A social pattern is found wherever we find a
community which is more than an association of individuals, bound
up with a coherent body of customs and ideas. There is an
integrated unity or system in which each element has a definite
function in relation to the whole which is passed down through
learning from generation to generation.. Culture in this
comprehensive sense is only found in human communities. Non-human
primates do exhibit innovative behaviours that are passed by
learning across generations but the examples are the exception to
the rule.
Culture appears when a primate learns a
particular pattern of behaviour for the first time and it is passed
from one individual across generations by learning. This is not
general in non-human primates but is a feature of isolated groups
of a particular species expressed as 'food washing', and the use of
'food tools'.
Human culture is deeply rooted in biology. Its
evolution is channelled by the biological rules of mental
development, which in turn are genetically coded.
We can envisage the full chain of causation for
gene- culture coevolution from DNA code to the formation of culture
and back again through natural selection to changes in DNA gene
frequencies.
Culture is based on human cognative development
and is therefore ultimately a biological product. In many cases
half or more of the variability in personality and cognition, is
hereditary in origin.
Human cognitive development is severely
constrained by human genes, and it is likely that the total amount
of variability due to heredity and environment combined is only a
minute fraction of the amount conceivable.
The classical explanation for the emergence of
culture is that it is 'the necessary conditions of existence
of the social organism'. To this the social institutions must
correspond. In turn the necessary conditions of existence, at any
stage of social development, depend on the geographical situation
and the level of technology. This is true from the Stone Age to
modern industrialism.
Basic to every form of social organization is the
method of obtaining those items essential for human survival. In
other words, how do the people of a particular society produce
their food, clothing, tools, and other items that they need in
order to live as human beings ? Cultural changes occur to maintain
the organism in its steady state regarding well being of families,
neighbours and nation. Through the ages technology has developed to
conduct primeval cultural activities of human beings, such as war,
tribal reunions, and bartering, as well as food production and
providing shelter.
These 'necessary conditions of existence' shape
the relationship of men to each other. Men carry on a struggle
against nature and utilize nature to produce the necessities of
life not in isolation from each other, not as separate individuals,
but in common, in groups, in societies.
At different stages of development people make
use of different modes of production and therefore lead different
kinds of life. Correspondingly the whole social pattern, including
religion, morals, customs, and ideas, differs from age to age.
Whatever is man's manner of life, such is his manner of behaviour
and of thought.
Within such a system we must ask of any custom,
or magical practice, or marriage rule, or taboo, what contribution
it makes to the total social life, and to the functioning of the
total social system. The system will then be found to regulate the
relationship of all the individuals in that society; it will
provide such adaptation to the physical environment as to make
possible an ordered social life; it is, in short, a method of
survival.
Anthropologists no longer merely record and
compare interesting customs, they compare total patterns,
the web of thought and action. It is this web rather than any
elaborate system of government that holds primitive societies
together. Its bonds are internal—the habits of
thought, of obligation, and of custom shape attitudes and
behaviour.
This interior force is as real and authoritative
as the external environment. The two together constitute the very
nature of man in any particular society. This sum total of customs,
rules, beliefs, marriage systems, and so on is called the
culture of that society.
Culture
maintains and enhances life.
It builds up
and strengthens the group and helps it to satisfy its needs.
Culture, then, is the integrated system of
learned behaviour patterns characteristic of the members of a
society. It constitutes the way of life of any given social group.
It is also a social heritage, transmitted from generation to
generation and instilled into the minds of the young not only by
education and initiation, but by the long, unconscious conditioning
whereby each individual becomes the person he ultimately is. It
thus becomes a form of social heredity.
Such an interpretation of the structure of the
social organism is called 'functionalism'. The function of culture
as a whole is to unite the individual human beings into more or
less stable social structures, i.e. stable systems of groups
determining and regulating the relations of those individuals to
one another, and providing such external adaptation to the physical
environment, and such internal adaptation between the component
individuals or groups as to make possible an ordered social life.
That assumption, I believe to be a sort of primary postulate of any
objective and scientific study of human society.
It must be realized that such a pattern of
society is an evolved harmonious whole. It survives and
flourishes because it successfully maintains solidarity among its
members, and to attain this, the institutions interacting within
that society and constituting it contribute to that solidarity. The
people concerned in such a society do not, of course, see
the model constructed to explain it to the Western student of
anthropology. The analysis into a pattern of institutional
relationships is one thing, the actual working of the system is not
realized to be 'a system' at all by the people within it. It is
just the usual way things get done. The scheme as worked out by
the functionalist would be quite unintelligible to them, for
they would not be interested in considering the kind of questions
with which the anthropologist is concerned.
Every culture, from that of a simple,
food-gathering community like the Inuits to our own, has three
fundamental aspects: the technological, the sociological, and the
ideological.
The Technological.
This aspect
of culture is concerned with tools, materials, techniques, and, in
our day, machines. The tool is basic. The bronze axe is not only a
superior instrument to the stone axe, it carries with it a more
complex economic and social structure. Cultures may be defined in
relation to their dependence upon such tools and techniques as the
digging stick and spear, the hoe and garden, the herd of cattle,
the ox-drawn plough.
The Sociological.
This aspect
of culture involves the relationships into which men enter,
especially in work and in the family. These will always involve
some form of co-operation, and may be basically free from
exploitation, as among very primitive tribes, or may reflect some
form of conflict, domination and subordination as in more advanced
societies.
The Ideological.
This aspect
of culture comprises beliefs, rituals, magical practices, art,
ethics, religious practices, and myths. In developed civilizations
it includes the philosophies and legal systems of the society.
Changes in technology and social organization will bring forth
changes in the ideas, beliefs, in fact the whole spiritual life of
man, but such ideas will always react back on the social
organization. It is a reciprocal process.