The Catalyzing Mind by Kenneth R. Cabell & Jaan Valsiner

Author:Kenneth R. Cabell & Jaan Valsiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer New York, New York, NY

Conclusion: A Conditional Analysis of Culture

This chapter has used Bartlett’s framework to explore the systemic causes of cultural diffusion, maintenance, change and invention. In this concluding section, I will highlight how this framework is guided by the principles of conditional analysis (see, e.g. Beckstead et al. 2009). The different factors Bartlett identifies that condition the direction of cultural diffusion do not directly ‘cause’ cultural elements to be incorporated or ignored, transformed or maintained; rather they ‘set the stage’ for these processes to occur. These factors cannot thus be treated as mere variables that somehow ‘interact’; instead, the researcher must consider how they operate as a system through the analysis of concrete and contextualized single cases as they change through time (i.e. diachronically). Thus, Bartlett confronts us with a wealth of ethnographic studies that illustrate particular processes of diffusion and analyses them with a flexible theoretical apparatus that looks at the relations between different tendencies and the material in which they work on. This framework necessitates attending to individual and group processes, which dynamically relate with a particular environment. The unit of analysis is an active individual embedded within an environment that is both physical and social.

The social part highlights a number of important conditions of the transmission and transformation of culture: the forms of relationship (i.e. dominance, submissiveness and primitive comradeship), which operate between individuals, between the individual and the group, and between groups. These work in concert with a group’s ‘cultural patterns’ or ‘conventions’, which always stand in a dynamic tension between past and future, stability and change, conservation (the flexible maintenance of the old) and construction (the creation of the new). Primitive groups tend towards conservation but conditions can quickly change such that construction takes the lead. Although these different factors may appear rather simple from the outset, their dynamics quickly become complex when applied to single cases. Primitive groups are not homogeneous, but differentiated into ‘special groups’, which become custodians of certain tendencies and material culture. Special groups develop certain relations with the wider community that in turn creates particular conditions for the growth of culture. For example, a group’s relative dominance and regular contact with the wider community ‘sets the stage’ for the elaboration of culture, whereas isolation or popularization creates conditions for simplification. Individual acts of elaboration or simplification are not, however, ‘caused’ by these social conditions, but rather work through them.

There are also complex dynamics between one community and another. Contact with new groups and the introduction of new cultural elements can transform a group’s whole culture. This is because cultural elements do not stand alone but form a relational whole. Diffusion between communities takes the route of contact or borrowing, each of which sets different conditions. Borrowing depends more on the personality of the individual, who brings a foreign cultural element into the community and is its promoter, while contact depends more on broader societal factors. Contact creates conditions for the blending of culture when the communities are in a relation of primitive comradeship and displacement when one is dominant and the other submissive.

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