ID 501Excerpts from A SCIENTIFIC THEORY

OF CULTURE

Bronislaw Malinowski

Selma Kadiroğlu1561729

A minimum definition of science for the humanist

• Scientific approach is obviously not the only interest or inspiration in the domain of humanism. Aesthetic, humanitarian, or theological zeal or inspiration are legitimate motivations in all humanities. Science is indispensable.

• Every statement and every argument has to be made in words, in concepts. Each concept is the result of a theory which declares that some facts are relevant and others adventitious that things happen as they do because personalities, massesm and material agencies of the environment produced them.

• Science; it begins with the use of previous observation for the prediction of the future.

• We have to make assumptions concerning to man`s reasonable behavior, the permanent incorporation of such reasonable behavior in tradition and the fidelity of each generation to the traditional knowledge inherited from their ancestors.

• A definite scientific theory is embodied in each performance. The tradition had to define in a general abstract manner and the principles of performance.

• The tradition implied two pedagogical and theoretical elements; -it was embodied in the manual skills of each generation -whether primitive symbolism was accomplished by verbal statement such

as instructions where to find and how to store the materials and produce the forms.

• Desired end of activity determines; -reasonable behavior -fidelity to the theoretical principles -technical accuracy.

• This sense of value pervades and becomes permanently attached to both manual ability and theoretical knowledge.

• The scientific attitude is as old as culture• The minimum definition of science is derived from any pragmatic

performance.

• Anthropology was the first of all social sciences to establish its laboratory, side by side with its theoretical workshop. The ethnologist must be at the same time skilled in the art of observation in the ethnographic field-work and an expert in the theory of culture.

• One of the most dangerous procedures is to borrow the methods of older and better established disciplines. This and many other tricks have done more harm than good.

Concepts and methods of anthropology

• Modern anthropology started with the evolutionary point of view. Darwinian interpretations of biological development, ethnographic data

• Origins is the essential nature of an institution like marriage or the nation, the family or the state or the organization of witchcraft.

• Evolutionism has suffered a temporary eclipse under the attack of the diffusionist or so-called `historical` schools.

• Diffusion as a cultural process is as real and unassailable as evolution. The real merit consists in their concreteness, fuller historical sense and their realization of environmental and geographical influences.

Ritter and Ratzel were the pioneers of this movement.

• The rift between evolutionism and diffusionism contains a number of partial schools and divergent opinions.

• There is a comparative method which students is primarily interested in gathering extensive cross-cultural documentations.

• Wundt and Crawley, Westermarch and Lang, Frazer and Freud have approached fundamental problems such as origins of magic and religion, of morals and totemism by propounding exclusively psychological solutions.

• Durkheim can be regarded as representing one of the soundest of those tendencies which aim at the full scientific understanding of culture.

• The value of the results depends on the really scientific definition of the institution, as in criticism of the comparative and diffusionist methods.

• Graebner and Ankermann was the museum moles and influences diffusionism.

• Recently the psychoanalytic school brought to the Study of Man a specific, perhaps one sided but important point of view.

• The real contribution of psychoanalysis is its insistence on the formation of mental, that is, also sociological, attitudes during early childhood due to such cultural influences as education, the use of parental authority and certain primary drives associated with sex and nutrition

• Sigmund Freud succeeded in breaking down our occidental taboo on the various `indecencies`. So anyone can use pshycoanalytic jargon to discourse on any matters related to the lower part of the body.

• Behaviorism consists newer developments of stimulus-and-response. Its method are identical as regards limitations and advantages with those of anthropological field-work.

• Use the short circuiting of empathy is always dangerous in dealing with people of different culture. Ideas, emotions and conations never continue to lead a cryptic, hidden existence within the unexplorable depths of mind, conscious or unconscious.

• It is important to distinguish clearly between the program, the leading interest of an evolutionist, as opposed to that of diffusionist, a psychoanalyst, or a museum mole.

L.H.Morgan- Ancient Society (evolutionism) W.J. Perry- Children of the Sun (diffusionism) Frazer- The Golden Bough, Westermarck`s The History of Human

Marriage (comparative )

• L.H. Morgan ; discovery of the classificatory system of kinship and his resolute persistence in studying the principles of primitive relationship by marriage by blood and by affinity

• Tylor give a minimum definition of religion and his method of casually the relevant factors of human organization

• Westermarck contributed to our knowledge by the correct appreciation of relationships , of the vitality of the domestic institution than by his evolutionary linking up of human marriage with the pairing apes, birds and reptiles.

• Shortcomings of various schools of anthropology; They always center round the question whether, in constructing an evolutionary

stage system, or in tracing the diffusion of cultural phenomenon, the scholar has devoted sufficient attention to the full and clear analysis of the cultural reality with which he deals.

• Where the material determinants, human actions, beliefs and ideas, that is, symbolic performances enter into such an isolate or reality of culture how they interact and how they obtain that character of permanent, necessary relationship to each other.

• A.A. Goldenweiser; A survival is ‘ a cultural feature which does not fit in with its cultural medium, it persists rather than functions, or its function does not harmonize with the surrounding culture.’

They represent a constant and omnipresent aspect of all cultures.

If we take any example of survival;

• The survival nature of the alleged cultural hangover is due primarily to an incomplete analysis of the facts.

• Most survivals have gradually and progressively faded out of anthropological theory.

• The real harm done by this concept was to retard effective field-work. The observer was merely satisfied in reaching a rigid, self contained entity instead of searching for the present day function of any cultural fact.

• In diffusion, the problem of identity first has to be faced and solved.

• The extreme representative of the diffusionist schools, F.Graebner maintains that `law of mental life` and that `their scientific and methodical study is possible only from the psychological point of view` are all the regularities of cultural process.

• Interpretation of culture in terms of individual psychology is as fruitless as mere historical analysis; and that to dissociate the studies of mind is to foredoom the results.

• Ratzel propounded the main problem of ethnology, the study of distribution and diffusion has been followed up by Frobenius, Ankermann, Graebner, Peter W. Schmidt and subsequently by the late Dr. Rivers.

• The merit of the anthropological diffusionism lies in its geographical rather than in its historical contributions .Bringing out the influence of physical habitat as well as the possibilities of cultural transmission is a valuable method.

• The distributions mapped out for America by Boas, Spinden,Lowie, Wissler, Kroeber and Rivet for the survey of Melanesian cultures by Graebner for Australian provinces by Schmidt for Africa by Ankermann .

• Professor Kroeber recognizes that trait analysis and the characterization of culture by traits or trait complexes depends on the question whether they can be isolated as realities, and so made comparable in observation and theory.

• Those who prefer to use such words as trait and trait complex, instead of speaking of institutions, organized groups, artifacts in use, or beliefs and ideas insofar as they pragmatically affect human behavior, are quite welcome to retain any labels or verbal usages.

• The only point which matters is whether we are able to isolate a related set of phenomena on the basis of a really scientific analysis, or on a mere arbitrary assumption.

• We attach the maximum value to characteristics of a trait or the composition of a complex, insofar as they are extrinsic and irrelevant; or whether we look only for relations and forms which are determined by the cultural forces really at work.

What is culture?• Integral whole consisting of implements and consumers` goods, of human ideas

and crafts, beliefs and customs.

• Standard of living depends on -the cultural level of the community, -the environment -the efficiency of the group.• A cultural standard of living means that new needs appear and new imperatives

or determinants are imposed on human behavior.

• Cultural traditions is transmitted from each generation to the next.

• All primary problems are solved by artifacts, organization into cooperative groups, and also development of knowledge, a sense of value and ethics.

• Basic needs and cultural satisfaction are linked up with the derivation of new cultural needs.

• Instrumental imperatives: economic, normative, educational and political Integrative imperatives : knowledge, religion, magic

• Human beings have to be organized to achieve any purpose, reach any end and organization implies a very definite structure.

• Institution implies an agreement on a set of traditional values for which humans come together.

• Culture is an integral composed of partly autonomous, partly coordinated institutions. It is integrated on a series of principles such as;

the community of blood through procreation the contiguity in space related to coordination the specialization in activities the use of power in political organization

• The element of time; all evolutionary or diffusion processes happen in the form of institutional change.

For example; a new technical device becomes incorporated into an already established system of organized behavior and produces a complete remolding of that institution.

• Scientific anthropology gives us the functional analysis, which allows us to define the form, as well as the meaning, of customary idea or contrivance.

Theory of organized behavior• The essential fact of culture is the organization of human beings into permanent

groups.

• The invention of new device, the discovery of a new principle, or formulation of a new idea, a religious revelation or a moral or aesthetic movement, remain culturally irrelevant unless they become translated into an organized set of cooperative activities.

• The science of human behavior begins with organization.

• If we analyze the daily behavior of any individual, we find that all phases of his existence must be related to one or other of the systems of organized activities into which our culture can be subdivided, which really constitute our culture.

• The organization of each such system of activities also implies the acceptance of certain fundamental values and laws.

• In relating the general types of activities, and their effects on the total life, we would be able to assess the function of each system of organized activities.

• In primitive and civilized communities alike, all effective human action leads to organized behavior. This organized behavior can be submitted to define analytic scheme. The type of such institutions or isolates of organized behavior, presents certain fundamental similarities throughout the wide range of cultural variety.