Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

institution stretch out to the farthest limits of the social structure, and affect, and are affected by, countless other social arrangements.

Even when institutions are very closely related they are frequently only partly synthesized. That is, while the existing arrangements compel a number of institutions to function together, they may be so constituted that they cannot function harmoniously. This is sometimes the case with laws. Since they are laws, we feel that they should be respected and enforced; but we are confronted with aggravating dilemmas when they run counter to long established ways of life. Confusions and conflicts of purpose and action naturally result-witness our troubles with the Eighteenth Amendment.

The heart and core of a living institution is to be found in the shared human purposes and ideals which lie behind it. Institutions are moribund and in process of decay, though they may for a time persist to encumber the social scene, when they are no longer warmed by human allegiance and loyalty. This allegiance need not be actively and explicitly recognized by all the members of a group for it to be effective. But when men begin to exhibit disaffection and apathy towards an institutional structure, the importance of faith and confidence in it becomes apparent. It is possible that societies decline and disappear more through failures in morale than for any other reason. A conquered people need not lose its identity and become a mere memory of itself, if it can only maintain a lively faith in its own folkways in the face of the invader.

The number and variety of institutions in our culture

A complete enumeration of the institutions of a culture in their many interrelations would give an outline picture of its social structure. The classification of cultural offerings presented earlier in this chapter was really an attempt to carry the analysis a step further, since its aim was to indicate in the briefest possible compass the kinds of institutions to be found in any society. The very generality of this classification, however, requires that it be supplemented by material,

of greater concreteness. In the present state of our knowledge no complete analytical catalogue of the institutions of any specific culture is possible; but a summary list of a few contemporary institutions may help to clarify the meaning of the term. The headings of the following classification have been rather arbitrarily chosen, and are not to be taken as exhaustive:

Domestic-the family; marriage; relationship; the home; the meal; telling children stories; inheritance; having books in the home; etc.

Economic-the various occupation groups; barter and trade; credit; money; the rights of property; industrialism; the factory; division of labor; distinction between employer and employee; laws regulating trade and commerce; etc.

Political the state; the party system; universal suffrage; the police power; the principle of checks and balances; letting the country be run by politicians; the various governmental offices; representation in Congress determined geographically (by congressional districts, etc.); "law and order;" war;

etc.

"Social"-friendship; romantic love; rules of social intercourse; etiquette; play (and all the various games); charity; arrangements for health, insurance, and the like; etc.

"Personal"-classifications as to age, sex, status, locality, etc.; the idea of being a distinct personality, and of "amounting to something;" ways of regarding one's self; etc.

Educational-the school; books; libraries; the newspaper; moving pictures; the various ways in which gossip and rumor are institutionalized; etc.

Moral-leagues for and against vice; moral and ethical codes; the rights of animals and of children; the notion of what constitutes "a good time;" etc.

Religious-the church and churches; the clergy; "the Christian way of life;" holy days and sacraments; Heaven and Hell; the Bible; monotheism; etc.

Artistic-all the various arts and crafts; the canons and principles of art, and of the various arts; the symphony, the sonnet, and all other art forms; etc.

Scientific-All the various sciences, and the habits of thought they characteristically generate; the experimental method; hypotheses; the laboratory, the test-tube, and the

microscope; the notion of cause; the idea of one uniform nature; etc.

How cultures change

Even a list so incomplete and sketchy as the above cannot fail to suggest the great medley of impulses behind social activity. A single institution may serve a staggering array of human needs, and by its permeation into other institutions and into the deepest recesses of our lives may seem almost beyond essential change. Consider the present economic order-its effects invade the farthermost reaches of human living and thinking. Scarcely a single human impulse of any consequence could be named whose expression has not been altered in important ways since the rise of industrialism during the last two or three hundred years. Yet nothing is clearer than that such institutions do change, and even disappear, for the past is richly strewn with their wrecks. How, then, do cultures change? Two processes may be distinguished:

(1) Diffusion-the importation of elements into a group through the contact of cultures. Cultures are never perfectly isolated, and a constant interchange of culture elements goes on even between primitive cultures. The process involves the exchange, not merely of material goods, but also of ideas. Culture elements originate in one area and are carried to contiguous regions, being altered, if necessary, to adapt them to the culture patterns into which they are assimilated. In the case even of primitive groups with no written records, it is often possible to draw maps indicating where particular traits must first have arisen. 10 It is difficult to realize to what an extent borrowing is characteristic of culture history; the attempt to locate the origin of the elements of any culture would probably take us over continents, across seas, and in some instances, perhaps, to all parts of the globe.

Our own culture offers many examples of materials obtained by processes of diffusion. Even if we disregard such minor borrowings as the derivation of tobacco from the American Indians, coffee from the Arabians, silk from the

Chinese, the vine from the Caucasus, astronomy from Chaldea, etc., there yet remains a considerable number of cultural loans of the very first magnitude. Modern science, modern art, and modern philosophy were fed at their sources by materials drawn from Greek culture; the Christian religion originated in Palestine; the Phoenicians gave us the alphabet and the Hindus (through the Arabs) our number system; the Romans and the Teutons our system of law; nor did any one of the cultures that made these major contributions to our life elaborate them in isolation from other culture contacts. And, on the other hand, in recent centuries our culture has spread over the whole globe, effacing or degenerating practically all of the minor cultures that once dotted the earth's surface, and even seriously threatening the great civilizations of Islam, India, and China. This is indeed "the European epoch of the human mind." It can seriously be doubted whether the wholesale destruction of cultures that has accompanied the spread of western civilization is a good thing. In many instances whole peoples have been completely destroyed, along with their arts, achievements, and general outlook on life. The invader is as a rule both unwilling and unable to salvage these things. Quite aside from questions of justice, this makes the world so much the poorer in the resources of the mind. Every people has its own religion, its own mythology and folklore, its own store of homely wisdom, its own arts and knowledges, its own organization of life. It takes long ages of living together to form a culture, and it seems as if time itself were being attacked when cultures are destroyed.

(2) Invention—the putting of already available materials to new uses. This topic will be discussed in another setting in a later chapter, so it will suffice for the present to remark that inventions do occur in every group; indeed they are found to be exceedingly common when once the term is properly understood as not implying more than a minimum of originality. Adaptations and adjustments of the existing cultural materials are continually occurring, and in this give and take culture traits slowly acquire new forms. Thus languages undergo long-term changes which are only notice

able after they have accumulated in the course of centuries."1 No Chaucer, Shakespeare or other great molder of the speech is here required; slowly and imperceptibly through countless minute inventive adaptations, the pronounciation and usage of words is altered.

The process of diffusion may in one way be regarded as a special case of invention, for borrowing from other cultures always involves some degree of inventive adaptation. With invention proper, however, no new elements are introduced into the culture from another complex, since the whole process is confined to a working over of already available materials.

Our dependence upon our culture

A man would have to work for many lifetimes to make all of the things he uses in the course of a single day, if indeed he could ever hope to learn all of the arts and techniques necessary for such a task. Primitive peoples sometimes ask white men whether they themselves have made their own clothing, shoes, gun, camp equipment, etc., and are surprised to learn that nearly all of these things were made for them by other persons. But the primitive himself is really no better off; he may have been his own artisan, but he cannot have been the inventor of all the arts he practices. He too is dependent upon his culture for the apparatus that makes his life possible.

But a man's dependence upon his culture pattern extends much further than this. Both the questions he asks the world and himself and the answers he finally gives to these questions, are culturally determined except in the case of persons of the greatest originality. Lévy-Bruhl elaborates this point in his book entitled Primitive Mentality. He shows, for example, how living in an orderly, well-established society affects our notion of causation: 12

The uninterrupted feeling of intellectual security is so thoroughly established in our minds that we do not see how it can be disturbed, for even supposing we were suddenly brought face to face with an altogether mysterious phenomenon, the

« AnteriorContinuar »