Culture

For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation).

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,")[1]
generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give
such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems
of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed
boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one
another"[2] Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for
understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.
Culture is manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater
and film and similar things. [3] Although some people identify culture in terms of
consumption and consumer goods (as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or
popular culture),[4] anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to
consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and
give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such
objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes art,
science, as well as moral systems.
Cultural Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the
universal human capacity and activities to classify, codify and communicate their
experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of
humans. (although some primatologists have identified aspects of culture among
humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom). [5]

Farhang culture has always been the focal point of Iranian civilization. Painting of Persian
women musicians from Hasht-Behesht Palace ("Palace of the 8 heavens.")
 Ancient Egyptian art.

Contents

1 Defining "culture"
1.1 Culture as civilization

1.2 Culture as worldview

1.3 Culture as symbols

1.4 Culture as a stabilizing mechanism

1.5 Culture and evolutionary psychology

2 Cultures within a society

3 Cultures by region

4 Belief systems

4.1 Abrahamic religions

4.2 Eastern religion and philosophy

4.3 Folk religions

4.4 The "American Dream"

4.5 Marriage

5 Cultural studies

6 Cultural change

7 Notes

8 References

9 See also

10 External links

Defining "culture"
Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of
a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been
called "the way of life for an entire society." [6] As such, it includes codes of manners,
dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and
systems of belief as well as the art.
Various definitions of culture reflect differing theories for understanding, or criteria for
evaluating, human activity. Writing from the perspective of social anthropology in the
UK, Tylor in 1874 described culture in the following way: "Culture or civilization,
taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is 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."[7]
More recently, the United Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)
(2002) described culture as follows: "... culture should be regarded as the set of
distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social
group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of
living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". [8]
While these two definitions cover a range of meaning, they do not exhaust the many
uses of the term "culture." In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a
list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and
Definitions.[9]
These definitions, and many others, provide a catalog of the elements of culture.
The items cataloged (e.g., a law, a stone tool, a marriage) each have an existence
and life-line of their own. They come into space-time at one set of coordinates and
go out of it another. While here, they change, so that one may speak of the evolution
of the law or the tool.
A culture, then, is by definition at least, a set of cultural objects. Anthropologist Leslie
White asked: "What sort of objects are they? Are they physical objects? Mental
objects? Both? Metaphors? Symbols? Reifications?" In Science of Culture (1949),
he concluded that they are objects "sui generis"; that is, of their own kind. In trying to
define that kind, he hit upon a previously unrealized aspect of symbolization, which
he called "the symbolate"—an object created by the act of symbolization. He thus
defined culture as "symbolates understood in an extra-somatic context." [10] The key
to this definition is the discovery of the symbolate.
Seeking to provide a practical definition, social theorist, Peter Walters, describes
culture simply as "shared schematic experience", including, but not limited to, any of
the various qualifiers (linguistic, artistic, religious, etc.) included in previous
definitions.
Culture as civilization
Many people have an idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and
early 19th centuries. This notion of culture reflected inequalities within European
societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It
identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this
way of thinking, one can classify some countries and nations as more civilized than
others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have
thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture.
Theorists such as Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavisites regard culture as
simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world” [11] Arnold
contrasted mass/popular culture with social chaos or anarchy. On this account,
culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human
behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "... culture being a pursuit of
our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most
concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world". [11]
In practice, culture referred to élite activities such as museum-caliber art and
classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took
part in, these activities. These are often called "high culture", namely the culture of
the ruling social group,[12] to distinguish them from mass culture or popular culture.
From the 19th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast
between the highest and lowest culture, but have stressed the refinement and
sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure
and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by
working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music
seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays Indigenous
peoples as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and
uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West.
Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the
opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as
élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) -- simply regarding them as just
cultured in a different way.
Culture as worldview
During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with
nationalist movements — such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out
of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the
Austro-Hungarian Empire — developed a more inclusive notion of culture as
"worldview." In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view
characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this
approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or
"tribal" cultures.
By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture
to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive
to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and
that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human
evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain
differences between specific cultures — an approach that either exemplified a form
of, or segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they
often reveal processes of domination and resistance.
In the 1950s, subcultures — groups with distinctive characteristics within a larger
culture — began to be the subject of study by sociologists. The 20th century also
saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture — distinct and malleable
within the context of an employing organization or a workplace.
Culture as symbols
Flowers, a butterfly, and a twisted rock sculpture, an album leaf painting by Ming artist Chen
Hongshou (1598–1652). The Chinese viewed painting as a key element of high culture.

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner
(1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that
gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic
gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and
understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance
and meanings.[13] Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a
culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible
terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are
the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977),
"give regularity, unity and systematics to the practices of a group." [14] Thus, for
example:

"Stop, in the name of the law!"—Stock phrase uttered to the antagonists by

the sheriff or marshal in 20th century American Old Western movies
Law and order—stock phrase in the United States

Peace and order—stock phrase in the Philippines

Culture as a stabilizing mechanism

Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product
of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity
and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Stephen Wolfram's A
new kind of science on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which
the concept of culture as an operating mechanism in can be developed on Friday, [15]
and Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype for discussion of genetic and
memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms.[16]
Culture and evolutionary psychology
Researchers in evolutionary psychology argue that the mind is a system of
neurocognitive information processing modules designed by natural selection to
solve the adaptive problems of our distant ancestors. According to evolutionary
psychologists, the diversity of forms that human cultures take are constrained
(indeed, made possible) by innate information processing mechanisms underlying
our behavior, including:
 Language acquisition modules
Incest avoidance mechanisms

Cheater detection mechanisms

Intelligence and sex-specific mating preferences

Foraging mechanisms

Alliance-tracking mechanisms

Agent detection mechanisms

Fear and protection mechanisms (survival mechanisms)

These mechanisms are theorized to be the psychological foundations of culture. In

order to fully understand culture we must understand its biological conditions of
possibility.

Cultures within a society

Large societies often have subcultures, or groups of people with distinct sets of
behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a
part. The subculture may be distinctive because of the age of its members, or by
their race, ethnicity, class or gender. The qualities that determine a subculture as
distinct may be aesthetic, religious, occupational, political, sexual or a combination
of these factors.
In dealing with immigrant groups and their cultures, there are essentially four
approaches:

Monoculturalism: In some European states, culture is very closely linked to

nationalism, thus government policy is to assimilate immigrants, although
recent increases in migration have led many European states to experiment
with forms of multiculturalism.
Leitkultur (core culture): A model developed in Germany by Bassam Tibi. The
idea is that minorities can have an identity of their own, but they should at
least support the core concepts of the culture on which the society is based.
 Melting Pot: In the United States, the traditional view has been one of a
melting pot where all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated
without state intervention.

Multiculturalism: A policy that immigrants and others should preserve their

cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation.

The way nation states treat immigrant cultures rarely falls neatly into one or another
of the above approaches. The degree of difference with the host culture (i.e.,
"foreignness"), the number of immigrants, attitudes of the resident population, the
type of government policies that are enacted and the effectiveness of those policies
all make it difficult to generalize about the effects. Similarly with other subcultures
within a society, attitudes of the mainstream population and communications
between various cultural groups play a major role in determining outcomes. The
study of cultures within a society is complex and research must take into account a
myriad of variables.

Cultures by region
Main article: Culture by region
Many regional cultures have been influenced by contact with others, such as by
colonization, trade, migration, mass media and religion.
Africa
Though of many varied origins, African culture, especially Sub-Saharan African
culture has been shaped by Egyptian/Kemetic colonialism, and, especially in North
Africa, by Arab and Islamic culture.

Hopi man weaving on traditional loom in the USA.

Americas
The culture of the Americas has been strongly influenced by peoples that
inhabitated the continents before Europeans arrived; people from Africa (Brazil and
the United States have a large number of descendants from African migrants), and
the immigration of Europeans, especially Spanish, English, French, Portuguese,
German, Irish, Italian and Dutch. North America is a kind of "mixed culture" as it
takes in different things from different cultures and races.
Asia
Despite the great cultural diversity of Asian nations, there are, nevertheless, several
transnational cultural influences. Though Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are not
Chinese-speaking countries, their languages have been influenced by Chinese and
Chinese writing. Thus, in East Asia, Chinese writing is generally agreed to exert a
unifying influence. Religions, especially Buddhism and Taoism have had an impact
on the cultural traditions of East Asian countries (see section on Eastern religion and
philosophy, below). There is also a shared social and moral philosophy that derives
from Confucianism.
Hinduism and Islam have for hundreds of years exerted cultural influence on various
peoples of South Asia. Similarly, Buddhism is pervasive in Southeast Asia. Another
monotheistic religion is Sikhism. Sikhism is found in South Asia.
Pacific
Most of the countries of the Pacific Ocean continue to be dominated by their
indigenous cultures, although these have generally been affected by contact with
European culture, in particular that of the Philippines. In any case, most of Polynesia
is now strongly Christian. Other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand have
been dominated by European settlers and their descendants, whose culture now
predominates. However Indigenous Australian and Māori (New Zealand) cultures
are still present.
Europe
European culture also has a broad influence beyond the continent of Europe due to
the legacy of colonialism. In this broader sense it is sometimes referred to as
Western culture. This is most easily seen in the spread of the English language and
to a lesser extent, a few other European languages. Dominant influences include
ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and Christianity, although religion has declined in
Europe.
Middle East and North Africa
The Middle East generally has three dominant and clear cultures, Arabic, Persian
and Turkish, which have influenced each other with varying degrees during different
times. The region is predominantly Muslim although significant minorities of
Christians and smaller minorities of other religions exist.
Arabic culture has deeply influenced the Persian and Turkish cultures through Islam;
influencing their languages, writing systems, art, architecture and literature as well
as in other areas. The proximity of Iran has influenced the regions closer to it such
as Iraq and Turkey, traces of language can be found in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti dialects
of Arabic as well as the Turkish language. The 500 years of Ottoman rule over most
of the Middle East has had a heavy influence over the Arabic culture, this may
spread as far as Algeria but can be found to a heavier degree in Egypt, Iraq and the
Levant.

Belief systems
Main article: Religion
Religion and other belief systems are often integral to a culture. Religion, from the
Latin religare, meaning "to bind fast", is a feature of cultures throughout human
history. The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion defines religion in the following
way:
... an institution with a recognized body of communicants who gather together
regularly for worship, and accept a set of doctrines offering some means of
relating the individual to what is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality. [17]

Religion often codifies behavior, such as with the 10 Commandments of Christianity

or the five precepts of Buddhism. Sometimes it is involved with government, as in a
theocracy. It also influences arts.
Eurocentric custom to some extent divides humanity into Western and non-Western
cultures, although this has some flaws.
Western culture spread from Europe most strongly to Australia, Canada, and the
United States. It is influenced by ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Christianity.
Western culture tends to be more individualistic than non-Western cultures. It also
sees man, god, and nature or the universe more separately than non-Western
cultures. It is marked by economic wealth, literacy, and technological advancement,
although these traits are not exclusive to it.
Abrahamic religions
Judaism is one of the first, recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest
religious traditions still practiced today. The values and history of the Jewish people
are a major part of the foundation of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity,
Islam, as well as the Bahá'í Faith. However, while sharing a heritage from Abraham
each has distinct arts (visual and performance arts and the like.) Of course some of
these are regional influences among the nations the religions are present in, but
there are some norms or forms of cultural expression distinctly emphasized by the
religions.
Christianity was the dominant feature in shaping European and the New World
cultures for at least the last 500 to 1700 years. Modern philosophical thought has
very much been influenced by Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas
and Erasmus and Christian Cathedrals have been noted as architectural wonders
like Notre Dame de Paris, Wells Cathedral and Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral.
Islam's influence has dominated much of the North African, Middle and Far East
regions for almost 1500 years, sometimes mixed with other religions. For example
Islam's influence can be seen in diverse philosophies such as Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail,
Ibn Khaldun and Averroes as well as poetic stories and literature like Hayy ibn
Yaqdhan, The Madman of Layla, The Conference of the Birds and the Masnavi in
addition to art and architecture such as the Umayyad Mosque, Dome of the Rock,
Faisal Mosque, and the many styles of Arabesque. Judaism and the Bahá'í faiths
are usually minority religions among the nations but still have made distinctive
contributions to the cultures of the nations and regions.
The mainstream anthropological view of ‘culture’ implies that most people
experience a strong resistance when reminded that there is an animal as well as a
spiritual aspect to human nature.[18]
Eastern religion and philosophy
 Agni, Hindu fire god.

Main articles: Eastern philosophy and Eastern religion

Philosophy and religion are often closely interwoven in Eastern thought. Many Asian
religious and philosophical traditions originated in India and China and spread
across Asia through cultural diffusion and the migration of peoples. Hinduism is the
wellspring of Buddhism, the Mahāyāna branch of which spread north and eastwards
from India into Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan and Korea and south from China into
Vietnam. Theravāda Buddhism spread throughout Southeast Asia, including Sri
Lanka, parts of southwest China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.
Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy. Both contain elements of nonmaterial
pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the
enjoyment of material world. Confucianism and Taoism, both of which originated in
China have had pervasive influence on both religious and philosophical traditions, as
well as statecraft and the arts throughout Asia. Sikhism, founded in India during the
16th and 17th centuries, is a monotheistic religion with a belief in one, universal,
non-anthropomorphic God.
During the 20th century, in the two most populous countries of Asia, two dramatically
different political philosophies took shape. Gandhi gave a new meaning to Ahimsa, a
core belief of both Hinduism and Jainism, and redefined the concepts of nonviolence
and nonresistance far beyond the confines of India. During the same period, Mao
Zedong’s communist philosophy became a powerful secular belief system in China.
Increasingly Christianity is gaining a foothold in Chinese culture, developing
heretofore unforeseen changes in both Christianity and Chinese culture.
Folk religions
Main article: Folk religion
Folk religions practiced by tribal groups are common in Asia, Africa and the
Americas. Their influence can be considerable; may pervade the culture and even
become the state religion, as with Shintō. Like the other major religions, folk religion
answers human needs for reassurance in times of trouble, healing, averting
misfortune and providing rituals that address the major passages and transitions in
human life.
The "American Dream"
The American Dream is a belief, held by many in the United States, that through
hard work, courage, and self-determination, regardless of social class, a person can
gain a better life.[19] This notion is rooted in the belief that the United States is a "city
upon a hill, a light unto the nations,"[20] which were values held by many early
European settlers and maintained by subsequent generations.
This concept is mirrored in other cultures, such as in the case of the Great
Australian Dream, although this refers more closely to home ownership by the same
means.
Marriage
Religion often influences marriage and practices.
Marriage occurs in most cultures, though specific customs vary widely. Marriage is
difficult to define cross-culturally because cultures define family, love, parenthood,
gender roles, etc., differently. Cross-culturally, one's motivation to get married and
expectations of it, therefore, vary widely. In some cultures, marriages are conducted
very much like business transactions, in others they are deeply sentimental.

Cultural studies
Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-
introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of
sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement
aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the
non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of
consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and
19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to
apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural
studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture".
Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most,
however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore,
many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the
notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns
that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales.
According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.
Currently, a debate is underway regarding whether or not culture can actually
change fundamental human cognition. Researchers are divided on the question.

Cultural change

A 19th century engraving showing Australian "natives" opposing the arrival of Captain
James Cook" in 1770.

Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change, depending on culture

traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures.
One gender might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second
half of the 20th century in western cultures. Thus there are both dynamic influences
that encourage acceptance of new things, and conservative forces that resist
change.
Three kinds of influence cause both change and resistance to it:

1. forces at work within a society

2. contact between societies

3. changes in the natural environment.[21]

Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a
society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models.
Environmental conditions and contact with other societies may enter as factors,
spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany
ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the end of the last
ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about
many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics [citation needed].
Contact between societies produce different types of changes in those societies.
War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social
dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another,
through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not
necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example,
hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into
China. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture
leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct Borrowing" on the other
hand tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another.
Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when
individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.
Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of
the traits of one culture with those of another, such has happened to certain Native
American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the
process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include
assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.
Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be
useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist
as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period",
driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all,
the human population explosion, among other factors.
Culture change is complex and has far-ranging effects. Sociologists and
anthropologists believe that a holistic approach to the study of cultures and their
environments is needed to understand all of the various aspects of change. Human
existence may best be looked at as a "multifaceted whole." Only from this vantage
can one grasp the realities of culture change.
Notes
1. ^ Harper, Douglas (2001). Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. ^ Findley, Carther Vaughn and John Alexander Rothney (2006). Twentieth-century
World. Sixth edition, p. 14. ISBN 978-0618522637.

3. ^ Raymond Williams (1976) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev.

Ed. (NewYork: Oxford UP, 1983), pp. 87-93 and 236-8.

4. ^ John Berger, Peter Smith Pub. Inc., (1971) Ways of Seeing

5. ^ Goodall, J. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior.

6. ^ Williams, Raymond. Keywords, "Culture"

7. ^ Tylor, E.B. 1874. Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology,
philosophy, religion, art, and custom.

8. ^ UNESCO. 2002. [1] Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.

9. ^ Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and

Definitions.

10. ^ White, L. 1949. The Science of Culture: A study of man and civilization.

11. ^ a b Arnold, Matthew. 1869. Culture and Anarchy.

12. ^ Bakhtin 1981, p.4

13. ^ Cohen, A. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community.

14. ^ Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice.

15. ^ * Wolfram, S., A New Kind of Science.

16. ^ Dawkins, R. 1982. The Extended Phenotype

17. ^ Reese, W.L. 1980. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western
Thought, page 488.

18. ^ Jonathan Benthall Animal liberation and rights Anthropology Today Volume 23
Issue 2 Page 1 - April 2007
 19. ^ Boritt, Gabor S. Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, p. 1.

20. ^ Ronald Reagan. "Final Radio Address to the Nation".

21. ^ O'Neil, D. 2006. "Processes of Change".

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← Wolfram, Stephen. 2002 A New Kind of Science. Wolfram Media, Inc. ISBN 978-1-
57955-008-0

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Definitions of Culture from the Web:

" Culture Is the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts
that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and
that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning. " umanitoba.ca

" Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that
depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding
generations. " Marriam Webster Dictionary

" Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that
shapes and influences perception and behavior -- an abstract mental blueprint or
mental code. " eou.edu

" Culture is the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs,
institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. " The Free Dictionary

"Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,")
generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give
such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical
bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. In general, the
term culture denotes the whole product of an individual, group or society of
intelligent beings. It includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems and
the characteristic behaviors and habits of the selected intelligent entities. In
particular, it has specific more detailed meanings in different domains of human
activities.

Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal
human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically.
This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of the humans. However,
primatologists have identified aspects of culture among human's closest relatives in
the animal kingdom.[1] It can be also said that culture is the way people live in
accordance to beliefs, language, history, or the way they dress. (Wikipedia.com)"
DEFINING CULTURE
Sociology
How do sociologists define culture?
"The total, generally organized way of life, including values, norms, institutions, and
artifacts, that is passed on from generation to generation by learning alone" --
Dictionary of Modern Sociology
"The patterned behavior resulting from social interaction" -- Francis Merill
"All the behavior and related products which men, as members of human society,
acquire by means of symbolic interaction..."
"Sociocultural" "Pertaining to the social and the cultural in human life, the two terms,
society and culture, being combined into one so as to call attention to the functional
inseparability of these two essential aspects of human existence" -- Dictionary of
Modern Sociology
"Culture stems from the development and transmission of human belief in symbols"
"The language system is a series of symbols used to transmit cultural beliefs among
members of a society" "Messages about cultural expectations can be found in the
media, government, religious institutions, educational systems, and the like."--
Boudon et. al 1989
"That part of the total repertoire of human action (and its products), which is socially
as opposed to genetically transmitted. -- Dictionary of Sociology, D. Mitchell (ed.)
"society relies on a culture that has unwritten rules and guidelines."
Members of the human species are trained in the family and in their education,
formal and informal, to behave in ways that are conventional and fixed by tradition.
In some instances culture can be considered detrimental to the individual person.
What is the dominant or common culture?
"Common Culture: "A commonly shared system of symbols, the meaning of which
are understood on both sides with an approximation to agreement." T. Parsons.
What is a subculture?
"A subculture may arise when an attempt is made to resolve collectively experienced
problems resulting from contradictions in the social structure, and they generate a
form of collective identity from which an individual identity can be achieved."--
Comparative Youth Culture by M.. Brake
Sometimes they refer to 'a culture' as 'a society' which is often imprecise, since it is
extremely difficult to define an entire population as having distinctive cultural
characteristics. Culture may also refer to a system of values, ideas, and behaviors
which may be associated with a social or national group (e.g., African American
Culture). The minority cultures which lay within a larger dominant culture are often
described as sub-cultures. As outlined in her book The Individual and Culture "The
'whole' culture is a composite of varying and overlapping sub-cultures." ...
Anthropologists may also speak of the 'personal culture' of a single individual.
Some sociologists view culture as "fragmented and diversified" (Lane 1984). This
view takes a different approach to culture in that it relies on sub-cultures to come
together to form one culture. Without each of the individual cultures the whole
concept of culture would be incomplete. According to Lane, "In contemporary society
there is no agreement whether societies possess a dominant culture or ideology"
"Subcultures, such as teenagers, exist as cultural undercurrents in the general
society which don't encroach upon the main culture, but are important to some
members." (Davies, 1972)
What does culture of poverty mean?
The culture of poverty is not just a matter of deprivation or disorganization, a term
signifying the absence of something. It is a culture in the traditional Anthropological
sense in that it provides human beings with a design for living, with a ready-made
set of solutions for human problems, and so serves a significant adaptive function" --
O. Lewis 1966 Culture of Poverty, Scientific American.
"Culture of poverty" was developed by Oscar Lewis. Fatalism is the key aspect
which leads this culture to continually repeat itself. The poor learn to cope instead of
finding a way out because they feel this lifestyle is inevitable.. This theory has been
criticized because it "blames the victim" and neglects external influences on
economic development.
What is cultural lag?
Concept developed by Wm. Ogburn to describe the uneven processes of social,
cultural, and technological change. Social changes tend to "lag" behind
technological change. Cultural lag "result(s) when a culture's social institutions fail to
adapt their functions so as to mesh with the changes in other parts of the larger
sociocultural system" --Encyclopedia of Sociology (1981)
What is culture shock?
The disruption of one's normal social perspectives (own society, subculture,
membership groups) as a result of confrontation with an alien culture. Might also
apply to the experience of cultural lag resulting from massive and continuing
technological change. e.g., future shock
What is cultural a definition of the situation?
"...An individual's interpretation of any given set of circumstances, such
interpretations generally being largely dependent upon the cultural values in terms of
which the individual has been socialized." -- Henry Fairchild

Anthropology
How do Anthropologists define culture?
The anthropologist's term "culture" originated in the 19th century. The idea first
appeared in the Renaissance. "recognizing that the customs, beliefs, social forms,
and languages of Europe's past were different from the present. ...The second
period of culture occurred when it was recognized that "contemporary men
themselves in different regions of the world varied even more widely in the
languages they spoke, the rituals they practiced, and the kinds of societies they lived
in." -- Encyclopedia of Sociology
"Culture is a well organized unity divided into two fundamental aspects -- a body of
artifacts and a system of customs -- Malinowski.
"Humans cannot eat, breathe, defecate, mate, reproduce, sit move about, sleep or
lie down without following or expressing some aspect of their society's culture. Our
cultures grow, expand, evolve. Its their nature." -- Marvin Harris
The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the
anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly
belong." -Geertz, Balinese Cockfight (222)
Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take
culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental
science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning." -- Geertz,
Interpretation of Cultures (5).
"people do not realize how greatly culture influences their behavior until they come
across other ways of doing things."
"Culture is learned behavior" A person is not born with a culture. Culture is a
universal, every human being possesses it by virtue of their biological state.
"(Cultural Anthropology) is inherently pluralistic, seeking a framework in which the
distinctive perspectives of each cultural world can be appreciated."
"(c)ultural practices are meaningful actions that occur routinely in everyday life, are
widely shared by members of the group, and carry with them normative expectations
about how things should be done" (Goodnow, Miller and Kissell, 1995)
"A collective name for all behavior patterns socially acquired and socially transmitted
by means of symbols, hence a name for all the distinctive achievements of human
groups." -- Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences
"Culture is or civilization... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man (sic.) as
a member of society." -- Edward Tylor
"Culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the
reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives,
and the product of human activities as determined by these habits." -- Franz Boas
Sociocultural Anthropology focuses on how language, customs, and culture in
general develop.
Cultural Anthropologists compare and contrast the vast range of cultures with the
hope of better understanding "the diversity of human behavior, and ultimately to
develop a science of human behavior." --Friedl, J. Cultural Anthropology
What is traditional (or folk) culture?
"Traditional culture is the habitual behaviors or thoughts of any given social group,
and there is not only the chance of customary behaviors occurring, customary
behaviors are expected and generally required by members of the society (Smith-
Seymour, 1986).
Folk culture is a model of the peasant community characterized by economic self-
sufficiency, intimate social ties, the strong role of ritual and tradition, and the relative
isolation from urban centers. The concept of folk culture is that it represents an
attempt to characterize the values and social structure of traditional, rural
communities existing within complex societies.
What methods do they use to study culture?
Fieldwork: visiting and living among a particular people.
Mapping, inventories, census, behavior protocols, questionnaires, projective tests,
collecting genealogies, kinship terminologies, oral traditions, recording cases, and
tracing networks." (Hunter and Whitten, 1976)
In order to study these cultures, ethnographers had to become part of them. Live
with the people for extended periods of time. To study different groups of people, the
scientists had to become immersed in their study.
One important qualification that anthropologists should possess is a strong
awareness of their own culture. Although it is necessary for Anthropologists to be as
unbiased as possible, it is also necessary for Anthropologists to be aware of their
cultural tendencies in order to comprehend another's culture. Therefore, absolute
objectivity, which would require that the Anthropologist have no biases, and in result
no culture at all, should be given up in favor of a relative objectivity based on the
characteristics of one's own culture. The Anthropologist is forced to include himself
and his own way of life in his subject matter. In order to study others, and to study
culture in general, the Anthropologist uses his own culture.
What is material culture?
Culture involves much more than behavioral traits, it includes all produced artifacts --
tools, art, books and texts etc.
"Probably no other country in the world has such high regard for material culture as
the United States"
"Cultural materialism is a type of analysis that looks at ecology and economics for
explanation of cultural beliefs and practices. It tries to explain cultural habits in terms
of basic needs. 'A cultural materialist view of history looks for relationships between
the use of new technologies, population booms, the material improvement of life,
and the collapse of civilization." (Fisher, 1986)
What is cultural diffusion? "The worldwide tendency of human populations to
share and pool creative efforts which are in origin locally known and used." -- David
Hunter

Humanities
"An educated man is not always a cultured man, although a cultured man is usually
educated ... and that the cultured man is not merely the knowledgeable man, but the
man who uses his knowledge humanely" (Ashley Montagu).
How do humanities scholars define culture?
A Thesaurus of Word Roots of the English Language describes the root of the word
culture like this: cult (Latin) meaning tend, care for. Cultus meaning care cultivation.
These being the roots of the word culture, care...
The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people
from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual,
institutions (including schools), and art, from one generation to the next." --
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
What is American Culture?
I. American Culture is a melting pot:
The melting pot concept of American culture was dominant for many years. As early
as 1782, J. Hector St. John de Cr6vecceur, a French immigrant, wrote in his Letters
from an American Firmer about the creation of a new man:
What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European or the
descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find
in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an
Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives
new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he
obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in
the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into
a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in
the world. (1957, p. 39)
In 1845 Ralph Waldo Emerson expanded the amalgamation of American culture
beyond Anglo-Europeans:
Man is the most composite of all creatures.... Well, as in the old burning of the
Temple at Corinth, by the melting and intermixture of silver and gold and other
metals a new compound more precious than any, called Corinthian brass, was
formed; so in this continent,--asylum of all nations,--the energy of Irish, Germans,
Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes,--of the Africans, and of
the Polynesians,--will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new
literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the
smelting-pot of the Dark Ages, or that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic and
Etruscan barbarism. La Nature aime les croisements. (pp. 115-116)
The melting pot idea also found its way into historical interpretation of the
development of this country. Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 essay The
Significance of the Frontier in American argued that:
The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American
people.... In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated,
and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The
process has gone on from the early days to our own. (p. 11)
II American culture is Pluralistic:
In the early years of the twentieth century some scholars began to educate about
the richness of American cultural heritage. They pushed for cultural pluralism and
argued that a political democracy must also be a cultural democracy and that each
ethnic culture should play a unique role in American society. In his address to the
National Education Association in 1916, John Dewey noted that:
Such terms as Irish-American or Hebrew-American or Germanmerican
are false terms because they seem to assume something which is already
in existence called America, to which the other factor may be externally
hitched on. The fact is, the genuine American, the typical American, is
himself a hyphenated character. This does not mean that he is part
American and that some foreign ingredient is then added. It means that,
as I have said, he is international and interracial in his make-up. He is not
American plus Pole or German. But the American is himself Pole-
German-English-French-SpanishItalian-Greek-Irish-Scandinavian-
Bohemian-jew- and so on. The point is to see to it that the hyphen
connects instead of separates. And this means at least that our public
schools shall teach each factor to respect every other, and shall take
 pains to enlighten all as to the great past contributions of every strain in
our composite make-up. I wish our teaching of American history in the
schools would take more account of the great waves of migration by
which our land for over three centuries has been continuously built up,
and make every pupil conscious of the rich breadth of our national make-
up. When every pupil recognizes all the factors which have gone into our
being, he will continue to prize and reverence that coming from his own
past, but he will think of it as honored in being simply one factor in forming
a whole, nobler, and finer than itself.
In 1924, Horace Kallen used the lerm "cultural pluralism" to summarize his point of
view. He proposed a federal republic that would have:
Its substance a democracy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and
autonomously through common institutions in the enterprise of selfrealization
through the perfection of men according to their kind. The common language of the
commonwealth, the language of its great tradition, would be English, but each
nationality would have for its emotional and involuntary life its own peculiar dialect of
speech, its own individual and inevitable esthetic and intellectual forms. The political
and economic life of the commonwealth is a single unit and serves as the foundation
and background for the realization of the distinctive individuality of each nation that
composes it and of the pooling of these in a harmony above them all. (Kallen, 1924,
p. 124)
He also used the metaphor of the symphony orchestra:
As in an orchestra every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality,
founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and
melody in the whole symphony, so in society, each ethnic group may be the natural
instrument, its temper and culture may be its theme and melody and the harmony
and dissonance and discords of them all may make the symphony of civilization.
(pp. 124-125)
III American Culture is Multicultural:
Social changes in the last half of the 20th century led to concepts of multicultural
education. The American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education helped
refine the concept. In November 1972, the Association adopted the statement No
One Model American that:
Multicultural education is education which values cultural pluralism. Multicultural
education rejects the view that schools should seek to melt away cultural differences
or tne view that schools should merely tolerate cultural pluralism. Instead,
multicultural education affirms that schoois should be oriented toward the cultural
enrichment of all children and youth through programs rooted to the preservation
and extension of cultural alternatives. Multicultural education recognizes cultural
diversity as a fact of life in American society, and it affirms that this cultural diversity
is a valuable resource that should be preserved and extended. It affirms that major
education institutions should strive to preserve and enhance cultural pluralism.
(Lopez, 1979, p. 5)
Furthermore,
Colleges and universities engaged in the preparation of teachers have a central role
in the positive development of our culturally pluralistic society. if cultural pluralism is
to become an integral part of the educational process, teachers and personnel must
be prepared in an environment where the commitment to multicultural education is
evident. Evidence of this commitment includes such factors as a faculty and staff of
multiethnic and multiracial character, a student body that is representative of the
culturally diverse nature of the community being served, and a culturally pluralistic
curriculum that accurately represents the diverse multicultural nature. of American
society. (p. 6)
Over the last several decades, the concept of multicultural education has been
broadened to address the concerns of many additional groups, including women, the
disabled, senior citizens, gays and lesbians, and individuals with special needs
(Banks & Banks, 1989). After reviewing books and articles published since the early
1970s on multicultural education for grades k-12, Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant
found five approaches used in American schools:
"Teaching the Culturally Different" is an approach used to assimilate students of
color into the cultural mainstream and existing social structure by offering transitional
bridges within the existing school program. A "Human Relations" approach is used to
help students of different backgrounds get along better and appreciate each other.
"Single Group Studies" fosters cultural pluralism by teaching courses about the
experiences, contributions, and concerns of distinct ethnic, gender, and social class
groups. The "Multicultural Education" approach promotes cultural pluralism and
social equality by reforming the school program for all students to make it reflect
diversity.... Finally, "Education That is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist"
prepares students to challenge social structural inequality and to promote cultural
diversity. (1987, p. 422)
"A quality of enlightenment or refinement arising from an acquaintance with and
concern for what is regarded as excellence in the arts, letters, manners, etc."
--Webster
The training or refining of the moral or intellectual faculties: the enlightenment and
refinement acquired by such training.
"The best that has been thought and known" -- Matthew Arnold The distinction of
"best" to be decided by intellectuals who are disinterested and dissociated from
class interests.
It is a belief, still pre-eminently honored that a primary function of art and thought is
to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense
and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgement."
L. Trilling, Beyond Culture, 1979.
"Man must embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, because the greatest
separation feat of all is when one manages to gradually free oneself from the grip of
unconscious culture." -- E.T. Hall, Beyond Culture, 1976
The Great Tradition of English education has been about personal growth and
development through access to other significant forms of thought and feeling: it has
been about breaking the stranglehold of the present on the mind." -- F. Musgrove.
"The domesticated university" 1978
Another definition of culture often associated with art and the art world, however,
does not deal with time or place, but more subtle distinctions of 'taste.' These taste
cultures may be subdivided into different stratification levels, but in the most
simplified model a single division line exists between high culture and popular
culture.
Most promoters of high culture believe that achievements should remain valuable
through a test of time.
There are critics in every field defining what is acceptable to be a cultured person.
Musical criticism involves writing about the aesthetics, history and evolution of music
and also reviewing musical compositions and performances.
Culture is a study of achievement and development or the higher aspects of
civilization. In the humanities these include a study of achievements in the arts,
architecture, music, dance, literature, history, and philosophy to name a few. Within
each of these branches of study, a canon may determine which achievements are
emphasized more than others.
When a person is labeled as a cultured individual, automatically the assumption is
that the person is an aficionado of high culture rather than a consumer of popular
culture.... Popular culture is also known as mass culture by virtue of the fact that it
has many consumers. ...High culture ... is much less accessible for several reasons.
First there is a lesser volume of high culture material. Second, because the general
public does not demand these materials they are rarely broadcast in the mass
media. Third, many high culture events require the patron's economic status to be
high. Fourth, higher education is prerequisite to understanding and enjoying high art.
A modern aesthetician describes art as: "an entity produced by agents with relevant
skills and knowledge, having some non-functional value, and open to appreciation
by suitably qualified audiences, with appreciation persisting even if related functional
values are removed." --Moravcisk
High culture is formed by the most powerful and wealthy strata of society. The art of
this culture is greatly inaccessible to those in the general population. Popular art is
created in mass profusion but is rejected by the higher culture as shallow.
Music can support multiculturalism, as there are no clear lines as to how many
cultures a person can be identified with. This popular culture advocates tolerance
and appreciation among our differences. the music of each culture is "...a unique
record of where each culture has been; what is valued; how it lives, feels, and
communicates; and sometimes even its dream and visions for the future." --Schmidt,
W. Music and the Multicultural Mandate
A world without ignorance. a world without prejudice. This is what Madonna strives
for. This is what our culture is made of. Whether she is raising money for AIDS
research and education, giving talk show hosts innuendos that she is a lesbian,
dancing in front of burning crosses, or masturbating on stage, she tries to bring
these issues into cultural acceptance. Most people would just as soon forget these
issues as well as Madonna.
"Violence, brutality, sadomasochism, evil and degeneracy in general are
interconnected themes attracting attention in American popular culture" (Michale
Selzer)
What is the canon?
The canon is a list of authors and books that constitute our cultural heritage (Kolb).
The word canon: "derives from the Greek kanon, meaning rod, measuring line,
standard; the word passed through Latin canon, with the definition model or
standard, then to assume its ecclesiastical character in the Middle Ages as part of
the catholic Church's terminology: law, rule, doctrine; the unchangeable, central part
of the mass ritual; and, finally the list of sacred books (J. Bruce-Novoa)
The works that we consider the measuring stick against which we compare and
critique all others.
The canonists don't like the new scholarship, and they attack many aspects of the
educational system, merging and simplifying their points of ambush. However, the
politically correct view or the "new humanities" have rebelled against the literary
canons, believing that a variety of representations, and not simply the great literary
works of the past, must be studied in order to interpret a society's culture.
Cultural studies
Culture is not a thing its a process. Culture is a contested terrain in which a number
of different groups struggle to assert meaning

When technology transforms our homes and workplaces, we too are transformed"
Hix

"We make architecture, architecture makes us." -- Winston Churchill

Culture is a product of power struggles between different social groups, based on

age, gender, and ethnicity as well as economic divisions.

Culture is a set of norms, values, and assumptions that are available to acting
individuals, and it is thus inseparable from action and process.

The educational system creates cultural sites where students are exposed to certain
realities that include and exclude based upon membership in different groups. Here
they learn subjectivities, identity, and social status.

Literacy is not defined as solely being able to read and write but "to recognize the
role of cultural factors associated language learning in different societies." It
incorporates such things as "values, beliefs, attitudes, and motivation." Literacy is
something that can be attained after interacting with different people from different
backgrounds. "One becomes literate when one has developed mastery of both the
process and symbolic media of a particular culture, the ways in which cultural
norms, values, and beliefs are represented"

Culture is a way of perceiving, believing, evaluating, and behaving. It is : shared,

and adaptation, and constantly changing. A person's cultural identity is based on
traits and values that are learned as part of our ethnic origin, religion, gender, age,
socioeconomic level, primary language, geographical region, place of residence,
and disabilities. --(Gollnick and Chinn, 1994)

"Postmodernism.. Is largely a response to modernity. Whereas modernity trusted

science to lead us down the road of progress, Postmodernism questioned whether
science alone could really get us there. Whereas modernity happily created
inventions and technologies to improve our lives, postmodernism took a second look
and wondered whether our lives were really better for all the gadgets and toys." --
Brent Wilson Internet source

"Science is only a special form of negotiated opinion, not the antithesis of opinion." --
Dombrowski
"Postmodernism is a culture and politics of transgression. It is a challenge to the
boundaries in which modernism has developed its discourses of mastery,
totalization, representation subjectivity and history" -- Henry Giroux

"The concept of cultural worker has traditionally been understood to refer to artists,
writers, and media producers. According to Henry Giroux (1992) the range of cultural
workers should be extended to include people working in professions such as law,
social work, architecture, medicine, theology, education, and literature."
What is"multiculturalism?"
"The concept of "multicultural" as become so widely used in today's society that it is
sometimes referred to as a "generalized adjective preceding any idea, concept, or
location" (Swartz, 1993)
"... for the most part our public school system reflects a hierarchical Eurocentric
system, hence the ideas of multiculturalism appear to be a contesting of our
practices and ways of thinking."
I looked up the word "multiculturalism" in the 1985 Art Index, much to my surprise,
there was no sub-heading for "multiculturalism." I looked up the word in each year's
index, not to find the word "multiculturalism" until 1991.
Our culture is a unique one made up of bits and pieces from past and present
cultures.
The multicultural history curriculum of public schools... contains subject such as anti-
racism and history lessons. These revised history lessons include facts which were
hidden from American schools in the past because of their non-patriotic nature. An
authentic multicultural book is described as having positive images which leave
lasting impressions, accurate factual information that is enjoyable to read, cultural
authenticity/specificity. ... If a child studies every culture but his/her own, the child is
not educated and feels misplaced. This is why meaningful stories of their ancestors
may be vital to the curriculum.
The introduction of multicultural activities has been motivated by at least four
intentions: To remedy ethnocentrism in the traditional curriculum to build
understanding among racial and cultural groups and appreciation of different
cultures to defuse intergroup tensions and conflicts to make the curricula relevant to
the experiences, cultural traditions, and historical contributions of the nation's
diverse population
Assimilation is the process by which groups adopt or change the dominant culture.
The process of assimilation develops through stages in which the new cultural
group:
1. Changes its cultural pattern to those of the dominant group
2. develops large-scale primary group relations with the dominant group
3. intermarries fully with the dominant group
4. loses its sense of peoplehood as separate from the dominant group
5. encounters no discrimination
6. encounters no prejudiced attitudes
7. does not raise issues that involve value and power conflict with the dominant
group
"One article in action in Action in Teacher Education was about preparing teachers to
comprehend the deep meaning of culture in school learning." This preparation
includes ultimately reframing curriculum, redesigning classroom instruction, and
creating a more responsive social context for school learning for students from
different cultural and experimental backgrounds. It used the word culture to explain
the baggage children brought to school with them and how to make it fit with the
baggage of other children. Another article in Anthropology and Education Quarterly
emphasized Educators learning to fit the construction of curriculum and pedagogy to
fit students' culture instead of vice versa.
Sociocultural evolution
In the unilineal evolution model at left, all cultures progress through set stages, while
in the multilineal evolution model at right, distinctive culture histories are
emphasized.
Sociocultural evolution(ism) is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution
and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have developed over
time. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the
relationship between technologies, social structure, the values of a society, and how
and why they change with time, they vary as to the extent to which they describe
specific mechanisms of variation and social change.
Most 19th century and some 20th century approaches aimed to provide models for
the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies are at
different stages of social development. At present this thread is continued to some
extent within the World System approach. Many of the more recent 20th-century
approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea of
directional change, or social progress. Most archaeologists and cultural
anthropologists work within the framework of modern theories of sociocultural
evolution. Modern approaches to sociocultural evolution include neoevolutionism,
sociobiology, theory of modernization and theory of postindustrial society.
Contents

1 Introduction
2 Classical social evolutionism

2.1 Development

3 Organic Society

4 Stadial Theory

4.1 Sociocultural evolutionism and the idea of progress

4.2 Critique and impact on modern theories

5 Modern theories

5.1 Neoevolutionism

5.2 Sociobiology
 5.3 Theory of modernization

5.4 Prediction for a stable cultural and social future

5.5 Theory of postindustrial society

6 Contemporary discourse over sociocultural evolution

7 See also

8 Notes

9 References

10 Further reading

10.1 Readings from an evolutionary anthropological perspective

11 External links

Introduction
Anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural
social tendencies and that particular human social behaviors have non-genetic
causes and dynamics (i.e. they are learned in a social environment and through
social interaction). Societies exist in complex social (i.e. with natural resources and
constraints) environments, and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus
inevitable that all societies change.
Specific theories of social or cultural evolution are usually meant to explain
differences between coeval societies, by positing that different societies are at
different stages of development. Although such theories typically provide models for
understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, or values of a
society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of
variation and change.
Early sociocultural evolution theories—the theories of Auguste Comte, Herbert
Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan—developed simultaneously but independently of
Charles Darwin's works and were popular from the late 19th century to the end of
World War I. These 19th-century unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies
start out in a primitive state and gradually become more civilized over time, and
equated the culture and technology of Western civilization with progress. Some
forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones) have led to
much criticised theories like social Darwinism, and scientific racism, used in the past
to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery, and to justify new policies such
as eugenics.
Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for
the evolution of humankind as a single entity. Most 20th-century approaches, such
as multilineal evolution, however, focused on changes specific to individual
societies. Moreover, they rejected directional change (i.e. orthogenetic, teleological
or progressive change). Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal
evolution. Other contemporary approaches to social change include
neoevolutionism, sociobiology, dual inheritance theory, theory of modernisation and
theory of postindustrial society.

Classical social evolutionism

Development
Organic Society
The 14th century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun concluded that societies are living
organisms that experience cyclic birth, growth, maturity, decline, and ultimately
death due to universal causes several centuries before the Western civilisation
developed the science of sociology. Nonetheless, theories of social and cultural
evolution were common in modern European thought. Prior to the 18th century,
Europeans predominantly believed that societies on Earth were in a state of decline.
European society held up the world of antiquity as a standard to aspire to, and
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome produced levels of technical accomplishment
which Europeans of the Middle Ages sought to emulate. At the same time,
Christianity taught that people lived in a debased world fundamentally inferior to the
Garden of Eden and Heaven. During The Age of Enlightenment, however, European
self-confidence grew and the notion of progress became increasingly popular. It was
during this period that what would later become known as "sociological and cultural
evolution" would have its roots.

Stadial Theory
The Enlightenment thinkers often speculated that societies progressed through
stages of increasing development and looked for the logic, order and the set of
scientific truths that determined the course of human history. Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel, for example, argued that social development was an inevitable and
determined process, similar to an acorn which has no choice but to become an oak
tree. Likewise, it was assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a
Hobbesian state of nature, and naturally progress toward something resembling
industrial Europe.
While earlier authors such as Michel de Montaigne discussed how societies change
through time, it was truly the Scottish Enlightenment which proved key in the
development of sociocultural evolution. After Scotland's union with England in 1707,
several Scottish thinkers pondered what the relationship between progress and the
'decadence' brought about by increased trade with England and the affluence it
produced. The result was a series of "conjectural histories". Authors such as Adam
Ferguson, John Millar, and Adam Smith argued that all societies pass through a
series of four stages: hunting and gathering, pastoralism and nomadism,
agricultural, and finally a stage of commerce. These thinkers thus understood the
changes Scotland was undergoing as a transition from an agricultural to a
mercantile society.

Auguste Comte

Philosophical concepts of progress (such as those expounded by the German

philosopher G.W.F. Hegel) developed as well during this period. In France authors
such as Claude Adrien Helvétius and other philosophes were influenced by this
Scottish tradition. Later thinkers such as Comte de Saint-Simon developed these
ideas. August Comte in particular presented a coherent view of social progress and
a new discipline to study it—sociology. The founders of sociology spent decades
attempting to define their new discipline. In the course of this effort they tried several
highly divergent pathways, some suggested by methods and contents of other
sciences, others invented outright by the imagination of the scholar.
These developments took place in a wider context. The first process was
colonialism. Although imperial powers settled most differences of opinion with their
colonial subjects with force, increased awareness of non-Western peoples raised
new questions for European scholars about the nature of society and culture.
Similarly, effective administration required some degree of understanding of other
cultures. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution allowed Europeans to organise
their new knowledge in a way that reflected and justified their increasing political and
economic domination of others: colonised people were less evolved, colonising
people were more evolved. When the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas
Hobbes described primeval man as living in conditions in which there are "no arts,
no letters, no society" and his life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", he was
very much proclaiming a popular conception of the "savage." Everything that was
good and civilized resulted from the slow development out of this lowly state. Even
rationalistic philosophers like Voltaire implicitly assumed that enlightenment
gradually resulted in the upward progress of humankind.
The second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism which
allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the means of production. Emerging
theories of sociocultural evolution reflected a belief that the changes in Europe
wrought by the Industrial Revolution and capitalism were improvements.
Industrialisation, combined with the intense political change brought about by the
French Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, which were paving the way for the
dominance of democracy, forced European thinkers to reconsider some of their
assumptions about how society was organised.
Eventually, in the 19th century three great classical theories of social and historical
change were created: the sociocultural evolutionism, the social cycle theory and the
Marxist historical materialism theory. Those theories had one common factor: they
all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely
that of the social progress. Thus, each past event is not only chronologically, but
causally tied to the present and future events. Those theories postulated that by
recreating the sequence of those events, sociology could discover the laws of
history.
Sociocultural evolutionism and the idea of progress
Main article: Unilineal evolution
While sociocultural evolutionists agree that the evolution-like process leads to social
progress, classical social evolutionists have developed many different theories,
known as theories of unilineal evolution. Sociocultural evolutionism was the
prevailing theory of early sociocultural anthropology and social commentary, and is
associated with scholars like August Comte, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry
Morgan, Benjamin Kidd, L.T. Hobhouse and Herbert Spencer. Sociocultural
evolutionism represented an attempt to formalise social thinking along scientific
lines, later influenced by the biological theory of evolution. If organisms could
develop over time according to discernible, deterministic laws, then it seemed
reasonable that societies could as well. They developed analogies between human
society and the biological organism and introduced into sociological theory such
biological concepts as variation, natural selection, and inheritance—evolutionary
factors resulting in the progress of societies through stages of savagery and
barbarism to civilization, by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Together with the idea
of progress there grew the notion of fixed "stages" through which human societies
progress, usually numbering three—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—but
sometimes many more. The Marquis de Condorcet listed 10 stages, or "epochs", the
final one having started with the French Revolution, which was destined, in his eyes,
to usher in the rights of man and the perfection of the human race. Some writers
also perceived in the growth stages of each individual a recapitulation of these
stages of society. Strange customs were thus accounted for on the assumption that
they were throwbacks to earlier useful practices. This also marked the beginning of
anthropology as a scientific discipline and a departure from traditional religious
views of "primitive" cultures.
 Herbert Spencer.

The term "Classical Social Evolutionism" is most closely associated with the 19th-
century writings of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase
"survival of the fittest") and William Graham Sumner. In many ways Spencer's theory
of "cosmic evolution" has much more in common with the works of Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck and August Comte than with contemporary works of Charles Darwin.
Spencer also developed and published his theories several years earlier than
Darwin. In regard to social institutions, however, there is a good case that Spencer's
writings might be classified as 'Social Evolutionism'. Although he wrote that societies
over time progressed, and that progress was accomplished through competition, he
stressed that the individual (rather than the collectivity) is the unit of analysis that
evolves, that evolution takes place through natural selection and that it affects social
as well as biological phenomenon. Nonetheless, the publication of Darwin's works
proved a boon to the proponents of sociocultural evolution. The world of social
science took the ideas of biological evolution as an attractive solution to similar
questions regarding the origins and development of social behaviour and the idea of
a society as an evolving organism was a biological analogy that is taken up by many
anthropologists and sociologists even today.
Both Spencer and Comte view the society as a kind of organism subject to the
process of growth—from simplicity to complexity, from chaos to order, from
generalisation to specialisation, from flexibility to organisation. They agreed that the
process of societies growth can be divided into certain stages, have their beginning
and eventual end, and that this growth is in fact social progress—each newer, more
evolved society is better. Thus progressivism became one of the basic ideas
underlying the theory of sociocultural evolutionism.
August Comte, known as father of sociology, formulated the law of three stages:
human development progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was
mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from
supernatural beings, through metaphysical stage in which nature was conceived of
as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena
from them until the final positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are
discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This
progress is forced through the development of human mind, and increasing
application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of the world. [1]
Herbert Spencer, who believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom
for individuals; and so held that government intervention ought to be minimal in
social and political life, differentiated between two phases of development, focusing
is on the type of internal regulation within societies. Thus he differentiated between
military and industrial societies. The earlier, more primitive military society has a goal
of conquest and defence, is centralised, economically self-sufficient, collectivistic,
puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and
repression, rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society has a
goal of production and trade, is decentralised, interconnected with other societies via
economic relations, achieves its goals through voluntary cooperation and individual
self-restraint, treats the good of individual as the highest value, regulates the social
life via voluntary relations, values initiative, independence and innovation. [2]
Regardless of how scholars of Spencer interpret his relation to Darwin, Spencer
proved to be an incredibly popular figure in the 1870s, particularly in the United
States. Authors such as Edward L. Youmans, William Graham Sumner, John Fiske,
John W. Burgess, Lester Frank Ward, Lewis H. Morgan and other thinkers of the
gilded age all developed similar theories of social evolutionism as a result of their
exposure to Spencer as well as Darwin.
 Lewis H. Morgan

Lewis H. Morgan, an anthropologist whose ideas have had much impact on

sociology, in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies differentiated between three eras:
savagery, barbarism and civilization, which are divided by technological inventions,
like fire, bow, pottery in savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture,
metalworking in barbarian era and alphabet and writing in civilization era. Thus
Morgan introduced a link between the social progress and technological progress.
Morgan viewed the technological progress as a force behind the social progress,
and any social change—in social institutions, organisations or ideologies have their
beginning in the change of technology. [3] Morgan's theories were popularised by
Friedrich Engels, who based his famous work The Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State on it. For Engels and other Marxists, this theory was
important as it supported their conviction that materialistic factors—economical and
technological—are decisive in shaping the fate of humanity.
Emile Durkheim, another of the "fathers" of sociology, has developed a similar,
dichotomal view of social progress. His key concept was social solidarity, as he
defined the social evolution in terms of progressing from mechanical solidarity to
organic solidarity. In mechanical solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little
integration and thus there is the need for use of force and repression to keep society
together. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and interdependent
and specialisation and cooperation is extensive. Progress from mechanical to
organic solidarity is based first on population growth and increasing population
density, second on increasing "morality density" (development of more complex
social interactions) and thirdly, on the increasing specialisation in workplace. To
Durkheim, the most important factor in the social progress is the division of labour.
 Emile Durkheim

Anthropologists Sir E.B. Tylor in England and Lewis Henry Morgan in the United
States worked with data from indigenous people, whom they claimed represented
earlier stages of cultural evolution that gave insight into the process and progression
of evolution of culture. Morgan would later have a significant influence on Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, who developed a theory of sociocultural evolution in which the
internal contradictions in society created a series of escalating stages that ended in
a socialist society (see Marxism). Tylor and Morgan elaborated the theory of
unilinear evolution, specifying criteria for categorising cultures according to their
standing within a fixed system of growth of humanity as a whole and examining the
modes and mechanisms of this growth. Theirs was often a concern with culture in
general, not with individual cultures.
Their analysis of cross-cultural data was based on three assumptions:

1. contemporary societies may be classified and ranked as more "primitive" or

more "civilized";
2. There are a determinate number of stages between "primitive" and "civilized"
(e.g. band, tribe, chiefdom, and state),

3. All societies progress through these stages in the same sequence, but at
different rates.

Theorists usually measured progression (that is, the difference between one stage
and the next) in terms of increasing social complexity (including class differentiation
and a complex division of labour), or an increase in intellectual, theological, and
aesthetic sophistication. These 19th-century ethnologists used these principles
primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among
various societies.
Lester Frank Ward developed Spencer's theory but unlike Spencer, who considered
the evolution to be general process applicable to the entire world, physical and
sociological, Ward differentiated sociological evolution from biological evolution. He
stressed that humans create goals for themselves and strive to realise them,
whereas there is no such intelligence and awareness guiding the non-human world,
which develops more or less at random. He created a hierarchy of evolution
processes. First, there is cosmogenesis, creation and evolution of the world. Then,
after life develops, there is biogenesis. Development of humanity leads to
anthropogenesis, which is influenced by the human mind. Finally, when society
develops, so does sociogenesis, which is the science of shaping the society to fit
with various political, cultural and ideological goals.

Edward Burnett Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor, pioneer of anthropology, focused on the evolution of culture

worldwide, noting that culture is an important part of every society and that it is also
subject to the process of evolution. He believed that societies were at different
stages of cultural development and that the purpose of anthropology was to
reconstruct the evolution of culture, from primitive beginnings to the modern state.
Ferdinand Tönnies describes the evolution as the development from informal
society, where people have many liberties and there are few laws and obligations, to
modern, formal rational society, dominated by traditions and laws and are restricted
from acting as they wish. He also notes that there is a tendency of standardisation
and unification, when all smaller societies are absorbed into the single, large,
modern society. Thus Tönnies can be said to describe part of the process known
today as the globalization. Tönnies was also one of the first sociologists to claim that
the evolution of society is not necessarily going in the right direction, that the social
progress is not perfect, and it can even be called a regress as the newer, more
evolved societies are obtained only after paying a high cost, resulting in decreasing
satisfaction of individuals making up that society. Tönnies' work became the
foundation of neoevolutionism.
Although not usually counted as a sociocultural evolutionist, Max Weber's theory of
tripartite classification of authority can be viewed as an evolutionary theory as well.
Weber distinguishes three ideal types of political leadership, domination and
authority: charismatic domination (familial and religious), traditional domination
(patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism) and legal (rational) domination (modern law
and state, bureaucracy). He also notes that legal domination is the most advanced,
and that societies evolve from having mostly traditional and charismatic authorities
to mostly rational and legal ones.
Critique and impact on modern theories
The early 20th century inaugurated a period of systematic critical examination, and
rejection of the sweeping generalisations of the unilineal theories of sociocultural
evolution. Cultural anthropologists such as Franz Boas, and his students like Ruth
Benedict and Margaret Mead, typically regarded as the leader of anthropology's
rejection of classical social evolutionism, used sophisticated ethnography and more
rigorous empirical methods to argue that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan's theories were
speculative and systematically misrepresented ethnographic data. Theories
regarding "stages" of evolution were especially criticised as illusions. Additionally,
they rejected the distinction between "primitive" and "civilized" (or "modern"),
pointing out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much
history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilized societies. They therefore
argued that any attempt to use this theory to reconstruct the histories of non-literate
(i.e. leaving no historical documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific.
They observed that the postulated progression, which typically ended with a stage of
civilization identical to that of modern Europe, is ethnocentric. They also pointed out
that the theory assumes that societies are clearly bounded and distinct, when in fact
cultural traits and forms often cross social boundaries and diffuse among many
different societies (and is thus an important mechanism of change). Boas introduced
the culture history approach, which concentrated on fieldwork among native peoples
to identify actual cultural and historical processes rather than speculative stages of
growth. This "culture history" approach dominated American anthropology for the
first half of the 20th century and so influenced anthropology elsewhere that high-
level generalization and "systems building" became far less common than in the
past.
Later critics observed that this assumption of firmly bounded societies was proposed
precisely at the time when European powers were colonising non-Western societies,
and was thus self-serving. Many anthropologists and social theorists now consider
unilineal cultural and social evolution a Western myth seldom based on solid
empirical grounds. Critical theorists argue that notions of social evolution are simply
justifications for power by the elites of society. Finally, the devastating World Wars
that occurred between 1914 and 1945 crippled Europe's self-confidence. After
millions of deaths, genocide, and the destruction of Europe's industrial infrastructure,
the idea of progress seemed dubious at best.
Thus modern sociocultural evolutionism rejects most of classical social evolutionism
due to various theoretical problems:

1. The theory was deeply ethnocentric—it makes heavy value judgements on

different societies; with Western civilization seen as the most valuable.
2. It assumed all cultures follow the same path or progression and have the
same goals.

3. It equated civilization with material culture (technology, cities, etc.)

4. It equated evolution with progress or fitness, based on deep

misunderstandings of evolutionary theory.

5. It is greatly contradicted by evidence. Many (but not all) supposedly primitive

societies are arguably more peaceful and equitable/democratic than many
modern societies, and tend to be healthier with regard to diet and ecology.

Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was often used to
support unjust and often racist social practices—particularly colonialism, slavery,
and the unequal economic conditions present within industrialized Europe. Social
Darwinism is especially criticised, as it led to some philosophies used by the Nazis..
Modern theories

Composite image of the Earth at night, created by NASA and NOAA. The brightest areas of
the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. Even more than
100 years after the invention of the electric light, most regions remain thinly populated or
unlit.

When the critique of classical social evolutionism became widely accepted, modern
anthropological and sociological approaches changed respectively . Modern theories
are careful to avoid unsourced, ethnocentric speculation, comparisons, or value
judgements; more or less regarding individual societies as existing within their own
historical contexts. These conditions provided the context for new theories such as
cultural relativism and multilineal evolution.
In 1941 anthropologist Robert Redfield wrote about a shift from 'folk society' to
'urban society'. By the 1940s cultural anthropologists such as Leslie White and
Julian Steward sought to revive an evolutionary model on a more scientific basis,
and succeeded in establishing an approach known as neoevolutionism. White
rejected the opposition between "primitive" and "modern" societies but did argue that
societies could be distinguished based on the amount of energy they harnessed,
and that increased energy allowed for greater social differentiation (White's law).
Steward on the other hand rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead
called attention to the Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had
to adapt to their environment in some way.
The anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service prepared an edited
volume, Evolution and Culture, in which they attempted to synthesise White's and
Steward's approaches.[4] Other anthropologists, building on or responding to work by
White and Steward, developed theories of cultural ecology and ecological
anthropology. The most prominent examples are Peter Vayda and Roy Rappaport.
By the late 1950s, students of Steward such as Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz turned
away from cultural ecology to Marxism, World Systems Theory, Dependency theory
and Marvin Harris's Cultural materialism.
Today most anthropologists reject 19th-century notions of progress and the three
assumptions of unilineal evolution. Following Steward, they take seriously the
relationship between a culture and its environment to explain different aspects of a
culture. But most modern cultural anthropologists have adopted a general systems
approach, examining cultures as emergent systems and argue that one must
consider the whole social environment, which includes political and economic
relations among cultures. There are still others who continue to reject the entirety of
the evolutionary thinking and look instead at historical contingencies, contacts with
other cultures, and the operation of cultural symbol systems. As a result, the
simplistic notion of "cultural evolution" has grown less useful and given way to an
entire series of more nuanced approaches to the relationship of culture and
environment. In the area of development studies, authors such as Amartya Sen
have developed an understanding of "development" and 'human flourishing' that
also question more simplistic notions of progress, while retaining much of their
original inspiration.
Neoevolutionism
Main article: Neoevolutionism
Neoevolutionism was the first in a series of modern multilineal evolution theories. It
emerged in the 1930s and extensively developed in the period following the Second
World War and was incorporated into both anthropology and sociology in the 1960s.
It bases its theories on empirical evidence from areas of archaeology, palaeontology
and historiography and tries to eliminate any references to systems of values, be it
moral or cultural, instead trying to remain objective and simply descriptive.
While 19th-century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general
principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by the Historical Particularists
as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who
brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to
contemporary anthropology.
Neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that
of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories.
Then neoevolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces
probability, arguing that accidents and free will greatly affect the process of social
evolution. It also supports counterfactual history—asking "what if" and considering
different possible paths that social evolution may take or might have taken, and thus
allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping
entire stages others have passed through. Neoevolutionism stresses the importance
of empirical evidence. While 19th-century evolutionism used value judgments and
assumptions for interpreting data, neoevolutionism relied on measurable information
for analysing the process of sociocultural evolution.
Leslie White, author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to
the Fall of Rome (1959), attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of
humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are
determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book,[5] echoing the earlier
theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As measure of society advancement, he proposed
the measure of a society's energy consumption. He differentiates between five
stages of human development. In the first, people use energy of their own muscles.
In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the
energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here). In the fourth, they
learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness
the nuclear energy. White introduced a formula, P=E*T, where E is a measure of
energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the
energy. This theory is similar to Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's later theory
of the Kardashev scale.
Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear
Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of "multilinear" evolution which
examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment. This approach
was more nuanced than White's theory of "unilinear evolution." Steward on the other
hand rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called attention to the
Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had to adapt to their
environment in some way. He argued that different adaptations could be studied
through the examination of the specific resources a society exploited, the technology
the society relied on to exploit these resources, and the organization of human
labour. He further argued that different environments and technologies would require
different kinds of adaptations, and that as the resource base or technology changed,
so too would a culture. In other words, cultures do not change according to some
inner logic, but rather in terms of a changing relationship with a changing
environment. Cultures therefore would not pass through the same stages in the
same order as they changed—rather, they would change in varying ways and
directions. He called his theory "multilineal evolution". He questioned the possibility
of creating a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity; however,
he argued that anthropologists are not limited to describing specific existing cultures.
He believed that it is possible to create theories analysing typical common culture,
representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the
development of given culture he pointed to technology and economics, but noted
that there are secondary factors, like political system, ideologies and religion. All
those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same
time; hence the application of the term "multilinear" to his theory of evolution.
Marshall Sahlins, author of Evolution and Culture (1960), divided the evolution of
societies into 'general' and 'specific'. General evolution is the tendency of cultural
and social systems to increase in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to
environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction
and a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to
develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to
them in different combinations and on different stages of evolution.
In his Power and Prestige (1966) and Human Societies: An Introduction to
Macrosociology (1974), Gerhard Lenski expands on the works of Leslie White and
Lewis Henry Morgan. He views the technological progress as the most basic factor
in the evolution of societies and cultures. Unlike White, who defined technology as
the ability to create and utilise energy, Lenski focuses on information—its amount
and uses. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of
natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He distinguished
four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of
communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second,
when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by
experience. In the third, humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth,
they can create symbols and develop language and writing. Advancements in the
technology of communication translate into advancements in the economic system
and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of
social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology,
communication and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3)
advanced agricultural, (4) industrial, and (5) special (like fishing societies).
Talcott Parsons, author of Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives
(1966) and The System of Modern Societies (1971) divided evolution into four
subprocesses: (1) division, which creates functional subsystems from the main
system; (2) adaptation, where those systems evolve into more efficient versions; (3)
inclusion of elements previously excluded from the given systems; and (4)
generalization of values, increasing the legitimization of the ever more complex
system. He shows those processes on 4 stages of evolution: (I) primitive or foraging,
(II) archaic agricultural, (III) classical or "historic" in his terminology, using formalized
and universalizing theories about reality and (IV) modern empirical cultures.
Sociobiology
Sociobiology departs perhaps the furthest from the classical social evolutionism. It
was introduced by Edward Wilson in his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis and followed his adaptation of biological theory neo-Darwinism to the field
of social sciences. Wilson pioneered the attempt to explain the evolutionary
mechanics behind social behaviours such as altruism, aggression, and nurturance.
In doing so, Wilson sparked one of the greatest scientific controversies of the 20th
century.
Sociobiologists have argued for a dual inheritance theory, which posits that humans
are products of both biological evolution and sociocultural evolution, each subject to
their own selective mechanisms and forms of transmission (i.e. in the case of
biology, genes, and cultural evolutionary units are often called memes). This
approach focuses on both the mechanisms of cultural transmission and the selective
pressures that influence cultural change. This version of sociocultural evolution
shares little in common with the stadial evolutionary models of the early and mid-
20th century. This approach has been embraced by many psychologists and some
cultural anthropologists, but very few physical anthropologists.[citation needed]
Neo-Darwinism, also known as the modern evolutionary synthesis, generally
denotes the combination of Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species by
natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological
inheritance and mathematical population genetics. Essentially, the modern synthesis
(or neo-Darwinism) introduced the connection between two important discoveries;
the units of evolution (genes) with the mechanism of evolution (selection).
Due to its close reliance on biology, sociobiology is often considered a branch of the
biology and sociology disciplines, although it uses techniques from a plethora of
sciences, including ethology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics,
and many others. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely
related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.
Sociobiology has remained highly controversial as it contends genes explain specific
human behaviours, although sociobiologists describe this role as a very complex
and often unpredictable interaction between nature and nurture. The most notable
critics of the view that genes play a direct role in human behaviour have been
biologists Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould.
Since the rise of Evolutionary psychology, another school of thought has emerged in
the past 25 years that applies the mathematical standards of Population genetics to
modeling the adaptive and selective principles of culture. This school of thought was
pioneered by Robert Boyd at UCLA and Peter Richerson at UC Davis and expanded
by William Wimsatt, among others. Boyd and Richerson's book "Culture and the
Evolutionary Process" (1985)[1] was a highly mathematical description of cultural
change, later published in a more accessible form in "Not by Genes Alone" (2004)
[2]. In Boyd and Richerson's view, cultural evolution exists on a separate ground
from biological evolution, and while the two are related, cultural evolution is more
dynamic, rapid, and influential on human society than biological evolution. (Boyd,
Robert & Richerson, Peter J. (1985), Culture and the Evolutionary Process,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-2260-6933-8.)
Theory of modernization
Theories of modernization have been developed and popularized in 1950s and
1960s and are closely related to the dependency theory and development theory. It
combines the previous theories of sociocultural evolution with practical experiences
and empirical research, especially those from the era of decolonization. The theory
states that:

← Western countries are the most developed, and rest of the world (mostly
former colonies) are on the earlier stages of development, and will eventually
reach the same level as the Western world.
← Development stages go from the traditional societies to developed ones.

← Third World countries have fallen behind with their social progress and need
to be directed on their way to becoming more advanced.
Developing from classical social evolutionism theories, theory of modernization
stresses the modernization factor: many societies are simply trying (or need to)
emulate the most successful societies and cultures. It also states that it is possible
to do so, thus supporting the concepts of social engineering and that the developed
countries can and should help those less developed, directly or indirectly.
Among the scientists who contributed much to this theory are Walt Rostow, who in
his The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)
concentrates on the economic system side of the modernization, trying to show
factors needed for a country to reach the path to modernization in his Rostovian
take-off model. David Apter concentrated on the political system and history of
democracy, researching the connection between democracy, good governance and
efficiency and modernization. David McClelland (The Achieving Society, 1967)
approached this subject from the psychological perspective, with his motivations
theory, arguing that modernization cannot happen until given society values
innovation, success and free enterprise. Alex Inkeles (Becoming Modern, 1974)
similarly creates a model of modern personality, which needs to be independent,
active, interested in public policies and cultural matters, open for new experiences,
rational and being able to create long-term plans for the future. Some works of
Jürgen Habermas are also connected with this subfield.
Theory of modernization has been subject to some criticism similar to that levied on
classical social evolutionism, especially for being too ethnocentric, one-sided and
focused on the Western world and culture.
Prediction for a stable cultural and social future
Cultural evolution follows punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge
developed for biological evolution. Bloomfield [6][7] has written that human societies
follow punctuated equilibrium which would mean first, a stable society, a transition
resulting in a subsequent stable society with greater complexity. Using these
guidelines, mankind has had a stable animal society, a transition to a stable tribal
society, another transition to a stable peasant society and is currently in a
transitional industrial society and if the man's previous changes are extended then
mankind will have a future stable automated society.
The status of a human society rests on the productivity of food production. Deevey[8]
reported on the growth of the number of humans. Deevey also reported on the
productivity of food production, noting that productivity changes very little for stable
societies, but increases during transitions. When productivity and especially food
productivity can no longer be increased, Bloomfield has proposed that man will have
achieved a stable automated society. Space is also assumed to allow for the
continued growth of the human population, as well as provide a solution to the
current pollution problem by providing limitless energy from solar satellite power
stations.
Theory of postindustrial society
Main article: Theory of postindustrial society
Scientists have used the theory of evolution to analyze various trends and to predict
the future development of societies. These scientists have created the theories of
postindustrial societies, arguing that the current era of industrial society is coming to
an end, and services and information are becoming more important than industry
and goods.
In 1974 Daniel Bell, author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, introduced the
concept of postindustrial society. Like many more classical evolutionists, he divided
the history of humanity into three eras: pre-industrial, industrial and postindustrial.
He predicted that by the end of the 20th century, United States, Japan and Western
Europe would reach the postindustrial stage. This would be visible by:

← domination of the service sector (administration, banking, trade, transport,

healthcare, education, science, mass media, culture) over the traditional
industry sector (manufacturing industries, which have surpassed the more
traditional, agriculture and mining sector after the 19th-century Industrial
Revolution);
← growing importance of information technologies;

← increased role of long-term planning, modelling future trends;

← domination of technocracy and pragmatism over traditional ethics and

ideologies;

← increasing importance and use of technology and intellect;

← changes in the traditional hierarchy of social classes, with highly educated

specialists and scientists overtaking the traditional bourgeois;
From the 1970s many other sociologists and anthropologists, like Alvin Toffler
(Future Shock, 1970), and John Naisbitt (Megatrends 2000: The New Directions for
the 1990s, 1982) have followed in Bell's footsteps and created similar theories. John
Naisbitt introduced the concept of megatrends: powerful, global trends that are
changing societies on the worldwide scale. Among the megatrends that he mentions
was the process of globalization. Another important megatrend was the increase in
performance of computers and the development of the World Wide Web. Marshall
McLuhan introduced the concept of the global village (The Gutenberg Galaxy,
1962), and this term was soon adapted by the researchers of globalization and the
Internet. Naisbitt and many other proponents of the theory of postindustrial societies
argues that those megatrends lead to decentralization, weakening of the central
government, increasing importance of local initiatives and direct democracy,
changes in the hierarchy of the traditional social classes, development of new social
movements and increased powers of consumers and number of choices available to
them (Toffler even used the term "overchoice").

Logarithmic plot showing exponential shortening trend in evolution of humanity, basis for the
technological singularity theory.

Some of the more extreme visions of the postindustrial society are those related to
the theory of the technological singularity. This theory refers to a predicted point or
period in the development of a civilization at which due to the acceleration of
technological progress, the societal, scientific and economic change is so rapid that
nothing beyond that time can be reliably comprehended, understood or predicted by
the pre-Singularity humans. Such a singularity was first discussed in the 1950s, and
vastly popularized in the 1980s by Vernor Vinge.
Critics of the postindustrial society theory point out that it is very vague and as any
prediction, there is no guarantee that any of the trends visible today will in fact exist
in the future or develop in the directions predicted by contemporary researchers.
However, no serious sociologist would argue it is possible to predict the future, but
only that such theories allow us to gain a better understanding of the changes taking
place in the modernised world.

Contemporary discourse over sociocultural evolution

The Cold War period was marked by rivalry between two superpowers, both of
which considered themselves to be the most highly evolved cultures on the planet.
The USSR painted itself as a socialist society which emerged out of class struggle,
destined to reach the state of communism, while sociologists in the United States
(such as Talcott Parsons) argued that the freedom and prosperity of the United
States were a proof of a higher level of sociocultural evolution of its culture and
society. At the same time, decolonization created newly independent countries who
sought to become more developed—a model of progress and industrialization which
was itself a form of sociocultural evolution.
There is, however, a tradition in European social theory from Rousseau to Max
Weber that argues that this progression coincides with a loss of human freedom and
dignity. At the height of the Cold War, this tradition merged with an interest in
ecology to influence an activist culture in the 1960s. This movement produced a
variety of political and philosophical programs which emphasised the importance of
bringing society and the environment into harmony. Current political theories of the
new tribalists consciously mimic ecology and the life-ways of indigenous peoples,
augmenting them with modern sciences. Ecoregional Democracy attempts to
confine the "shifting groups", or tribes, within "more or less clear boundaries" that a
society inherits from the surrounding ecology, to the borders of a naturally occurring
ecoregion. Progress can proceed by competition between but not within tribes, and it
is limited by ecological borders or by Natural Capitalism incentives which attempt to
mimic the pressure of natural selection on a human society by forcing it to adapt
consciously to scarce energy or materials. Gaians argue that societies evolve
deterministically to play a role in the ecology of their biosphere, or else die off as
failures due to competition from more efficient societies exploiting nature's leverage.
Thus, some have appealed to theories of sociocultural evolution to assert that
optimising the ecology and the social harmony of closely knit groups is more
desirable or necessary than the progression to "civilization." A 2002 poll of experts
on Nearctic and Neotropic indigenous peoples (reported in Harper's magazine)
revealed that all of them would have preferred to be a typical New World person in
the year 1491, prior to any European contact, rather than a typical European of that
time.
This approach has been criticised by pointing out that there are a number of
historical examples of indigenous peoples doing severe environmental damage
(such as the deforestation of Easter Island and the extinction of mammoths in North
America) and that proponents of the goal have been trapped by the European
stereotype of the noble savage.
Today, postmodernists question whether the notions of evolution or society have
inherent meaning and whether they reveal more about the person doing the
description than the thing being described. Observing and observed cultures may
lack sufficient cultural similarities (such as a common foundation ontology) to be
able to communicate their respective priorities easily. Or, one may impose such a
system of belief and judgment upon another, via conquest or colonization. For
instance, observation of very different ideas of mathematics and physics in
indigenous peoples led indirectly to ideas such as George Lakoff's "cognitive
science of mathematics", which asks if measurement systems themselves can be
objective.

See also
← Clash of Civilizations ← Guns, Germs, and Steel

← Cultural diversity ← Historicism

← Cultural selection theory ← Institutional memory

← Diffusion of innovations ← Memetics

← Dual inheritance theory ← Population dynamics

← Economic determinism ← Punctuated equilibrium

← Evolutionary anthropology ← Reformism

← Social dynamics

← Social implications of the theory of evolution

← Social cycle theory

Notes
 1. ^ "The Philosophy Of Positivism". Adventures in Philosophy.
2. ^ "Herbert Spencer". Sociological Theorists Page.

3. ^ Morgan, Lewis H.(1877) "Chapter III: Ratio of Human Progress". Ancient Society.

4. ^ Evolution and culture. Ed. by Marshall David Sahlins and Elman Service. Ann Arbor, MI:
Univ. of Michigan Press, 1960.

5. ^ The Evolution of Culture, Leslie White

6. ^ Bloomfield, Masse.Mankind in Transitio, Masefield Books, 1993.

7. ^ Bloomfield, Masse.The Automated Societ, Masefield Books, 1995.

8. ^ Deevey, E. S., The Human Population, Scientific American 203, September 1960, p.226.

References
← Sztompka, Piotr, Socjologia, Znak, 2002, ISBN 83-240-0218-9
← The Philosophy Of Positivism accessed on 7 August 2005

← Herbert Spencer accessed on 7 August 2005

← Chapter III: Ratio of Human Progress accessed on 7 August 2005

← Marshall David Sahlins, Evolution and culture, University of Michigan Press, 1970

← Leslie White, The Evolution of Culture; The Development of Civilization to the Fall of
Rome, Mcgraw-Hill, 1959, ISBN 0-07-069682-9

Further reading
← Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994, ISBN
0-631-18206-3
← Trigger, Bruce, Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (New
Perspectives on the Past), Blackwell Publishers, 1998, ISBN 1-55786-977-4

← Stocking, George, Victorian Anthropology, Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0-02-931551-4

← Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward, A History of Anthropological Thought, 1981, Basic

Books, Inc., New York.
← Graber, Robert B., A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, 1995, Thomas
Jefferson University Press, Kirksville, MO.

← Harris, Marvin, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture,

1968, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.

← Hatch, Elvin, Theories of Man and Culture, 1973, Columbia University Press, New
York.

← Hays, H. R., From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of Social Anthropology, 1965,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

← Johnson, Allen W. and Earle, Timothy, The Evolution of Human Societies: From
Foraging Group to Agrarian State, 1987, Stanford University Press.

← Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc.,
Prospect Heights, Illinois.

← Kuklick, Henrika, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology,
1885–1945, 1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

← Mesoudi, A. (2007). Using the methods of experimental social psychology to study

cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology, 1(2), 35–58.
Full text

← Raoul Naroll and William T. Divale. 1976. Natural Selection in Cultural Evolution:
Warfare versus Peaceful Diffusion. American Ethnologist 3: 97–128.

← Segal, Daniel (2000) Western Civ" and the Staging of History in American Higher
Education The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 770-805
doi:10.2307/2651809

← Seymour-Smith, Charlotte, Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology, 1986, Macmillan,

New York.

← Stocking Jr., George W., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology, 1968, The Free Press, New York.

← Stocking Jr., George W., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888–1951, 1995,
The University of Wisconsin Press.
 ← Winthrop, Robert H., Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology, 1991,
Greenwood Press, New York.

← Alternatives of Social Evolution, 2000, FEB RAS, Vladivostok.

← John Henry Morgan, In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious

Consciousness 2007 Cloverdale Books, South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0

← Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World
Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective, First Edition, Lewiston, New
York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0.

← Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics:

Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00559-0
[3].

Readings from an evolutionary anthropological perspective

← Two special issues on the evolution of culture:
← Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews Volume 12,
Issue 2, Pages 57–108 (April 2003)

 The evolution of culture: New perspectives and evidence (p 57–

60) Charles H. Janson, Eric A. Smith

 Making space for traditions (p 61–70) Dorothy Fragaszy

 Traditions in monkeys (p 71–81) Susan Perry, Joseph H.

Manson

 Is culture a golden barrier between human and chimpanzee? (p

82–91) Christophe Boesch

 Cultural panthropology (p 92–105) Andrew Whiten, Victoria

Horner, Sarah Marshall-Pescini

 The fossil record - Human and nonhuman (p 106–108) Eric

Delson
 ← Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews Volume 12,
Issue 3, Pages 109–159 (2003)

 On stony ground: Lithic technology, human evolution, and the

emergence of culture (p 109–122) Robert Foley, Marta Mirazón
Lahr

 The evolution of cultural evolution (p 123–135) Joseph Henrich,

Richard McElreath

 The adaptive nature of culture (p 136–149) Michael S. Alvard

 Do animals have culture? (p 150–159) Kevin N. Laland, William

Hoppitt

External links
← Evolution and Culture The Missing Link
← Introduction to Social Evolutionism at the University of Alabama

← Sociocultural evolution on Principia Cybernetica Web

← Comte and the philosophy of positivism

← Lewis Morgan 'Ancient Societies' online. See chapter 3 for his

savagery/barbarism/civilisation theory

← Classical Sociological Theory: Comte and Spencer

← Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends

← Homeapge of Robert L. Carneiro

← Homepage of Frank Elwell

← Homepage of Khaled Hakami

Categories: Core issues in ethics | Culture terms | Evolution | Sociocultural evolution

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