American relative cultural orientation
That every human society has its own value system, based on a distinctive cultural choice, and on backgrounds that Kadriner later called the normative personality, all of this allowed American anthropology to overcome in the period 1930-1950 many of the clouds that marred British structural functionalism. The methodology and language of American studies succeeded in arriving at a new discourse that was hostile to colonial ideology and compatible with the demand of uncomplicated societies subject to colonialism for their right to exist.
Alfred Kroeber (1876-1960) saw that history does not mean at all the study of the succession of phenomena and events in time, as the functionalists understood it, but rather aims in the end to give a comprehensive description of the subject of study, and in this way history can be used to study current facts and events in a particular society. On the basis of this expansion of the concept of history according to Kroeber as an approach that takes into account the elements of time and place, anthropology becomes a historical study in the first place and its goal is to distinguish between cultural patterns that can be extracted from the comparative study of peoples. But other American anthropologists, such as Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Edward Sapir, and McCardiner, saw that history alone is not sufficient to explain culture, because culture is a complex issue that combines, in their belief, the experience acquired over time and throughout history with the psychological experience, and that any cultural characteristic thus includes a combination of psychological and cultural activity in relation to a specific environment. This resulted in those anthropologists resorting to psychological concepts.
Ruth Benedict's study "Patterns of Culture", which she published in 1934, was a real beginning to crystallize the cultural-relative trend (what is known in some cases as the psycho-historical trend) in the study of cultures. It seems that the comparative tendency that characterized her study is not permissible if it is returned to the tendency that had been suggested by Radcliffe-Brown. There is no doubt that the studies conducted on the types of societies that were distinguished by their economic, social, and religious practices (the Dobo, the Zuni, and the Kwakit of the Native American peoples), in addition to the investigation of the necessary cultural systems that are considered utmost examples of human voluntariness, are what enabled Ruth Benedict to develop the theory of “cultural formulas.” Every culture, according to Benedict, is based around a basic principle that gives it its own pattern or formation that distinguishes it from other cultures. Every society uses only a specific part of the cultural formula that humans can use. Benedict conducted a comparative study between several simple cultures, through which she clarified the relationship between “the general cultural formula and personality manifestations as reflected in individuals in those societies.” As Ahmed Abu Zeid pointed out, while “Malinowski began his view of culture from the individual, regarding cultural phenomena as derivatives of individual needs, Ruth Benedict began from cultural formulas, usually individual behavior as mere agreement and harmony with the teachings, ideals, values, and cultural trends that already exist.” Thus, not only the one-line idea was put forward, but also the idea of evolution in its traditional sense.
Thus, the idea of cultural choice was replaced by the concept of class, or identification or parallelism in the path of each society. The difference is not for the sake of regularity, that is, delay in the only development, but rather it is the result of selection and different methods. According to this perspective, all resistance belongs and loses its significance. Thus, no society returns to the ambition or arrogance of judging others, and it acquires non-competing interpretations of practices and beliefs, which do not differ from each other, because a certain line is present here but absent there, or because another line exists in two regions, but in different forms. It varies as a whole in different directions. It advances in different ways in search of different ends, and these ends and means that we find in one society cannot be judged in terms of another society because they cannot be measured.
The universality of the meaning of human institutions (kinship, economics, politics) helped both Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski to establish the theory of comparison. However, for Benedict, the matter is different in that institutions are only a formal but empty framework, and it is easier to show their comprehensiveness when we leave out the concrete and effective meaning that they represent in, or for, a culture. This in turn applies to the concept of “function” in the sense introduced to it by Malinowski and Brown, which is a matter due to institutions’ interpretation of special and distinct values. “Choices” are linked to a specific society, not as a response to basic needs as Malinowski believes (the universality of sexual need is matched by the universality of the family, hunger is matched by the economic institution, and the universality of anxiety is corresponding to the religious institution).
There is a second model of the American relativistic cultural trend, represented in the works of Abram Kardiner, which proposes the concept of the basic personality, which refers to a set of psychological and behavioral characteristics that correspond to all the systems, elements, and characteristics that make up any culture. Kardiner focuses on what he called the primary systems associated with raising children in their early years, which differ from one culture to another. Kardiner assumes that as a result of a group of people sharing a certain type of upbringing and upbringing during their childhood, common personality traits prevail among them when they grow up. These traits are then linked to the final formation of the prevailing culture among these individuals. Although the prevailing cultural pattern or formation cannot increase or reduce the presence of individual differences within the scope of one culture, the relationship between cultural patterns and individual personality and the mutual influences between them is something that should not be neglected. In his book, “The Psychological Frontiers of Society,” Cardner presented a number of types of culture: the Comanche culture or the culture of the Alur peoples, confronting Western culture as embodied in a small American city. Cardner's interpretation was based on basic values, or as Cardner says, based on "projection systems" of the basic personality that is represented in every culture without resorting to external values or concepts. This is due, as he says, to "each culture having a unique psychological structure, and there are no two similar cultures."
This does not mean, in the opinion of American advocates of cultural relativism, that cultures are always “cultural successes” to the same degree, since some are more harmonious and adaptive than others. Adaptation is not measured directly by degrees of technical or “cultural” progress. On the contrary, some may see that Western culture is less adaptive than many non-complex societies, and then the change that resulted from the decline has no value in itself. Every culture has its own way of perceiving and experiencing change...it will either accept it silently, or it will try to suppress it. It can be concluded from this that the forced imposition of a certain pattern of change often leads to distortions in the cultural system, distortions that may turn into repression at the individual level or into psychological dysfunction and mental illness.
As for Sapir, he proposed a distinction between “authentic” cultures and “inauthentic” cultures. The first is: “cultures that are harmonious, balanced, and live in complete conformity with themselves.” The other turns the individual into a state of rust, and also generates repression and alienation. However prominent the effectiveness and technical power of the second type of culture may be, it cannot hide its “cultural failure”: “There is no illusion greater and more ridiculous than the illusion which we all share, which arises from our praise of the specialization, the growing technical precision, and the perfection which science has brought to our technology, such that we seem to arrive at similar results with regard to the depth of our culture and its complete conformity and harmony with our lives.”
Herskovitz is credited with inventing the term “cultural relativism,” as he asked, “How can value judgments be made about this or that culture, or about uncomplicated culture in general, as long as these judgments are based on experience, and as long as each individual interprets experience within the limits of his own contradiction?” There is no “experience” (sensory, artistic, religious, etc.) in and of itself, as long as every experience is relative to the cultural system of society, and as long as every society is a system of experience and judgments.
Melvin Herskovitz, in conjunction with Ralph Linton and Robert Redfield, is credited with considering the contradiction as including cultural change in those phenomena that arise when groups of individuals belonging to two different cultures enter into direct contact with them, which results in changes in the original cultural patterns prevailing in one of these two groups or in both of them. Thus, the general concept of contradiction is the way in which an incoming or new culture is accepted and digested within its content so that these new or incoming elements become an integral part of the general cultural content. Thus, the study of contradiction and social change is a study of the process of change and acceptance in many cultural systems and elements, in order for the new elements to fit into the cultural quantity or the cultural quantity to fit into the new elements, or for the two processes to occur together to different degrees depending on the strength of the new elements and their importance in the culture as a whole.
Regardless of the goals of contradiction studies, they have helped enrich the treasure trove of ethnological data in the world, and have also contributed to the emergence of many theoretical ideas. I also explained that the degree of change in the field of material culture is much faster than in the fields of non-material culture. At the same time, these studies have shown that new cultural elements do not find similar acceptance in their entirety among different groups, thanks to the influence of the wide range of choice in human societies.
Evolutionism, as we have shown, represents one of the oldest and most widespread attempts to explain the development of culture. By evolutionary trend we mean that social philosophy whose roots extend to theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as Vico and Spencer, and which found its application in anthropology at the hands of Morgan and Taylor. There is no doubt that the methods of the evolutionary trend and its anthropological theory have not remained rigid and closed since its emergence, as it has been subjected to many modifications. Although few anthropologists classify themselves as evolutionary, it is noted that the ideas of this trend represent elements of known weight in all subsequent and current attempts to explain the development of culture.
The process of reviving anthropological evolutionary theory began again in the 1940s and 1950s at the hands of Leslie White (1900-1975). The most clear and extensive expressions of new evolutionism appeared in the works of his students, especially Service and Sallins. White was greatly influenced by Morgan's writings, calling for not using European systems as a basis for measuring development, and for the need for other criteria that can be measured and to reduce discretionary judgments about them. White emphasized in his book “The Science of Culture,” which he published in 1949, that it is important for evolutionary theory not to be limited to specifying specific stages in the sequence of culture’s growth, but rather it is necessary to highlight the factors that determine this growth. In his opinion, the “energy” factor is the main test for the progress of peoples. The most prominent main elements of the new cultural evolutionary trend expressed by Leslie White can be identified in the following points:
1- Commitment to the principle of material determinism.
2- Confidence in the possibility of formulating cultural laws.
3- Using some concepts of Darwinian theory of evolution.
In analyzing the development of culture, advocates of neoevolutionism rely on various forms of “organic functional analogy.” They view human societies, like all biological organisms, as producers of diversity, but it is cultural diversity that remains active over generations according to the differential thermodynamic efficiency of cultural groups competing with each other. Here the use of evolution according to Darwinian concepts is clearly evident. Darwin had explained in his book “The Origin of Species” published in 1859 his concept of evolution, which is a concept that can be summarized in the following five points:
1- All species are able to produce offspring faster than increases in resource production.
2- All living organisms exhibit diversity, and no two individuals of the same species are exactly alike.
3- Since the number of individuals present is greater than what is supposed to survive, a bitter conflict arises in which those individuals who constitute a positive type in terms of quantity, strength, running ability, or any other characteristics necessary for survival will prevail.
4- These positive variations are transmitted genetically to the next generation (this is a false hypothesis that Darwin accepts regarding Lamarck).
5- These successful species produce, over periods of geological time, variations that lead to the emergence of new species.
Some neo-evolutionists also emphasize the usefulness of applying the concept of "evolution" to cultural history, as Service and Sallins argue that "evolution is synonymous with ascension: higher forms grow from lower forms and eliminate them." We also find that they say that advancement can be measured objectively through “the functional and structural terms that are represented in the higher organization.” They summarized this relationship in what they called the “Law of Cultural Sovereignty,” which states that “the cultural system that exploits the energy sources available in its surroundings with greater efficiency will show its ability to spread in that surroundings at the expense of less efficient systems... and that the cultural system shows a tendency to emerge specifically in those environments that enable it to achieve a higher energy return for the work unit than any other alternative systems.” Leslie White had assumed that cultures develop when the amount of energy they use increases. In other words, the technical content in a culture determines the social entity and its ideological tendencies. For example, we find that in societies whose members use a specific amount of energy, religious, political, and economic systems arise that are less complex than those that are formed in societies in which the uses of energy and technical capabilities are abundant and diverse.
The new evolutionary trend was criticized for neglecting the achievements achieved by the modern biological theory of evolution. Some have viewed the new evolutionary trend as a Lamarckian trend in its essence, in that the new evolutionists pay little attention to the first origins of cultural diversity. Rather, they suggest that diversity is essentially the frequency of needs perceived by the senses, consciously or unconsciously, which means looking at the direction of cultural change as a function of the first diversity rather than a product of natural selection. Under such an understanding, people are more adaptive than adaptive beings. Dunnell and Vinick pointed out that “the environment in scientific development is effective through natural selection or through non-directional variation to produce the apparent direction of change at higher levels. However, according to the new evolutionary trend, the environment directly controls the creation of diversity.”
Thus, the new evolutionary trend focuses its attention on formulating typologies rather than on testing empirical diversity, and it also neglects the concept of natural selection by assuming a directional path in the evolutionary record. For all of this, the new evolutionary trend showed an inability to produce laws or rules of succession through which the development of culture could be explained. However, despite the failures, the elements of the new evolutionary trend found their reflection in the treatments proposed for the development and emergence of culture, especially the ecological-cultural treatment and its material-cultural counterpart specifically in the two treatments’ use of the concept of “adaptation” as an alternative to the concept of “natural selection.”
Follow the materialistic cultural trend