THE REALITY OF CULTURE

Man and his Works

Herskovits - 6/17/71

Man lives in many dimensions. He moves in space where the natural environment exerts a never ending influence on him He exists in time, which provides him with an historic past and a sense of the future. He carries on his activities as a member of society, identifying himself with his fellows and cooperating with them in maintaining his group and assuring its continuity.

But man is not unique in this. All animals must take time and space into account. Many forms live in aggregates wl1ere the necessity of adjusting to their fellows is an ever­present factor in their lives. What marks off man, the social animal of our concern, from all o1 these, is culture This propensity to develop cultures cements into a unified whole all the forces that play on man, integrating for the individual the natural setting in which he finds himself, the historic past of his group, and the social relations he must assume. Culture brings all these together and thus affords man a means of adjusting to the complexities of the world into which he is born, giving him the sense, and sometimes the reality, of being its creator as well as a creature of it.

A short and useful definition of culture is: Culture is the man­made part of the environment. Implicit in this is the recognition that man's life is lived in a dual setting, the natural habitat and his social "environment." The definition also implies that culture is more than a biological phenomenon. It includes all the elements in man's nature endowment that he has acquired from his group by conscious learning or, on a somewhat different level, by a conditioning process -- techniques of various kinds' social and other institutions, beliefs, and patterned modes of conduct. Culture, in short, can be contrasted with the raw materials, outer end inner, from which it derives. Resources presented by the natural world are shaped so as to meet existing needs; while inborn traits are so molded as to derive out of inherent endowment the reflexes which are preponderant in the overt manifestations of behavior.

Those who would comprehend the essential nature of culture must resolve a series of seeming paradoxes that are not to be ignored. These paradoxes can be phrased in many ways, but may be stated here as follows:

l. Culture is universal in man's experience, yet each local or regional manifestation of it is unique.

2. Culture is stable, yet culture is also dynamic, and manifests continuous and constant change.

3. Culture fills and largely, determines the course of our lives, yet rarely intrudes into conscious thought.

How fundamental are the problems raised by these formulations, and how difficult it is to reconcile their. seeming contradictions, will not become fully apparent until their many implications have been probed. Here we will consider them as they bear on the immediate question of the reality of culture.

In reality, then, our first paradox is to be resolved by accepting both of its terms. What this means is that the universality of culture is an attribute of human existence. Even its division into a series of aspects is proved by all we know of the most diverse ways of life, in all parts of the globe, wherever cultures have been studied. On the ether ha d, i.. is equally susceptible of objective proof that no two cultures are the same. When observations of this fact, gained from present­day investigations, are translated into the dimension of time, it means that each culture has had a development unique to itself. The universals in culture, we may thus say, provide a framework which the particular experiences of a people are expressed in the particular forms taken by their body of custom.

And, at this point, we may let this, first of our paradoxes rest, leaving the explanation of why it can be met in this way for later chapters.

When we weigh cultural stability against cultura1 change, we must, first of all, recognize that the evidence in hand proves beyond doubt that culture is dynamic; that the only completely static cultures arc dead ones. We have but to look at our own experience to see how change comes upon us, frequently so softly that we never suspect it until we project the present on the past. The instance of a photograph of ourselves, perhaps only a few years old, which amuses us because of the difference in the style of clothing from what we wear now makes the point. Nor is it to be thought that this tendency to change our ways is unique to our own culture. The same phenomenon is to be studied among any people, no matter how few in number, how isolated, or how stable their customs. Change may only be manifest in small details of their culture, such as a variation in an accepted pattern of cosign, or a new method of preparing an accepted foodstuff. But some change will always be apparent if such people can be studied over a period of time, if remains of their culture can be excavated from the earth, or if their ways can be compared with those of some neighboring, related group whose culture is like theirs in general, yet varies in detail.

Though cultural change is ubiquitous, and its analysis is thus fundamental in the study of human group life, it must not be overlooked that, as in any aspect of the study of culture, it exists in terns of setting and background, and not in absolute terms, by and of itself. This is how we escape from our second apparent dilemma, and rest comfortably on both its horns. Culture is both stable and everchanging. Cultural change can be studied only as a part of the problem of cultural stability; cultural stability can be understood only when change is measured against conservatism. Furthermore, both terms are not only relative in the large, but must also be considered in relation to each other.

Our problem in resolving the third paradox, that culture fills our lives, yet we -- are largely unconscious of it, differs somewhat from the preceding paradoxes in that more is involved than just a weighing of possible alternatives. Here we are confronted with basic psychological and philosophical questions. We must seek to understand the psychological problem of how human beings learn their cultures and function as members of society, and to find an answer to the philosophical question that asks whether culture is thus a function of human mentality or exists by and of itself.

Essentially we must here face the issue that, while culture, a human attribute, is restricted to man, culture as a whole, or any individual culture, is more than any individual human being can grasp or manipulate. A case can thus be cogently made for studying culture as thought it were independent of man, to create, as White has called it, a science of culturology" Yet an equally strong case can be made for conceiving culture as having no more than psychological reality existing as a series of constructs in the mind of the individual. Philosophically, here is but another instance of the age-old clash between realism and idealism, a clash that defines a fundamental cleavage of concept and approach to the nature of the world and of man. Bidney has shown that each of these positions, if pursued to the exclusion of the other, creates a logical fallacy that can be met only by an eclectic approach to the problem they pose. As he phrases it, "Neither natural forces nor cultural achievements taken separately or by themselves can serve to explain the emergence and evolution of cultural life." Both points or view, however, hold much that is essential to an understanding of culture, or that is is important for us to consider the arguments advanced by the proponents of each before attempting to answer the question of the nature of culture.

Must we choose between the view that culture is an entity in its own right, moving irrespective of man and the one that holds that culture is but a manifestation of the human psyche? Or is it possible to reconcile these two points of view?

So deeply do the conditionings of the individua1 lodge in human behavior, so automatic are his responses, so smooth the historic line to be traced when changes in a given culture are followed over a period of years, that it is difficult not to treat of culture as a thing outside man, dominating him, carrying him along whether he desires it or not to a destiny he can neither shape nor see. It is difficult, indeed, even to speak or write of culture without employing this. Yet, as we have seen, when culture is closely analyzed, we find but a series of patterned reactions . that characterize the behavior of the individuals who constitute a given group That is, we find people reacting, people behaving, people thinking, people thinking, people rationalizing. Under those circumstances, it becomes, clear that what we do is to reify, that is, objectify and make concrete, the discrete experiences of individuals in a group at a given time. These we gather into a totality we call their culture. And, for purposes of study, this is quite proper. The danger point is reached when we reify similarities in behavior that only result from the similar conditioning of a group of individuals to their common setting, into something that exists outside man, something that is sure organic.

This does not mean that we are to deny the usefulness, for certain anthropological problems, of studying culture as if it had an objective existence. There is no other way in which we can attain an understanding of the range of variation to be found in the types of sanctioned behavior that achieve the ends all men do achieve. But we must not allow the recognition of methodological need to obscure the fact that we erect this construct as a guide in our thinking and as an aid to analysis.