases his dependence on others and therefore strengthens group solidarity." In the case of
intimate "primary" group~, play subjects the participants to common experiences and hence strengthens their solidarity. In more impersonal "secondary" groups, play is more likely to stress group opposition and so to
channel competition and conflict.
Space does not permit inclusion here of an inventory of the range of

346

Art and Play

play activities over the world. In anthropological monographs they are

usually put under some heading such as "Games and Amusements," and
confined to descriptions of the more structured games and sports. Useful
general discussions are found in Lowie (1940) and Beals and Hoijer
(1953). We need to know more of the proportionate distributions of time
spent on play types of activity: such a people as the Polynesians, for example, have been spoken of by the author elsewhere (1941) as apparently
having the "highest standards of leisure in the world." The significance of
play in our own society is becoming increasingly apparent, as machines
shorten the demands of "work" upon the time of individuals.
The closer interlocking of the concepts of play and art are illustrated
when we say, of a sport, "It is quite an art," or of the theater, "Let us go to
the play." In art as a general category, however, the functional setting is
certainly not one consistently of nontruth, fantasy, breaking routine, relaxing status, the temporary abandonment of the utilitarian. It involves adding
some degree of finesse to activities of "work" as well as of "recreation."
Its valuational and emotional associations tend to run, as we say, to the
"aesthetic" in addition to, or more than, the "playful."
Art, moreover, tends to have generalizing and synthesizing functions
in some respects comparable with those of religion and of sCience. The
artist, the sculptor, the novelist, the musician, and the dramatist are likely
to delineate people and their behavior in terms of what he may judge or
search out as basic "truths," selecting essential facts and eliminating irrelevancies. As noted elsewhere, their syntheses and insights on character and
situation are often comparable with social science generalizations. It might
fairly be said that we cannot know a culture, any more than a period in
history, until we know its art.

Problem 67 . The Aesthetic Aspect of Culture

/

How do cross-cultural perspectives c1arify,this facet of behavior?

The term "art," from Latin ars, may have in its broader sense about
as wide a meaning as "technique," e.g., "the art of cooking," "the art of
war." More narrowly it implies skill and finesse, and, in one of its senses,
achievement in terms of elegance or excellence as defined by canons of
aesthetic appeal. This latter comes out particularly in the familiar distinction often made! between the utilitarian arts and the fine arts-the one combining th~ aesthetic with the practical, the other making aesthetic expression the prime objective.
The field of art is beset with many attempted definitions, but all too
little resulting clarity. The following are some representative anthropological
viewpoints:

"-

[67] The Aesthetic Aspect of Culture

347

Some Conventionaliz.ed Bird Designs on Hopi Pottery. After Fewkes.

1. Boas, in a classic study titled Primitive Art (1927), postulated

that man has an "inborn impulse to shape creatively," but that the particular
"form" through which such impulse finds outlet is "culturally determined."
Art, he suggests, arises from two sources: "technical pursuits," and the "expression of emotions and thoughts" as soon as these assume fixed forms.
The "more energetic the control of form over uncoordinated movement, the
more aesthetic is the result."
2. Bunzel (1938) speaks of aesthetic emotion as differing from other
-forms of pleasure in "being a direct response to the object, unrelated in any
way that we can see to biological satisfactions," i.e., the response itself is
satisfying, an end in itself. (Is this all, however, we see in appreciating the
Venus de Milo?) Aesthetic emotion, she notes, may emerge from both the
"pleasure of creating," and "the pleasure of contemplating beautiful forms."
3. Herskovits (1948) and others emphasize that aesthetic impulses
find expression in terms of culturally defined "standards of/beauty," "taste,"
"sanctioned form,'" or "significant form."
4. Chapple and Coon (1942) define art as "emotional response to
symbols and techniques," or inversely as "symbols and techniques of evoking emotional response."
5. Firth (1951a) says of "a work of art" that it "makes a selection of
elements of experience, imagination, and emotion." It does this in such a
way that its forms arouse in us "special kinds of reactions," namely, "evaluations based on feeling tonek which we call aesthetic." When a work of art
is judged aesthetically (rather than in, say, economic, political, or religious
terms) it is being evaluated primarily in relation to its formal arrangements
of "lines, mass, color, sound,1 rhythm."
Exercise

Two theories are embedded in these definitions as to the origin of art: one
psychological, i.e., an aft object is intrinsically pleasing; the other technological, i.e., art is an elaboration of a technical process, as in the manufacture of a tool. What ~eighting would you give to these two elements?
Again, taking note that a sunset is often spoken of as evoking aesthetic
responses, can a natural phenomenon be "art" or does it have to be a
man-made object or activity?

348

Art and Play

Anthropologists, like other students of art, differ in the answers they

give to these questions. Cutting through the profusion of ideas, the empirical
principle inherent in all such approaches seems to be that wherever an object or creative act becomes invested with aesthetic values by any people,
we may speak of it as a part of the art tradition of their culture. The creative
person may himself see "art" in what he encounters or has made. Where
cultural canons enter, however, there is nearly always some recognized and
approved elaboration of form. This latter has led many anthropologists to
stress the technical, or craft, associations of art rather than its psychological
attributes. Art, seen with this emphasis, comes into existence when "performance" carries beyond the immediately utilitarian. It involves, too, at
least a reasonable degree of technical skill, or mastery of fundamentals, so
that intrinsic aesthetic possibilities may be brought out. Art, Lowie says
(1940), exemplifying this viewpoint, is "rooted in craft," so that "art thrives
where craft has developed." When a craftsman controls his technique, he
says, its problems no longer cramp him, and he can "allow free play to his
imagination." If he has none, of course, he will remain a "mere technician";
but without mastery of his process he is "not an artist at all."
Adam (1954) and others have claimed that the production of artistic
objects or activities solely to gratify aesthetic impulses is rare among "primitive" peoples, though not wholly lacking. The greater part of their art,
this view holds, pertains to useful objects or activities which ~re designed
for economic, political, religious, or other purposes. A contrast is then
made with the "fine" arts of "civilized" man, which in at least some expression forms may seem to be more free of commercial, prestige, or other
"utilitarian" motivation, as in the saying "art for art's sake." This supposed
contrast perhaps needs more investigation than it has received. It cannEt
be casually assumed that a nonliterate artist may be creating a given artifact,
or dance, or tale, for practical rather than aesthetic reasons. The case is
often cited of design embellishments which are so placed on objects that
they lre not seen and hence appear to have no. "audience" rationale: for
example, an ornamented hide box with the design largely folded in. Moreover, the so-called fine arts in ,our own society relate functionally in many
respects by way of the salon and patron to practical motivations, as a little
thought soon shows. As with other aspects of culture, art, can be understood only in terms of its place in the total context, and such perspectives
are likely to reduce any such apparent dichotomy between "primitive" and
"civilized" arts. 1
'
EXAMPLE.

NEW IRELAND CARVING

New Ireland, a Melanesian island of the South Pacific, has a style of

carving in which grotesque ceremonial images are worked out in three dimen-

[67] The Aesthetic Aspect of Culture

349

A New Ireland Carving. Typically the design is

built up by using fretwork forms and grotesque
representations of the human figure. The predominating colors are black, red, and white. From
a specimen in the British Museum.

sions. These have intricate fretwork designs and high color. To the Western eye
they may well provide the most startling of all "primitive" art. The artists are
here in a real sense professional specialists. They are hired to construct their
masterpieces by rich patrons who pay them lavishly. A simple piece may take
six months or more to construct, and a special festive occasion marks its public
exhibition.
I
!
I

Every cultural group defines artistic standards or norms in its own

terms, as in canons of "good,,1 and "bad" art, drama, tragedy, comedy, and
so on. Scarifications, wasp wdists, wigs, or filed-down teeth may have aesthetic appeal where the huma* body 'is being made the basis for embellishment. Dance motions and meanings of great importance in a local choreographic tradition may not be understood by the outsider, and their subtleties
may not even be perceived-~s, say, with a Westerner viewing Balinese or
Japanese religious dances. ~ne people may value sculpture in wood or
paintings displayed in frames on walls while another lacks this particular
art form entirely, selecting others for emphasis. A style or norm may stress
naturalism or realism or else conventionalization or symbolism.
The question arises here as to whether there are any universal elements
"0

350

Art and Play

in art which people, regardless of their particular cultural traditions, can

respond to and share. We sense the artistry of a Burmese temple image, or
a Peruvian pot, even though in doing so we may tear it out of its functional
context and use it as an ornament. Some anthropologists have stated as a
hypothesis that there are basic elements of form which do have a universal
appeal. What is meant by the "aesthetic" in discussions above appears to
be a universal tendency for humans to respond affectively (variously with
pleasure, delight, wonder, and other emotional nuances) to perceptions of
shape or design, color, rhythm, texture, unity, and other regularities of
"form."
Many terms appear in the literature of the arts relating to such form.
A dance analyst may speak of rhythm, balance, repetition, variety, contrast,
transition, sequence, climax, proportion, harmony, unity. Other art vocabularies may add style, tone, color, pattern, design, symmetry, perspective,
delimitation, organization, frame; a thesaurus will show additional terms.
Bunzel (1938) counts four "purely formal" principles as dominating all
works of art: unity, rhythm, symmetry, balance. It could be a matter for
discussion how far this list might be extended. At least two notable essentials of form are delimitation and repetitive behavior.
Form tends to be directly influenced and limited by the nature of the
raw materials or media, e.g., stone carving, bodily ornamentation, a wall
surface to be covered. For example, technical processes involved in handling
the materials exercise a strong influence, as does a musical instrument with
its characteristic sound possibilities, or the criss-crossing of plaited elements
that automatically produces a geometric pattern which the artist may elaborate. Form may also be shaped by the intended use or function; for example, a water receptacle mus~ be enclosed and have a stable base, or a
dance is fitted into a religious ceremony. The relative weightings of these
factors in shaping "significant form" have to be examined to understand
any item of art. A basic factor, too, is always the skill and creativity of the
artist; Whether the formal results are counted "art," at least from the standpoint of audience response, depends on how far-,they fit the norms of art
as valued in the culture concerned: recognition is one of tlie keys to form.
Such norms may require hewing closely to set forms or may permit, or even
encourage, deviation and experiment. Evaluations by the worker himself
or by an audience to certain efforts of form may, of course, be negative,
ranging from merely "clever craft" to "bad art," "ugly," and so on.
A dimensio~ of art about which all too little cross-culturally is yet
known is Hie timetable of the emergence of individuals in art abilities. The
young child may respond very early to rhythmic sounds. As is done in some
societies, he may be patiently taught the kinesthetic controls of a dance.
He may also learn songs and literary items appropriate to his vocabulary,
or to his ability to "carry a tune." But a sense of perspective, or an ap-

[68] Classification of the Arts

351

preciation of the structure of a sonnet, comes considerably later. Where a

cultural milieu offers to all members of the society a maximum stimulus and
opportunity to create and to participate in a play or art form, it is likely
that every normal individual learns to perform reasonably wen. The "gifted"
person, of course, will still stand out. Often, however, differentials show
here: being a member of a higher class may favor or inhibit participation, or
the work of experts may set standards which discourage general effort or
undermine confidence. Because of the great importance of leisure, recreation, and self-expression in every culture, the art specialist usually has a
favored occupational status.

Problem 68 . Classification of the Arts

To what extent can universal categories be established?
Anthropologists, like others, have tried out different modes of classi"tying the various art categories as they appear in cross-cultural perspective.
Most field workers have been content to adopt the familiar pigeonholes of everyday language, based primarily on materials or media and
technique. Their discussion headings are therefore likely to comprise painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramics, textiles, metallurgy (perhaps put together as the representative or graphic and plastic arts), music, dancing,
drama, folklore or literature, and perhaps ceremonials.
/
Discussions at theoretical levels may stress more the types of sensory
perception involved. The categories then become the visual or visible arts
(eye) ; the auditory or audible arts (ear); the tactile (touch) and kinesthetic
(muscular movement) arts as with the dance; and with varying importance
the olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) arts as with the use of perfumes
and cooking. A further category comprises synesthetic expression, the term
synesthesia meaning "the i~entification of the properties of one sense
modality in terms of another,l'I e.g., expressing sounds through body
motion,
,
or relating colors to sounds.! Any art medium, however, tends to involve
combinations of these sense lperceptions; music may be "seen" as well as
heard, or the body may respond to the excitement of hearing a story. Drama
and ceremony involve particvlarly complex sensory interactions.
Chapple and Coon (J 942) have tried out a classification on the basis
of space and time factors appropriate to "interaction" theory (Problem 31).
They list, as "art in space": 1. surface decoration, 2. sculpture; as "art
in time": 1. rhythm (e.g., Idrumming), 2. music, 3. literature; and as
"art in space and time" conjointly: 1. the dance, 2. the drama. They
consider architecture a "halfway house" between technology and the arts in
space. Ritual, though it has an independent existence, is regarded by Chapple and Coon as the original point of development for art symbols and tech-

I'

352

Art and Play

niques. They define ritual as "a symbolic configuration" of rhythmic interaction used to "restore equilibrium after a crisis." This view could be
profitably compared with theories of art origins in the aesthetic urge or in
elaboration of technological processes.
Other classifications are possible, and enter into anthropological and
other analyses of aesthetic theory. One rests upon the affective responses
evoked: "the beautiful," "the tragic," "the comic," "the sublime," and so
on. Another emphasizes functional significance: "decorative art," "persuasive art" (for stimulating action), "expositionary art" (to explain or
teach). The main headings in the British field handbook Notes and Queries
in Anthropology suggest an even wider analytical scheme: "Art as an
aesthetic act"; "Art in relation to society"; "The place of the artist in society"; "Schools and styles of art"; and "Objects of art and history of art."
A question can be raised as to the universality of the various categories of art expression. Anthropologists are sure that every culture includes
some types of body decoration, music, dancing, folklore or "literature," and
drama at least in the form of social ceremonies and religious ritual. The
graphic and plastic arts, however, occur much more selectively. Painting,
sculpture, architecture, textiles, and other forms may be present o~ absent.
Typically a people concentrates on a few only of the possibilities here,
especially those which it counts major art traditions. In Polynesia, for example, the Hawaiians notably emphasized featherwork and wooden calabashes (as holders for the semiliquid fermented taro, or poi); the Maoris,
wood carving, especially with curvilinear motifs; the Samoans, fiberwork
and geometric motifs on wooden tools and weapons; the Marquesans, stone
construction and carving. Even our modern society, with its great range
of graphic and plastic media, plays down or even omits arts which flourish
elsewhere. Some societies elaborate public,ly much more than we do arts
connected with sex, or with etiquette. Tlie machine and the chemicallaboratory have been instrumental in rendering 'some of our historic arts obsolete./
'
In the section which follows a brief review will be gi~en, of some of
the major art categories. These 'will give at least glimpses of ethnological
perspectives and of the methods of analysis used by anthropologists.

Problem 69 . rhe Major Arts

What are the characteristic features and varieties of the graphic and
plastic arts, music, the dance, drama and ceremony, oratory, folklore, and
literature?
The chapter on material culture discussed body adornment, architecture, ceramics, the textile arts, and metallurgy from the technological

[69] The Major Arts

353

viewpoint. Reference has also been made to the early efflorescence of painting and sculpture among Upper Paleolithic peoples.
The graphic and plastic (visual, representative) arts, seen in the total
perspectives of man's creativity, show an amazing range of alternative
possibilities. As indicated above, their most universal element appears to
be decoration of the human body. Another widely spread technique is the
use of vegetation, rocks, and other natural forms in pleasing combinations,
as in gardens and flower arrangements. Again, tools and utensils, constructions (houses, canoes, tombs, temples, and so on), and other items of material equipment may become foci for art. This, we have seen, may be a direct
effort to produce aesthetic satisfactions, as of beauty or grandeur. But it is
especially the mark of other supratechnological values, such as social prestige or religious symbolism. The stone adz of the Cook Islander, when
linked to a ceremonial context, is elaborated by a delicately carved fretwork
handle which would probably shatter from a hard blow. The example of the
Ainu arrow could be reviewed in this light (Problem 5). The expenditure
of art effort on a practical object suggests that it may have wider cultural
and social meanings.
Graphic and plastic art traditions may also include creative forms
which have no close relation to practical utility. Here the artist manipulates materials, techniques, and motifs with whatever freedom local aesthetic
canons permit: decorations on available flat surfaces, sculpture in the
round, combinations of flowers, shells, feathers, human hajJ', and whatever other materials may have appeal. Such "art for art's sake" has emerged
African Negro Sculpture. These examples are from Gabon, French
Equatorial Africa. The one on the left is of wood; that on the right is of
copper over wood.

354

Art and Play

Australian Aborigine X-Ray Drawings. Kangaroo; Barramundi Fish.

most fully, it would appear, in societies where artists have achieved something of a separate occupational status, and have come under the stimulus
of competition for patronage and prestige. The designs may still sometimes
be fitted to utilitarian forms; the pottery, or the silver rings, bracelets, and
belts, of a Pueblo artist; Of- the framed picture to fit a house wall, so much
emphasized in Western art. But the compelling creativity is thar of aesthetic
expression. Clearly, nurtured originally in the settings of the medieval church
and the Renaissance city-state, this nonutilitarian phase of. aesthetic expression has become a major feature of the Western tradition/of graphic and
plastic arts.
More than any of the other arts, the visual media permit reproduction
of forms from "natural" life, e.g., the painting of mountains and forests, the
sculptured contours of the bqdy. Where this is emphasized in an aesthetic
tradition it is spoken of as naturalistic, representative, realistic. But an artist
is never able to reproduce living forms exactly: the~e is always a selection of
elements, an "artificiality"-the painter must work in two dimensions, the
scuJptor must "freeze" a pose. One of the striking variations of "realism"
in some nonliterate traditions presents an X-ray-like effect by showing the
interior skeleton as well as the form of an animal or hurrtan, as in many
Australian Aborigine drawings. This tendency stands in contrast to the
conventionalized, or stylized, in which elements are more selected and
manipulated; and to the decorative, in which form is shaped more or less
"for its own sake" to give an aesthetic effect. There are many striking art
traditions among nonliterate people which use conventionalization and
decoration to achieve some symbolic effect, e.g., a warlike people may
use the grotesque apparently to simulate scaring enemies, or gods may be
depicted as huge or many-armed. Masks are particularly interesting to study
from this point of view, for example, the elaborate ritual masks of North;west Coast Indians, and Melanesian and west African masks. Religiou~

I!

355

[69] The Major Arts

images also yield wide variations from the realistic to the conventionalized.
Schools of modern art in the West have been markedly influenced by image
styles of Asia, west Africa, and Oceania. Decoration can involve amazingly
complex "rhythms of space," color schemes, and other elements which may
be variously stylized or free. Some notable regional surveys of art, usually
well illustrated, by which a student could carry this study further, are listed
at the end of this chapter.
EXAMPLE.

IROQUOIS "FALSE FACES"

An art form widely familiar through museums is the sculpturing of "false

faces" made by the Iroquois Indians of eastern North America. These usually
grotesque wooden masks are used in ceremonials of so-called False Face
Companies or Societies. Fenton (1956) has classified the masks into twelve basic
forms including smiling, crooked mouth, whistling, protruding tongue, and
various forms of blowers. Masks are associated by the Iroquois and Delawares
with forest spirits, which are "only faces" and which influence hunting success.
-They are also used in healing ceremonies, as having curing power. Fenton
suggests that various 'disease types may be portrayed in some of the mask forms,
such as hysterical manifestations, paralysis, toothache, or sore eyes. Masks have
their origin myths, they assume localized styles, and they may be associated
with roles and grades within a company. Their wearers engage in chasing away
spirits, dancing, mimicry, tricks, shamanistic curings, and other colorful activities, notably in the course of a cycle of major tribal festivals. It is not considered
incongruous, today, for False Face members to visit from 'house to house in
automobiles.
Boas, in a volume edited by him (1938), points up a restrictive relation
between the development of graphic and plastic arts and a people's total
way of life. Migratory hunters, for example, do not have much time for
Some Iroquois "False Faqe" Masks. After Fenton, Smithsonian Institution Annual Report, 1940.
I

356

Art and Play

manual work beyond the utilitarian. Nor can a family burden itself with
the finished products, or with those still unfinished. Such art forms call
for leisure and also either stability or else adequate means of transport.
Works in heavy wood or stone call for a sedentary mode of life. By contrast,
Boas says, such restrictions are not present in the arts of music, dance, and,
literature. Even the hunter, in carrying on his daily work activities, may
give free rein to his imagination. Out of his "daydreams" and also those
of the woman going about her housework, "stories and songs may be spun."
Music, the dance, and drama or ceremony tend to be closely associated
in most cultures. Dancing is rarely performed without either music or
else a recitative or rhythmic accompaniment. Music in some cultures appears to be almost wholly a vocal or instrumental phase of some larger complex of behavior, as where the Navaho "singer" uses the chant as an' essential part of the "healing" ceremonies. McAllester, in a notable recent study
of Navaho music (1954), found that this people could not discuss "music"
as a general field of experience; their vocabulary refers only to particular
musical accompaniments of particular occasions.
Musicology, especially the comparative study of music, is the specialty
of a very small number of cultural anthropologists. University anthropology
departments usually have collections of the musics of non-Western peoples
for demonstration and study. General reviews of the field arc given by
Herzog in an important paper on primitive music (1934) and ,in a volume
by Nettl (1956). Broadly speaking, music is concerned with (a) the human voice (b) instrumental sound production.
Chapple and Coon were seen above to separate rhythm from music
proper. Sound patterns at subhuman levels are exemplified by gorilla behavior. Some form of rhythmic sound production, as clapping hands, stamping, striking sticks, clacking stones, pounding mats, shaking rattles, beating
gongs, or drumming, appears to be a cultural univers~l. In this sense percussion instruments appear to be the most universal and fundamental artifact
aidi~ the human voice and they take by far the ,greatest number of forms.
Sound rhythm is important to a poem or to the prose recital of a tale
as well as to a song. Music emerges distinctively when rhythm' has added to
it the factor of melody. Another familiar dimension, harmony, has a much
later and more restricted place in music.
Both vocal and instrumental music illustrate very well the concept
of "patterning" in behavior. Within the total acoustic range of the human
voice, many diffe~ent systems of structure and delimitation have been worked
out, corresponding to what we call scales, tones, intervals, pitch, and the
like. The music of a people then tends to keep within the pattern. A song
can be recognized and repeated, or a "sour note" jars the ear. In the same
way a particular type of musical instrument adds to this stylization in terms

[69] The Major Arts

357

of its physical properties, as with {he tonal variations in percussion, the

woodwinds, the brass.
When the ear is trained to one musical system only, it is difficult to
grasp the properties of other musics. Though the octave appears to be an
acoustic constant, it may be subdivided in different ways. The more trained
an individual is in musical form, the more he is likely to reinterpret some
other music into his own system. Some musics involve finesse of discrimination beyond that admitted into the familiar Western scale. The average
individual used to the latter would, for example, probably fail even to "hear"
some Polynesian quarter tones and other stylized variations. On the other
side of the coin, a Menomini Indian chief, hearing Jenny Lind sing while
on a visit to Washington, D. C., reported it as being a kind of caterwauling
which he could not understand. A person hearing Australian Aborigine
singing for the first time may gain much the same impression.
Frequently in nonliterate songs the accompanying word materials are
minimal, obscure, or repetitive, the important elements being the rhythm
-and tune. But the opposite is sometimes true: the tunes tend to be controlled
by the words, as in the required forms of a ritual chant. According to Herzog
(1934), the "drum language" of west Africans involves tones which, produced by striking the middle or rim of the drum, imitate the pitch sequence
and rhythm of words in the language, so that the "melody of sound" is read
as corresponding to the "melody of speech."
Many nonliterate peoples have had no instruments o)her than those of
percussion type, which produce rhythm and perhaps some deliberately
patterned tone. The tonality or melody of their music is essentially carried
by the human voice. Some instruments yield acoustical responses by rubbing or friction: a New Ireland people have a kind of orchestra of hollowed
wood "gongs" graded from bass to treble which may be either rubbed or
struck. Wind instruments are widely spread, but not universal, taking such
forms as reed pipes, horn or shell "trumpets," wood flutes, and metal instruments, developed later. 1 A musical family on the writer's university
campus rapidly mastered a 'inose" flute brought back by him from a Philippine mountain people; the air stream for this instrument is provided from
one nostril. String instrumehts were confined to the Old World, and show
the least number of varying types. To make up for the limited sound volume
of the vibrating string, some~ form of resonance chamber is characteristically
used. The simplest stringed.instrument is the musical bow, sometimes with
the mouth used as a reson~nce chamber. Combinations of the string and
percussion principles may be developed, as in the piano and the African
zanza, which has tongues or keys of iron or wood of various lengths, like
a xylophone, over a bridge and resonance box, the free ends being plucked
like strings. Instrumental music, in polyphonic combination, may be per-

358

Art and Play

'1'1, ,I' '.I!

II
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'1 1 '1,1 1 !II

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,I I,

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,II

II

NOSE. FLUTE

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'

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PANPIPES

FRICTION

DRUM

BULL -ROARER
MUSICAL BOW

Rhythm and Music. Some unfamiliar instruments of nonliteratt; peoples: bull-roarer (whirled); Panpipes; friction drum (stick or cord is
pulled back and forth, vibrating the drum membrane); nose flute;
musical bow, with gourd as a resonator (string is plucked,' hand or
mputh can be used at one end to vary length of vibrating bowstring
and produce different notes).

formed without the human voice in other cultural settings

besides Western
\
civilization. A fuller classification oLinstruments used in nonliterate societies is given in Notes and Queries in Anchropology (1950).
Dancing is a cultural universal. Choreographic styles and meanings,
howe'ver, vary greatly. By familiar definition, the: dance involves significant
body movements of an individval, and often of a group of in~ividuals, usually following related and patterned movements. As with apes, its origin
appears to be rooted in kinesthetic pleasure arising out of muscular motion
and rhythm. At the one extreme, incipient dance movements may be subordinated to a "story," a musical theme (e.g., rhythmic accompaniments)?
or a religious rituil.l. At the other, the dance itself may be the center of aesthetic attention and development, such as the ballet and pleasure dancing.
Dancing, with its high visibility, is often a centerpiece for public display and for occasions of group assemblage and excitement. In many cultures it serves as an integrating force to group identity and morale: a war
party may dance before and after action, or dancing may have an essential
place when high festive or religious occasions occur. Relations between the

(691 The Major Arts

359

sexes are often highlighted and draJ?atized in the dance types and roles
assigned to males and females, and dancing may be an important factor in
courtship. The dance specialist, as leader, teacher, creative choreographer,
or entertainer, usually is a person of prestige. It is a useful exercise to ask
what dancing does in our own society.
Anthropological records are likely to tell more about the contexts of
dancing than about the actual dances themselves. A monograph may describe the occasion, the dancers, their clothing, the chants, and other accompaniments. But the dance as an action sequence does not easily lend itself
to record, even in the rare case where the field worker has had choreographic
training. Still photographs, diagrams, or stick figures give static and limited
information. Motion pictures provide the best visual record. A type of
"stenochoreography" or "choreoscript" developed by an Austrian specialist, Laban, and called "Labanotation," has been applied with success by
dance specialists to Western dancing, and may be adaptable to dance recording elsewhere. One anthropologist, Birdwhistell, has been attempting to
work out a standard system for recording all types of body motion; he calls
this field kinesics (1955).
Dancing very often becomes part of some wider setting of drama or
ceremony. Here the visual, auditory, and other arts tend to come into a
combination in the interests of acting out some interpretation of living
situations, or telling a story. By far the widest context here is that of religious
ritual. Perhaps every society phiys out more or less elaborate symbolic
"dramas" of the relations of men and deity, as in initiatiori ceremonies, acting out myth materials, pantomiming of totemic animal behavior, and formal
rites of worship. Bateson and Mead (1942) have hypothesized that the
colorful temple drama of Bali symbolizes in its "plots" the major themes and
values of Balinese culture: the good prince, the evil witch, the trance states
of the chorus, and so on. In the same way, ceremonious behaviors connected with honoring leaders, formal traveling and reception of visitors, the
play of etiquette, and othet important social activities may at times approximate to drama. By contrast, secular drama executed in its own right
for pleasure and aesthetic cinjoyment occurs in very limited regions only.
It reaches its fullest devel6pment in the later history of European and
Asian civilizations. It is notable that "playacting" is one of the culture
elements which appears to Idiffuse with great facility and vigor in modern
acculturative contacts.
EXAMPLE.

I-

THE ARIOI ENTERTAINERS OF THE SOCIETY ISLANDS

I

A notable example of the relation between the arts and social organization
is provided by the Arioi of the Society Islands in Polynesia. As reported, for
example, by Handy (1930), they comprised a kind of secret society of entertainers and artists into which men and women might choose to be initiated. As

360

Art and Play

such they made a career of the arts of dancing, music, poetry, and other aesthetic
and festive activities. Parties of Arioi traveled through the villages or formed
part of the retinue of high chiefs. The Arioi reportedly were not permitted to
marry and any offspring they had were killed. The "society" apparently had an
elaborately graded internal organization and its distinctive religious and magical
practices. Incoming missionaries were shocked particularly by their sexual freedom and elaboration of arts with a sexual emphasis.

A final zone of aesthetic expression may be called the verbal arts:

oratory, folklore, literature. Language and its mechanical extension in
writing lend themselves to artistic creativity in terms of form, as in sound
patterns and grammatical style, and also in meaning, as with the content
of a tale. As noted already, linguistic materials may accompany music, the
dance, and other art media.
Oratory often becomes an important expression form, notably in cultural settings without written documents so that communication is by word
of mouth. The ability to put verbal materials together, usually with a visual
public presence and the kinesthetics of gesture, may be a highly valued
art both aesthetically and because of the "power of words" in decision making and opinion formation. In Samoa a special class of leaders developed
called "orators," or "talking chiefs," whose tasks included speechmaking
for the chiefs proper, and acting generally as repositories and brokers for
the more technical and intellectual activities of the society. Oratorical styles
may vary widely even in our own society, as witness the familiar caricatures
of the politician, the evangelist, the learned professor.
Folklore, as a term, puts the spotlight on older tale traditions of popular character, while literature tends to emphasize the creative front of contemporary work. The special class of verbal materials known as myth has
already been discussed. Among other traditions, found variously in folklore as well as in the written literatures, are historical records, fictional tales
of various types for children and adults, biography, and popular sayings,
such a~ proverbs and riddles. The forms of expression may lean to the side
of prose, in which narrative and imagery tend to be,the goal, or to the side
of poetry, in which more or less, stylized rhythms and other -w6rd patterns
give an approximation to music; the latter's effect also tends tci depend not
just upon the power of description but upon ability to evoke strong emotion.
Literature is, strictly speaking, a written record, though the phrase
"oral literature" is sometimes used in anthropological writings. In all the
major cultures withia written literary tradition, the anthropologist bows out
to the specialist in the various literary fields. For anthropological purposes,
however, the written literature of a people is a rich source to be worked for
understanding of cultural patterning, personality and culture data, value
systems, and national character generally. This is also true of folklore. Oral

[69] The Major Arts

361

traditions, however, have to be treatc:d with great caution as a source for

reconstructing longer-term history, because of the uncertainties of memory,
and the possibilities of manipulating the record in the interests of selfglorification, moral instruction, or other advantage. What makes a folklore
theme is often the unusual event such as makes memorable news in our
own society. Among the reindeer-hunting Chukchi of Siberia, for example,
many tales deal with attempts by the people to free themselves from the
tyranny of some overpowerful camp leader. Among the Northwest Coast
Indians, noted for their Potlatch ceremonies described earlier, a principal
theme is the rise of a poor man to rank and wealth.
How far any people has special categories of verbal expression, such
as poetry, heroic sagas, moral tales for children, riddles, or proverbs, is a
matter for investigation. Tragedy, humor, farce, pornography, and other
literary modes have their own culturally relative standards. A difficulty
familiar to all cross-linguistic work is translating from the indigenous idiom
to that of the investigator. The best anthropological records present the
original texts, a literal translation, and then explanatory and interpretive
material through which an intelligible text is won.
Folklorists, apart from pleasure in the tales they may locate, have
tended to concentrate attention on the history and distribution of tale elements. Gods, "culture heroes," ancestors, or supernatural animals may be
among "characters" capable of being traced locally and often regionally. The
type figure of a "culture hero" who mediates between gods a9-d men is found
widely spread, e.g., Hiawatha and related figures among eastern Indians in
North America, Maui, who fished up islands in Oceania. The "trickster"
who plays pranks, the "guardian spirit," "giants," "fairies," and many other
characters, with associated character situations, have lent themselves to historicalist analysis (Problem 26). Special folklore encyclopedias and journals
are usually available in standard libraries.
In bringing out here the formal and functional characteristics of the
arts as seen in cross-cultural :perspective, there is no implication that the
anthropological field worker lapks interest in the artist himself. Beyond, however, the more obvious matte~s such as the degree to which being an artist
or performer is a specialized occupation, or calls for formal training, or carries a distinctive social status, Ithe study of the human dimensions of artistic
creativity tends to be an elusive matter. Few life histories or other intimate
records are yet available from nonliterate societies to show the artist in his
social milieu and at work. A tiotable exception is Bunzel's The Pueblo Potter (1929). Herskovits also gives careful information on Dahomey artists
in west Africa (1938). An instance may be cited here of an Australian
Aborigine, N amatjira, whose artistic talent emerged in an acculturative
setting, and whose paintings are widely known and acclaimed.

Art and Play

362

EXAMPLE.

AN AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINE ARTIST

Namatjira, when acting as a guide to a white Australian artist painting

scenes in inland Australia, began to experiment himself by drawing on old
pieces of cardboard and other available materials. With some instruction from
the artist, he tried out painting scenes of rocks, trees, and other settings of his
familiar habitat. Helped by the artist and other interested white friends in
securing the necessary art supplies, he soon had flowing in to the Australian
cities a series of powerful and distinctively styled paintings. The income from
these paintings, which now hang in galleries as well as in private collections, is
managed by the Australian government. Namatjira soon interested other Aborigines in this art medium, so that the group now has the proportions of a "school"
of painting of generally realistic Western style, but with Aborigine motifs often
discernible.

Review
Play and art have been recognized as vital facets of any culture. Foreshadowed in subhuman animal behavior, they become more or less. structured in all human societies. Rather than being "luxury" dimensions of a
way of life, as some popular thought would imply, they are basic to cultural,
social, and personal creativity and integrity.
In concluding this section certain general comments may be ventured
about play and art in the special setting of modern civilization. Prior to the
rise of urbanism and industrialism" outlets of leisure and self-expression in
Western communities tended to be of "folk" character, publicly open and
with wide participation, just as has been so \broadly typical of nonliterate
societies. These older folk activities actually still have some vogue, at least
in made-over forms.
Wit;h urban life and the mac~ine, however, some notable shifts have
occurred. "Spectator" sports and arts undoubtedly have a mucl! larger place
-football, motion pictures, television. The "fine arts," emerging' under the
aegis of the rich patron, become a matter of long training .and career
specialization, as with the professional painter, musician or dancer. Early
industrial workers, with long hours had little time for leisurely arts. (One
notable new art medium did emerge, however, namely, photography and
its derivatives.) Even though work hours were shortened, leisure activities
have become g~ared extensively into the money economy, and have become
to a large extent a private matter of home and interest associations. The
clock, factory whistle, and calendar distribute time between "work" and
"nonwork."
Recently the scene has been shifting markedly. More efficient machines

363

Collateral References

are progressively increasing the margi~ of leisure. Children and older people tend to be excluded by edict from the unionized or otherwise organized
work of our society and, with the indigent and infirm, are assured support
from public sources if necessary. Industrialized populations are largely having to relearn how to "play." The popular arts carve out their place more
or less separately from the professional arts. In the longer perspectives of
automation, it seems certain that the great majority of men and women of
the future will have the opportunity, and indeed the necessity, to place the
leisurely, creative, and ceremonious values of culture in the forefront of
life-as have a few nonliterate groups, such as some of the peoples of
Oceania, and those segments of the larger societies which have in many
settings formed a "leisure class."

Collateral References
Standard texts usually have sections dealing with the arts. Notable works
concentrating on the graphic and plastic arts are Boas, F., Primitive Art (1927,
reissued 1952), Kroeber, A. L., "Art: Primitive," Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences (1931), Weltfish, G., The Origins of Art (1953), and Adam, L. Primitive Art (rev. ed. 1954). Firth, R., has an important discussion of art in his
Elements of Social Organisation (1951). The anthropological approach to music
can be seen in Roberts, H. H., "Music: Primitive," Encyclopaedia 'of the Social
Sciences, and NettI, B., Music in Primitive Culture (1956). A good introduction
to folklore is Thompson, S., The Folktale (1947); this subject has a very extensive literature including serials such as The Journal of American Folklore and
Folk-Lore. The Boascedited text, General Anthropology (1938) has useful
articles by Bunzel on "Art," and by Boas on "Literature, Music, and Dance,"
and on "Mythology and Folklore."
For examples of well-illustrated regional studies of art, see Firth on New
Guinea (1936), Douglas and d'Harnancourt on American Indians (1941),
Linton and Wingert on Oceania' (1946), and Radin on Africa (1952). Additional studies of music include Herzog (1934) and McAllester (1954); of the
dance, Evans and Evans (193 i) and Pollenz (1949); of drama, Williams
(1940); and of folklore and liter~ture, Malinowski (1926b), Radin (1927), and
Voegelin, B. (1946). For play, :recent works by Bateson (1954, 1956) could
profitably be examined. For kine~ics see Birdwhistell (1955).
I

I,

xv

Language

THE ABILITY to communicate by way of precise symbols

was spoken of as a main condition for cultural growth (Chapter III). The
important theorist Sapir emphasized that all cultural behavior, by virtue
of its forms and meanings, may be looked at as a symbol system (Problem 29). The running of spectators to watch a fire, a smoke signal seen
in the distance, the rhythm of a drum, the scent of perfume may convey
"messages" by way of sensory perceptions. Par excellence, however, it is
language, that is, the vocal symbolism of speech with its related bodily
gestures and mechanical signals, such as writing, which gives precision and
finesse to communication.
Reference was made in the first chapter to the development within
anthropology of a special sub science called "linguistics" or "anthropological
linguistics." The field worker, to penetrate the settings where he does research, has been forced to learn more or less efficiently the language of
the people concerned. From this handling of local language materials came
an interest in comparative language studies, and in the place of language
in culture. Linguistic specialists in the "humaniti~s" have concentrated
upon a relatively few major languages, nearly all with written literary traditions (e.g., IndO-European languages, the. major east Asian languages). It
has been left almost exclusively to the anthropologist to investigate the very
great number of other language traditions over tb~ earth. The development
of a general "science" of ling~istics has become a joint enterprise of both
these groups, as is seen in the "linguistics department" of some universities.
Linguistics has become a highly technical field. Only fl small number
of anthropologists consider themselves to be linguistic specialists. They
must be skilled in handling what are often exceedingly complicated symboJ
systems, oral and, written, with sounds, grammars, meanings, and externalized writing or other supplements quite different from those familiar in
Western languages. The trained linguist now may make extensive use of
statistics and of mechanical devices such as _recorders, movies, X rays of
vocal movements, special typewriting and other signs needed for recording
beyond the everyday alphabet. Linguistics is a very rapidly moving front

364

[70] The Nature and Significance of Human Communication

365

of knowledge, as scrutiny of such professional serials as Language and the

International Journal of American Linguistics would show. Any student
who wants to pit his wits against the specialists at work could do so by way
of a conference report edited by Hoijer titled Language in Culture (1954).
Our discussion here will minimize the more technical phases of the study
and concentrate on the cultural significance of symbolic communication.

Problem 70 . The Nature and Significance of Human

Communication
How do speech and other signal-and-meaning systems enable humans
to communicate? What is known of the origin and development of language?
Language is a form of learned behavior and so is recognized by anthropologists as an aspect of culture. There is no substance to the story of the
white couple who adopted a Chinese baby and then began to learn Chinese
so that they could understand it when it started to talk. But, like other
facets of culture, language has its own special characteristics-in this case
based upon the physiological fact that it is primarily a training of the speech
organs in the production of sound signals. Persons who have learned the
same set of signals, and the cultural meanings which attach to them, "speak
the same language." Realization of this basic principle will guard the student
against often strange and mystical ideas as to the nature/of human communication.
Exercise
o.et some person or persons who can speak another language than your
own to say some phrases in that language. You hear (and see) the signals
involved, but the meaning is not communicated. Now give a phrase from
your own language to be translated, so that you supply the meaning. You
then hear (or see) unfamiliar signals which you will only recognize as you
make the effort to le~rn them.
I

Bloomfield, in an important general text (1933), says that "the whole

working of human society is due to language." Sapir (1931) speaks of
society as comprising, in' one sense, "a highly intricate network of partial
or complete understandipgs between the members of organizational units
of every degree of size and complexity, ranging from a pair of lovers or a
family, to a league of n~tions." He sees group life as "reanimated or creatively reaffirmed from ;day to day by particular acts of communicative
nature which obtain among individuals participating in it."
Animal signals, taken note of earlier (Problem 12), have broadly similar trigger action from one organism to another. But such communication

366

Language

has none of the exactness, or specific "definition of situation," which marks

the transfer of information between humans. Speech, especially, tickets experience in terms of precise labels variously for classes of phenomena
(e.g., "man," "dog," "movement") and for exact objects, people, actions
(e.g., "my father," "that terrier there," "they ran").
Often the meaning of speech is refined, or even corrected, by supplementary communication signals made with the body, broadly called gesture.
When we are inside the universe of discourse, as some have called a particular signal-meaning system, we can understand the culturally defined significance of movements of head, hands, and other bodily zones, including
facial expressions (laughing, scowling, raising the eyebrows, and so on),
and activities such as bowing, pressing noses, or kissing. Such expression
forms vary from group to group, and can attain great precision, as with the
"sign language" of the American Indians, the hand language of the deaf
and dumb, and the technical signals of the stock exchange floor. Great contrasts exist among different peoples in the nature of gestures and the extent
to which they have a conventional place in communication; one has only
to walk on the streets of London and Paris to see this. We will also have
had the experience of feeling -strange in the presence of people whose particular facial expressions we do not understand; this is one of the important high-visibility factors in so-called race prejudice. Signals with drum
and smoke, and the development of writing, illustrate further t?xtensions of
symbolism which have become increasingly diversified in man's more recent
history.
Inevitably a great deal of speculation has accrued as to the origins
of language. It must be met with the now familiar critical attitude to the
extent hypotheses are dogmatically stated-the more so because no external,.ized evidence appears until the identificatiQn of writing in the archaeological
record (Problem 19). The main theories are often summarized under somewhat popularized labels. One has been -called the "bow-wow" theory,
nameJy, that language began w~th the imitation of characteristic sounds of
nature ("splash," "roar," "patter" are examples of such ol1oIl,latopoeic expression); another is the "pooh-pooh" theory, seeing it as arising out of
"interjections," instinctive utterances called forth by pain or other intensive
emotional states ("Oh," "Ouch," and so on); still another is the "yo-he-ho"
theory, considering the earliest language sounds as "natural phonetic accompaniments" of repeated muscular acts performed in common, thesecoming to stand ~s verbs signifying'the acts themselves: "heave," "haul,"
and the lik~. Even more wildly speculative is the "ding-dong" theory of a
mystic harmony between sound and sense which caused speech to be evoked
instinctively as the ring emerges from a bell. Jesperson, a humanities specialist in linguistics (1923), going by way of an analysis of the laws of linguistic
development, sees at or near the beginning a few "half-mystical unanalysed

[71] The Analysis of Language

367

expressions for individual beings ~nd solitary events." Another, Vendryes

( 1925), sees emotional cries or simple chants taking on symbolic value as
being associated with particular activities. Ingenious as such theories may
be, they must be counted at best as suggestive hypotheses.
Some earlier scholars believed that the beginnings of language might
be ascertained by studying the speech of "savages." Nowhere, however,
do anthropologists find a symbolic communication system, spoken or otherwise, which is "rudimentary" or "simple"; indeed, they often discover instead that the language of isolated peoples has become specialized along
highly complicated lines of sound and grammar. Another approach, tried
out particularly by early philologists in the humanities, was to isolate by
critical analysis the oldest ancestral roots of contemporary languages; but
this rapidly becomes speculative: as Vendryes puts it, "Despite all our
efforts, between the primitive 'bark' and our oldest tongues there exists a
gulf which can never be bridged."
Still another approach to origins has been the study of how children
- learn to talk. Jesperson, for example, speaks of three periods in a child's
linguistic development: "the screaming time, the crowing or babbling time,
and the talking time'~-the last covering successively the acquisition of the
more individualistic "little language" (the child's own form of baby talk),
and then of the common language through which his wider social relations
can be exercised. Granting the importance of studying language training
in different sociocultural settings, not least of all for important clues to
personality development and national character, it is cl~ar1y an inadequate
source for understanding language origins in general. As Kroeber (1948)
has noted, this approach shows us merely how a child becomes trained to
the particular language of his group.

Problem 71 . The 4nalysis of Language

!

How do linguists classify the constituent elements of a language?

Speech behavior is st4died by linguists from three main aspects. First,
it involves a set of soundl signals, the articulatory or phonetic systemthe aspect of phonology. Second, it is built upon structural principles that
put the sound signals togbther in a customary form-the aspect usually
spoken of as grammar, or/sometimes morphology (structure) in a general
sense (see below). Third'ljt carries a set of meanings for those who are
trained to these signals and forms-the semantic aspect. Words, or working units embodying these.1three phases of language in significant interrelations, build up as a vocaoulary to take in the totality of experience represented in the language and group concerned. A total statement made by
an individual without interruption is an utterance.

368

Language

The physiological apparatus with which sounds are made is, of course,
that with which we also breathe and eat. It consists of (1) the lungs,
(2) the larynx or throat, with its two liplike vocal cords and its lidlike epiglottis, (3) the pharynx, or resonant sound box of the upper throat, (4)
the buccal cavity or mouth, with its tongue, palate, teeth, and lips, and
(5) the nasal cavity or posterior nares. Most sounds are made by interference with the outgoing breath, this being done by the vocal cords, tongue,
teeth, or lips, though in some exceptional languages there are also special
suction sounds and clicks. It is possible for the vocal apparatus to shift
with great rapidity from position to position, thus producing the various
sounds in succession. When the languages of the world are looked at as a
whole, it is realized that the number of distinct sounds that are possible is
enormous. We may easily test this out by varying our own conventional
sounds through shifting our mouth shape in different ways. Actually, however, each language concentrates upon a very limited number which are
significant to the people trained in it.
Each speech system has its own recognized set of sound signaling units
which the linguist calls phonemes. A phoneme, as defined by Bloch and
Trager (1942), is "a class of phonetically similar sounds contrasting and
mutually exclusive with all similar classes in the language." As such it is
a minimal significant unit of sound patterning. Each phoneme comprises a
lump or bundle of acoustic properties. It may be what we call a "vowel,"
made with the outpouring breath, tautened and vibrating vocal cords, and
various mouth shapes, or else "consonant," either voiced or voiceless, and
involving forms of friction (represented in the letters f, s), explosion (t),
or other characteristics. Such sounds may vary in qualities like duration,
stress, pitch or frequency of vibration, and timbre. The same sounds may _
have widely different meanings according to ~he ways they are said, as with
a "lookout" and "look out!"
The number or range of sound signals which may be made with the
vocal aBparatus is amazingly large: Sounds may be used of which we have
no experience whatsoever, as with so-called clicks made by B~s4men. Linguists use increasingly exact mechanical and other measures tO'define the
acoustic properties of signals, and to isolate the phonemes in the languages
they study. The number of phonemes in any language is likely to range
from about fifteen to sixty, but rarely exceeds thirty. What in England is
called the "King's English," according to Bloomfield (1933), has about
forty-six, while that of Chicago has about thirty-two.
The defiriition of a phoneme as a "class" of sound admits room to
recognize the obvious fact that each individual has his own minor idiosyncratic variation in speech. It is also a fact of experience that once the vocal
apparatus has been trained at all rigidly to one set of sounds, it is difficult
for it to take on new habits that involve marked differences. What we know

[71] The Analysis of Language

369

as an accent in the speech of someol?-e from another language group, or in

our own use of an alien tongue, illustrates this. The range here varies with
individuals. Some persons who have been accustomed to speak two or more
languages in childhood, when the vocal apparatus is plastic, or who have
gone through some intensive training later, are able to achieve phonetic
mobility sufficient to cover more than one set of habits without such limitations. The public school playground and corner lot, too, are often a stimulus:
a child may use with equal facility one type of pronunciation in the schoolroom and another among age mates. By contrast, an accent often becomes
one of the significant marks of a class or other unit of social differentiation,
kept to rigidly by those concerned and passed on to their children.
The formal structuring of language materials in grammar tends to be
beneath our level of consciousness, as Sapir noted (1921), or at least until
we bring it to attention by the generally painful exercise of learning grammar. The importance of grammatical organization may be illustrated from
our own speech by the matter of order: the words in "The dog bit the man"
-are the same as in "The man bit the dog"-but the meaning conveyed is
vastly different. The way "words" are built up by combining linguistic forms
is often called morphology in a narrowed sense. The minimum significant
unit forming a word or part of a word is then called a morpheme, or a simple
linguistic form, e.g., as in the two morphemes which make up "income"
("in-" and "-come"). A morpheme which can stand alone is called a free
morpheme, e.g., "man," "dog." One which is never used alone, like "-ish"
or "-ing," is called a bound morpheme. Words in turn comhine into phrases
and sentences; the study of these larger patterns is called syntax.
Linguists have a technical vocabulary for classifying various types of
grammatical structure. Persons who have studied Anglo-Saxon or Latin
know they have stronger tendencies toward inflexion and polysynthetic or
agglutinative ("gluing" materials together) combinations than modern
English, which breaks up very much into words having "free form" (i.e.,
_an isolating tendency), whicp are then strung together in analy tic fashion.
Sapir, in his important early book titled Language (1921), said that "form"
or "structure" in language g~ves "grip" and "style," while "content" gives
"power" or control over situations.
The semantics, or mea~ing system, of a language is what Sapir was
indicating by "content." In this attribute of language, we are really talking
about culture itself from thE< aspect of communication or message storage
and transmission. Later in d~is chapter a discussion of what is called "metalinguistics," a concern with the way the language system of a people serves
to organize its approach to experience, will expand further the meaning side
of language-culture relationships (Problem 73). The reader wanting a more
technical analysis of the relations between phonemics, grammar, and semantics is referred to a work by Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952).

370

Language

Problem 72 . The Distribution and Dynamics of

Language
What are the historic relations among languages over the earth? How
do languages grow and change?
A group of people who use the same speech signals is referred to as
a speech community. Broadly speaking, this concept is clear enough; it
refers to the persons who are able to understand one another. As such, they
are set over against people who live in other worlds of mental commerce as
being in other speech communities.
Actually, however, the delineation of a speech community is by no
means always easy. Languages often shade into one another through mutual interchange of words and meanings, especially when they adjoin geographically, so that boundaries are not clear-cut. They may share a common
ancestry, and though long separated still have many recognizably identical
elements. Spanish, for example, is tantalizingly familiar to anyone knowing
its Romance language collateral, French, and so is Dutch to an Englishspeaking person.
,
Moreover, within a given speech community there tend to be many
subdivisions. A widely spread language will tend to be reg~onally differentiated into what we call dialects, speech forms which bear marked contrasts, though not sufficient to mark them off as a separate language. The
traditional dialects of Great Britain afford a familiar example-Somerset,
Cornish, Cockney, Yorkshire, and so on. New dialects have appeared within
the British Commonwealth, and even to an extent within the mobile Unitea
States. Additionally, distinctions may exis_t between the spoken language and
the literary language if such ,exists -(we usually write "do not" but say
"don't"), between the sophisticated speech of the main centers, especially
if tMy are urban, and the provincial or rural areas, and between the speech
of the upper and lower classes or the educated and'the uneducated. Then,
too, there may be conventiomil specializations of language on the basis of
occupation (legal and medical terminology in our own speech), of religion
(ecclesiastical language typically contains much that is archaic), or rank
("honorific" terminology pertaining to classes and leaders), of sex (a few
peoples require Jillales and female~ to use different kinds of speech and
of various pther dimensions.
The line of differentiation between a dialect and a language cannot
be fixed. It is a matter of degree of mutual intelligibility. The same is often
true as between a language and some larger grouping of related languages
which still share elements in common. More clear-cut, at least by definition,
is the concept of a language family or language stock. This is a group of

[72] The Distribution and Dynamics of Language

371

languages linked by scientifically. demonstrable (or hypothesized) connections back to a common ancestral form.
To establish such historical connections between languages often involves highly technical analysis and reconstruction. On the whole, as would
be expected, grammar, or form, tends to be far more persistent over time
than sounds, words, or meanings, and so it gives the most reliable clues.
In cases where historic separation and opportunity for specialization have
been very prolonged, the original language usually has to be reconstructed
in terms of a few critically important grammatical forms. But over shorter
periods, even phonetic, verbal, and other correspondences may selectively
persist in recognizable form. An exciting new device for language comparison
recently proposed by Swadesh (1955) and co-workers is called lexicostatistics, or, as a chronological instrument, glottochronology. This follows
an older linguistic idea that sound systems are likely to change in regular
ways, e.g., Grimm's law, which postulates certain regularities of sound
change in IndO-European languages.
By studying rates of change in word systems in the history of known
European languages, glottochronologists have postulated that there is a
constant rate of change in what they call a "basic vocabulary," represented
by a sample of a hundred concepts regarded as universal in all human
experience. This basic vocabulary may be expected to change at the rate
of 19 per cent per thousand years, i.e., 81 per cent of these sample terms
should remain in a language after one thousand years ~f change; or where
two languages formerly connected have been apart for a thousand years,
each should have changed by 19 per cent, thus maintaining a 65.6 per cent
correspondence. This exciting proposition is still in its testing stages, and
is probably subject to many forms of exceptional influence which can accelerate,or retard change, e.g., in Polynesian Tahiti a taboo on using words
that occur in the names of dead chiefs, and their replacement with other
words, might speed up the discarding process. With it, however, tentative
datings are being worked (;mt for relationships among languages in regions
such as Malaysia and Polynesia, where language families have scattered
I
components.
Space does not permit here a full listing of language families on a
world-wide basis. In gene~al, the greatest language specialization, producing a very broken-up pattern of small local speech groupings, occurs among
the more isolated and marginal peoples, e.g., as in the Australian region,
northeast Siberia, North fmerica. The antecedents and interrelationships,
for example, of the Japanese, Korean, and Ainu languages are not understood. By contrast, the river valleys, grasslands, and ocean tended to carry
a convenient language far and wide, with trade, political consolidation, and
techniques of writing often making it a lingua franca ("language frank")
or verbal "coin" for large populations. The great carriers of civilization have

Language

372

been such literary languages as Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, classical Chinese,

and, later, Arabic (language of the Koran), Spanish, French, and English.
These are likely in turn to undergo dialectal and other variations, as noted
above.
EXAMPLE.

THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE FAMILY

To illustrate what is meant by a language family, with its constituent subgroupings, English may be placed in its tabular position within the widely spread
"Indo-European" (or "Aryan") language family. Critical scholarship has gone
some distance in reconstructing the ancestral language, fortunately having at
hand one of its earlier descendants, Old Indian or Sanskrit, the language of the
Vedic hymns dating back probably to 1500 B.C., and used for literary and
scientific purposes up to modern times. A number of the widely used languages
Language Families of Eurasia. Most widely spread are (1) IndoEuropean, (2) Ural-Altaic, shown with dots (subfamilies: FinnoUgric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic) , (3) Sinitic, shown
with wavy lines (subfamilies: Chinese, Tai, Tibeto-Burman) , (4)
Malayo-Polynesian (Malaysia, most of Oceania, and Madagascar).
Paleo-Asiatic indicates a cluster of northeast Asian languages. Such
isolated languages as Basque and Japanese have no recognizable wider
affiliations.

[72] The Distribution and Dynamics of Language

373

of contemporary India, Hindustani, Hiudi, Bengali, and so on, also trace back
to the Indo-European stock. Between the old and modern forms lie various
"middle Indian" languages, notably the literary languages known as the Prakrits
and some religious ones, the most important of which was Pali.
Western Asia has had various Indo-European languages called collectively
Iranian: the early forms known as Old Iranian comprise two dialects, Old Persian and Zend (or Avestan); Middle Iranian is represented by Pahlavi, Sogdian
and Saka; and modern descendants include Persian, Kurdish, Baluchi, Afghan,
and so on. Armenian is another related language.
Indo-European languages were carried or adopted far and wide in Europe,
where they went through much differentiation. The Hellenic dialects of ancient
Greece (Doric, Ionian, Attic, and so on), and their present descendant, Modern
Greek or Romaic, trace back to this source. So, too, does the great group of
languages known as Halo-Celtic, spoken in south and west Europe. Still another
differentiated group are the Balto-Slavonic languages of northeast and east
Europe, including Great Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, and so on.
The Germanic languages comprise the final European group of this family.
:The primitive or early form is known to some extent through fragmentary
records of Old Norse and Gothic (East German). Modern descendants are
A. North German or Scandinavian (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic)
B. West German or Anglo-Frisian
1. English dialects
2. Frisian
C. German (Low, Middle, High)
/
D. Dutch, with a special offshoot in South Africa, Afrikaans.
For other language families, and for the history and geography of language
in general, see Graff (1932), Bloomfield (1933), and Gleason (1955).

The tendency for a speech system to undergo internal change over time
has been called by linguists language drift. Where speech elements are
diffused from one group to another, the process has been called language
borrowing. Some theorists have postulated a kind of inherent tendency in
language, making for drift ~nd change, but the anthropologist looks for
specific environmental and cultural causes. Among the factors that have
been postulated as at work a~e climate, allegedly making for verbal vigor or
languor; "temperament" (whatever that may mean to the writer concerned);
a tendency toward economy bf effort; the tolerance of innovations, including
sound changes that come f~om children's speech; the stimulus of warfare
and new inventions; shifts ip. the "national psychology," making variously
for "progress" and the "desire for liberty," for gentleness and moderation,
or for great outpourings of ,energy. This matter will be made more realistic
in later discussion of cultural stability and change (Chapter XVI). In our
own milieu we find speech innovations coming from the scientific laboratory,
politics, the stage, the campus.

374

Language

Along, however, with this tendency to local specialization must be

recognized an opposite trend toward greater standardization and homogeneity. This has been especially marked where communities have a stable
agricultural or industrial life bringing together larger aggregations of people, where language becomes linked to nationalistic development, and
where writing and printing call for common understandings of their symbolism. The King's English has tended to become standard among the historic dialects of England, while Parisian French and the Japanese of Tokyo
have become the norm of speech in France and Japan, respectively. Mass
media such as the newspaper, the radio, and the motion picture are exercising increasingly wide influences toward linguistic consolidation.
The same factors of interaction and utility which may cause peoples
to modify their current speech in favor of foreign elements operate to
produce bilingualism, or sometimes polylingualism. Those individuals of
one group who have special contact with persons of other language groups
-for example, traders, missionaries, officials, scholars, and individuals
making mixed marriages-find it more or less essential to be able to communicate directly. Such bilingualism can vary in quantity and quality. It
may range from acquisition of a mere smattering of words and grammar,
and an imperfect phonetic usage, to a grasp so complete that it calls forth
the expression "speaking like a native." Only rarely, however,' does the
adoption of a second language result in displacement of the original speech,
even though it may bring modifications in the latter's content and use.
"Language," Sapir says, "is probably the . . . most massively resistant of
all social phenomena."
Perhaps the most spectacular feature of linguistic change has been the
development of what are variously called simplified, mixed, makeshift,
jargon, or minimum languages. Among well-known examples are the Pidgin
(business) English of the China Coast, Beach-la-mar (beche-de-mer) or
Pidgins of northern Australian 'and the Pacific Islanas, Chinook Jargon of
the ~orthwest coast of America., and the Creole and other Negro or Indian
combinations with European speech found in Africa and parts pf the American continent. These all represent media developed for quick intercourse
within limited fields of information. The Asian and Pacific Pidgins and
Chinook came into existence as instruments of trade, and those of New
Guinea and other parts of Melanesia have been widely used in dealing with
mining and plantation labor, and even as a government and mission lingua
franca. The Creqle languages have been developed more to give limited
communication between differentiated social groups, e.g., between the
French, Spanish, and English elements in the southeastern United States.
The l?eoples involved in such frontier contacts usually had neither the
opportunity nor the inclination to learn one another's speech at all thoroughly. All that was necessary was to get a certain number of standardized

[73] The Field of Metalinguistics

375

ideas mutually comprehended. Makeshift languages, therefore, are built up

in the form of a vocabularly of convenience, typically with a minimized
grammatical structure, and with phonetic systems reduced to some more
or less common denominator. A factor undoubtedly making for simplification has been the marked tendency for people to "talk down" to those
ethnically different, just as adults do to a child, particularly to persons in a
subservient role, like servants or laborers. In many respects such a great
lingua franca as English has become "Pidginized" in the course of fitting
widely differing language needs and circumstances. Attempts have been
made to compound and disseminate artificial constructed languages, such as
Esperanto, Novial, and Basic English, but these have generally failed to
"take," for they involve no established relation between a linguistic form
and a cultural medium.
Anthropologists also study the widespread phenomenon of uttering
sounds which are more or less meaningless. This is exemplified by the religious ecstasy of "speaking with tongues," and the often incomprehensible
utterances made by shamans or others "possessed by spirits." Here, patterns
of grammar and meaning tend to break down, and vocalization takes more
or less random form under emotional stress or unconscious motivation (see
May, 1956).

Problem 73 . The Field of Metalinguistics

What is the relation between a people's language and their "view of

the world" as expressed in their culture?
Most people have assumed without question that their own traditional
speech is a 'superior language, and have tended to regard other languages
as "queer" or inadequate. Language has readily lent itself to glorification
among nationalist or otherwise culturally conscious groups, as is true of
European minorities and some of the new nations emerging from colonial
status. In intellectual circles, too, claims have often been made that languages are of differing worth, lare more or less abstract, favor better style,
or are more suitable for poetic expression. Primitive languages have been
rather automatically assumed Ito be inferior. It has even been asserted that
some "savage" groups had no language beyond a dozen or so words.
The historicalists of early twentieth-century anthropology rejected
firmly any such evaluations 6f language. They rightly insisted that every
speech system provides for people using it an adequate tool for carrying
their particular body of expe'rience. The fact that some languages have a
larger vocabulary than others merely results from having a wider array of
things and ideas to be labeled-it is a matter of greater cultural complexity,
not of .superiority in language. By the standard of complexity, too, some of

376

Language

the so-called primitive languages appeared to have as complicated grammars as any worked out by man anywhere. Word counts by field workers
have revealed no language with less than several thousand words, and most
have a very much larger number. (It has been pointed out, too, that the
English-speaking individual uses most of the time only some three or four
thousand words of the several hundred thousand in a comprehensive dictionary.) As Kroeber put it: "Every language is capable of indefinite modification and expansion and thereby is enabled to meet cultural demands almost
at once" (1923, p. 114).
A notable feature of language specialization is the elaboration of special vocabularies. A forest people tends to build up a vocabularly discriminating minutely the conditions of its way of life, e.g., wind in the trees, the
characteristics of local plants and animals. A cattle-herding people shows
similar discrimination relating to cattle and pastures. The industrialized society has a minute terminology for machines and gadgets, as that ethnographically revealing document, the mail-order catalogue, well shows. How
each language milieu tended to foster a distinct (but not necessarily superior) "style" for speaking and for writing is well shown in Sapir's theory
of patterning (Problem 29).
,
Out of this type of investigation, a series of important insights was
developed by Whorf, a businessman who became a specialist ih language
study. Following up the Sapir line of thought, he analyzed the view of the
world represented in certain Mexican and North American Indian languages,
particularly the Hopi Indian language. In several papers published shortly
before his death in 1942, he made a case for a relationship between language
and culture which has subsequently been called metalinguistic, i.e., in the
sense of "going beyond" the forms of language to its manner of organizing
experience. Whorf's main writings have ~een recently published in a single
volume (1956).
According to Whorf's interpretation, the Hopi language does not
separate observed experience ~o fully into distinct things, as with "sky,"
"hill," and other words of the English language, but 'rather _us~s expressions
by which elements "flow together into ,plastic synthetic creations." While
Hopi is unusually rich in defining repetitive occurrences, it is weak in its
delineations of time. Other striking differences occur which produce further
contrasting ways of viewing the world. Wharf concluded (1940) that every
language "binds the thought" of its speakers by the "involuntary patterns of
its grammar." Subh grammar "determines" not only the way we build sentences but ~lso "the way we view nature and break up the kaleidoscope of
experience into objects and entities about which to make sentences." We
cut up and organize the "spread and flow" of events as we do largely because, through our language, we are "parties to an agreement to do so," not
\">ecause "nature itself is segmented in exactly that way."

[74] Writing and Other Extensions of Speech

377

Whorf's stimulating contributions, conjoined with the conceptual impact of "operationalism" (Problem 8) ,focused keen and increasing attention among anthropologists on the relation of linguistic patterns to modes
of thought and behavior. Tests of the Whorfian hypothesis have been going
forward in other languages, such as Navaho and Chinese. While it can be
assumed that the relation between language forms and cultural sets or themes
may be consonant or consistent, most theorists appear loath to accept the
thesis that the former "determine" the latter in any comprehensive way.
The dynamics of language growth are a measure, as Hockett puts it (in
Hoijer and others, 1954), of man's successful struggles to say new things in
spite of the limitations of his current linguistic traditions. A general critique
of metalinguistics is contained in this Hoijer-edited volume.

Problem 74 . Writing and Other Extensions of Speech

What forms does writing take, and what is their history? What gains
come from mechanical and other extensions of the spoken word?
Writing has been described as a kind of roundabout speech or mechanical gesture. It comprises a series of graphic symbols (or "symbols of symbols") which hold and store information, more or less permanently according to the medium, apart from the individuals who are in communication.
Sight comes into use here, though frequently the writing an(} reading processes are accompanied by corresponding activity in the speech organs,
muted or otherwise. (Test yourself on this by reading, and then writing,
some phrases). Writing so facilitates communication and understanding as
to be counted among the most fundamental cultural elements invented by
man.
The inventions .connected with writing (Problem 19) come late in cultural history. They have also been limited in their range until recent times,
and, even where they were known, "literacy" was confined to relatively few
persons. Ethnological records spow, however, various message-carrying devices which are presumably of rilUch greater antiquity. Examples are notched
sticks (Australian Aborigines! and others), knotted cords (the Peruvian
quipus), sand paintings (as with American Indians in the Southwest), and
petroglyphs (rock markings, found in various parts of the world), which
convey information from man to man or else from man to deity.
The first step in the direchon of writing seems to have been the drawing of pictures to convey idea~. All early forms of writing include symbols
which are pictures or are recognizably derived from pictures. Though often
called a pictographic type of writing, this representational depiction falls
short of attathing specific symbols to precise language materials, even when
it may tell a kind of narrative story.

378

Language
SUN

PICTOGRAPHS

0
EJ

ANCIE.NT CHINeSE

{.

LOGOGRAPH 5 (IDEOGRAPHS)
MODeRN CHINE.SE

OTHER "CJ.lARACTERS
eXE.MPLlFIE. 0

REBUS WRITING

BELIEF

U
Nitf!J

.''''

MOUNTAIN

'"
~

LEARN

*"

11'

HABIT

PHONETIC WRITING (eXEMPLIFIeD)

DEMONSTRATED FROM
NGLISH WORDS

IDOLIZE

,W,

ABOVE

"

ROMAN

GREEK

b.

I<

HEBREW

i
6:.

:J

~
(D)

CJ>

PHOENICIAN
EGYPTIAN

SOUNDS:

'Y

(I-<)

.D

T
T

-t-

mil

(P) (T)

Forms of Writing. Chinese is used here to demonstrate a shift from

pictographic to logographic (ideographic) symbols. The principles of
rebus writing, and some phonetic symbols, including alphabet Jetters,
are shown.

The transition to true writing may have occurred through the invention of so-called rebus writing, which is a mode of expressing words and
phrases by pictures of objects or actions the names of which resemble those
words, or the syllables of which they are composed, as where we might
represent "idol" by pictures of an eye and of a doll. The name "rebus" comes
from the Latin "by things," and use of rebus characters occurs in variQus
early types of writing. Writing, proper emerges when a symbol or character
comes to represent directly a linguistic f~rm.
The earliest writing in this sense appears to have been one which
attaphed characters to word units: so-called logographic writing. "Logograms" (or logographs) appear in early Near Eastern, C~in~se, and Maya
writing. The Chinese continued this trend most fully in developing their
traditional "ideographic" writing. A basic group of signs or signals in the
form of strokes and combinations of strokes is compounded in numerous
ways to provide thousands of distinctive symbols capable of conveying all
the ideas represented by the cultural milieu. The same "characters," subject
to certain variations and limitations, were used to write not only the differing spoke~ languages of China itself but also those of Japan and parts of
southeast Asia.
Logographic communication, however, is cumbersome, as the Chinese
dictionary and typewriter illustrate. A further tendency developed in eady

[74] Writing and Other Extensions of Speech

379

centers of writing to attach fixed symbols to recurring syllables of spoken

words. A sign or signal of this kind, with its associated sound, becomes a
phonogram, e.g., as if the English word "symbol" were to be represented by
one character for the sound "sym" and one for "bol" ("bull," "bIe," and
so on). Syllabic writing requires far fewer signaling units, e.g., the modern
Japanese syllabary has only sixty-five characters.
Alphabetic writing is a further more efficient refinement of phonographic symbolism. Here the character becomes attached, if not to a
"phoneme," at least to a fairly minimal, quickly uttered unit of speech
sound. A small number of written signs, which we call "letters," can then
cover all the combinations of sound forms, as represented in spoken words,
and so convey the appropriate meanings. Distinctions can emerge more
subtly, as with "pear," "pair," "pare," as well as complications, as with
"through" and "trough."
Specialists in the history of the alphabet suggest that it may have
been worked out by a Semitic-speaking people of the Near East who in
turn may have based it on an Egyptian syllabary of some twenty-four characters. As first used, the "letters" stood for consonants only, just as in Hebrew writing the reader must add the vowels from his knowledge of the
context. The Greeks, in taking over the alphabet via the Phoenicians,
wanted signs for vowels, but needed less consonants. They therefore used
superfluous characters for vowels. This Greek alphabet ("alpha"-"beta")
is parent to modern European alphabets. Meantime, th;' earlier Semitic
model stimulated a variant offshoot in Ethiopia. The basic idea also spread
into Persia and India, and on to southeast Asia and to central and north
Asia, ultimately reaching even Korea. In spite of their numerous variant
forms, all alphabetic systems of writing trace back to the same original
source. This diffusion process was obviously linked strongly to the spread
of the great religions, with their Sanskrit, Latin, Arabic, and other written
literatures.
Writing has had a vast I fillip since printing was invented. Literacy is
now spreading rapidly among former nonliterate groups. One of the practical
tasks faced by linguists has b:een to devise a workable orthography, or writing system, for languages which have phonetic characteristics very different from, and sometimes far more complex than, our own. International
scientific agreements have be,en developed among linguistic experts to cover
these so far as possible in 'a jstandardized way. In the modern setting, such
further specializations of symbolism as the Morse and the semaphore codes,
the Braille system for the blind, elaborations of mathematical symbols, and
the rapidly developing messkge-transmitting machines of automation, have
been invented. All such supplements to the spoken word enlarge the possibilities of communication and interaction of ideas over space and time.

Language

380

Review
The distinctly human use of symbols for communication is revealed
most fully by the analysis of the precise signal~meaning systems of language.
This category of culture lends itself to specialized types of study as represented by linguistic science. Phonetic and grammatical regularities provide
notably clear illustrations of what social anthropologists mean by form and
pattern. Metalinguistic studies reveal how a people organizes its cultural
experience, including its basic world view. Language shows both strong
tendencies to persistence and great viability in the face of new perceptions.
The factors making for such stability and change are essentially those applying to culture in general, as discussed in the next chapter.

Collateral References
General anthropology texts include a section on language. Two articles by
the linguist Hoijer can be read with special profit: one in Beals, R. L. and
Hoijer, H., An Introduction to Anthropology (1953), the other in Shapiro, H.
(ed.), Man, Culture, and Society (1956). Of works concentrating on this field,
the student could refer initially to Sapir, E., Language (1921, ,reissued 1949),
Hall, R. A., Leave Your Language Alone! (1950), and Gleason, H. A., Intro~
duction to Descriptive Linguistics (1955). A rather more technical work, of
importance in the formulation of linguistics, is Bloomfield, L., Language (1933).
Examples of other important general works on the field are Jesperson
(1923), Vendryes (1925), Graff (1932), and a useful article by Boas in a
text edited by him (1938). Bloch and Trager (1942) show methods of analyzing languages in a work prepared for use (luring World War II. Technical works
written by linguists are illustrated by Sapir (papers edited by Mandelbaum,
1949), Voegelin, C. F. (1951), Iakobson and others (1952), iHoijer (1953),
ane Hoijer and others (1954), the last-named beiq.g an important symposium on
the relation of language to cu,lture. For lexicostattstics (glottochronology), see
Swadesh (1955). The work of Whorf can conveniently be seen in a collection of
his papers (1956). The wider matrix of communication is discussed by Sapir
(1931) and Bateson and Ruesch (1951). A general review and critique of
linguistics can be seen in a Kroeber-edited symposium volume on anthropology
(1953). The scope of this field of study may be seen in such technical journals
as the International Journal of American Linguistics and Language.
I

XVI

Stability and Change

REFERENCE has been made from time to time to "cultural dynamics" in the sense of factors making for persistence or change
in behavior. Here, so to speak, is the vital chemistry of culture, as of history. The long-term perspective of cultural growth, with its accumulating
"inventions," was examined in an early chapter. The contact of cultures,
with its resulting "diffusion" and "acculturation," has been noted; and likewise the continuities that come in culture and personality systems through
the training which members of a society give to each oncoming generation.
Broader influences, such as those of constitution, of habitat, and of demography, have also been seen at work.
In this chapter the spotlight will be turned directly on the factors and
processes making for stability and for change. Culture change may be
defined here broadly as a reformulation in group behavior. Such reformulation may be seen occurring from the level of individual experience, as with
being an innovator or accepting an innovation, to that of the total functional
and integrational setting of a cultural system. This field of study will be
seen as ~ rapidly developing one, though still not well organized. Its importance lies not only in the opportunities for scientific understanding of
culture through its dynamic aspects, but also in "applied" needs for analyzing and, so far as possible, P;Iedicting present-day cultural trends.
I

Problem 75 . Culturbl Dynamics as a Field of Study

Why is the study of Jow cultures change of central significance to
anthropological theory? ,
In the chapter on the<?retical perspectives, various earlier viewpoints
were seen as concerned with culture over time or culture on the move.
The evolutionists tried to work out a total sequence of human progress.
The historicalists dealt, although overmechanistically, with the "invention"
and "diffusion" of cultural elements in time and space. The European
diffusionists tried to reconstruct the total story of culture growth.

381

382

Stability and Change

With the coming of the functional viewpoint, especially of the Radcliffe-Brown "school," some account was taken of "diachronic" dimensions,
including both eunomic and dysnomic tendencies. But, in general, functionalists and configurationalists were absorbed with integrational phenomena which weighted culture to the side of persistence, and stressed the
continuity of institutions and premises, values, goals. So, too, with personality and character studies-except that here the dynamics of the
roughly two decades in which the infant become transformed into an adult
were extensively explored. In the classic models of all such later theoretical
systems, indeed, surprisingly little attention was paid to behavior over
time, taking account of possibilities of change. These approaches were
dominantly cross-sectional or "synchronic," with culture, personality, and
the social structure held stationary for purposes of analysis. This dominant
tendency was spoken of in the review section of Chapter VI as a kind of
"cultural statics." More recently, however, all these creative systems of
thought have been channeled into an increasingly strong stream of cultural
dynamics theory.
A notable feature of the newer approach to cultural dynamics is that
it concentrates research on actual situations involving stability and change,
either as observed in contemporary societies or as recorded through reliable
memory, historical documentation, or archaeological sequepces. As discussed in earlier chapters, there is still room for hypotheses relating to
longer-term history, even the total growth of human culture, including influences from biology, habitat, and the nature of culture and society. But
most of the newer work is concerned with very specific and localized situations and short-time perspectives, within which stability and change can
be analyzed more minutely: e.g., the known spread of a culture element,
a local modification in established custom, a community in transition, comparisons of rates of change 'in similar' elements in different cultures. Current thinking is directed strongly toward constructing models and formula/ing hypotheses in this field, on the basis of which dynamic regularities
in behavior may be recognized and made the basis for prediction and testing, thus strengthening the, theoretical foundations of 1:h~ science. In the
rough, of course, this is what the advertising man tries to do in selling his
goods, the judge in weighing the future of a criminal, the' educator in training children, the diplomat in measuring policy. How far there is prospect
of more accurate prediction and control through scientific understanding
will be seen as the discussion pr6ceeds.
Sys'tematic study of this type is spoken of here as relatively new.
Yet sporadic work of such a kind goes far back in the history of anthropology. The writer, in making an inventory of culture change studies within
the science (1953a), noted that as long ago as the 1860's a few journ,al
articles had appeared on such relevant topics as "anthropology and sodal

[75] Cultural Dynamics as a Field of Study

383

innovation," the experiences of missions in trying to gain Christian converts, "the destruction of aborigines" as a result of contacts with modern
civilization. By the 1890's records were accumulating on what was coming
to be called the acculturation of American Indians, including records of new
religious cults of which Mooney's study of the "Ghost Dance" (1896)
stands out (Problem 23). By the early twentieth century, British and other
authorities with "colonial" territories abroad began employing anthropologists on their overseas staffs to study and advise on problems of administration, and their writings provided significant materials on cultural
persistence, change, and attempted control.
In the first three decades of the twentieth century, each year had a
small peppering of works relevant to cultural dynamics: records of language changes, of new religious movements springing up along cultural
frontiers, of depopulation, of urban-rural relations, of nationalism, to give
some examples of topical fields (see Keesing, 1953a). An interesting case
study is that of Ishi, last member of a California Indian tribe, who was
found living in the mountains, and who became attached to the Department
of Anthropology at the Universtiy of California, where he learned to fit
into modern civilization (Waterman, 1917).
By the 1930's such studies began to gather momentum. From being
rather a side line in cultural analysis-and indeed often merely the record
of "stripping off" later acculturative influences in order to reach and describe the indigenous or aboriginal culture of pre-W1}ite times-the investigation of dynamics quite suddenly and dramatically became "fashionable" in the science. Fashion in turn changed by the 1940's to a growing
theoretical interest in problems of cultural dynamics as such; and to theoretical interest were added the needs of the expanding field of "applied
anthropology." Today, as will be seen from the analysis which follows,
this field of study has become a central one in cultural anthropology, and
represents a most active front of theory and practice.
It is often said that the many small societies which anthropologists
study offer the equivalent of a series of laboratory situations in stability
and change. Recently, however, some field workers have gone beyond the
observation and recordingl of such dynamic events to conduct actual experiments of a more or le~s controlled nature. To a degree, of course, all
"applied anthropology" work so far as it involves programs of directed
action is of such "experimental" character. But additionally it is possible,
at the theoretical level, t6 set up or influence situations in which given
propositions or hypothese~ may be tested. A potential innovation, for example, may be presented to a people, and their reactions of acceptance or
rejection analyzed. A notable series of experiments have been conducted
by Cornell anthropologists on a hacienda population at Vicos in Peru,
where an old I estate came under their control by arrangement with the

384

Stability and Clumge

Peruvian government. Their study deals with local responses over time to
certain set goals of self-government and technological achievement. Undoubtedly the field will be marked by a great deal more of such planned
experiment.

Problem 76 . Stability and Change in Culture

What kinds of "constructs" or "models" can be worked out to organize thought on these tendencies in behavior?
Two major models emerged from the initial studies of cultural dynamics, one involving internal changes in a single cultural system, as
through invention, the other involving contacts between two or more cultural
systems, as with diffusion and acculturation. These two models have continued to form a broad framework for work relating to stability and change.
Study of single cultural systems over time has been much less systematically attacked than study of culture contact. This can be understood
when a reminder is given that the latter type of problem was thrust upon
the anthropological observer by the fact that so-called primi!ive cultures
were everywhere coming under the impact of civilization. The sailor and
soldier, the trader, the missionary, the government official, the'settler, and,
later, the tourist were active instrumentalities of change; even the anthropologist himself in the field had an impact often profound 'because of the
intimacy of his contacts.
Older viewpoints generally assumed, and sometimes stated openly,
that cultures in isolation are almost wholly static. They admitted an occasional internal change, as represented by an "invention," but the picture
was one of a stable tradition, transl1litted with Ilittle modification from
generation to generation. Few peoples other than those within the framework of civilization were on the move. This model of the cultural stability
of jsolated societies is now s~en to be- artificial and erroneous. It was based
first on popular impressions and secondly oil'inadequi\te. interpretations
of culture and society.
Some anthropological theorists have gone to the other extreme, stating
that every culture is in a constant and continuous state of change. Without
adequate explanation, this statement may be equally misleading. Proper
perspective on this problem must see forces making both for stability and
for change. Bdfore a more detailed discussion it may be noted that a
closer look at behavior tends to bring a panorama of change into view.
Children; for example, are encountering new experience as they learn the
adult traditions. Each person is developing and elaborating his own unique
organization of cultural and social experience, putting his own innovative
stamp on behavior through perception, selection, and choice. Individuals

[76] Stability and Change in Culture

385

and groups having different statuses are interacting, and sometimes generating conflict, even perhaps to the extreme of frustration and breakdown
of patterned habits. The whole picture is of an "open" rather than a
"closed" system. At the same time, particularly when larger trends are
being examined, there are also strong "self-correcting mechanisms" present
which make for the appearance of stability and duration: repetitive learning and habit formation, approximations of individual behavior around
modes or patterns, the normative grip of premises, values, goals which
integrate the way of life, the strong affective states which accumulate around
conformity to rules and beliefs. Most characteristically, therefore, any
model of a cultural system in isolation tends to approximate what has
variously been called an "equilibrium," a "steady state," a condition of
homeostasis ("same-standing"). Similarly, the usually slow, voluntary
changes which take place from within a cultural system tend to have
a consistent directional flow and character earning them the name of
cultural drift.
The relative weighting of stability and of change in any given cultural
system, and more specifically in particular dimensions of group and personal behavior within the system, is a matter for research. One society over
a given period may approximate closely to a homeostatic model. It is a
matter in question as to whether any larger cultural system, such as "a
culture" (taken as ;t whole), would be without permanent or "irreversible"
changes in process at any given time, as with linguistic shifts, creativity in
the arts, economic adjustments to varying availability of resources in the
external habitat, or responses to biological and demographic variations
such as changes in age and family composition. The expectation is that no
society is withou( some margin of enduring cultural innovation in progress.
Somewhat more in question is how far major reformulations in an
ongoing tradition are likely to take place without some external stimulation,
i.e., some impetus of direct or indirect contact with other cultural traditions.
Models can be constructed Which picture, say, some individual proclaiming new visions 'of religious 1truth, or an individual or group discovering
some technical short-cut w~ich meets an accepted goal more efficiently.
Changes could also be stimulated by shifts in habitat conditions, as slowly
by an Ice Age, or suddenly!by a volcanic outbreak; by organic changes,
as in modifications in disease immunities; by shifts in the size and other
demographic dimensions of ithe group. Such "spontaneous" invention, as
Kroeber calls it, must surel~ have occurred at times to trigger off initial
developments in the societi~s of origin of many innovations in world culture history, even granting; .the importance of cross-cultural stimulation
and "fertilization" in ideas (Problem 23). How far and how rapidly an
isolated society may change its basic value system or "social integration"
is at this stage a matter for speculation. The most dynamic model of change,

386

Stability and Change

perhaps always involving some leaven from outside influences, is that of

revolution. Kroeber (1948) speaks of revolutions as suddenly precipitated
changes, with more or less violence, which affect a considerable total portion of a culture, and are brought about by "an accumulation of arrears,
or lag, in progressive change." The resulting alteration in culture patterns
"tends to be excessive, and is likely to be given up again in early reaction."
He contrasts, in his examples, the marked tendencies toward accelerated
and even revolutionary changes in large and dynamic societies with the
characteristic stability of the small isolated cultures.
Models of the dynamics of the completely self-contained culture and
society are necessarily inferential. No scientist can observe a completely
isolated group in the contemporary world-he would not be there, or
written records would not be kept, if it were so. Culture contact situations,
by contrast, are on every hand for model construction and testing. The
question has recently been raised as to whether the behavioral processes
at work in the contact and interaction of two cultures are really any different from those constantly operating in the dynamic settings of a single
cultural system. One very significant dimension does appear, however, to
the extent that the two- cultures are unlike. In a single cultural system,
even under highly dynamic conditions, there is a unifying groundwork
of experience as represented by common premises, values, goals which
the interacting groups and individuals share. To the extent,that two cultures
in contact are different, the group and individual are faced with alternative
total systems of cultural integration and personality structure. The contact
situation here certainly merits separate constructs or models, even while
recognizing that many components will be the same.
As early as 1880, Powell, director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, spoke of indigenous traditiqns as being changed by the "force of
acculturation under the overwhelming presen<:;e of millions of civilized
people." In 1898, McGee, in a paper on what he called "piratical accultura=;tion," said:
Human development . . . ,may be measured by the degr6e in which devices
and ideas are interchanged and fertilized in the process of transfer, i.e., by the
degree of acculturation. In the higher culture-grades . . . the interchange is
friendly and purposive; this is amicable acculturation. 'In the lower culturegrades . . . the interchange is largely inimical and adventitious; this may be,
called piratic,al acculturation (1~98, p. 243].
I

The term acculturation is seen here as coming into use, though often
interchangeably with "diffusion." In due course, however, the two terms
were technically distinguished. "Diffusion" came to represent a specific
transfer of a cultural element from one culture context to another. ~'Ac
culturation," however, came to have in some respects wider, and in others
,

[76] Stability and Change in Culture

387

narrower, meanings. In a definitiv~ discussion of the term offered in 1936

by a committee of the Social Science Research Council, consisting of Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits (1936), it was distinguished as covering
"those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different
cultures come into continuous firsthand contact, with subsequent changes
in the original culture patterns of either or both groups." Acculturation
involves direct and usually prolonged contact, and a cumulative process
of culture transfer and reformulation.
A further concept appearing in the earlier literature is that of assimilation, e.g., as in the "assimilation" of Negro popUlations in the New World.
Some students have used this term in a cultural sense to refer to the process
by which introduced elements become totally accepted into a new cultural
milieu, e.g., a diffused custom is "assimilated." More usually, however,
anthropologists follow the sociological usage of considering assimilation
to occur where members of one ethnic group are fully integrated culturally
and socially into another ethnic group. Seen in terms of total human history,
- this has undoubtedly been an important thread, as with the assimilation of
conquered or conquering peoples; but in terms of currently observable
dynamics it is a comparative rarity except with individual and family
migrants. Examples which would call for somewhat different model construction in each case are an immigrant minority group cut off from its
homeland, a small minority group surrounded by an immigrant majority,
and the consolidation from heterogeneous elements of a larger national
or ethnic whole.
/
Far more typically, acculturation is a highly selective process in which
a group undergoing culture contact maintains its social identity and to a
degree its cultural distinctiveness and integrity. We have already encountered one model here which has had importance in social theory, that of
the "folk society" (Problem 29). As with Latin-American peasantries, such
a milieu typically combines in some new equilibrium surviving elements
from an indigenous way iof life with selected and reinterpreted elements
from an outside, domina~tly rural, tradition. Where two cultural systems
merge in this way to fonn a distinctive third system,. the process has been
called cultural fusion. Btit many other dimensions may be isolated here,
from which theoretical constructions can be built up.
One situation of gre~t theoretical interest is that of the society undergoing initial contacts withia culture different from its own. This is concerned
with the time period immediately beyond what has been called the "base
line" of acculturation, i.~., the cultural system in existence as interaction
begins. Such a base line would be the moment in some of the Pacific Island
cultures that the ship of Captain Cook or some other voyager topped the
ocean horizon, shocking the islanders into a realization that there were
people and ways of life very different from their own, hence dealing their

388

Stability and Change

cherished view of the world in some respects a mortal blow. Often the
anthropologist may be able to ascertain in such situations what traditional
tools, ideas, and other cultural elements were the first to be modified or
abandoned, and what foreign elements were initially accepted or rejected.
Unfortunately, historical records of such initial contacts are scattered and
imperfect, while in only a few remote corners of New Guinea and South
America can firsthand observation still be made today. Nevertheless, some
significant materials are already available.
EXAMPLE.

INITIAL CONTACT OF A PAPUAN GROUP WITH WHITES

w. R. Humphries, a government patrol officer with anthropological training, entering hitherto unpenetrated territory in New Guinea, describes in his
Patrolling in Papua (London, 1923) the reactions of the local people to his
patrol's equipment. The villagers, he says, sat by the campfire and amused
themselves by looking at compasses, waterproof matchboxes, sunglasses, flashlights, and other objects very confidently until someone accidentally pressed the
button of a flashlight and beamed the light full on them. "Immediately," he
reports, "there was a howl of dismay from the whole crowd. Some of them fell
backwards and took to their heels."
Another type situation of theoretical interest is that of the society
in the final phases 0/ assimilation, or at least in a state of near assimilation, to another sociocultural milieu. Here will show mosi notably what
has been exceptionally persistent in the older culture, and also what elements of the "donor" culture are most tenaciously resisted, or else have
been acceptable in significantly changed form only. Some American Indian
groups directly in the pathways of intensive white settlement, as well as
the Polynesian Hawaiians and Maoris~ are examples of peoples who in
most aspects of their lives might today hardly be recognized (apart from
skin color) to be different from the immigrant peoples who now outnumber
the,m. Here anthropological studies are often available, and continuing firsthand observations feasible. Such situations lend themselves to controlled
comparison, and so to the 'possibility of isolating any- regularities from
situation to situation. It has been postulated, for instance, that great persistence appears, in all the known cases, in characteristics, acquired in early
personality training, in intimate family customs, in use and enjoyment of
staple foods, and, perhaps above all else, in beliefs, with attendant emotions, relating t'o "black" magic (sorcery, witchcraft), and other harmful
spiritual forces generally, that is, in areas of life marked by great personal
insecurity and fear.
Another common acculturative situation occurs when two cultural
systems in contact maintain a more or less symbiotic or side-by-side rela;tion, each keeping its own identity and integrity, yet takin~ over selectively

[76] Stability and Change in Culture

389

some elements from the other. This is particularly likely to happen where
marked racial, ethnic, or linguistiC differences block assimilation, as in
modern Fiji, where Whites, Fijians, and a large migrant population from
India carryon their own traditions while playing interdependent roles
within a larger sociocultural system. Models based on this situation are of
particular help in explaining the extensive historical processes of diffusion
by which cultural elements have spread between groups in contact without
undermining the essential integrity of such groups. What has been called
"borrowing" in the linguistic sphere is an example of this diffusion (Problem 72).
The vast number of acculturation fronts over the world share certain
variable characteristics which may be used to develop more specific types
or models of culture contact. One is the obvious variable of time span.
Other factors being equal, it might be postulated that the longer the time,
the more the acculturation. But in actual happenings this is not universally
true. Some societies, after a period of rapid acceptance of new elements,
may turn back the clock, so to speak, in some "contra-acculturative" movement, such as will be described shortly, in which older elements are selectively revived. Over a given time span, one group may shift at a rapid
pace, while another holds firmly to much of the old way of life. Of the
Pacific Island Micronesians, the Palau peoples are currently eager for innovation, while their near neighbors, the Yap peoples, are highly conservative.
Another important variable is that of size, particularly relative population numbers. It might be expected that a majority group would tend to
assimilate, or at least act as the major donor in an acculturative exchange,
especially if it is much larger than the minority; and where two groups
are abo~t the same size, the postulate might be that they would have about
a fifty-fifty relation. But again this is anything but true universally, as could
be illustrated from cases where small powerful groups-horsed warriors,
for example, dominating agricultural communities-may exercise power
over larger groups.
.
Here an interesting yariable which the writer has called elsewhere
momentum (1953b) may be influential. Some groups, in a contact situation, tend toward passivit~, even retreat. Others are aggressive, as where
military forces, officials, missionaries, and others may make an active and
even planned impact, often holding that they are correctly the donors and
the other people the recipients. A small aggressive group with marked
momentum is likely to "dtrry the cultural ball" so long as a large group
with which it is interacting remains passive; however, typically the latter
tends in turn to generate forces of momentum which become set in opposition. Further models here, which the reader may illustrate from his own
knowledge, are two passive societies in contact, a setting favorable to

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Stability and Change

symbiosis or side-by-side relations, and two societies with high momentum

pressing upon one another.
An additional variable here is the effectiveness of contact along the
acculturation front. One group may have only a few selective mediators,
such as the officials, missionaries, and others spoken of above. Interaction
may be limited mainly to elite levels, so that the great bulk of the society's
members and the main arc of the culture are not in effective contact. By
contrast, the whole leadership, the communication system, and other key
elements in another society may be interpenetrated. The student of acculturation must understand fully the specific nature of such relations to understand group responses. Assimilation could only come about, for example,
as the whole front of experience becomes effectively interrelated.
A variable, important in shaping relationships, is that of place, or
spatial distribution. It is a matter of general observation that a group remaining in its familiar habitat is likely to show greater cultural stability
than one which is mobile or migrant, opening the way to wider contacts.
But again exceptions may occur, as where a migrant enclave, perhaps under
pressure, or a traditionally mobile people, such as a Gypsy group, holds
more firmly to many old ways; perhaps even more than stay-at-homes.
Both groups may, in a given case of contact, remain in their "home" places,
one only may be migrant, or both may be migrant.
{
Another highly significant variable is that of hierarchy, or relative
prestige status. Two groups in contact tend to develop self-images and
images of the other involving superiority or inferiority, superordination
or subordination, power or weakness. For example, a people who recognizes
that its traditional technology and other problem-solving instrumentalities
are demonstrably less efficient when confronted with alternatives is likely
to experience acute inferiority. Widely present arel situations in which one
group believes in, and acts out, a dominant role, and the other accepts its
evaluation as a subordinate or satellite.- But other situations involve two
grojlPs each believing itself superior; or one group judging the other as
inferior while the latter does 'not accept the judgment and so counts itself
superior. Still another series, of possibilities occurs in whiCh groups may
count themselves as equals or peers. A stance in which two groups interact
in a relation approximating to equality is one strongly pressed in contemporary international diplomacy, as favorable to ethnic integrity. By
contrast the typical "colonial" relationship has been one of subordination.
Most of the characteristics of contact situations discussed to this point
involve rather clear-cut distinctions, easily illustrated from the reader's
personal knowledge. Certain other variables are of a greater order of generality or abstraction, and are more difficult to assess.
One is the relative flexibility or adaptability of the cultural system~
I

[76] Stability and Change in Culture

391

in contact. Some cultures, in terms of their values and other integrating

characteristics, have a kind of all-or-nothing rigidity, as a result of isolation
and homogeneity, of specialized habitat adjustments, of very elaborated
social structure, of a religion of great certainties, or similar factors. What
Leighton and Smith (1955) call their "threshold of tolerance" for change
does not easily admit innovation. In an acculturative situation, to use a
metaphor, the people may break rather than bend. Other cultures show
great inherent flexibility in the sense that the people take acculturation in
their stride. This is particularly so where a group has a long history of dealings with other people, in which they have developed mobile habits of
adaptation. Peoples occupying historic pathways of migration and zones of
great popUlation mobility, such as the western Europeans and the Malays
of southeast Asia, are good examples, as well as the modern industiral society. Alternatively, a people may happen at the time of contact to be in
a state of cultural disequilibrium which leaves them particularly open to
change. In the contact situation, both groups may be rigid, both flexible,
or one group flexible while the other has to make a sudden break from the
base line of cultural tradition. A rigid system, if not thrown into disorganization at an early stage, is more likely to be marked by forces of stability,
and to organize defensively in the face of external challenge (Problem 79).
The flexibility factor is also important where models of internal change are
being considered.
Another variable of great generality is the compatipility or congruence
("fitting together") of the cultural systems in contact. Two cultures may,
through past historical connections or as a result of parallel invention, have
a considerable similarity. This may particularly open the way to easy and
extensive acculturation to the extent that critical zones of the culture such
as the basic technologies and the premise and value systems prove to be
consistent or harmonious. People here find familiar footholds for learning
and understanding. At th~ other extreme, two cultures may be so different
that there are virtually no bridges between them, and an individual trying
to go over to the new cu~ture has to abandon his own and start learning
from the beginning. Vividj case studies are provided, for example, by Australian Aborigine groups faced by the white Europeans. Here the Aborigine
way of life has often beco1ne socially shattered and culturally disorganized
to a point where survival ;is threatened, and in many instances tribes have
gone out of existence (Elkin, 1948). A technology of digging-stick cultivation, too, does not easily ~provide a "fit" for tractors.
Sometimes congruerice appears to show a kind of reverse twist, in
which one group reads ihto behaviors of the other a kind of idealization
or escape d~am for its own troubles. Thus the white man may think a
South Sea island a lotus land, while the islander may grasp at the white

392

Stability and Change

man's power and education as a new kind of more efficient magic. Incompatibilities, however, often show in mutual contempt, pity, or amused
tolerance at the other's strange and exotic behaviors.
Out of the combined operation of all these variable factors, the cultural
analyst may make an over-all characterization in ter~s of the total response
or proportionate degree of change and reformulation over time. Anthropologists and others often say: "This culture has remained stable"; "That
culture is greatly changed." We often talk in a comprehensive way of "progress," in our own culture. Older evolutionary ideas of "stages," it was seen,
projected such assessments onto culture history at large. The dynamic
construct here has a scope rather equivalent to that of total-culture integration, dealt with earlier. Where cultures are in contact, both may remain in
this broad sense little changed, one may change little and the other much,
or both may change greatly. In "assimilation," as already seen, one culture
changes to a point where it merges wholly into the other.
All these types, constructs, or models have involved very general
propositions. When the processes are examined, we shall see, as indeed
we know from experience, that the detailed happenings of change, persistence, and resistance vary minutely. Some individuals have contact with
innovations and with influences from outside ahead of others. Leaders may
be mobile, going off to the towns, while ordinary people stay home. Migrants may move back and forth. A person may accept passively or voluntarily today what tomorrow he will attack or resist, and on a day of high
morale he may feel superior, but on another day experience the sensations
of the underdog. A dynamic system, though yielding a total impression of
flexibility, will be adaptable in some zones of behavior but rigid in others
(Problem 81). What is considered compatible in an outside system by _Qne
individual may be heartily disliked by aQother. Any total response estimate,
therefore, is merely a composite weighting of the ways in which, in a given
cultural system, technology, social structure, religion, language, and other
bel;1avioral facets have been c4anged in their details or have resisted change.
To this point we have tried to distinguish'regularitles in the passing
stream of historical events an'd to establish the range and frequency of type
situations as a basis for greater understanding and prediction. Now the
discussion may turn more directly to major processes that' mark dynamism
in culture: innovation (including "invention"), cultural transmission or
transfer, and cu~tural adaptation ~r readjustment.
I

Problem 77 . Innovation
What understandings come from studying the creation and adoptio.Q
of new cultural elements?
I

[77] Innovation

393

As seen earlier, much attention was given in anthropological theory

to acts of invention, i.e., literally "coming into" (something new). Invention was thrown into juxtaposition with diffusion in which an invention
entered another cultural system. Invention, as might be expected, has been
widely discussed by scientists and also by humanists who want to understand "creativity," as in musical composition or a philosophical idea.
Later students of culture change have been inclined to use the wider
term innovation for acts of cultural creativity. This draws attention not
only to the original inventor of a new cultural element, but also to innovators who try it out in new cultural systems. When, for example, the first
Indian caught the idea that the trader's blanket, a bedcovering for the white
man, could serve his needs as a warm garment, was this a creative act any
different in psychological or sociocultural texture from that which brought
the blanket into existence initially?
The problem of invention intrigued a number of the "historicalists,"
even while they were resistant to admitting psychological lines of thought
- into their analyses. Dixon offered the best-known earlier anthropological
interpretation in his The Building of Cultures (1928). He distinguished
between discovery, the chance or "accidental finding of something previously unobserved," and invention, "the purposeful creation of something
radically new." The casual discovery of a new food, for example, may lead
to further purposeful inventions regarding its development. The inventor
brings together factors of "opportunity," "observation," and "a measure of
genius" (pp. 34-37). Kroeber (1948) and others question the universality
of the statement that "necessity is the mother of invention" in the sense
that unfulfilled needs generate innovation. The economist Veblen, indeed,
reversed the proverb by saying that "invention is the mother of necessity."
Case studies of innovation show, however, that inventions have a low
chance of acceptance into the ongoing cultural tradition unless they are
congruent with, and so fit into, the pattern of the established needs, values,
goals.
:
Kroeber stresses the f~ctor of "accident" in discovery and invention,
and he also cites a number, of cases where inventions originated in an atmosphere of "play." He stfesses the "cumulative" tendency by which one
invention reveals further problems for solution, so that a combination of
"antecedent" units may bu'ild up into a "complex" invention, as with the
automobile. Anthropologi9al discussions give a reminder, now hardly
needed, that the populari, conception of invention as concerned with
mechanical devices is und~ly narrow.
Dixon's reference to "a measure of genius" undoubtedly came from
his knowledge of outstanding inventors and of the spectacular nature of
many of the inventions of modern times. It also reflects the sense of the
historicalist that few inventions became caught up in the earlier streams

394

Stability and Change

of human culture-at least proportionately to the totality of human individuals who have been cultural transmitters. Such an invention as the bow
and arrow, or the plow, shows later variation but in general the picture is
one of great sameness. Once, however, study of the individual and his
relation to culture became admitted, this limited view of invention had to
change dramatically.
What now came to the fore was the realistic fact of individual variability. Each person throughout the cycle of his organic life is involved in
a continuous series of "innovative" acts: kicking and moving in the womb,
crying and suckling as a newborn infant, exploring his crib, experimenting
with sounds, and in due course molding idiosyncratic behavior around cultural and social patterns. Especially in waking hours he initiates fresh acts
in dressing, doing his toilet, putting speech materials together, acting as a
kinsman or marital partner, facing problems of going between the inside
and outside of buildings, looking up travel schedules, and so on throughout
the time-stream of activity. In a sense the "inventive" or "innovative" act,
might be looked at as the "atom," so to speak, of behavioral sequence.
Such individual acts reassemble the cultural and personal experience into
ever-varying rearrangements around the group mode or norm. A large proportion of them will probably neyer be repeated in exactly simllar form;
many will, and so become personal habits; here and there, such an individual variant in behavior attracts audience attention, is emulated, and
starts on its way to establishing a new group mode of at least temporary
fashion but possibly becoming part of the continuing cultural milieu, e.g.,
a bon mot in the theater, a makeshift tool, a new cooking recipe, a fresh
religious interpretation. The following are some examples of possible experimental materials:

Exercises
1. What (for men) are your successive steps in shaving? In any group,
! some will be found who start from the upper right cheek; others from
the upper left cheek, still others from und~r the right or left ear, or
under the chin, or under 'the nose.
'
What (for women) are your successive steps in applying cosmetics? Here, too, variations may be anticipated.
:
From what source was the habit pattern learned? Some will have
been self-taught, others will have imitated another individual, have followed a parentally taught habit, have read the advice of an "expert,"
and1so on.
2. Picture yourself coming home and finding the front door locked and
your key inside. What steps would you take?
3. Note some new theatrical, campus, laboratory, or other term which is
"going the rounds." What can you ascertain about its origin?

[77] Innovation

395

The question inevitably arises ~s to whether "innovation" at this level

is of the same texture as Dixon's "inventions" calling for a "measure of
genius." The second exercise is particularly apt here, as it gives a sense of
what happens in an actual situation calling for creativity. The person locked
out "perceives" a situation or problem which is by no means entirely fresh,
and is quite unlikely to engage in random behavior. He may, according
to his selection of possibilities from his store of cultural and personal experience, respond by trying windows, getting a second key from a relative,
ringing the police department for help, making it an excuse for doing something else as an alternative to getting inside. In other words, innovation
calls for the recognition and evaluation of a problem, the weighing of alternatives, and trial of potential lines of action, all within the existing cultural and personal context. This has been summed up as an act of selective
perception. The innovator serves as a kind of catalyst of the bits and pieces
which others do not put together and so perceive in quite the same relationship. In this psychological-cultural focus the minor innovative act and
-the major invention by a "genius" would appear to have the same texture.
The difference would lie in the socially evaluated magnitude of the problem
and of the result. It is well, however, to stress the creative character of the
process in the individual mind-some discussions of invention now go to
the other extreme of picturing the cultural situation as presenting actively
a critical combination of experience which the inventor perceives as a kind
of passive or mechanical agent.
'
Is this, then, at all different from what happens wh6n an "innovator"
accepts an element from another cultural system, as in the initial step of
"diffusion"? The individual concerned acts here, too, as a catalyst of elements which become juxtaposed and "selectively perceived," as a result of
which he ,makes a choice of the new as against the old. But while the psychological quality of the event may be the same, the cultural and personal
dimensions are multiple. Two traditions are involved, usually with much
. sharper alternatives for chdice, and above all the outside cultural system
provides, so to speak, a working model of the possible innovation as a basis
for learning. At the same ~ime the individual almost .inevitably puts his
own cultural and personal interpretation upon such an outside model-and
indeed it may be drasticallyl modified at the point of perception, as will be
seen below.
The writer has recently suggested (1953a) that initial acts of discovery or invention be call~d primary innovati(m and initial acts of adoption into another cultural ,system be called secondary innovation; or the
latter might be called something like transfer innovation. These, however,
are only the high points in establishing any new cultural element. In terms
of individual behavior, its further spread also depends on personal acts
of perception, learning, and acceptance. In due course it may gather be-

396

Stability and Change

hind it the weight of favorable choice and value approval of the society at
large and so become incorporated through continuing enculturation processes into the ongoing cultural tradition. This turns attention to the problem
of cultural transfer or transmission, which will be dealt with in the next
section.

Problem 78 . Growth, Loss, and Reformulation

How do cultural elements spread, build up, get extinguished, and
undergo reformulation?
This subject has received most attention as it applies to "transactions"
between a "donor" culture and a "recipient" culture, as in diffusion and
acculturation, and their effects upon the latter milieu. But it is also relevant
for the understanding of additions and subtractions within a single cultural
system.

Do 5 ga
W/a

~ma

9na

Iqua

Gwa

~dla

WVQ

Stimulus Diffusion: the Cherokee Indian Syllabary. A syllabic alphabet

worked out by Sequoya, in 1821, to write the Cherokee language.
Twelve 0/ eighty-five letters are shown, with the syllables which they _
represent. The Cherokees became e:{tensively literate in this writing
system. Sequoya evidently knew 0/ the English alphabet, but not how
to use it.

Diffusion, in the historicalist sense, involved transfer o~ elements from

one culture to another. From merely descriptive recording of such happenings, students of the subject were inevitably led to look into the processes
involved. Wissler (1923) distinguished diffusion into two types: natural,
or based upon chance contacts and voluntary choices; and "organized,"
where purposive and sometimes compulsive effort goes into cultural transfer. Kroeber
(1948) speaks of the first type as "voluntary" or "spontaneI
ous" diffusion. He also distinguishes "contact diffusion" from "stimulus
diffusion" or "idea diffusion." In the latter case, what has been called above
the working model in the donor culture fails to penetrate, hut the idea or
principle stimulates a related invention in the recipient culture, e.g., an
illiterate part-Cherokee Indian, Sequoya, aware in the early nineteenth

[78] Growth, Loss, and Reformulation

397

century that Whites had a system of writing, developed a distinct alphabet.

Kroeber points out that this process could equally be called "stimulus invention." Other concepts here include "antagonistic diffusion," recognizing
that elements may pass even between groups hostile to each other, and
"controlled diffusion," indicative of the fact that a recipient group may
deliberately lay down rules of choice.
The innovative aspects of stimulus diffusion are clearly an extreme
case of the modifications which must always be present in some degree in
behavioral transfer from group to group, and even from individual to individual. Boas (1927) pointed to the "inner forces . . . [by] which foreign
elements are remodeled according to the [prevalent] pattern" of the recipient culture. Lowie (1940) speaks of diffusion as both a selective and
a creative process. As noted in an example earlier, a white man's bedcovering became an Indian garment. Attention was also called to the way preexisting elements would tend to become modified as new elements penetrated the cultural fabric.
A process of cultural loss or extinction was also noted by various students to be part of this dynamic picture. This might result either through
"displacement" of older elements by innovations, or through obsolescence
of elements internal to a system. Kroeber (1948), in what is probably the
most systematic discussion of cultural loss, cites examples of how environmental limitations, decline of skills, shrinkage of population, or impoverishment may bring about the decline or disappearance of cultural elements,
e.g., absence of pottery in Pacific islands with little or no suitable clay, loss
of canoe-making technique by the most northerly Eskimo group out of the
range of driftwood. His work also includes a discussion of the more or less
total disappearance of a cultural system, or what by analogy he calls "cultural death." He notes, however, that apart from the rare total extinction of
a group' (e.g., the Tasmanian Aborigines), the society concerned goes on,
as happened in Egypt or Greece. What, therefore, may be involved is "the
dissolution of a particular assemblage of cultural content, configurated in a
more or less unique set
patterns" pertaining to that society in former
times (pp. 382-385). Such cases, however, rarely show with sharp distinctiveness. Kroeber, in a q~ite monumental work (1944), tried to isolate
regularities in the "rise and fall" of various historical traditions within
Western civilization; but His results were largely negative. Typically, under
conditions of change, older elements are likely to become modified in form
and function rather tha~ dropping entirely out of the behavioral habit
system, e.g., the candle (froblem 5). Only over longer time periods, or in
highly dynamic situations, of contact, is cultural reformulation or loss likely
to show at all starkly.
The processes of modification in new and old elements under dynamic
conditions have been summed up by different scholars in a series of related

at

398

Stability and Change

concepts, among them adjustment, readaptation, reorientation, reinterpretation, indigenization, syncretization ("blending"), synthesis, and (preferred by the writer) reformulation. The very number of these terms, perhaps alarming to the beginner in theory, indicates the wide interest in
trying to pin down these processes. Actually four major alternatives are
possible:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Adoption of new cultural elements.

Rejection of new cultural elements.
Retention of old cultural elements.
Discarding of old cultural elements.

Each of these alternatives involves highly selective choices or value judgments of preference for individuals and groups. Clearly the process is not
a mathematical addition and subtraction, but one of modification, the
dynamics of which affect the interrelations of cultural elements and the total
integration of the cultural system.
An innovation, whether locally invented or introduced from outside,
becomes established by gaining a functional relationship which integrates
it with the ongoing culture. Like a pebble thrown into a pool, its effects spread
out more or less far and wide. To a degree, it may be said to'modify the
whole cultural system as involving an integrative realignment. A newly
introduced tool, for example, may not only make for more efficient use;
it is likely to put out of work the makers of the older tool for which it is
substituted; prestige now runs with ability to use the new tool rather than
the old; the work timetable is likely to be changed because of greater efficiency; a segment of religion connected with the power of the old tool becomes obsolete; and so on and, on. This illustration also shows how cultural
loss involves corresponding processes of functional and integrational realignment. Sometimes the more immeoiate impa~t of an innovation is
called "primary" and the longer-term repercussions "secondary." Understaryding of these points makes clear how difficult "applied", manipulation
of a culture is. An official or a missionary may, attack a cultural element
judged "undesirable" only to,find other elements which they heartily support tumbling down as well, or even instead; a cultural system pressed at
one point may show the main effects in an entirely unexpected zone. Earlier
case studies of the diffusion of the horse among North American Indians
of the Plains and of Eskimo acculturation are highly relevant here (Problems 23, 25). I
A factor seen to be of great importance is the hierarchical position,
or prestige status, of the individual innovator and of the initial group which
may accept his innovation. In general, the easily formulated proposition appears to hold true that an innovation has the best chance of becoming established in a group if it is approved by, and so becomes associated with;

[78] Growth, Loss, and Reformulation

399

Change in Form and Function: a New Guinea Ceremonial Ax. This

large, ornamented type of stone ax, used in the MI. Hagen highlands
area as a form of gift exchange, has been modified in shape so that it
would be awkward as a tool or weapon.

leaders and other persons of high status. Not infrequently, however, the
anthropologist notes that the "elite" person moves ahead of the mass in
promoting innovations. It is sometimes found, then, that the cultural element concerned is being used in a symbolic and even monopolistic sort of
way to add to the distinctive prestige of the leader, e.g., Western clothing
or housing in an area where they have not yet strongly penetrated. By contrast, elite persons may firmly support an old cultural element when persons
of lesser status are adopting the new, the latter perhaps/involving hope of
raising prestige status and advancing personal welfare. Behavioral changes
may sometimes take place more readily among lower-class groups in which
noblesse oblige does not serve to enforce conformity, or among young people whose conduct is not taken too seriously. Each case has to be studied
in term~ of the specific operation of status factors, especially when "applied"
problems call for the use of leaders in the hope of influencing the situation
concerned: all this is equiilly true as regards status responses involved in
cultural loss.
Numbers of field workers have noted that the form and the function
of a cultural element tend to respond independently under dynamic conditions. Form may remairl and function change, or vice versa. They have
also noted that the form Iof a cultural element is likely to diffuse more
readily than its function., That is, an element tends to take on a revised
meaning or functional significance
as it becomes fitted into the new context
I,
of the recipient culture or,jmore specifically, the personal habits. The American Indian might use thitpbles for sacred ornaments on a "medicine bag";
we may use an Asian religious image as a house ornament. It has also been
noted that cultural elements tend to diffuse most easily in their minimal
"trait" units rather than as whole institutions or trait-complexes or value
systems-the latter are likely to be greatly modified in, any process of ac-

400

Stability and Change

ceptance. Similar propositions could be entertained by the reader in relation to cultural loss. A group living on a tropical atoll, while keeping its
canoes, may modify some old art form or abandon bark cloth for clothing.
What factors, then, operate to govern selection or choice here? The
point of decision is clearly one of marked cultural self-consciousness where
usages and values which hitherto may have been largely "unconscious" are
likely to come to attention. Many students have stressed a principle of
utility. Old elements are held to, or new elements accepted, when they are
judged to have greater usefulness than any new or old elements with which
they may be respectively compared. Correspondingly, the old will be discarded, or the new rejected, if they are considered inferior. Where a new
element involves no competition with an old element, it makes headway on
what are believed to be its demonstrable merits. These principles certainly
underlie the activities of the advertising man or salesman.
But the matter goes further than this. Linton, in a provocative analysis
of acculturation (1940), puts forward additional principles or factors of
prestige and compatibility. A new element, he says, to be acceptable, must
not lower the prestige or hierarchical status situation of the recipient, and
preferably should raise it. Moreover, it must be compatible, or congruent,
with the new cultural context. Both these factors have already been referred
to in the discussion of special variables on the basis of which models can
be built. They lead back as does utility directly to the val~e system of the
culture concerned, i.e., individual and group judgments of the worth of new
and old elements as expressed in affectively charged choices. It has been
said metaphorically that the values of a culture, particularly the "basic"
values, act as "watchdogs" or "censors" permitting or inhibiting entry and
exit of cultural elements. Values, in other words, have a screening effect
on stability and change.
\
I

Exercises
1. Think of some line of conduct which fs' practiced in another culture,
and make a judgment as to your reactions if it were proposed that you
adopt it. How do you react, say, to the idea of one major meal a day,
marrying only your first cousin, eating dog meat, burying a wife at the
husband's death, a special tax on bachelors?

2. Pictufl? a situation where you were challenged to discard some element

!n your own way of life, and examine your reactions. How would you
respond, say, to discarding the wearing of hats, the eating of potatoes
or some other staple food, the public marriage ceremony, the private
use of firearms?

To the extent that important established values are evoked when old
and new culture elements confront the individual or the group for voluntary

[78] Growth, Loss, and Reformulation

401

decision, the existing element is likely to be persistently adhered to. Only

if the new element demonstrates that it fits in with important values better,
or at least is not in conflict with them, is it likely to gain wide acceptance.
To the extent that a prospective innovation is instrumental in the sense that
it may serve existing values, it is more likely to gain acceptance than where
it carries a new value charge of its own. As your reactions to the above
exercises would show, any sharp deviation in behavior from the accepted
core of basic values would tend to bring about more or less violent emotional disturbances in the individual, as well as group revulsions. A newly
adopted element, too, tends to be reformulated in terms of the currently
accepted value system. A number of theorists have stated that so long as the
basic value system of a culture remains reasonably firm, selective change
through innovation and loss can proceed with minimum strain or disturbance to the cultural equilibrium.
But values themselves may undergo change-a particularly crucial
dimension of dynamics. A new cultural item may "pass the censor" by
generating a fresh zone of value. An apparently innocuous novelty may in
its longer effect tend to disrupt older values. A Chinese scholar has suggested that an important factor in breaking down Puritan values in New
England was the introduction of silks from China by way of the clippership trade (Ping Chua Kuo, Canton and Salem: Some Oriental Influences
on Western Culture. New York, 1931). In contact situations the very fact
of becoming consciously aware of the existence of alternative values may
have a shockingly modifying effect, as in the case of is6lated islanders experiencing their initial contacts at the acculturation base line. Voluntary
changes may occur where an individual or group believes that new values
represent closer approximations than their former ones regarding power,
truth, g90dness, beauty, as, say, among religious "converts." Alternatively,
value changes may be forced upon a people through outside circumstances,
such as a change in habitat, super-imposition of an alien system of law and
order, or authoritative sup,pression. Anthropologists consider quite exceptional a degree of dynamism which, as in our own society, consciously
makes change in the sens~ of "progress" or "betterm~nt" a pervasive value
I
in itself.
In a given situation the old value system may be little impaired; or it
may be modified, but with progressive substitution of new values which
the people find just as ad~quate; or it may be seriously thrown into doubt,
threatened from outside, interfered with, or more or less undermined and
invalidated, without adeq~ate substitution. In extreme cases, some individuals and groups have 'undergone, or are in the process of undergoing,
the experience of having their whole value system in jeopardy or shattered,
catastrophically or through a prolonged series of crises. The effect may be
earthquakelike: culture and personality may reach extremes of disorganiza-

402

Stability and Change

tion; change, especially loss, is likely to go fastest and farthest; reformulation and reintegration of the way of life is most difficult; and cultural
"death," as Kroeber calls it, could result.

Problem 79 . Intervention
What happens where outside agencies exercise power or suasion to
accelerate, hold back, or otherwise manipulate change?
Most of the discussion of cultural processes to this point has assumed
the right of voluntary or self-determined choice as relating to innovation
and loss. In the last paragraph, however, the dimension of nonvoluntary or
compulsive response was introduced. Here, intervention by an external
power source may result in forced change, often with elements of deprivation. Obviously such intervention has been highly important in the long
history of culture contact, as represented by conquests, missionizing, economic development, and other types of expansionism involving measures of
external control and manipulation. It may occur, indeed, readily enough
within a cultural system, as where one individual or group comes un~er the
arbitrary authority or domination of another. What is distinctive, it may
be asked, about these two types of dynamic behavior?
I
The pacing of voluntary change, as noted, bears a direct relation
to value and choice. Nonvoluntary behavior, by contrast, may involve (a)
being pressed into changes faster than the value system of individual or
group defines as desirable; (b) being held back from desired innovation or
relinquishment. It forces value and action out of step.
Exercises
1. You have probably eaten with chopsticKs. Picture that, after enjoying
~e novel sensation for a w~ile at an Asian dinner, your iQefficiency
combined with hunger causes you to go back to a fork. At this point
some armed Asians come in, say chopsticks are right, -quote sacred
scriptures to back up the custom, assure you quite seriously that if you
change to a fork you will be killed, and then tell you that you must use
chopsticks permanently. What would you think, feel, do?
2. Picture yourself taking forcibly out of the hands of an unwilling child
a knife, a piece of candy, a favorite doll, or other toy. What responses
would you expect from such deprivation? What additional reactions
might come from other children in the group? What contingencies
might make the action easier or harder?

You will most probably conjure up imagined responses here which

actually parallel some of those found by anthropologists in field situations

[79] Intervention

403

where there are marked elements of gov,ernmental and other compulsion.

Most obvious are behaviors of accommodation, as in external conformity
to demanded conduct, even though no value appreciation is generated, The
women of some of the remoter Pacific Islands may wear upper garments
when white people are present or expected, to meet standards of modesty
laid down by government or mission, but at other times be little concerned
about the custom-and certainly feel no weight of public opinion to press
conformity. Dual standards of this kind could probably be quickly located
at points where authority presses in our own immediate cultural milieu.
In some situations, a kind of mediator individual or group emerges to carry
interaction between the people concerned and the external authority, and
so far as possible to soften the pressures of compulsion.
As regards innovation or loss of some elements, force may produce
negligible tension and resistance. This would be so to the extent that the
, item might be counted unessential, or that some satisfying substitute might
be found from within or outside the culture. The government anthropologist
Williams (1928, 1935) found that introducing soccer football to Papuan
" villagers provided a vigorous alternative outlet for the energies and prestige
needs formerly served by war. But he reports, too, that the introduction
of latrines was generally resisted. A widespread fear that an individual's
feces might be made an instrument for "contagious" black magic against
him lies at the root of such resistance. The Navaho Indians have built up
great bitterness about the livestock reduction program of the late 1930's
which the United States government authorities felt was neces{ary to reduce
overgrazing of their reservation lands (Kluckhohn and Leighton, 1946).
If, indeed, a nonvoluntary measure threatens or undermines basic cultural
values, violent responses of emotion and action may be generated when
force is proposed or applied. The point may be reached where a people
would rather die than conform to an imposed demand. Compliance can
be viewed here as destructive of the self-image of individual or group, and
in this sense the choice may s~em to be between physical death on the
one hand and psychological or cultural extinction on the other. Such dynamic situations are particularly! rich sources for ascertaining, and getting
some degree of measurable weighting of, a people's value system.
The total stance of relationships between the interacting individuals
and groups is, of course, relev1ant here. Friendly relations and cultural
congruence appear to generate a much greater tolerance for nonvoluntary
behavior than ,obtains where hpstile antagonism and cultural incompatibility are the rule. The whole problem of cultural intervention and manipulation is of particular importance in "applied anthropology." The applied
anthropologist gives technical advice to administrators, military specialists,
missionaries, industrialists, social workers, or others who are faced with
the problem of initiating action programs among groups who may not

404

Stability and Change

respond voluntarily with the desired behaviors. Some of the suggested "rules
of the game" will be referred to shortly (Problem 83).

Problem 80 . Disintegration and Reintegration

How far is social disorganization an inevitable accompaniment of
change? What forces tend to make for reorganization and stabilization?
Constructs or models of cultural integration, equilibrium, the "steady
state," "eunomia" have been discussed earlier. Here the focus may be
turned directly on those of "disintegration," "disequilibrium," "dysnomia"
-what the sociologist often called "social disorganization" or "social pathology." A reminder is hardly necessary here that the anthropologist, in
discussing these states, is not evaluating them as better or worse, even
though to the people concerned either may have a value emphasis in one
direction or the other.
One of the "classic" earlier studies here was the attempt by Rivers
( 1922) to explain depopulation in Melanesia. He pictured the peoples
concerned, under the pressures of colonialism and of contact more generally, as experiencing cultural breakdown and loss to a point where there
was "a decay of the will to live," or loss of "interest in life." This manifested itself, for example, in unwillingness to bear children, or to care for
and teach them if they were born, making breaks in generation continuity
and enculturation. This hypothesis of a general loss of the will to live has
been a focus for much controversy subsequently, but to a point it may have
validity as a kind of psychological construct covering low morale, lack of
self-respect and confidence, a tendency to apathy or even hopeless~ess, a
sense of being unable to go back to the old or to find one's wayan to
something new-all states of mind marking extreme cases of cultural and
fersonal disintegration. Similar controversy has surrounded the questionwhether an individual, losing the will to live,- can go into a fatal decline; yet
medical history certainly records such cases-, and th~ ~Titer has seen an
acculturated Papuan lying in the final stages of a self-induced death, despite
hospital medical care. '
It will be noted that Melanesian cultures are among those which, set
over against modern civilization, show least compatibility or congruence;
they tend tq be traditionally ~mall, homogeneous, and rigid. Coming very
late into contact with the white man, the western Melanesians particularly
experienced a sudden imposition of arbitrary pressure and control, and
were treated as being in an inferior status. Such a combination of circumstances presents a most culturally destructive and humanly difficult situation. These elements come together in the most extreme instances known,
perhaps in the cases of the Australian and Tasmanian Aborigines and the

[80] Disintegration and Reintegration

405

California Indians who were food-gathering groups in areas of major white

immigration. Only a relatively few individuals, many of them of part-white
ancestry, have managed to move successfully across the gulf between the
one culture and the other-though an increasing number are now doing so,
especially from remoter groups which have survived the earlier shock
periods.
Turning now to less extreme cases, it may be asserted that groups
under dynamic conditions of change are always likely to be marked by
heterogeneous and inconsistent behavior. Patterns, norms, modes tend to
become less defined, and often assume a duality or polarity represented
by expected or correct behavior which is new in contrast to that which is
old. Government law may call, say, for patrilineal inheritance of land
where local custom may be matrilineal. Individual and group behaviors
under such circumstances tend to become spread out over wide arcs or
gradients of cultural difference where before the range of variation in behavior may have been narrow. Parents and other elders may be "conserva- tive" and the younger age groups "progressive." Communities in or near
urban centers may lean strongly to change while rural communities hold
back. Males and females may respond to change differently. Anthropologists have noted that such conditions tend to breed "factionalism," so that
a group may split up into dissident or even hostile sections. External control, as noted, tends to exaggerate the inconsistencies and tensions involved.
It will be found by anyone exploring this field tha~ the vocabulary of
current social science is poor. There is nothing comparable with the now
considerable precision of concepts of cultural stability, such as trait, pattern, configuration, enculturation. Very general concepts such as "disintegration," "disorganization," "discontinuity," and "dysfuntion" exist, but
we perhaps also need some additional terms expressive of such phenomena
as might be called awkwardly "dyspattern," "disconfiguration," "deculturation."
Exercise

I
I
.
Compile from Roget'sj Thesaurus a list of the English language words
which cover aspects and nuances of cultural and pers, ,nal change.

Culturally dynamic conditions tend to register themselves in the emotional states of individuals and groups. These may serve as important
"tracers" for research. Evclnts either of stability or of change, according to
the values put upon theml may show in general or special manifestations
of "euphoria" (Problem 28 )-well-being, security, integrity, self-respect,
confidence, high morale, and so on. Alternatively, "dysphoria" may be
signaled by insecurity, anxiety, face-saving pretensions, fluctuating or
"temperamental" behavior, unrest, malaise, low morale, bewilderment,

406

Stability and Change

frustration, disillusionment, and so on, even to despair and suicidal tendencies. In relation to others, individuals or groups may feel superior, equal
or inferior, free or suppressed; attitudes and sentiments may include those
of respect, friendliness, affection; of passivity, wariness, evasion; of hostility, aggressiveness, contempt; of resentment, grievance, blame, hate, fear.
Every working cultural system, it has been noted earlier, even when
counted most stable, involves insecurities and other strains. In situations
of change, however, the incidence of anxiety and other indicators of stress
appears always to rise, and particularly so to the degree that basic values
are threatened or undermined. Studies of "morale," and of "vulnerabilities"
in the sense of points at which a people's confidence may break, were particularly featured in "applied" anthropological studies of both friendly and
enemy countries during World War II. Currently studies of tensions are
notably stressed in relation to fields of "mental health" and of international
relations.
Hypotheses, fairly widely tested and documented to date, may be
summarized here as follows:
So far as individuals and groups in a changing cultural system have
their self-esteem little impaired, retain confidence that they are, keeping
in touch with the best sources of security, power, and prestige, and so
maintain a high level of morale, they will tend to remain "well int6grated";
cultural fundamentals are likely to be highly persistent, and. voluntary
change may occur with a minimum of tension and disorganization. So far
as they feel superior, in relation to individuals and groups with whom they
are in contact, their cultural system may be held to the more firmly, or
change may go far with little tension. By contrast, to the extent that individuals and groups come to feel themselves inferior, lose confidence in their~
basic sources of security, power, and prestige, and sOllapse in morale, the
way is open for extensive and even drastic change. Unless reasonably satisfying cultural substitutes can be found, extreme disintegration and emotional ~tress will occur. This may persist over considerable periods of time,
or may under extreme circumstances threaten the'continue_d existence of
the group.
Under conditions of disequilibrium, groups, like individuals, show
strong tendencies to strive after some new and satisfying 'reformulation
of experience as a basis for survival and integrity. The adaptive processes
involved obviously have both theoretical and practical importance, the latter'
not least of all bechuse "applied" goals nearly always put strong emphasis
on order, eqJilibrium, continuity, high morale, and so on.
The tYEes of reformulative responses most studied by anthropologists
to date are those often summed up in the term "nativistic" movements,
including the new religious cults spoken of earlier. One of the best-known
attempts to give theoretical coherence to such movements is a statement by

[80] Disintegration and Reintegration

407

"Bullet-Proo!" Ghost Shirt. This Arapaho (Plains American Indian)

shirt was part of the magical equipment of Ghost Dance adherents,
supposedly protecting them against the white man's guns. It is of
- leather, with both traditional Indian symbols and what appear to be
Christian symbols (the cross). After Mooney.

Linton (1943), though the typology he offers is a rather rigid one. By

his scheme, they range from "perpetuative" causes or cults, which attempt
to maintain the whole or part of the traditional system of life, to "assimilative" movements which advocate absorption into a foreign cultural and
social milieu. Characteristically, however, they attempt to 60mbine stillvalued elements of the old with wanted elements of the new into a fresh
and satisfying integration. Emphasized here may be either a backward look,
accompanied perhaps by "reactive adaptation" or "contra-acculturative"
withdrawal at Jeast selectively from the new, or a forward look of extensive
participation in the new, with perhaps room for progressive adaptation.
An extensive and growing literature is documenting situations of this
kin9 over the world, and attempting general interpretations of the common features of motivation and j action. A case has already been citedthe rise and spread of the Ghost Dance religion among American Indian
tribes (Problem 23). Whether in Melanesia or Asia, Africa or southern
California, zones of frontier c~ntact and sociocultural mobility tend to
show such movements. Initial leadership may be provided by some "prophet,"
"messiah," "visionary," hard-headed politico, or other type of innovator;
study of such figures is most r9warding for an understanding of cultural
and personal dynamics. Both action programs and symbols may draw
inspiration variously from an idealized "Golden Age" of the past, some
"Paradise" promised for the future, or problems and aspirations related
to existing realities. A magical attitude is likely to be a strong element in
action. There appear to be always a dynamic of shattered and thwarted

408

Stability and Change

premises and values, and a reaching after new panaceas which promise
security, power, prestige, continuity.
Such movements may range from active patterns of politics, economics, welfare, or war, to passivity and mysticism. Programs may run
from quite unreal and impossible aspiration to intelligent causes of political
nationalism or cultural revitalization and renaissance. Forceful suppression, so often resorted to by outside authority, particularly when any movement becomes aggressive or threatening, appears to do no more than
eliminate overt expression and redirect into "underground" channels the
tensions and strivings involved.
.
Less studied, and not even well classified by anthropologists, have been
various other types of response aimed at reinforcing group or personal
integrity. Some of these are well documented in psychological and psychiatric literature on our own society, and by social psychOlogists in dealing with "collective behavior." They include various escapist, compensatory, aggressive, or other behaviors, well structured or otherwise: reversions
to a kind of "infantilism," sulking, devotion to novelties, fads, and fashions,
drink or drugs, shows of bravado and "sophistication," romantic outlets,
unreasoning rage (as in the individual temper tantrum), overt or covert
aggressiveness, revolts, conversions, the practice of double standards, and
so on to various extremes of neurosis and psychosis. Many unreal or temporary way stations lie on the pathway toward a reformulation or equilibrium which meets cultural and personal needs with reasomible satisfaction
and lack of tension. The dual quest of man in modern civilization for a
stable yet a better way of life tends to show the marks of all such dynamic
factors in different zones of the sociocultural milieu.

Problem 81 . Rates of Change

/ How rapidly are people likely to change ~heir systems .of custom? Are
tliere any categories of culture which appear_ to be special lodgments of ~
conservatism, and any particularly responsive to change?
Students have here and there in the literature of cultural dynamics
suggested that tendencies to regularity may exist regardiI1g particular points
in culture where stability and change tend to focus. It has been widely
suggested, for example, that staple foods everywhere tend to be held to "tenaciously, that formal social structures, as also the grammar of language,
show gn~at persistence, that elements characteristic of early personality training tend to pass from parents to children generation after generation.
Such hypotheses raise the question whether there is any high-frequency
patterning as regards focal points or loci of persistence or of responsiveness
to change. Out of this comes the further question as to whether rates of
change in a particular zone of culture coul~ be made the subject of sigf

[81] Rates of Change

409

nificant prediction. To the extent this might be so a cultural system could

then be looked at not just as a fiat cross-section or a moving plane over
time, but could be given a kind of three-dimensional character of plan
and profile.
An anthropological group at Cornell University has been using seven
widely separated villages as laboratories for comparison of rates of change
in different zones of behavior. These villages are in eastern Canada (Acadian
French and British), Peru, Thailand, Burma, India, Japan, and on the
Navaho Indian Reservation. Leighton and Smith, reporting on a seminar
of the field workers in which results were being assessed (1955), say that
"in spite of great variety, there was evident a limited number of striking
patterns common to all cases." They summarize these as follows:
1. A trend from a self-contained and independent economic system toward
a cash economy, with dependence on a larger social group such as state
or nation.
2. A similar shift from autonomy to integration in governmental and
political affairs.
.
3. Changes in values, ideologies and social usages which, though constituting breaks with the past and influenced by outside forces, are "not
altogether in harmony with the governmental trends noted above, or
consistent with each other within a given community," i.e., much striking out in innovative directions.
4. Progressive secularization of life, with an increasingly sharp line drawn
between religious and other human activities such is work, governing,
and recreation.

It will be noted, of course, that here one of the interactive cultural

systems, namely, that of Western civilization and expansionism, is broadly
the same' in all seven cases. It shows its commercial and governmental
marks particularly in the first two trends. The other two represent perhaps
more directly the self-gene,rated responses in directions of change. This
report does not present systematically the common points where stability
shows.
Turning more to theoty, one concept which has had currency in behavioral science has been that of cultural lag. That is, certain zones of
group behavior, typically injthe realms of social structure and of value, fail
to keep up under conditions of change with innovations elsewhere in the
culture, as in technologic'al, fields or the arts. Herskovits (1948) suggests
that innovation is likely t<!r be particularly marked at points of cultural
"focus," i.e., in those ideas' and activities which are in the center of attention and interest, and so tend to challenge variation. It is often stated, however, that the major configurations or orientations of a culture tend to prove
very persistent, even where subject to such elaboration around their central
themes.
The concept of flexibility or adaptability, discussed as a dimension

410

Stability and Change

of cultural modeling along with its opposite of rigidity, offers another line
of approach. Cultural systems were spoken of as having generalized tendencies to flexibility or to rigidity as relating to degree of exclusiveness, specialized habitat conditions, and other factors, or, to put it another way, a
differential "threshold of tolerance" to change. More specifically these
tendencies may show in particular categories of behavior within a given
culture.
As a general hypothesis it may be said that rigidity, and so stability
and conservatism, are likely to be manifested in those areas of behavior
which are sharply crystallized and unquestioned, strictly insisted upon,
spelled out in fixed rules and imperative tradition, backed by powerful sanctions, stressed insistently in the training of subadults, embroidered with
symbolism and ritual, associated with prestige status, worked hardest for,
judged to be essential for the good citizen, saturated with the strongest
emotions. Here change, if it occurs through loss of cultural confidence or
outside pressures, is likely to generate the greatest disorganization and tension, and reintegration to be most difficult.
By contrast, flexibility, and so change, is likely to show notably in two
areas of experience. First, there are those areas of behavior which are
elective, where "freedom," "individualism," "novelty" are 'tolerated and
even encouraged, where the range of permitted alternates is wide, where
"play," and "self-expression" are allowed, where the citizen is relaxed and
"happy." Second, there are those areas where the cultural' system is poorly
integrated, where uncertainties and anxieties exist, where ambitions are
not being met, where cherished values are not being satisfied. Here innovations and losses may occur with minimum stress and disturbance to cultural
and personal integrity.
Can these zones of persistence and mobility be located more specifically? The writer (1953b) has ventured perhaps the most comprehensive
scheme of analysis here, drawn partly from field experience in several widely
distributed
acculturative situations,
and partly from comparison of the
I
,
records and hypotheses of other field workers. The tentative propositions
await further testing of their validity, and the reader may try them out
in terms of personal experience.
First, a series of categories of behavior may be specified as appearing
to show high frequency of persistence and stability, or, if they are disturbed
voluntarily or by force, as being likely to involve most serious stress and disorganization. iIt will be noted that these zones of culture bear a marked rela-
tion to various constitutional, habitat, societal, and other determinants discussed 'in the earlier chapters:

1. Essentials of early constitutional conditioning: the fundamental

kinds of body-training habits such as digesting, evacuating, sleeping, using

[81] Rates oj Change

411

energy and relaxing; also mental se~s such as friendliness, suspicion, curiosity, enjoyment, worry, fear.
2. Essentials oj organic maintenance: materials, techniques, and
ideas which a people count vital to their physical survival, e.g., staple foods,
medicines, some aspects of clothing, housing, transport. An innovation here
must usually be immediately demonstrable as a superior substitute.
3. Essentials oj communication: verbal and other techniques by
which people share meanings and so organize ~nd transmit experience.
4. Essentials oj primary group relations or societal security: the faceto-face social structure of age, generation, sex, child-rearing group, work
organization, and any closely interdependent kinsmen or others beyond
these.
5. Essentials jor the maintenance of high prestige status: elements
vital to established superior statuses and roles, "vested interests," entrenched
authority, especially of ascribed character. At least persistence shows among
their beneficiaries.
6. Essentials of territorial security: vital interests of living space and
resource control, and associated in-group loyalty and political authority.
7. Essentials of ideological security: basic intellectual and religious
assumptions and interpretations as to existence, power, providence, mortality, welfare, and attendant emotional tensions. Perhaps most consistently
stable have been those beliefs and behaviors which become .active at times
of extreme crisis or insecurity, as with natural calamity, ~ccident, sickness,
death and disposal of the dead, or the spiritual threat of pollution, as with
black magic.
These are zones of culture which tend to be most backed with premises
and values of axiomatic and compulsive character in behavior and learning.
They also tend to be charged with emotions associated with "truth,"
"seriousness," "goodness," "duty," "responsibility," "obedience," "reciprocity," "coordination," and their like, though of course they may also arouse
"pleasure," "pain," and otlier affects relating to performance or nonperformance. They might perh~ps be summarized as the basic maintenance,
security, and interaction systems oj a culture. Rates of change are likely to
be very slow unless internal )innovations, or more usually alternatives from
another cultural system, are clearly demonstrated as both superior and capable of immediate substitution for the old.
By contrast, certain ~ohes of culture appear to be malleable with high
frequency. Change here tends to bring about minimum disturbance and tension. T~e writer classifies t~em as follows:
1. Instrumental techniques: means of achieving values and goals,
ranging right across the action front of a culture, e.g. tools, "know-how,"
etiquette, military tactics, political techniques, magical formulas.

412

Stability and Change

2. Elements of taste and self-expression: behaviors which may be

elected if desired, as with luxury items, creative art media, recreation, "manners."
3. Secondary group relations: more impersonal and often elective
zones of social organization, as remoter kin ties, friendship and interest associations, political and other superstructures, mass movements.
4. Low-status positions: statuses and roles, usually of achieved
character, connected with subordination, followership, service; changes
may involve upward rating and mobility with the pre-existing status system or else alternative higher statuses, e.g., as connected with money, or
other new sources of power and authority.
These, by contrast with the previously listed cultural zones, tend to
be areas of creative effort, cultural choice, achievement, and often competition. The associated affects tend to be those of freedom, pleasure, beauty,
striving, advantage, relaxation, release, the nonserious.
A proviso must be added in all the latter categories, namely, that an
item would not show such mobility to the extent that it is linked with deeply
held values. A tool or other item may, for example, survive in a ritual setting long after it has disappeared from everyday use, as witli ecclesiastical
robes or archaic language forms. Art, games, and other behaviors may have
ceremonial and symbolic functions related to, say, status or religion which
lead to similar persistence. In reverse, a "sacred" element such as the hula
dance of Hawaii, in losing its functional significance, may become open
to wide innovation.
There is even less systematic exploration about still another approach,
which inquires into the possibilities of relating regularities of stability and
change to areas of experience represented in age, ,sex, and other status 'posi.
tlOns.
Most obviously, in all cultures, basic constitutional conditioning and
t}Ie learning of the essential communication symbOls pertain to early childhood. The small child also gets his or her sex assignment, ap.d enters into the
primary group relations especially of the "family of orientation." In a society with rigid class, occupational, or other status distinctions, these too
will be a focus for early training. All appear to be persistent cultural categories.
Childhood is apparently in all societies a period of active play-and
other elective: behavior, which tends from the later subadult years to be- '
come more structured into competitive games and sports and the practice'
of serious work. It is also a period of submitting to adult authority and of
disciplined learning. In some cultures children enter into disciplined "work"
surprisingly early, often through the gateway of initial play participati9n.
Typically societies provide, as we do, shifts to statuses associated with m~re
\

[82] The Individual and Change

413

serious responsibilities around the -period of adolescence or early adulthood, and time devoted to elective behaviors is likely to become greatly
reduced. Earlier adulthood is apparently in all societies the period of carrying major "work" in economic, household, and other spheres. Elective taste
and self-expression are likely to shift to more sedentary and relaxing forms
of play or to find outlet through the arts. This period is also likely to be
marked by striving in relation to statuses of importance for the later years.
Middle to older adulthood appears to be everywhere the major age
zone of concentration, though of course with exceptions, for political authority and other public forms of leadership significant for the group as a whole.
It is also the main repository of ideological continuity, as in knowledge and
religion. Survivors into old age, however, tend to be released from fixed
responsibilities, and elective and idiosyncratic behaviors including play and
rest come in strongly again-no social unit could count on having such
elders around, at least in a competent state of body and mind; hence it is
unlikely that they will be normally assigned essential tasks. Every society,
however, is likely to align its dead, so far as they are believed to influence
the living, on the side of stability and conservatism.
The significance of such a glimpse at stability and change in terms of
life cycles and statuses becomes clearer if we think of the planner and promoter at work in contemporary affairs. The technical assistance specialist
interested in improving work methods is likely to carry his proposed innovations to the younger adults who bear the brunt of the labor, but knows that
it is also vital that he gain the support of leaders. He may also try to affect
longer-term trends by teaching the children in the schools, in an atmosphere
more or less of play. The missionary tends to work at once through the
older and higher status carriers of the ideological tradition and through the
children: A governmental reformer, talking to young people in a politically
static society, is'likely to be met with the statement: "Go to the leaders
and the elders." Perhaps in all societies the period of later adolescence
shows a duality of being ~t once open to variation and innovation, as in
fads and fashions, or "shgpping around" the opposite sex, and yet rigid
and conventional in many areas marked by authority from elders and from
peer groups. Such factors deserve more detailed study as loci of stability
and mobility both in give~ cultures and comparatively between cultures.
Their applied significance is clearly apparent.
I

I
I
Problem 82 . The [Jndividual and Change
How does the individual fare in situations of change? Are there special
personality types particularly influential in producing or resisting change or
in other ways characteristic of dynamic situations?

414

Stability and Change

The individual has already been seen rather specifically as innovator

and in terms of status factors. Many other personal dimensions have also
received reference in passing. Yet on the whole such materials still remain
to be well systematized in cultural dynamics studies.
It was noted earlier that theoretical approaches to the study of the
individual in culture, such as those of Mead, Benedict, Linton, and Kardiner,
have been concentrated almost wholly upon how the personality or character becomes shaped to the patterns of a stable culture. The main construct or model used was that of successful "enculturation" to a single
cultural system, though some note might be taken of deviation, or "abnormality." In a dynamic situation, particularly that of culture contact, such
a model has to take account as well of alternative and often conflicting
patterns. The child of a "mixed" marriage, to which father and mother
bring different cultural heritages, represents a familiar and vivid case of
what is involved for both child and adult where personality or character
has to be worked out between two differing cultural systems. The same
conflict of patterns may occur where sharp religious, national, or class lines
are crossed.
"\
In an overseas territory, today, an indigenous child goJng to school
at the age of six, or perhaps coming under missionary influenc~ even earlier,
may be pressed upon with alternatives to the basic constitutional conditioning of his home. He may be called upon to learn the lang~age of the dominant outsiders-of course he may want to do so to open for himself
important new experience and opportunity. An adult, too, well settled in personality or character patterns, may be challenged by the new, or have it
forced upon him by law or in the name of religion. Child or adult may, for
example, be required to stand up when talking to a group when his whole
training calls for sitting to talk, especially in the l presence of superiors. He
may be expected to attend an assembly when his~ own custom dictates that,
if certain sexually taboo relatives are present, he must stay away. Even in
old age he may find the world passing him by-unless he adjusts.
How far do "enculturation," "socializa:tion," oCcl)ildren in such a
dynamic situation involve variables different from pre-adult conditioning
in a stable system? How far, and with what strains and stresses, can an adult
take over effectively a cultural tradition markedly different from his own
childhood tradition? Under what conditions does he tend to "revert," as in
crises, dreams, old age? Are th{jre dimensions of culture change, concetned .
with modal o~ basic personality conditioning, which can only be achieved
over two or more generations rather than in individual lifetimes? These ar~
still questions for which well-formulated answers in terms of scientific case
studies and demonstrated theory are not as yet available-though of course
we would all have some ideas on these matters.
Growing up either in multicultural systems or in the interstices peI

[82] The Individual and Change

415

tween cultures (as with the "mixed'~ marriage case) certainly makes for
a more flexible type of personality structure. As in our own complex and
dynamic society, a successful type of individual may be the one who develops the capacity to make nimble adaptations to fresh experience, who
can face alternatives without strain and stress. In our model of a homogeneous culture the individual is, of course, called on to strive and adjust, as in
aspiring to achieved statuses and in daily interaction with others. But in a
contact situation he will have two or more quite distinctive sets of behavioral
norms facing him at many points in his experience. There is a widespread
tendency for early enculturation to become much more a "private" matter
of varying "family" tradition, based especially on parental choices, rather
than a publicly uniform tradition: this tendency shows up, for example,
in urban families apparently everywhere. The adult personality correspondingly is likely to lack consistency, and to be more subject to conflicts, anxieties, even breakdowns.. In our own society a great deal of educational, psychiatric, and other effort goes into trying to meet ubiquitous personality
maladjustments such as appear to be much rarer in stable societies.
Certain "stable" societies do show, it is true, much greater tendencies
to personality stress than others. A classic case is that of the Dobu, in
Melanesia. As described by Fortune (1934), this society is sorcery-ridden
and divisive to a point where individuals show marked tensions and anxieties. Benedict, analyzing it in her Patterns of Culture (1934), speaks of
it as fostering "extreme forms of animosity and malignancy/which most societies have minimized by their institutions." DuBois, in her outstanding
study of the Alorese, an isolated group in eastern Indonesia, analyzes child
training in a society strongly marked by what we would consider "antisocial" factors. By contrast, other societies, such as the Samoan and
Balinese, provide a setting of great consistency and security for the individual. Correspondingly, under dynamic conditions, a mobile and adaptable type of personality may .be functionally "benign" rather than "malign"
as fitting a person better to ~ultural dynamism-even if some persons become unduly disorganized o~ "break." Mead (1947) characterizes the life
adaptation which such individuals develop as "situational." She speaks of
modern American culture as having worked out "a variety of therapeutic
and educational measures d~signed to protect and strengthen individuals
exposed to this terrific culturkl strain." Notable are (1) emphasis on a new
type of child rearing which Itakes "self-demand" (the child's own rhythm
of response) as the frame,ork of habit; (2) the progressive education
movement with its philosophy of letting the child strike its own pace; and
(3) types of social and psychiatric work which stresses helping the individual to work out his own problems and achieve a new integration.
In a contact situation there will be, for the first generation at least,
individuals wholly conditioned in childhood to one personality system, yet

416

Stability and Change

called upon to make adjustments to the existence of another. They may "relearn" selectively, as indicated above. But it is unlikely that they will make
fundamental modifications in their personalities down to the level of their
core premises and values. The greatest personality conflicts and anxieties
may be expected to arise when, as in cases already discussed, the basic values tend to be thrown into doubt or to collapse. Even religious "conversion," anthropologists have observed, does not bring a person wholly and
securely into another system of meanings; there are strong tendencies for
older beliefs, especially fears, to persist. An American Indian, while consciously a Christian, may report dreams of religious drummings, witches,
thunderbirds, and other vivid phenomena of his background. Cases suggest
that in old age a person has a tendency to come to some intellectual or
philosophical compromise between the traditional and the new-and the
traditional may tend to gain momentum, especially in crises such as those of
sickness and death. Hallowell and his students (1952), as well as Spindler
(1955a), have been using both ethnographic analysis and structured psychological tests to define what they call "levels" of acculturation in Algonkin Indian individuals and hence within the groups concerned.
This again raises the critical question whether some basic dimensions
of a culture can only be shifted in a population by generations: The problem becomes particularly important in the modern world, where such matters as intergroup prejudices, special vested interests, and cultural rigidity
generally are being battered by cosmopolitan forces. Anthony Wallace, in
a study of Iroquois acculturation (1951), states a now perhaps widely held
view that "no cultural form can be successfully introduced, within the
space of one generation, [if itJ requires behavior which is uncongenial to
[the modalJ personality structure." Hallowell (1952) goes further in saying that it is "hard to imagine" how basic sets of peJ;sonality structure coUld
be changed fundamentally in "less than 'three generations." The writer has
suggested elsewhere (1953 a) that if the Grucial cultural transmitters, notably Jhe mother who has the major intimacy wit)1 the young yhild, are sufficiently convinced of the rightness of a new tradi!:ion, the essentials of such
a shift might be made in two generations. A theoretical case could be offered
for a shift within one generation where marked personality deviation in one
cultural system happens to be congruent with normality in, another cultural
system. Moreover, where critical survival values are at stake in a rapidly
changing situation, the so-called basic character and personality levels
may be much more malleable than theory is inclined to hold to date. The
reader is invited to illustrate and test these leads from his own personal
experience.
A final relevant problem here, much debated by historians, is how far
distinctive type figures and roles tend to emerge in culturally dynamic situations. The "conservative" and the "progressive" individual have already'

Collateral References

417

come into the picture, as well as the person who has the adaptability to
remain reasonably "well integrated" as over against the one who becomes
"poorly integrated," possibly to points of neurosis and psychosis. Reference has also been made earlier to the importance of mediators in culturally
diversified situations.
The field of literature so far provides very much more fully than the
social science record significant case materials of this kind: a Caesar, a
Hamlet, a Pygmalion, a Babbitt. Our historic recognition of regularities in
types here is seen in such terms as "the die-hard," "the conformist," "the
radical," "the compromiser," "the zealot," "the fanatic," "the messiah."
Anthropologists are gradually accumulating biographical and other records
of such persons in different cultural situations which may be added to those
of historians, political scientists, social psychologists, and others so far
almost exclusively in relation to the milieu of Western civilization. Whether,
however, the personality models set up from scientific records will tell us
anything more than, or perhaps even as much as, the sensitivities to character and situation dynamics of a dramatist or novelist remains to be seen.

Review
The dynamic perspectives opened out in this discussion are, it was
said, still undergoing definition. Clearly problems of stability and change
are going to provide major themes in continuing anthropo(ogical research
and generalization. In the final chapter, two further topics will be taken up
which relate especially to the possibilities of prediction: one concerned with
applied anthropology, the other with longer-term perspectives of cultural
growth.
.

Collateral References ;
The more recent textbooJs usually include a section .on "dynamics" or
"change," e.g., Kroeber, A. ~., Anthropology (1948), Beals, R. L. and
Hoijer, H., An Introduction tOjAnthropology (1953), and Herskovits, M. J.,
Cultural Anthropology (1955).iA. general survey of the field has been made by
Keesing, F. M., Culture Chanse; an Analysis and Bibliography of Anthropological Sources to 1952 (1953). A' number of important articles can be found in
Linton, R. (ed.), The Science oAMan in the World Crisis (1945), Kroeber, A. L.
(ed.), Anthropology Today (1953), and Thomas, W. L. (ed.), Current Anthropology (1956). Among notable ~works important for theory are Linton, R. (ed.),
Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes (1940), Thompson, L., Culture
in Crisis (1952), Barnett, H. G., Innovation: the Basis of Cultural Change
(1953), Redfield, R., The Primitive World and Its Transformations (1953),

418

Stability and Change

and the series of general works listed as applied anthropology references in

Chapter XVII. Important articles by Hallowell, A. I. and Steward, J. H. may be
conveniently seen in their republished papers, Culture and Experience (1955)
and Theory oj Culture Change (1956), respectively. British viewpoints on
"social change" are exemplified in Firth, R., Elements of Social Organisation
(1951) and Nadel, S. F., The Foundations oj Social Anthropology (1951).
The approaches of the evolutionist, historical, and diffusionist "schools" to
development and change were documented in Chapter VI. A notable work by
Kroeber (1944) explores regularities of change within the Western traditions.
Technical articles dealing with general theory and method are exemplified by
Tax (1951), Spindler and Goldschmidt (1952), Keesing (1953b), and Leighton
and Smith (1955). The special facet of acculturation, which has an extensive
literature, is notably discussed in Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits (1936),
Linton (1940, 1943), Thompson, L. (1948), Hallowell (1950b), Beals (1951,
1953), Wallace (1951, 1956), Watson (1952), and Barnett and others (1954),
the last-named reporting the results of a Social Science Research Council seminar on this topic. Studies of the individual and change are exemplified by Mead
(1940, 1947), Hallowell (1952), and Spindler (1955a). Change involving external intervention is emphasized in the sources on applied anthropology listed
at the end of the next chapter.

!
-

XVII

What Is Ahead?

CUL TURAL ANTHROPOLOGY was said to be, along with

other social or behavioral sciences: still in its infancy. The knowledge
which it has in hand has barely started to permeate popular thought. Though,
indeed, most teachers are nowadays exposed to its materials in their training period, there is very little cultural anthropology directly taught at elementary or high school levels. It is, to date, a professional or technical field
- of skills.
This situation, however, seems to be changing. There is an increasing
awareness that "expert" information about peoples and their cultures such
as the cultural anthropologist can help to provide is needed on many problems of our time: "racial" questions, intercultural relationships, technological development, urbanization, the waging of peace. The possibilities
of "prediction" open up tempting vistas of greater contr()l and direction in
human affairs. In this concluding chapter, questions of application and prediction will be somewhat elaborated.

Problem 83 . Applied Anthropology

In what ways can the ~nowledge and research methods of the cultural
anthropologist be put to pr~ctical use?
The most crucial tests of applied anthropology come where the worker
concerned is called upon tb predict behavior. This is not always directly
involved in "applied" studi~s. Many research projects are designed to provide the "man of action" ~ith technical information, so that the problem
under review is treated essentially in the manner of a standard field study
made for the scientific record. The responsibility then rests with those formulating policy to translatlthe research findings into action decisions.
The anthropologist, hbwever,
as his research progresses, becomes the
I
best-informed specialist on at least many aspects of the problem which
he is investigating. He is therefore consulted on lines of action. He is also
frequently employed with the understanding that he is to make recommenda-

419

420

What Is Ahead?

tions for action. His predictive task may be to forecast the results of the
alternative policies which are being proposed, or else to define the best
means of achieving some desired goal. His problem then is to anticipate
so far as possible in the light of his analysis of past and current cultural
behavior the regularities in forward projected trends.
The anthropologist's prognosis, coming from a scientist, is expected
to be as honest as that of a doctor, i.e., untainted by malpractice. The Society for Applied Anthropology, shortly after its establishment in 1941,
felt a need for getting agreement among its members upon a "Code of Ethics." The code was published in its journal Human Organization (1951,
no. 2, p. 32). A wide range of problems representative of the applied
approach can be found in this journal. Four notable book-length works
may be cited here, the first dealing with Japanese relocation experiments;
two emphasizing technological and economic change; and the fourth discussing governmental activities, particularly in overseas areas. They are
Leighton's The Governing of Men (1945), Spicer's Human Problems in
Technological Change (1952), Mead's Cultural Patterns and Technical
Change (1953), and Barnett's Anthropology in Administration (1956).
Perhaps the best way to bring out the problems of applying the science
to current concerns is to list in brief some of the important general propositions, or rules of the game, which have been found workable:
1. The values which people themselves put upon cultural elements are
what count in acceptance or rejection of proposed innovations, not their
worth in the eyes of the "donor" group, i.e., the principle of utility.
2. A new element can often be introduced via the elective categories
of a culture where it could not make headway in compulsive categories.
3. A proposed innovation to be introduc~d from outside shoUld so
far as possible be fitted :consistently into the existing cultural milieu,
i.e., aligned with the accepted system of "needs'; or "values."
4. Where arbitrary suppression or expl}rgation of a :cultural element
6ecomes essential, a substitute should be fou,nd to fill its place, wherever
this is at all possible. Sub~titution will minimize cultural loss, and reduce
disorganization and the likelihood of counterreactions.
5. A group under outside pressure, even if seemingly acquiescent and
subservient, is likely in fact to be generating contra-acculturation responses
which could erupt in sudden movements or other dynamic manifestations.
6. Maintenance of a reasonable degree of cultural integrity, along with
change: is vital to welfare: a group, at least up to the point of its voluntary
assimilation into some other group, should be encouraged to hold to its
self-respect, self-confidence, self-appreciation.
7. A careful watch should be kept on indices of change, such as

[83] Applied Anthropology

421

Planned Culture Change: a Community Center in the Palau Islands.

An experiment in urban rehabilitation following the destruction of the
town of Koror in World War II. Built by the Palauans as a modified
form of abai or traditional community house, with financial aid from
the South Pacific Commission, it was planned by anthropologist Homer
Barnett.

morale, factionalism, tension and anxiety, personal disorganization, migration.

.
8. So far as possible, the support of elite persons should be enlisted in
furthering a desired policy or action-using the principle of prestige status.
But care must be taken that they do not monopolize any benefits or otherwise pervert the external power in their own interests. /
9. Where major changes are sought, a total front effort of community
development or child-adult education is more effective and less disruptive
and disorganizing than piecemeal presentation of single innovations. Yet
such programs involve the risk of generating massive contra-acculturative
responses.
10. Channels of communication between interacting groups should be
kept as free and open as possible, so as to forestall information breakdowns,
misunderstandings, conflicts.
11. Training indigenous persons to assume leadership in new skills
and ideas is essential. An ~outside "expert" can do little more than provide
"models" which the people themselves have to work into the shape of their
culture. Participation is es~ential.
12. To the extent that interacting cultures are different, mediators
become of the greatest importance, and should so far as possible be trained,
given responsibility, and 'allotted secure status, e.g., interpreters, political
leaders, technical speciali~ts, persons of mixed parentage.
The applied anthropologist, of course, does not work at this level of
principle or generality except when he is assessing his problem in broadest

422

What Is Ahead?

terms. If he is serving as government adviser in an overseas territory, he may

be called upon to investigate some quite specific problem, such as whether
a proposed land law is going to run foul of indigenous custom, how a dispute between two parties can be resolved without a fight, why people are
refusing to come to a hospital, where a community displaced by an earthquake may be resettled. In an industrial plant at home, he may be examining the role of the foreman as a special focus of efficiency or inefficiency,
or following an arbitration process, or tracking down factory-community
relationships. Always, of course, he will follow up the ramifications of his
problem within the total cultural and social context. How far, especially
at more specific levels, predictions of pattern regularity can be made amid
the complex skeins of detailed events and individual behaviors is a matter
for much future work to define in both theoretical and action contexts.

Problem 84 . Future Cultural Perspectives

Can the anthropologist see any longer-term trends which might be a
basis for tentative predictions?
We saw earlier (Problem 14) how physical anthropol9gists had projected long-term trends in man's biological development/forward so as
to offer some tentative predictions of the future. This type of imaginative
exercise is based on the assumption that previous directions of change will
continue to operate. For cultural and social behavior, the assumption must
remain far more tentative. Nevertheless, a few notable tendencies, some
familiar, others perhaps less generally discerned, may be cited, if only to
stimulate discussion.
For long thousands of years, man was bound to the resources of his
immediate habitat, and his technology failed to develop beyond Stone Age
levels. Then, within a mere ten thousand years, the cumulative chains of
/invention became forged" first in the food-producing revolution, and then
vastly accelerated in the machine-age revolution. Under our very eyeS; the technology of our time is making potent breaks into :hew realms of electrical and nuclear phenomena, plastics, food processing, speed travel, disease reduction, weather control, and numerous other great fields of mastery
over habitat and organic life. It seems fair to assume that men of even a',
few genera~ions from now will have technological knowledge and controJ~
in m~ny respects beyond our present imagination. The anthropologist, is
noted earlier (Problem 34), is hardly likely to adhere to the belief that our
"plundered planet" is near its maximum of potential utilization.
In his ability to integrate social structures, man within the same relatively short period of history has worked out vast extensions of orgapization and of sentiment. From tiny groups usually of a few kinsmen, villages,

[84] Future Cultural Perspectives

423

then towns, cities, nations, and international structures have been consolidated. Administrative forms have run the gamut from authoritarian to
democratic. By our own time, varying types of political, economic, and
religious structures shape activities and hold loyalties of tens of millions
of people: nations, commercial unions, religious faiths. World-compassing
organizations are being experimented with in a great variety of fields: postal
arrangements, meteorological exchanges, whaling agreements, the United
Nations and its specialized agencies. Subject to shorter-term ups and downs,
this integrative tendency seems due to continue. Technological, security,
missionizing, and other forces are notably accelerating it in our time. Again,
however, the specific designs of future possible social structures must escape
our imaginations.
A consistent observation among those who have attempted to grade
"progress" or "evaluate values" is of the increasing efficiency in man's expenditure of effort. Less productive and more costly hand labor gives place
increasingly to the machine, and in our time the machine bids fair to be
tended mainly by other machines (automation). Though so far many such
new forms of "great industry" have little foothold beyond the North American continent, they are currently spreading, even to a degree into extremely
"underdeveloped" areas. Slavery has gone, and the concept of "the working class" is obsolescent. The household servant or drudge also seems to
be going, along with the work animal. A present-day forty- to thirtyfive hour working week may merely foreshadow the amount of leisure or
nonwork time which man of the future must learn to org&nize, use creatively,
and count upon as increasingly important in measuring status and success.
Perhaps the toughest problem area facing modern man is choosing
between the great array of alternative value systems now opening out before him. The earlier world of closed societies and locally specialized cultures tended to, provide for each group and individual a single, more or less
consistent configuration of absolute ethical, religious, and aesthetic standards. Then missionaries struck out to new lands, expansionist governments
imposed alien codes of hiw, traveling artists and art pieces revealed fresh
interpretations of beauty,lmovies and television showed alternative custom
in action. By and large, every ethnic group has defended itself initially with
ethnocentric armor. Behirrd the many ostensibly political and economic tensions and conflicts of today lie deeply entrenched premises, values, goals
which have the stamp 'of high ethics and religion, as with Israeli versus
Arab, and Chinese versuS Mongol. Yet amazing shifts are also taking place
in cross-cultural knowledge and attitudes over the world. Our discussion
of change in personality sets over generations (Problem 82) comes to mind
here. Studies of value and personality phenomena in such ethnically diversified countries as the United States, in metropolitan centers, and in
such microcosms of world contact as Hawaii, may give important clues

424

What Is Ahead?

as to possible future longer~term trends, e.g., the development of flexible

personalities; more scope for private or optional behavior; widening currency of the many values which hew to scientific truth, to social order, or to
the "good life" realizable through current opportunities.
Our study of universals or constants of culture offers a variety of clues
to the shape of the future. Whatever institutional forms "the family" may
take, known or yet unknown, every society must continue to provide a reasonably secure setting for the rearing and enculturation of children. Recognized kinsmen will need to be socially assigned. Rules for sex, property,
safety, and other categories of order will remain essential. Sickness and
death will continue to be grappled with. Religion and philosophy in the
broad sense of seeking answers to the ultimate "Why" questions will
doubtless continue to challenge men's minds, even though some individuals
may elect to by~pass public participation in organized ritual, or to rest their
actions upon implicit postulates as to truth and faith.
In another broad category of thought, we may predict, for what the
ideas are worth, that future cultures, no matter how elaborated, will operate
within limits set by habitat, by constitution, and by demography. Such
limits, of course, will not be the present known bounds. T~chnology will
continue to modify habitat, and in turn will call for adjustments in economic
and social systems. Human organisms are likely to prove malleable in ways
not yet known. The moves possible with a few chessmen on a board give
an inkling of the vast possibilities of variation and in~ention in group
structure and interaction. Less understood yet, but evidently operative, are
rules inherent in the nature of culture, as with the processes underlying
stability and change.
Over long time spans, the major movement of direction in Jnan's cultural history has been a centrifugfll one. Outward-moving, isolated societies have become increasingly different through behavioral specialization. _
The contacts of the Age of Discovery, Iollowed up by modern acculturative
iinpacts, have been reversing this direction and making centripetal or inter-_
action tendencies dominant. Only in the ceritral highl"!_nds of New Guinea
and tropical fastnesses of South America are there peoples not yet in direct
contact with modern civilization, and within a few years isolation will
give way even there to trade, mission, and other influences.
Every culture, indeed, in the classic anthropological sense is undergoing a test 9f its survival val~e in the face of the new technological- and, '
other pressures and under the impact of the many new and alternative possibilities in behavior. How far, in the longer run of history, the rich tapestries
of regional and local tradition will be cherished either by the peoples themselves or by others who might adopt elements from them can only be
speculated about. Certainly, vastly extended acculturation, as well as continuing innovation along many lines to meet current problems, can be
expected.

Collateral References

425

Linton, in reviewing the dynamics of culture (1940), says that "culture

is infinitely perfectible." Though this statement exercises a certain literary
license, it is clear that we cannot now imagine the numerous lines of behavioral experiment which man, if he survives cosmic catastrophe or selfdestruction, will have explored a hundred, a thousand, a million years from
now. Perhaps, from some vantage point in the future, a culture historian
will label peoples living in this era as the last examples of Homo as a
predominantly regional and local animal-or as pioneers bearing the
troubled brunt of an initial emergence of Homo to planetary civilization.

Review
Such a tentative glimpse into the future, including possible applications of cultural anthropology in solving certain types of problems, appropriately closes out this overview of the "science of custom." Culture,
continuing at base to build upon minimal acts of innovation and communication by individuals, has dynamic possibilities beyond present imagination. As envoi to the work, a Samoan oratorical proverb may be quoted:
Va tu'u la Ie va'a tele, "The large canoe has furled its sails." That is, our
presentation has run its course, and now is the opportunity for other voices
to be heard.
/

Collateral References
Applied anthropology is given little space in general texts, but it has a
rapidly growing, if scattered, literature. A number of significant articles are
included in Linton, R. (ed.), The Science of Man in the World Crisis (1945),
and there are also useful ar~icles in Kroeber, A. L. (ed.), Anthropology Today
(1953), and Thomas, W. L. (ed.), Current Anthropology (1956). Notable
works with an applied focu~ include Leighton, A. B., The Governing of Men
(1945), Spicer, E. B. (edl) , Human Problems in Technological Change: a
Casebook (1952), Mead, . (ed.), Cultural Patterns and Technical Change
(1953), Spindler, G. D. (ed.), Education and Anthropology (1955b), Barnett,
B. G., Anthropology in Administration (1956), and Anthropological Society
of Washington, Some Uses of Anthropology: Theoretical and Applied (1956).
Examples of more specialized works dealing with applications of anthropology are Williams (1928,11935), Leighton (1949), Foster (1952), Thompson
(1952), Keesing (1953b),' and Opler, M. K. (1956). The scope of applied
anthropology can be seen in the journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Human Organization, and in many papers in the regional journals Africa
and Oceania. Regarding future trends, anthropologists have tried out long-term
predictions as regards physical characteristics (Chapter III), but have ventured
few systematic predictions on cultural and social development.

Glossary

the modification of a culture through more or less continuous

contact with another.

ACCULTURATION:

ACHIEVED STATUS:
AENEOLITHIC:

a social position open to elective struggle, achievement.

a dominantly New Stone Age tradition with minor copper mate-

rials.
AFFINITY:

pertaining to emotional facets of behavior.

relation by marriage.

AGE-AREA:

the concept that older elements will be more widely di;tributed than

AFFECTIVE:

th~~re~~

AGE GRADES:

classes).

divisions of a society into fixed age groupings (alternatively

age
,

symbols for phonetic sounds.

ALPHABET:

belief in impersonal spiritual power or force, e.g., mana.

ANIMATISM:

belief in personalized, indwelling spirits throughout nature.

ANIMISM:

projecting human qualities upo~ supernatural forces.emphasizing external "extrovert" behavior, conformist, restrained.

ANTHROPOMORPHIC:
APOLLONIAN:
ARTIFACT:

a man-made object.

AS~RIBED STATUS: a fixed social position not open to competitIon, as, for ex-

ample, sex, age.

ASSEMBLAGE:

'

in archaeology,' a group of associated industries found in one

locality.
AVUNCULOCAL:
BAND:

marital residence at the locality of an uncle.

a small migratory political unit.

BILATERAL:

twotsided, i.e., kin reckoned from both the father's and the mother's

lines.
BILINEAL:

two-lined; same as bilateral.

marital residence at both husband's and wife's localities (also ambilocal) .

BILOCAL:'

BRONZE:

426

an a!loy of copper with tin.

427

Glossary
CASTE:

a class whose status is ascribed, i.e., with no competition, endogamous.

a combined copper, or" bronze, and stone tradition.

the distinctive characteristics of a society or a person.
CIVILIZED: pertaining to urban traditions, as from early Middle Eastern citystates.
CLAN: a unilineal (one-lined) descent group of large magnitude, alternatively a
sib.
CLASS: a grouping of persons who feel a common unity, and a sense of distinctiveness from other groupings.
CLASSIFICATORY KINSHIP: a class of persons referred to by the same kinship term,
e.g., "aunt," by contrast with descriptive kinship, e.g., a mother.

CHALCOLITHIC:
CHARACTER:

a shift in the frequency of racial characters as between adjacent populations; also a gradient.
COGNITIVE: pertaining to knowledge or ideational facets of behavior.

CLINE:

pertaining to action facets of behavior.

CONFIGURATION: a dominant or unifying tendency within some larger whole.
CONATIVE:

CONJUGAL FAMILY:

based on the legal bond of marriage.

CONSANGUINEAL FAMILY:
CONSANGUINITY:

relation by "blood" descent.

a scientific generalization or abstraction.

MAGIC: magic which involves contact or juxtaposition.

CONSTRUCT:
CONTAGIOUS

CORBELED ARCH:
CORE:

based on a "blood" descent group.

built up blocks like an inverted y, in contfast to the true arch.

a nucleus of stone from which flakes are struck.

COVERT:

not open to observation, hence inferred (e.g., as in behavior).

children of siblings of opposite sex-father's sister's child or

mother's brother's child, i.e., the sex has "crossed" from male to female
side.
CULTURAL LAG: the tendency for one facet of a cultural system to respond more
slowly than others und~r dynamic conditions.
CULTURE: the totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior.
CROSS-COUSIN:

a region of ~asic common culture.

DEME: an intermarrying residential group of kinsmen.
I
DERIVED DRIVE: the specific form which a primary drive assumes in being conditioned to cultural eXl1ectations.
DETERMINANT: a conditioning factor (e.g., as in behavior).
CULTURE AREA:

DIFFUSION:

covering a span of time.

the spread of ad element from one cultural system to another.

DIONYSIAN:

emphasizing "introvert" behavior, individualistic, active, aggressive.

DISCOVERY:

the chance perception of a creative new lead or innovation.

DIACHRONIC:

428

Glossary

an individual counts descent by way of the unilineal descent

groups of both parental lines.
DYAD, SOCIAL: interaction of two persons in a more or less patterned manner.
DYSNOMIA: lack of social integration.
DOUBLE DESCENT:

sense of ill-being, disorder.

the study of distributions and relationships in organisms.

DYSPHORIA:
ECOLOGY:

the process of learning a cultural tradition.

marriage into a fixed group.

ENCULTURATION:
ENDOGAMY:

an unstated assumption or premise.

Dawn Stone Age.

ENTHYMEME:
EOLITHIC:

edge of the Paleolithic, verging on the Neolithic.

a system which is theoretically in balance, or in a "steady state."

EPIPALEOLITHIC:
EQUILIBRIUM:

ETHNIC GROUP:

a group with more or less distinctive culture.

own-group-centered attitudes.
the dominant set or direction of a culture.

ETHNOCENTRISM:
ETHOS:

healthy social integration.

sense of well-being, order.

EUNOMIA:
EUPHORIA:

the search for general laws of cultural growth; more strictly a

theory of unilinear development.
.

EVOLUTIONISM:

marriage out of a fixed group.

a family group consisting of several closely related nuclear
families.
.

EXOGAMY:

EXTENDED FAMILY:

FETISHISM:
FOLK:
FORM:

attributing spirit qualities to objects.

peasant type of traditions.

an observed regularity, as in objects, ideas, actions.
the relation of an element within some larger whole.

FUNCTION:
GATHERING:

GENE DRIFT:

meeting material needs from wild products.

the chance statistical variation in ge~e materials over generations.

the genetic potenti~l, i.e., genetic chara2teristics. - :

an alternative name for a patrilineal clan; plural, gentes.

GENOTYPE:
GENS:

GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY:

study of rates of change in word systems (also called

lexicostatistics) .
the structure or "morphology" of language.
MARRIAGE:: marriage of more' than one man with more than one woman.
,

GRAMMAR:
GROUP

HIERARCHY:

relationship involving higher and lower rank.

HISTORICALISM:
HOLISTIC:

tion.

the study of specific cultural elements in time and space.

an approach which emphasizes phenomena of wholeness or integra-

Glossary
HOMINID:

429
manlike.
a tentative proposition which is subject to future experimental

HYPOTHESIS:

testing.
a symbol representing an idea, as in ideographic writing.
IDIOSYNCRATIC: individually distinctive.
IDEOGRAPH:

magic which involves imitation of a desired activity or result,

also called homeopathic.

IMITATIVE MAGIC:

INCEST:

to mate within a forbidden degree of close kinship.

in archaeology, a given type or level of technology.

INSTITUTION: an established form of group behavior.

INDUSTRY:

the interrelations of individuals in a social group; the play of

interpersonal relations.
INVENTION: an original creative act of innovation; in Dixon's narrower sense, a
creative act resulting from purposive search.
IRRELEVANT FORM: a form which is not relevant to immediate utility and
necessity.
KINDRED: recognized members of a bilineal descent group treated collectively,
with an individual as referent.
INTERACTION:

the study and recording of body motions.

KINESTHETIC: sensation associated with muscular movements of the body.

KINESICS:

KULTURKREIS:

theory.

a culture complex, circle, stratum, as in the German diffusionist

/

LANGUAGE DRIFT:

internal changes in a language.

a politically formulated rule supported by sanctions.

LEVIRATE: a man marries his brother's widow.
LAW:

members of a unilineal descent group linked by a remembered line of

ancestors.
MAGIC: techniques of influencing the supernatural automatically, as by spell and

I
nte.
:
MANA: an Oceanic term for impersonal supernatural power; also American Indian wakan, orenda. 1
MANISM: ghost worship, from manes, "shade."
MATERIAL CULTURE: the tJtality of man-made objects.
LINEAGE:

MATRI-CLAN:

line.
MATRILINY:

a clan group reckoning descent through the mother, or female

I,

descent reckoned through the mother's line.

MATRILOCAL:
MEGALTHIC:
MESOLITHIC:

marital residence at the mother's locality.

a "giant" stone tradition of construction.
Middle Stone Age.

430

Glossary

literally "beyond anthropology"; investigation of the

intellectual or philosophical basis of the science.
METALINGUISTICS: the study of the ways in which language organizes experience.
MICROLITH: tiny stone flake.
META-ANTHROPOLOGY:

the central or dominant personality characteristics more

or less shared by all members of an ethnic group.

MODAL PERSONALITY:

MODE:

a central or dominant tendency or trend.

one of two mutually exclusive divisions of a group.

MORPHEME: a minimum significant unit of word structure.
MOIETY:

NEOLITHIC:

a change in genetic potential.

New Stone Age.

NEOLOCAL:

marital residence in a new locality.

MUTATION:

the expected or ideal tendency (e.g., as in behavior),

husband, wife, and children.
OPERATIONALISM: the idea that concepts are definable only in terms of the
operations or procedures which enter into their construction.
ORIENTATION: a major direction or set in behavior within a culture.
ORTHOGRAPHY: a system of writing sounds.
OVERT: open to observation (e.g., as in behavior),
PALEOLITHIC: Old Stone Age.
PARALLEL COUSIN: the children of siblings of the same sex, i.e., father's brother's
children, mother's sister's children.
PARALLELISM: independent invention of similar cultural elements.

NORM:

NUCLEAR FAMILY:

a clan group reckoning descent through the father, or male line.

PATRI-CLAN:

descent reckoned through the father's line.

PATRILINY:

marital residence

PATRILOCAL:
PATTERN:

a~

the falher's locality.

a regularity (e.g., as in behavior):

the characteristics of the individual; particularly k a result of

learning and training.
--.
_ I

PERSbNALITY:

a minimum unit of distinctive sound.

PHONEME:

the analysis of speech sounds.

PHONETICS:
PHRATRY:

an associated group of clans.

PICTOGRAPH:
PLAITING:

the bodily structure, resulting'from genetic plus other influences.

PHENOTYPE:

a picture drawn to convey meaning, as in initial types of writing.

criss-crossing loose elements.

POLYANDRY:

one woman married to more than one husband.

POLYGAMY:

marriage with more than one spouse.

POLYGYNY:

one man married to more than one wife.

Glossary

431

Northwest Coast ceremon_ies marked by competing with property.

PREMISE: an assumption on which judgments are made.
PRESCRIPTIVE: required, as in marriage rules.
POTLATCH:

forbidden, as in marriage rules.

PROSCRIPTIVE:

writing in which pictures are attached to names or sounds, e.g., iron, "eye
run."

REBUS:

RECIPROCITY:

an equivalent give-and-take, or equivalence.

the process of adapting new cultural elements into the

functional setting of an existing system.

REFORMULATION:

REIFICATION:

attributing the reality of being "things" to abstractions.

rituals connected with crisis or "passing over" points in

the individual life cycle.

"RITES DE PASSAGE":

the part played by an individual or group expressive of status.

SANCTION: a validating and enforcing mechanism.

ROLE:

the analysis of language meanings.

SEMANTICS:

a direction or tendency, as with a dominant characteristic giving integration

to a culture, or a pattern of interaction among individuals.
SHAMAN: an individual religious expert.

SET:

SIB:

a unilineal (one-lined) descent group; alternatively, a clan.

a term used to include both brothers and sisters.

SIBLING:

SILENT BARTER:
SOCIALIZATION:

exchange of goods without direct social interaction.

/
the process of becoming a member of society.

the aggregation of individuals in an organized group.

SOCIETY:
SORCERY:

black, or evil, magic, usually private and "subversive."

SORORATE:

a man marries his wife's sister.

SPEECH COMMUNITY:

a group sharing the same language.

STAPLE:

a dominant foodstuff.

STATUS:

a social position.

STATUS PERSONALITY:

positions.

those personality dimensions which come from status

1

the stimulation of creativity in one culture through contact

with elements of another culture.

STIMULUS DIFFUSION:

STRUCTURE:
STYLE:

a regularity oftform.

a consistent pattern! or direction which dominates a language or culture.

a form or fixed se,nsory signal to which some fixed meaning is arbitrarily assigned.

SYMBOL:

magic based on the principle that influence can be exercised through sympathy.

SYMPATHETIC MAGIC:

432

Glossary

SYNCHRONIC: a cross section in time, i.e., "together in time."

SYNCRETIZATION: the combining of elements from two cultural systems into a
new whole.
SYNESTHETIC: experience relating to one of the senses being expressed through
another, e.g., color through music.
TABOO: sacred, or reserved, from the Polynesian word tapu.
TECHNOLOGY: manipulative skills.
TELL: a mound marking a once inhabited site.
THEME: one of the major premises or assumptions on which a culture is based.
TOTEM: a natural Object associated with man in a totemic relation (see
TOTEMISM).
TOTEMISM: belief in a relation between human descent groups and natural
objects.
TRAIT: a minimum significant unit of culture.
TRAIT-COMPLEX: an associated group of traits.
TRillE: a political unit, usually consisting of several thousand persons.
UNILATERAL: one-sided, Le., kin reckoned from either the father's or the
mother's line only.
UNILINEAL: one-lined; same as unilateral.
VALUE: an emotionally charged preference, or standard of worth.
WEAVING: warping one element, and shuttling the woof back and forth, as with
the 100m.
WITCHCRAFT: black, or evil, magic, inVOlving personalized familiars.

I
-

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I

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1955a
1955b
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1952

and GOLDSCHMIDT, W.
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1951
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1952

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1951
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1955

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1951
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1948
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1952
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1954
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1948
1952
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1947
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1952

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1954

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1940

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1946

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1951

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1957

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1955
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1941
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1956
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1939
1952
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1937
1953
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1953
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1929
The Great Apes. New Haven, Conn.

INDEX

Index

Aberle, D. F., 196

Abnormal behavior, 32-33, 40, 74, 170172, 254, 303, 313-315, 405, 408,
414-417
See also Crime
Acculturation, 27-28, 381, 383 ff., 426
Achieved status, 169, 244-245, 412, 426
- See also Status
Adam, L., 348, 363
Adolescence, 243, 247-248, 254, 329, 413
Adornment, personal, 92-93, 202-204,
343
See also Clothing
Adult status, 159, 243, 248-250, 256,
413-417
Aesthetic in behavior, 54-55, 182-184,
189-194, 238-240, 328, 330, 342363, 412, 423
See also Art
Africa, archaeology, 89-91, 98-103
art, 353, ,363
as a habitat, 108-110, 122
language, 357, 374
material culture, 200, 204, 208,213
population, 69,70-71
society, 154, 233, 264, 276, 278, 291,
293,295-297,303,316,407
in world perspective, 122-1251
See also Negroes; and names 'pf tribal
groups
,
Age, in ethnological perspective, 104,
193, 203, 225 ff., 242"':244, 247252, 405, 411-413
Age-area hypothesis, 117, 426
Age grades, 249,426
.
Agriculture, in ethnological perspective,
123-136, 198-201, 278, 289, 329
origins, 95-103, 149
See also names of plants

I'

Ainu of Japan, 21-22, 26, 37-38, 61, 71,

120, 135, 235, 371
Albert, E., 179, 187
Alorese, 169, 415
Alphabet, 141, 379, 396, 426
America, archaeology, 84-86, 93-94, 134
culture areas, 116-117, 131-134
as a habitat, 108-110
Oceania and, 85, 120, 134, 148-149
settlement patterns, 246
in world perspective, 130-134
See also American Indians; Middle
America; South America
American behavior (see United States
culture)
/
American Indians (North), archaeology,
84-86, 93-94, 134
art, 361, 363
culture areas, 116-117, 131-132
culture change, 388, 397,416
folklore, 361
language, 366, 371
material culture, 103, 111-112, 200,
205, 209-211, 213
population, 69, 71, 93-95, 108, 131,
134
religion, 253, 328; 338
society, 253, 254, 259, 268, 282, 296,
387
in world perspective, 130-134
See also America; and names of tribes
Ancestry (see Descent)
Andaman Islanders, 84, 126, 151, 153,
200, 262, 288
Andean highlands, 133
See also Middle America; Peru
Animal behavior, and culture, 30, 50-59,
342-343, 356, 365-366
Animal husbandry (see Herding)

459

460
Animatism, 326, 337-338, 426
Animism, 326, 337-338, 426
Apache Indians, 111-112
Ape and man compared, 12, 51-59, 325,
343,356
Applied anthropology, and cultural values, 183, 184
defined, 7-8
and intervention, 402-403, 419-422
uses of, 14, 178, 192, 229-230, 241,
383, 406, 419-420
Arabs, 102,210, 212, 259, 315, 317, 423
Arapaho Indians, 272, 382
Arapesh, 254-255, 297
Archaeology, 4, 8, 13, 80-105
See also Neolithic; Paleolithic
Architecture, 130, 147-148, 204-209,
351-352
Arctic peoples, 108-109, 112, 131, 149
See also Eskimo; Siberian peoples
Arensberg, C. M., 176, 177, 187,285,286
Art, and animal behavior, 54, 55
in archaeological perspective, 81, 9193, 95, 204-205, 343
and culture change, 409-413
in ethnological perspective, 342-363
evaluation of, 182-184
and material culture, 203, 205-206,
214-219, 238-240
and religion, 328
and society, 253, 313
as a universal, 152, 189-194
See also Aesthetic in behavior; and
names of various arts
Artifacts, 17, 87-103, 197-219, 426
See also Material culture; Technology
Arunta; 248
'
Aryan (see Indo-European)
Ascribed status, 169, 244, 411, 426
See also Status
Ashanti, 124, 293
Asia, archaeology, 85, 89, 94-103
art, 355, 359
culture areas, 117, P6
culture change, 40i
as a habitat, 108-110
herding in, 124, 209-212
language, 364, 372
material culture, 205, 209-212, 213,
216-217
population history, 63, 69, 71

Index
society, 224, 233, 259, 305
in world perspective, 134-136, 199,
205, 305
See also names of ethnic groups
Australian Aborigines, archaeology, 84
art, 92, 354, 361
contacts with Malays, 98, 126
and culture change, 391, 404
fossil ancestors of, 66
habitat, 108-110
and intelligence tests, 63
language, 371, 374, 377
material culture, 200, 202, 203, 205,
210-212, 213, 216, 224
migrations of, 68-69, 125-127
population history, 71
religion, 3, 279-280, 327
society, 248, 253, 256, 260, 279-280,
286,288,298,312,314,317
in world perspective, 3, 126, 149
Australopithecines, 52, 65-66
Authority, 281-285, 411-413 .
See also Hierarchy; Leadership
Aztecs, 132, 292-293
See also Mexico; Middle America
Bacon, E., 136
Balinese, 130, 163-164, 331, 349, 359,
415
Band organization, 288-289, 298-299,
426
Bantu, 31, 124,232, 274
_ See also Afric~; Negroes
Bari,272
Barkcloth, 204, 233, 400
Barnett, H. G., 417, 418,420; 421, 425
Barton, R. F.,,48, 241, 303, 315, 320, 341
Bascom, W. E., 285
Basic personality structure, 33-34, 169170, 411, 414-417
See also Personality
Basketry, 132, 216-217
Bateson, G., 166, 187, 286, 344-345, 359,
363, 380
Bathonga, 224
Beaglehole, E., 33, 187, 228, 241
Beals, R. L., 15,48,219,346,417,418
Bedouin, 315, 317
See also Arabs
Behavior (see Animal behavior; Culture;
Society)

Index

461

Benedict, R., 15, 19,44,47,48, 157-159,

163, 179, 187, 254, 305, 329, 333,
334, 33~ 337, 341,414,415
Bennett, 1. W., 48
Bennett, W. C., 102, 105
Berdache, 254
Bering Strait, 85, 93,94, 108, 131, 134
Betrothal, 257, 261
Beverages, 198-199, 214
Beyer, H. 0., 127
Bidney, D., 48, 179, 187
Bilateral descent, 274-276, 426
Bilineal descent, 275-276, 426
Bilingualism, 374-375
Biological heritage and culture, 16-17,
49-79
See also Constitution
Bird, J., 93-94, 102, 105
Birdsell, J. B., 78
Birdwhistell, R., 359, 363
Birth, 193, 243, 247, 268, 329
Bismarck Archipelago, 280
See also New Guinea
Bloch, B., 368, 380
Bloomfield, L., 365, 368, 373, 380
Boas, F., 15, 78, 111, 143, 145, 146, 158,
162, 169, 184, 220, 301, 341, 347,
355-356, 363, 380, 397
Boats (see Watercraft)
Bogoras, W., 339
Bone industries, 91-93, 95
Bontok, 208
Bor, 249
Bow, and arrow, 93-94, 141, 213, 394
musical, 357-358
'
Boyd, N. C., 78
Brahmanism, 117, 130
Braidwood, R. J., 84, 95, 96, 99, 101,
105, 144
I
Breeding population, 66-72
Breuil, H., 105, 325
Bride-price, 261-262
I
Britain, as a habitat, 134
national character, 166
Bronze metallurgy, 85; 100, 101-102,
218, 426
Bube, 125
Buck, P. R, 220, 324-325, 341
Buddhism, 117, 130
Buffalo, 116, 132, 289
Bunzel, R., 241, 347, 350, 361, 363

I,

Burial, 90, 193, 325, 343

(
Burma, 89, 130, 350, 372, 409
Bushmen of Africa, archaeology, 84
art, 92
in ethnological perspective, 98, 123,
125, 126, 199, 205, 232-233
and intelligence tests, 63
popUlation history, 71
Calendar, Maya, 133
Western, 322
California Indians, culture area, 117, 118,
131-132
and culture change, 383, 405
ethics of, 304-305
in ethnological perspective, 95, 200,
216, 295
Camel herding, 124, 135, 210
Canada, 131, 409
See also America
Capacities, psychological, 62-64, 73-75
Caribbean, 98, 133
Caribou, 116, 131, 143
Caroline Islands, 232
See also Micronesia
Caste, 225, 244, 282,-'283, 427
Cattle, herding of, 96, 124, 282-283, 427
as money, 232
Ceramic arts, 96, 97, 129, 214-215, 351352
Ceremonial behavior, 238, 240, 293, 317,
343, 359-360, 413
Ceremonial goods, 201, 206, 223, 227,
237-240, 283
Ceylon, 135
Change (see Culture change)
Chapple, E. D., 177, 186, 187, 229, 283,
285, 301, 347, 351, 356
Character, 17, 32-35, 159, 162-175,305,
413-417, 427
See also Personality
Cherokee Indians, 396-397
Chibcha, 133
Child, I .. L., 187,285
Child training, and character structure,
34-35, 159-175
and culture change, 382, 394, 408-417
in ethnological perspective, 247-249,
255-271, 305, 327, 331, 367
and learning capacity, 61-64, 76-77
as a universal, 189-194

462
Child training (continued)
See also Education; Learning; Personality
Childe, Vo Go, 94, 105, 144
China, anthropology in early, 10-11
archaeology, 85, 99, 101-102, 204
cities in, 45
fossil man in, 53, 65, 89, 90, 200
as a habitat, 134
language, 372, 374, 378
material culture, 200, 203, 211, 213,
215, 217, 218
national character, 164, 167, 305
navigation in, 98
population history, 71, 423
religion, 130, 322, 328
society, 250, 253, 254, 270, 272
in world perspective, 135-136, 181
Chukchi, 112, 290, 339, 361
Cities (see Urban centers)
Civilization, defined, 44-46, 427
development of, 99-103, 371
Clan, 277-278, 427
Clark, Go, 105
Class, in American society, 177
defined, 282, 427
in ethnological perspective, 206, 225,
226, 236, 244, 282, 295
Classificatory kinship, 273-274, 427
Clothing, and animals, 54
in archaeological perspective, 90-92
and culture change, 411
in ethnological perspective, 202-204
and habitat, 112-113
as a universal, 189-194
See alfo Adornment
Collier, Do, 105, 131
Communication, animal and human, compared, 51-59 '
and culture change, 390, 411, 421
language and, 364-380
and leadership, 283, 294
and play, 344-345
and transport, 96, 101, 112, 189, 209212,298 I
as a universal, 189-194
See also Language; Writing
Community, in archaeological perspective, 94, 100-101
development of, 421
and housing, 205-209

Index
and property, 234-235
social structure in, 175-178,207,243244,249,277,288-301
as a universal, 189-194
See also Residence; Urban centers
Comparative method, 141-143, 145-146,
185
Compass, 211-212
Configuration, 21, 26, 156-166, 409, 427
Configurationalism, 156-160
Conformity, 303-319
See also Social control
Conjugal family, 266, 427
Consanguineal family, 266-267, 427
Conspicuous consumption, 201, 237-240
Constitution, as cultural determinant, 4979, 174, 314
and culture change, 410-411, 422-424
defined, 16-17, 49-50
universals of, 169-170, 182-184, 188195, 242, 300, 326, 327, 342-344,
350-351
See also Biological heritage and culture;
Drives, biological; Genetics, human
I
Constitutional types, 49, 64, 75
Consumption economics, 201, 222-224,
230-240
Contra-acculturative movements, 389,
406-408, 420-421
Cook Islands, 353
See also Polynesia
Cookihg, 200-201,,207, 214
Coon, c., 78, 105, 144, 177, 186, 283,
301, 347, 351, 356
Copper metallurgy, 85, 100, /218
Corbeled arch; '208, 427 _ I
Count, Eo Wo, 78
I
Courts, 303, 306-308, 316-319
Covert culture, 42-44, 159,161, 427
Cressman, L. So, 134
Crime, 231, 302, 303-309
Cro-Magnon Man, 66, 90-93
'Cross-cousin marriage, 258-260
Crow Indians, 339-340
See also Plains Indians
Cultivation, plant (see Plant cultivation)
Cults, 119, 338, 383, 406-408
See also Religion
Cultural anthropology, defined, 1-2, 4-5
history, 9-14,

Index

463

Cultural dynamics (see Culture change)

Cultural relativism, 46-47, 160, 181-184
Cultural transmission, 168-169, 396
See also Education; Learning
Culture, and constitution, 49-79, 174,314
as a continuum, 28-29
defined, 16, 17-29, 427
distribution of, 107-136
future development of, 104-105, 421425
growth of, 59-64, 80-105
and habitat, 107-136
and individual, 162-175
and language, 364-380
scientific study of, 6-8
as symbolic, 29, 177
theories relating to, 138-186
universals in, 182-184, 188-196
Culture areas, 116-117, 125-136, 145,
427
Culture change, 7-8,23, 26, 42, 204, 209,
300,373,381-417
Culture-historical school, 121, 149-150,
327,341
Dahomey, 124,361
Dancing, 54-55, 238, 313, 328, 343, 349,
351, 356-358, 412
Death, 192, 235,243, 248, 250-251, 268,
274, 329-331, 411, 416, 424
See also Burial; Funerals
Decision making, 283, 291, 294
Decoration (see Adornment)
Deformation, 60-~1, 203
Deme, 264, 277, 427
Demography (see Population) ,
- Derived drives, 61, 172-173, 427
Descent, 266, 272, 274-280
Determinants, constitutional, 61-62, 7677,194
I
cultural, 146-147, 186
defined, 61, 427
economic, 110-115,240
habitat, 110-115
historical, 80, 146-147
'
infant training, 171-175
language, 376-377
population, 245-246
race, 74-75
sociological, 176
De Terra, H., 94

Diet, 139, 198-202

See also Food
Diffusion, and acculturation, 27-28,
381 ff.
and culture history, 80, 97-98, 101,
108-110, 223, 373, 379
defined, 23, 25, 386-387, 396-397,427
and habitat, 108-110
and language, 373
Diffusionism, American, 118-122, 145148
English, 148-149
German, 121, 149-150, 327, 341
Disease (see Sickness)
Disorganization and change, 381, 396408
Distribution, of culture, 23, 25, 107-136,
145-146
of wealth, 230-233, 236-237
See also Diffusion; History, of culture
Division of labor, 75-76, 225-230, 252
Divorce, 262-263, 269
Dixon, R. B., 116, 137, 393, 395
Dobuans, 207, 275, 334, 415
Dog, domestication of, 96, 103
Dollard, J., 172-173, 187
Domesticated anim[l.ls, 96, 209, 343
See also Herding; and names of animals
Double descent, 276, 428
Douglas, F. H., 351, 363
Drama, 313, 351, 356, 359-360
Drift, cultural, 385
genetic, 67, 71-72, 428
linguistic, 373
Drives, biological, 60-61, 76-77, 185-186
derived, 60-61, 64
and learning, 56-64, 172-173
Drugs and narcotics, 133, 199-200, 228,
408
DuBois, C., 48, 167, 169, 170,415
Durkheim, E., 175,245,327,328, 341
Dyad, social, 178, 244, 428
Dysnomia, 154, 404, 428
Dysphoria, 154, 405, 428
Easter Island, 98-99, 340
Ecology, and culture, 117, 243
defined, 428
and human variation, 65-72
Economic behavior, animals and, 50-59
in archaeological perspective, 80-105

464
Economic behavior (continued)
and art, 348
and biological drives, 60
and culture change, 408-413, 422-424
in ethnological perspective, 219-241
and evolutionary theory, 141-144
and habitat, 113
of industrial society, 103-104, 166-167
and material culture, 214 ft.
and religion, 328-330, 332-333
and society, 257, 271-280
universals in, 152, 189-194
Economics and anthropology, 2, 141-143,
221-222, 240--241
Education, and anthropology, 162-175
and culture change, 412, 414-417
in ethnological perspective, 225, 248249, 268-270, 305, 327, 331, 333,
344
as a universal, 152, 189-194
See also Child training; Learning; Personality
Eggan, F., 185, 286
Egypt, in achaeological perspective, 9596, 98-99, 102
and English diffusionism, 148-149
in ethnological perspective, 124, 147,
199, 205, 211, 213, 258, 397
writing, 379
See also Middle East
Elkin, A. P., 279-280, 391
Emotions, animal and human, 58
and culture, 250, 335, 343, 352, 405...:
406,411
and language, 375
Enculturation, and culture change, 396,
404, 414-417, 424
defined, 35, 428
in ethnological perspective, 64, 167,
268-270, 305, 310
Endogamy, 260--261,265,428
England, character in, 166
dialects in, 374
diffusionists in, 148-149, 327
See also Britain
i
Eolithic, 86-88,1 89, 428
Equilibrium, social, 153-154, 177-178,
318-319, 385 ft., 428
See also Pattern; Stability
Eskimo, abnormality among, 172
art, 92

Index
culture area, 116, 131
culture change, 143, 397, 398
habitat, 112
material culture, 203, 205, 208, 213,
224
society, 224, 268, 282, 288, 289
and war, 295
See also Arctic peoples
Ethics, and culture, 22, 182-194, 302319, 323, 423-424
relativity of, 181-184
Ethics, Code of, 420
Ethiopia, 123, 125, 199
Ethnocentrism, 46-47, 181,299-300,423,
428
Ethnological present, 107, 122
Ethnology, defined, 5
history of, 10--14
Ethnopsychology, 169-175
Ethos, 156, 159, 428
Etiquette, 244, 352, 411-412
Eunomia, 154, 428
Euphoria, 154, 318, 405, 428
Europe, archaeology, 85, 89-103
art, 359
culture areas, 117, 136
culture change, 391
habitat, 108-110, 134
language, 372
material culture, 206, 209-211, 234,
237
popUlation bistory, 69,70--71
soc\ety, 43, 237', 261, 282
See also Western civilization
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 48, 125, 154, 187,
241, 277, 286, 301, 324, 333, 341
Evolution, organic, 13, 50-53, 80
Evolutionism (cultural), defined, 13-14,
139-145, 185, 428
and ethnocentrism, 47
revival of, 144-145
theories of, 80, 110,223,264-265,289290,381
,Exchange, 230--233
Exogamy, 260--261, 265, 277, 428
Extended family, 267-270, 428
Factionalism, 272, 405, 421
Family, in animals, 54
biological basis of, 62
and culture change, 388, 411-413, 424

Index
defined, 265-266
evolution of, 88, 141, 142
and household, 206-207
in industrial society, 104
and religion, 328-329
and society, 242-243, 265-271, 291
and social control, 305, 317
as a universal, 189-194
See also Marriage
Fashions, 343, 408, 413
Feasting, 201, 236-240, 255, 328
Fenton, W. N., 355
Fetishism, 326, 340, 428
Fiji, 128, 251, 299, 389
Fire, in archaeological perspective, 88, 90,
141
making of, 114, 200
Firth, R., 154, 182, 185, 187, 196, 240,
241,294, 319, 329, 341, 347, 363,
418
Fishing, 94, 98, 116, 127-129, 132, 133,
141, 216, 235, 329
Focus, cultural, 159-168, 409
Folk society, 45-46, 97, 161, 387, 428
Folklore, 172, 190, 284, 310, 336-337,
360-361
Food, in archaeological perspective, 84103
and biological drives, 61, 62
and culture change, 388, 408-413
in ethnological perspective, 65, 94, 123136, 198-202, 294
and habitat, 112-113
as a universal, 189-194
See also Agriculture; Economic behavior; Fishing; Herding
Food producing revolution, 71, 84, 85,
125-136, 234-235, 300:
Ford, C. S., 192, 285
Forde, C. D., 111, 115, 136, ,'198, 220,
223,241,341
Form, in art, 350-351
and culture change, 399-40Q
defined, 22-23
j
and distributional studies, 120-122
theory relating to, 25-26, 152-155, 197
See also Mode; Norm; Pattern
Fortes, M., 124, 125, 242, 246, 275, 276,
277, 278, 285, 286, 296, 301
Fortune, R., 207, 258, 275, 286,334,341,
415

465
Fossil man, 12, 53, 65-66, 88-93, 125126
Foster, G. M., 187, 241
France, archaeology, 83-93
language, 373, 374
national character, 164, 207
Frazer, J., 141, 186, 326, 332, 341
French sociological school, 176,245, 327,
328, 341
Freud, S., 170-171, 327, 341
Friendship groups, 280-281
Fuegian peoples, 133-134, 202, 203
Function, in art, 343-344
and culture change, 396-402
defined, 25-26, 428
and distributional studies, 121-122
theory relating to, 21, 22-23, 150-155,
197
See also Integration
Functionalism, 150-155, 158, 382
See also Malinowski, B.; RadcliffeBrown, A. R.
Funerals, 192, 251, 330-331
See also Death
Games, 189, 296, 2~7, 310, 328, 343
Geertz, C., 30
Genealogies, 244, 274, 276
Generation, 242, 250, 411-413
Genetic drift, 67, 71-72, 428
Genetics, human, 50-53, 65-78
Gens (see Clan)
Geography and culture, 17, 107-136, 139
Germany, difIusionism in, 121, 149-150,
327, 341
geographic school in, 115, 145, 149,
164
language, 373
national character, 145
Gesture, 364, 366, 377
Ghost Dance, 27, 119,382,407
Gift giving, 227, 231
Gillin, J., 15, 172, 186
Gladwin, T., 48, 286
Gleason, H. A., 373, 380
Glottochronology (see Lexicostatistics)
Gluckman, M., 285, 288, 291, 301, 320
Goldenweiser, A. A., 111, 120, 137, 148,
176, 267
Goldschmidt, W., 246, 285, 304, 320, 418
Gorer, G., 164, 166, 281

466

Index

Government, 189-194, 287-301

See also Political organization
Graebner, F., 149
Graff, W. L., 373, 380
Grammar, 367-369, 375,428
Graphic and plastic arts, 347-356
See also Art; Painting; Sculpture
Great traditions, 27, 162, 181
Greece, anthropology in early, 10
archaeology, 102
culture change, 397
in ethnological perspective, 206, 208,
288, 305, 379
Group marriage, 263-264, 428
Group mind, 176
Guanaco, 133-134
Guilt sanctions, 165-167, 305, 319
See also Sanctions

Habit formation, 172-174,310

See also Learning
Habitat, and constitution, 72-73
and culture, relation defined, 16-17,
50, 107-136, 191, 197-219
and culture change, 390, 410, 411, 422,
424
determinism theory of, 112-115
and totemism, 279-280
Haddon, A. C., 2, 15, 105
Hall, R. A., 380
Hallowell, A. 1., 78, 172, 175, 187, 416,
418
Hambly; W. D., 137
Handy, E. S. C., 263, 359
Harding: C. F., 229-230, 241
Haring, D. G., 48
Hartland, E. S., 303, 320
Hawaiians, art, 352
and culture change, 388, 412, 423
economic values, 238
society, 128, 258, 273, 312
See also Polynesia ,
Health, commtjnity, 2'07
and culture change, 411
mental, 182-183, 254, 334, 343-344,
406, 415
and religion, 329, 334
and values, 182-183
See also Medicine; Sickness
Hebrews, 102, 103, 252, 259, 263

Heizer, R. F., 106

Henry, J., 79, 175
Herding, in archaeological perspective,
96, 102-103
in ethnological perspective, 124-136,
217, 235, 278, 289-290, 343
and food, 198-201
and language, 376
theories relating to, 102-103, 141, 149
and transport, 209
See also names of domestic animals
Herskovits, M. J., 15, 18, 48, 124, 136,
137, 182, 186, 187, 196, 233, 241,
347,361,387,409,417,418
Herzog, G., 356, 357, 363
Hierarchy, in animals, 54
and culture change, 390, 398-399, 428
and social structure, 242-244, 281-285
Historicalism, defined, 145-148, 428
and distributional studies, 118-122, 381
theory relating to, 80, 143, 150, 155,
158, 170, 185

History, and anthropology, 2, 80-82, 417

of culture, 80-105, 141-150
Hockett, C. M., 377
Hoebel, E. A., 301, 306, 319, 320
Hoijer, H., 15, 220, 346, 365, 377, 380,
417, 418
Holmberg, A. R., 48, 241
Homans, G., 178, 285
Honigmann, J. J., 33, 48, 175, 187
Hooton, E. A., 49', 78, 87, 314
Hopi Indians, 193, 228, 247, 263, 275,
- 376
See also So_uthwest Indians.
Horse, in Am~rica, 103, 11'8-119, 132,
398
- I
I
domestication of, 102
in ethnological perspective, 135, 210
Hottentots, 124
Household, 206-207, 209, 242, 271
See also Family
Housing, of animals, 54
in archaeological perspective, 92, 96103
and culture change, 209, 411
in ethnological perspective, 204-209
and habitat, 112-113
as a universal, 189-194
See also Architecture; Community
Hsu, F. L. K., 164, 167, 305

Index
Humanities and anthropology, 3, 6, 1112, 181-184,417
See also Philosophy; Values
Hybridization, 68-72, 414, 415

Iatmul, 164
Ideal culture, 38, 40
Ifugao, 303, 315, 316
. Inca, 132, 133, 292-293
See also Middle America; Peru
Incest, 183, 189-194, 258, 317,429
Independent invention (see Parallelism)
India, archaeology, 85, 89, 98, 101
caste, 283
culture change, 409
in ethnological perspective, 135-136,
181, 199, 206, 217, 251, 255, 263,
267
as a habitat, 108-110, 134-135
language, 372
population history, 69, 71
urban development, 45
Indians (see American Indians)
Individual, and culture, 17, 32-35, 156,
162-175, 186
and culture change, 410, 413-417
as innovator, 394, 414
See also Child training; Learning; Personality
Indo-European, 102, 364, 371, 372-373
Indonesia, i29-130, 303-304
See also Malaysia
Industrial revolution, in cultural perspective, 103-105, 420-422 .
economic consequences, 226, 2\!9-230
and politic~l consolidation, 3~0
and recreatIOn, 362-363
and social organization, 249
Industry and anthropology, 229-230,
421-422
I
Infancy (see Child training) , I
Inheritance, 189, 235-236, 250, 262, 274
- Initiation, 243, 248, 329, 359 l'
Innovation, of animals and hu~ans, 5759,64
I
and applied anthropology, 420-422
in ethnological perspective, 25, 117,
223, 308-309, 311, 344, 392-396
language, 373
and rates of change, 420-422

467
See also Invention; Reformulation
Institution, 25, 152, 429
Integration, of culture, 21, 26, 194, 318319, 326, 342-344, 358
social, 150-167
and stability, 385 Ii., 420
See also Function; Pattern
Intelligence, differences in, 73-75
tests of, 7, 62-64, 174-175
Interaction, chronograph, 178
defined, 32, 429
and social structure, 242, 244, 272
theory relating to, 175-178
Interpersonal relations, 32, 175-178,242
Intervention and change, 401-403, 409,
419-422
Invention, and culture history, 80, 300,
381 ff., 422
defined, 23, 45, 145, 429
independent (see Parallelism)
theory relating to, 23, 145, 393-394
See also Innovation
Iran, 84, 90-91, 95, 372
Iraq, 84, 90-91, 95-96, 98, 258, 372
Irish, 172, 176
Iron, Age, 85, 100
/
metallurgy, 85, 100, 113, 125, 141,218
Iroquois Indians, 355
Irrelevant form, 121, 149, 429
Italy, 172, 208, 373

Jakobson, R., 369, 380

Japan, archaeology, 85, 205
and culture change, 112, 409
in ethnological perspective, 135-136,
211, 232, 27~ 291, 34~ 378, 379
as a habitat, 135
language, 371, 374
national character, 44, 159
population history, 69, 71
Japanese relocation, in United States, 420
Java, in ethnological perspective, 129-130
migrations, 125-127
See also Malaysia; Southeast Asia
Java Man, 53, 65, 89, 125
Jesperson, 0., 366, 367, 380
Joking relationship, 272, 345
Judicial procedures, 303, 305-319
See also Courts; Law

468
Kardiner, A., 48, 169-170, 187,331,414
Kariera, 260
Keesing, F. M., 137, 242, 294, 301, 382,
383, 39~416, 417,41~ 425
Kelly, W. H., 18, 48
Kimball, S. T., 176,286
Kindred, 276, 277, 429
Kinesics, 359, 363, 429
Kingship, 124, 125, 149, 291-293, 297,
327
Kinship, and culture change, 411-413,
424
in ethnological perspective, 271-280
and marriage, 255-265
and political organization, 288, 291292
and property, 231
and social control, 305, 316-319
and social structure, 242-244
as a universal, 189-194
See also Descent; Family
Kluckhohn, C., 18, 33, 48, 59, 61, 79,
160-161, 164, 166, 174, 179, 180,
187, 189, 193, 19~ 248, 304, 32~
329, 336, 341, 403
Kluckhohn, F., 166, 179-180
Knowledge, and culture change, 411-413
in ethnological perspective, 101, 321323
as a universal, 152, 189-194
Kohler, W., 58, 78
Korea, 85, 135, 371, 379
Koryak,290
Kota, 330-331
Kroeber, A. L., 15, 18, 48, 55, 78, 105,
/ 111, 115, 117, 136, 137, 146, 175,
17~ 18~ 18~ 187, 189, 19~ 208,
246, 264, 285, 343, 345, 363, 367,
376, 380, 386, 393, 396, 397, 402,
417, 425
Krogman, W. M., 78, 79
Kula trading ring, 151-152
Kulturkreis (see Germany, difIusionism
in)
Kwakiutl Indians, 224
See also Northwest Coast Indians
LaBarre, W;, 171, 187
Lag, cultural, 409, 427
Language, and art, 360-361
changes in, 373, 408, 411, 412

Index
as a cultural system, 18-19, 27, 364380
distinctiveness of human, 57-59
drift, 373, 429
drum, 357, 366
generalizing tendencies in, 37
lexical domains in, 193
origin of, 87, 366-367
and religion, 326, 335
as a symbol system, 44, 156-157, 364366
as a universal, 189-194
Lapps, 112
Law, defined, 304-306
in ethnological perspective, 233-236,
254,280-281, 373-374
of limited possibilities, 120-121, 147148
as a universal, 152, 189-194
See also Social control
Leadership, in archaeological perspective,
88
and culture change, 390, 392, 399,413417,421
economic, 226-227
housing and, 206
of nativistic movements, 407
political, 289-301
religious, 338-339
sexual distinctions in, 76
and social structure, 178, 242-244,
281-285,
as a universal, 189-194
Sfe also Authority; Hierarchy
Learning, animal and human, compared,
56-59, 64
'
and art, '344'
capacity for, 62, 64
and culture, 35, 76-78, 172-175
and habitat, 113
Yale theory of, 172"':174
See also Child training; Education;
Personality
Leighton, A. H., 391, 409, 418, 420,
425
Leighton, D., 48, 403
Leisure (see Play; Recreation)
Levirate, 259, 429
Levi-Strauss, C., 245, 257, 265, 285
Levy-Bruhl, E., 176
Lexical domains, 192

469

Index
Lexicostatistics, 371, 380
Li An-Che, 270
Life histories, 7, 162-163, 174-175
Limited possibilities, law of, 120-121,
147-148
Lineage, 272, 276-277,429
Lingua franca, 374-375
Linguistics, defined, 4-5, 364-365
See also Language
Linton, R., 15, 18, 28, 30, 47, 48, 105,
136, 144, 155, 169-170, 182, 187,
341,363, 387, 400, 407, 414, 417,
418, 425
Lips, J., 301
Literature, 101,310,313,351,360-361
See also Folklore
Little communities, 45, 180-181
Llama, 133
Locality and culture (see Residence)
Loom, 129, 216
Loss, cultural, 397-398, 402, 410, 420
Lowie, R. H., 15, 48, 96, 137, 186, 220,
241,245,265,277,280,285,294,
301, 319, 322, 325, 327, 341, 343,
346, 348, 397
McAllester, D. P., 356, 363
Machine, in ethnological perspective,
212-214, 219, 352, 362-363
Machine Age revolution, 103-105, 420422
McLennan, J. F., 141, 245
Magic, and ~ulture change, 388, 411
defined, 323, 331-332,429
in ethnological perspective, 223, 227,
228, 234, 275, 312, 326, 331-335
in evolutionary theory, 142
and religion, 326, 334
as a universal, 152, 189-194
Maine, H., 288, 290, 319
Maize, 124, 129, 132-133, 199
Malaysia, archaeology, 85, 125-127
Australia influenced from, 98, 126
and culture change, 391
/.
in ethnological perspective, 125-130,
135-136, 199
.
language, 372
material culture, 200, 205, 210-211,
213
population history, 125-127
society, 253, 291, 297

See also Java; Philippines; Southeast

Asia
Malinowski, B., 121, 151-152, 154, 155,
158, 171, 187, 194, 196, 231, 241,
258,286, 303, 311, 320, 321, 328,
329, 336, 341, 344, 363
Mandelbaum, D. G., 187, 301, 330, 341
Manus Islands, 254
Maori, art, 203, 352
culture change, 388
material culture, 203, 206, 213, 227,
236-237
religion, 338
society, 236-237, 271, 296, 312
See also Polynesia
Marett, R. R., 326, 341
Mariana Islands, 128
See also Micronesia
Markets, 101, 233
Marquesans, 203, 227, 263, 352
See also Polynesia
Marriage, biological basis, 62
in ethnological perspective, 231, 255265,302,329
as a factor in selection, 67-68
theories of origin, 141 .
as a universal, 189-194
See also Family
Marshall Islands, 211-212
See also Micronesia
Martin, P. S., 105, 131
Masai, 248
Masks, 354-355
Material culture, defined, 17, 429
in ethnological perspective, 195, 197219, 335, 340
and habitat, 112-113
universals in, 189-194
See also Technology
Matrilineal descent, 171, 275-278
Maya, 102, 132, 133, 147-148, 293, 378
See also Mexico; Middle America
Mead, M., 48, 76, 162-164, 165-166,
187,207,224, 236, 238, 241, 254,
285, 286, 294, 301,305, 331, 359,
414, 415, 418, 420, 425
Mediators, 390, 403, 417, 421
Medicine, and culture change, 411
in ethnological perspective, 193, 329,
333, 355
and population trends, 104

470

Index

Medicine (continued)
and culture change, 411, 414-417
defined, 32-34, 170-171, 430
See also Health; Sickness
Megalithic, 98-99, 149, 429
See also Personality
Melanesia, cults in, 407
Mode, cultural, 37-44, 405, 430
depopUlation of, 404
Mohammedanism, 125, 130, 181, 291
in ethnological perspective, 128-130, Moiety, 278, 430
205,231-232,255,267,275,280- Money, 222, 232
Mongols, 130, 214, 217, 290, 423
281, 354
Montagu, M. F. A., 49, 78
language in, 374
See also New Guinea; Oceania; Pacific Mooney, J., 341, 383
Islands; and names oj island Moral order, in ethnological perspective,
253-254, 302-319, 323, 423-424
groups
as a universal, 189-194
Menomini Indians, 19-20, 26, 278, 357
See also Ethics; Social control
Mental health, 182-183, 254, 334, 343Morale, 343, 358, 406, 421
344, 406, 415
See also Abnormal behavior; Psychi- Morgan, L., 141, 144, 186, 245
Mormon, 180
atry and anthropology
Moros, 130
Mesolithic, 86, 93-94, 215, 429
Morpheme, 369, 430
Mesopotamia, 71, 89, 95-103, 2lO
Muller, M., 326
See also Middle East
Murdock, G. P., 48, 136, 137, 172-173,
Meta-anthropology, 179, 439
187, 191-193, 196, 245, 264, 265,
Metalinguistics, 150, 375-377, 4_30
272, 276, 285
Metallurgy, 84, 85, 100, 125-136, 202,
Murngin,3
217-219
Metraux, R., 48, 163, 207
Murray, H. A., 48, 174, 248
Music, and animals, 55
Mexico, 94, 132-133, 161, 199, 292
in ethnological perspective, 189, 228,
See also Middle America
234, 356-358
Micronesia, 108, 128-129, 211-212, 389
See also Oceania; Pacific Islands; and Mutation, 67, 72, 73, 430 .
Myths, and art, 359, 360
names oj island groups
defined, 335-337
Middle America, arch in, 208
and property, 234, 235
archaeology, 45, 84-85, 97-99, 102,
and religion,\ 335
206
in ethnological perspective, 132-134, _ and social control, 310
and social organization, 245, 258, 277,
199, 233
- 279-280
political organization, 292-293, 297,
See also Folklore
;299
.
urban development, 45-46, 98-99
Nadel, S. F., 48, 154, 196; 203, 245, 262,
See also Mexico; Peru
,
Middle East, archaeology, 89, 95-103,
285, 287, 301, 418
Nair, 267
210
in ethnological perspective, 84, 208, Narcotics (see Drugs and narcotics)
National character, 26-27, 34-35, 163259, 299
175,176-178,288,359
influences on Africa, 125
Nationalism, 297-300, 344, 383
urban development, 45, 95-103
See also Egypt; Iran; Iraq; Mesopo- Nativistic movements, 119, 341, 389,
406-408, 420-421
tamia
Navaho Indians, 111, 131, 157-159, 160,
Minangkabau, 266
179,403,409
Missions, 296, 360, 413, 414, 424
See also Southwest Indians
Modal personality, as a construct, 36

Index

471

Navigation, 98, 108, 210-212

See also Watercraft
Neanderthal Man, 66, 90, 325, 343
Needs and culture, 60, 76-77, 152, 185186, 194, 393, 420
Negritos, 69, 126, 128, 149, 205, 289
Negroes, African, 69, 70-71, 102, 123125,374
American, 63, 374, 387
See also Africa; and names of tribal
groups
Neolithic, 85, 93, 94-100, 127-129, 205,
212, 216
NettI, B., 356, 363
New Caledonia, 128
See also Melanesia
New Guinea, art in, 363
culture change, 387, 399, 403, 424
in ethnological perspective, 133, 151152, 164, 203, 212
language, 374
migrations to, 126-128, 130
society, 207, 254-255, 267, 297
See also Melanesia; Oceania; Pacific
Islands; and names of tribal
groups
New Ireland, 348-349, 357
See also Melanesia
Nilotic tribes, 203, 249, 272
Nissen, H. W., 57
Norm, cultural, 37-44, 302-303, 405, 430
Normal behavior, 32, 74, 159, 170-172,
173-174
Northwest Coast Indians, culture area,
116, 131
I
folklore, 361
language, 37 4
1
masks, 354
mental health, 172
society, 278, 282
See also KwakiutI Indians; Tlingit Indians
Nuba, 203, 262
Nuclear family, 267-270, 430
Nyakyusa, 249

Oakley, K. P., 105, 220

Occupations, 244, 413
See also Division of labor: Work

Oceania, and America, 85, 120, 134, 148149

art, 355, 363
culture areas in, 130
in ethnological perspective, 125-130
folklore, 361
as a habitat, 108-110
material culture, 200, 204, 208, 210212, 216
religion, 338
society, 259, 298-299
See also Melanesia; Micronesia; Pacific
Islands; Polynesia
Old age, 243, 248-250, 412-413
Oliver, D. L., 137, 241, 286, 301
Ona, 133-134
Operationalism, 36 if., 48, 430
Opler, M. E., 48, 160
Opler, M. K., 171-172, 187, 425
Ordeal, 315-316, 318
Orientations, cultural, 159-168, 409-410,
430
Origins, cultural, theories of, 80-81, 8788, 142-143, 245, 264, 326-327,
366-367
I
Osgood, C., 220
/
Overt culture, 42-44, 159-161, 430
Ownership (see Property)

Pacific Islands, archaeology, 86, 125

culture areas in, 130
culture change, 209, 402, 403
in ethnological perspective, 125-130,
154
as a habitat, 108-110
language, 374
population history, 71
See also Melanesia; Micronesia;
Oceania; Polynesia
Painting, 343, 347-356, 377
Paiute Indians, 119
Palauans, 389, 421
See also Micronesia
Paleoasiatic peoples, 112, 135
Paleolithic, 86-97, 125, 202, 204, 212,
324, 343, 353
Palestine, 90
Parallelism, 105, 120-121, 147-148
Pastoralism (see Herding)

472

Index

Patrilineal descent, 275-278, 430

and the horse, 118-119, 132, 398
Pattern, cultural, 9, 21-22, 26, 38-44, Plant cultivation, 95-103, 123-136, 198146, 157-158, 160-161, 179, 376,
201
See also Agriculture; and names of
405
See also Form; Mode; Norm; Universal
plants
culture pattern
Plateau Indians, 131-132
Paul, B. D., 48
Play, of animals, 54-55
Peasant society, 45-46, 97, 161-162, 181
and culture change, 410-413
Peking Man, 53, 65, 89, 90, 200
in ethnological perspective, 96, 97, 213,
Penniman, T. K., 15
280, 342-346, 362-363
as a universal, 152, 189-194
Perry, W. J., 149
Personality, and change, 382, 388, 408See also Games; Recreation
417, 423-424
Plow, 125
and culture, 32-35, 169-175
Poisons, 133, 200
defined, 16, 32-33, 174, 430
Police, 303, 306, 309, 312, 313
development and age, 247-250
Political organization, in archaeological
and marital selection, 257
perspective, 101-103
and sex rules, 254
and art, 348
and social structure, 176-178,269-270
and clothing, 203
as a cultural system, 27, 123-136,287types, 165-168, 305, 417
See also Character; Child training; In301
dividual; Learning
and culture change, 408-409, 422-424
Peru, archaeology, 98-99, 102
and economic behavior, 103-104, 223
culture change, 383-384, 409
and habitat, 113
in ethnological perspective, 132-134,
and leadership, 283-285
216, 258, 377
and marriage, 257
See also Middle America
and property, 234
Peyote cult, 119
and religion, 253, 298, 328-330
Philippines, 126-130, 201, 206, 210, 253,
as a universal, 189-194
298, 357
See also Government; Law
See also Malaysia; Southeast Asia; and Political science and anthropology, ~2,
names of local groups
288, 300-301, 417
Philosophy, and anthropology, 6, 178- _ Polygamy, 262-264, 430
184
Po!ynesia, and America, 85, 120, 134
of a culture, 159-168
archaeology, 99
art, 352'
in ;ethnological perspective, 1601 321323, 340-341, 422-424
as a culture' area, 13 0
and religion, 321-323
in ethnological perspective, 128-129,
Phoneme, 368, 430
199
Phonetics, 367-369, 430
material culture, 211; 213, 214, 216
Phratry, 278, 431
navigation in, 98, 1'14, 134, 211
Physical anthropology, defined, 1-2, 4,
play, 346
8
and property, 235
history of, 11-13,
society, 31, 227, 235, 253, 274, 293,
See also Constitution; Race and culture
298
Physical environment (see Habitat)
war, 31
Pidgin languages, 374-375
See also Oceania; Pacific Islands; and
Plains Indians, culture area, 116, 131names of island groups
132
Population, in archaeological perspective,
in ethnological perspective, 211, 235,
80-103
289, 296, 303, 313, 339-340
and culture, 194, 242-243, 245-247

lndex

473

and culture change, 383, 389, 404, 421,

424
and habitat, 108-110
in industrial society, 103-104
and political consolidation, 299-300
and society, 242-247, 278
See also Community; Society
Potlatch, 240, 361,431
Pottery, 96, 129, 132, 141, 214-215
Premises, 159-168, 323, 385, 408, 423,
431
Prestige, and culture change, 398-399,
400, 410--413, 420
and goods, 201, 206, 223, 227, 237240,283
Priests, 253, 338
Primitive, defined, 44-46
Production, 222-230
Projective tests, 7, 63-64, 174-175
Property, concepts of, 233-236
and law, 302, 304, 317
and religion, 328-329
and social structure, 255-256, 261262, 278, 282
as a universal, 189-194
See also Ceremonial goods; Material
culture; Wealth
Psychiatry and anthropology, 163-175,
344-345, 415
Psychic unity, 142-143, 185-186
Psychoanalysis and anthropology, 152,
163, 170-175,327,331
Psychology 'and anthropology, 2-3, 17,
60, 157, 158-175, 395, 408, ,417
Puberty (see Adolescence)
Pueblo Indians, 111-112, 131, 157-159,
205, 286, 353, 361
See also Southwest Indians
Punishment, 173, 303-319
See also Courts; Law
Pygmies of Africa, 67, 69, 71, ~8, 123,
149,200
Pyramids, 98-99, 120, 147-148, 206
Quimby, Go 1o, 105, 131

I
!

Race and culture, 64-78, 419

Radcliffe-Brown, A. Ro, 15, 151, 153-154,
175, 176, 187, 195, 251, 260, 279,
285,287, 316, 318, 320, 329, 382
Radin, Po, 15, 162, 322, 341, 363.

Radiocarbon dating, 82, 128

Rainey, Po, 143
Rank, and culture change, 410-413
in ethnological perspective, 225-227,
242-244,281-284
See also Authority; Class; Hierarchy;
Leadership
Rates of change, 408-413
See also Culture change
Ratzel, Po, 115, 137, 145, 149
Real culture, 40-41
Reciprocity, 227, 231, 257, 284, 311,
317-318,431
Recreation, 189-194, 270, 342-346, 362363, 409, 423
See also Games; Play
Redfield, R., 15, 27, 45, 161, 180-181,
182, 187, 242, 301, 319, 323, 324,
341, 387,417,418
Reformulation, cultural, 28, 381, 396408,431
Reification, 36-37, 44, 146
Reindeer, 112, 135, 143, 290, 361
Religion, and animal behavior, 55
in archaeological perspective, 92, 96,
101, 103
and art, 346, 348, 352, 359
cults, 119, 338, 382, 406-408
as a cultural system, 27, 125-136, 321341
and culture change, 382, 383, 385, 388,
406-412, 416-417, 423
and death, 250-251
defined, 323-324
and economic behavior, 201, 203, 223,
227,228,234
and habitat, 113
in industrial society, 104, 409
and language, 375
and magic, 334
See also Magic
and material culture, 201, 203, 234
origin theories, 142-143, 171, 326-327
and political organization, 253, 298,
328-330
and social control, 308, 312,315-316,
318
and society, 234, 253, 255, 271-280
as a universal, 152, 189-194
Research methods, 6-7, 63-64, 162-163,
164,174-175

474
Residence, 243, 264, 271, 298-299
See also Community
Rice cultivation, 129, 135, 201
Ritual, and culture change, 410-411, 424
and religion, 330, 335, 338-340, 351352
Rivers, W. H. R., 330, 404
Roads, 101, 210
Roberts, J. M., 179, 306, 320
R6heim, G., 171
Role, 244-245, 307,431
See also Status
Rorschach test (see Projective tests)
Russia, language, 373
national character, 164
Sakai, 135
Samoans, character structure, 163-164,
331
and culture change, 415
in ethnological perspective, 224, 227,
232, 238, 262, 299, 315,.360
See also Polynesia
Sanctions, and culture, 159-160, 165168, 303-319, 328-330
and culture change, 410-411
defined, 304, 305
See also Law; Moral order
Sapir, E., 19,48, 117, 121, 137, 156-157,
162, 187, 364, 365, 369, 374, 376,
380
Sayce, R. U., 219
Scandinavia, 85, 98, 163, 210
Scarification, 203
Schapera, I., 232, 316
Schmidt, W., 149, 187, 327, 341
Schnrider, D. M., 285
Schultz, A. H., 52
Sculpture, 343, 351-356
Secret societies, 280-281
Selection, in human populations, 67-72
Semang, 135
Sex, in animals, 50-51, 54
and art, 343, 352, 359
and clothing, 202-203
and cultural behavior, 64, 75-76, 251255
and culture change, 405, 411-413, 424
division of labor, 75-76, 225, 252-253
as factor in selection, 67-68

Index
and religion, 252, 328
and social control, 302, 304
and social structure, 168, 242, 244,
251-255
as a universal, 189-194,251
Shamans, 253, 289, 332-333, 338-339,
375, 431
Shame sanctions, 165-167, 305
See also Sanctions
Shapiro, H., 78, 105
Siberian peoples, 108-109, 112, 135, 254,
289, 290, 339, 361, 371
Sickness, 72, 268, 329, 334, 355, 411, 416,
424
See also Health
Siegel, B. J., 242
Silent trade, 232, 431
Singer, M., 180-181
Slotkin, J. S., 187, 345
Smith, E. G., 148, 187
Smith, M. W., 137
Smith, R. J., 391, 409, 418
Smith, W., 306, 320
Social anthropology, 5, 138-180
Social control, 245, 254, 269-270, 302319, 424
See also Judicial procedure; Law;
Moral order
Social organization, of animals, 30-31
in archaeological perspective, 87-88
and art, 358
biological basis, 60
and culture change, 382, 405-406, 408,
\
411-413, 422-423
4efined, 5, 31-32, 138-139
and economic behavior, 103-104, 223,
225-230, 238-240 !
in ethnological perspective, 123-136,
138-180, 242-285/
and habitat, 113
and housing, 207
and play, 343-346
and religion, 328-330, 335, 338-339
universals in, 189-194
See also Community; Family; Hierarchy; Social structure; Status
Social structure, 32, 175-178
See also Social organization
Socialization, 35, 64, 243, 269, 414-417,
431

Index
See also Child training; Education;
Learning
Society, of animals, 30-31,53-54
and culture, 29-32, 153-155, 175-178,
242-285
defined, 16, 29-30, 431
and personality, 174
See also Social organization
Society Islands, 227, 359-360, 371
See also Polynesia
Sociology and anthropology, 2-3, 8, 153155,169, 175-178
Sorcery, 316, 317, 325, 331-335, 388,
415,431
South America, archaeology, 93-94
culture areas, 133-134
in ethnological perspective, 133-134,
199, 213, 388, 424
See also Middle America; Peru
Southeast Asia, archaeology, 85, 125-127
in ethnological perspective, 125-130,
134-136, 216, 379
language, 372
navigation, 98
See also Java; Malaysia; Philippines
Southwest Indians, 131-132, 157-159,
268,270, 377
See also Apache Indians; Navaho Indians; Pueblo Indians
Spanish Americans, 63, 180
Speech community, 370-373, 431
Spicer, Eo Ho, 420, 425
Spindler, Go Do, 167, 169, 416, 418, 425
Spiro, Mo Eo, 48, 79, 155, 175, 187
I
Sports (see Games)
I
Stability, cultural, 122,374, 381-417
See also Mode; Norm; Pattedj
State, 287-288, 291-295, 409 I
See also Political organizationj
Status, and culture change, 390, 398-399,
411-413, 421
I
defined, 244, 431
. .
and economic behavior, 227, i35, 238239
,
and leadership, 281-284
and material symbols, 202-203, 206207,235
and personality development, 33, 169170
and play, 345

475
and sex, 251-253
and social control, 307
and social structure, 24-25, 176-177,
244-245, 250, 274-280
See also Hierarchy; Rank
Steward, Jo Ho, 48, 99, 105, 133, 144, 187,
195, 246, 301, 418
Style, 156, 159, 376, 431
Sudan (see Nilotic tribes)
Sumatra, 130, 266
Sumer, 100-101
Superorganic, 36, 44, 146, 157
Surplus, economic, 231, 237, 239
Survivals, 140-143
Swadesh, Mo, 371, 380
Symbolic communication, animal and human compared, 58-59
as basis of culture, 29, 50, 52, 64, 156157, 177
language as, 364-380
Symbolism, and art, 343-362
and culture change, 410-412
defined, 29, 431
and political organization, 287, 293
and religion, 328-331
and social control, ;'13

Taboo, 303, 312, 327, 339, 432

Tahitians, 227, 359-360, 371
See also Polynesia
Tallensi, 296
Tasmanian Aborigines, 126, 198, 213,
397, 404
Tattooing, 203
Tax, So, 241, 418
Technology, and animals, 54, 87
in archaeological perspective, 83-105
and art, 346-348
and biological drives, 60
and cultural change, 409-413, 419,
422-424
defined, 17
in ethnological perspective, 123-136,
197-219
evaluation of progress in, 184, 219
and habitat, 112-114
and universals, 189-194
See also Material culture
Temples, 97, 101, 133, 147, 206, 340

476
Tensions, in cultural contexts, 172-173,
272, 329, 330, 334, 343-344
and culture change, 404-408, 411,
414-417,424
Territoriality, 54, 88, 189-194, 235, 411
See also Residence
Tests (see Intelligence, tests of; Projective
tests)
Textile arts, 96-97, 129, 215-217, 351352
Thailand, 258, 372, 409
Themes, in culture, 159-160, 207, 323,
432
myth, 336-337
Thomas, W. L., 15, 79, 137, 187, 417,
425
Thompson, J. E. S., 102, 105
Thompson, L., 301, 417, 418
Thompson, S., 363
Thurnwald, R., 241, 301
Tibet, 130, 263, 372
Tierra del Fuego (see Fuegian peoples)
Tikopians, 288
Tlingit Indians, 278, 317
See also Northwest Coast Indians
Toda,330
Tombs, 97, 147
See also Burial
Tongans, 299
See also Polynesia
Tools, animals and, 54, 87
in archaeological perspective, 88-103
and culture, 212-214, 327
See also Artifacts; Technology
Totemism, 272, 279-280, 337, 359, 432
Towns (see Urban centers)
Trade! 88, 101, 214, 230-233, 298-299
Trager, G. L., 368, 380
I
Training, child (see Child training; Education; Learning)
,
Trait, as a construct, 36, 160-161
and culture change, 399-400
defined, 25, 145, 432
distribution studies of, 117-122
I
Trait-complex, 25, 145, 432
Transport, 96, 101, 112, 189, 209-212,
298,411
Travel, 68-72, 101, 117-122, 189, 209212
Tribe, 290, 297-298, 432

Index
Trobriand Islanders, 151-152, 171, 231232
Tswana, 232, 316
Tullishi, 262
Turks, 217
Turney-Higp, H. H., 136,301
Tylor, E. B., 18, 48, 141, 186, 258, 326,
341
Unconscious patterning, of culture, 1819, 42-43, 156-157, 160-161
of language, 18-19, 156-157
Unilateral (unilineal) descent, 274-280,
432
United States culture, age factor, 248249
art, 362-363
changes in, 401, 405
class, 282
crime, 314
family, 268-270, 274
industry, 229-230, 233, 234
intelligence tests, 63
national character, 3, 165-168, 177,
305
society, 26-27, 31, 17&--:178, 268-270,
274, 281, 282
urbanization, 243
values, 3, 180, 238
world view, 333, 341
See also Western civilization
_
Universal cultur,e pattern, 146, 179, 188189
Universals, in culture, 169-170, 182-184,
188-195, 242, 349-350
in personality, 34, 169-170, 174
Urban centers, in archaeological perspec-'
tive, 99-103
.characteristics of, 45-46, 103-105,
123-136, 161-162, 207, 209, 243,
299-300,362-363,383,419
and habitat, 11 0
Vaillant, G. C., 102, 105, 133, 292
Values, and cultural norms, 40, 159-168,
179-184
and culture change, 384-385, 400-401,
407-408,409,413,420,422-424
defined, 161,432
economic, 222-224

Index

477

and law, 302-303

and leadership, 283-284
relativism of, 4~7, 182-184, 219
universals in, 193
Vedda, 135, 205
..
Vendryes, J., 367, 380
Voegelin, C. F., 193, 196, 380
Vogt, E. Z., 286
Voluntary associations, 280-281,412
Wagley, C., 241
Wallace, A. F. C., 341, 416, 418
Wallis, W. D., 187, 341
War, in ethnological perspective, 271,
295-297,408
and political consolidation, 288, 294297
as a universal, 31, 189
Warner, W. L., 3, 48, 164, 166, 176, 177,
187,229, 243, 282, 286
Washburn, S. L., 78
Watercraft, 98, 114, 121, 209-212, 397,
400
See also Navigation
Watson, J. B., 418
Wealth, 222-224
See also Material culture; Property
Weapons, 88-103, 212-214
Weaving, 96, 129, 215-217
See also Textile arts
Webster, H., 334, 339, 341
Wedding (s~e Marriage)
Weltfish, G., 220, 363
Westermarck, E. A., 258, 303, 319
Western civilization, art, 353
as a cultural system, 27
and culture change, 226, 409, 423
language, 371-372
.
I
philosophy, 340-341
political organization, 293-295,

I,

social structure, 252-253, 262, 268270, 280-281, 282

See also Europe; United States culture
Wheel, 210, 215
White, L. A., 144, 187
Whiting, J. W. M., 174, 187,285
Whorf, B. L., 376-377, 380
Willey, G. R., 84,246
Williams, F. E., 341, 363, 403, 425
Wilson, M., 249, 286
Winnebago Indians, 162
Wissler, C., 111, 116, 131, 137, 146,
187-189, 196, 295, 396
Witchcraft, 306-308, 331-335, 388, 416,
432
See also Magic
Women (see Sex)
Woodland Indians, 119, 131-132, 313,
416
Work, in cultural context, 75-76, 225230
and culture change, 411-413, 422-424
and play, 345-346, 409
sex differences in, 252
World view, 321-341
See also Philosophy; Religion
Writing, 101, 125, 364-366, 377-380,
396-397
Yahgan, 133-134
Yakut,135
Yapese, 256, 313, 389
See also Micronesia
Yoruba,124
Yukaghir, 289
Zulu, 291
Zuni Indians, 43, 180, 270, 306-308, 316
See also Pueblo Indians; Southwest Indians