Culture Change

Human beings are the bearers of culture; therefore, it is important to study how humankind has evolved over time as a basis to understand culture change. Periods of culture change indicate the direction in which the strengths and values of said cultures survive and maintain their existence. How to study culture change may be difficult at best because theoretical ideas concerning culture have created a schism among proponents and opponents of cultural evolutionism.

The literature suggests that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was central to the understanding of how societies evolved over time. Darwin's main point focused on species survivals, that is, the individuals who were best suited to their environment transmitted cultural survivals from generation to generation. However, a biological framework is not progressive in that it can suffice to explain cultural survivals in terms of social structures, hierarchy, social justice, intergenerational poverty, and the like. To this end, rather than to rely upon biology alone, it became important to theorize about how humans “think.” Therefore, it is equally important to examine the social world of humans and the coexistence of mental and material phenomena, perhaps in symbolic interactionism.

With respect to symbolic interactionism, symboling and socialization are inextricably linked. Human beings make sense of their reality through symbol manipulations, and thus they behave accordingly. Both concepts can be viewed as a system of rules and regulations. As noted by Talcott Parsons, human beings must achieve compatibility and integration among cultural, social, personal, and biological systems. Therefore, culture and culture change can be examined and theorized through human interactions as well as human responses to environmental influences.

Environmental influences or the “web of life,” as coined by Julian Steward, refers to other human communities, plants, animals, and climatic changes that impact and influence how human beings and nature participate in a dance of survival. Furthermore, the question is: Who or what wins the proverbial prize of the ultimate survivor?

For the purpose of this entry, I will use Leslie White's concepts regarding culture. For White, culture [Page 647]has four key foci. First, it is ideological, in that humans relate to one another based upon shared knowledge, beliefs, and values that are transmitted from one generation to another. Second, it is sociological, in that it governs the laws and those institutions whereby codes of ethics are formulated and advanced in terms of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. The third element of culture deals with the subjective expressions in human society, in other words, the attitudes or sentiments of the realities that are constructed through the ability to symbol. Finally, the technological aspect of culture explains how human beings developed tools in order to adapt to the environment as well as to survive the forces of nature. In summation, the four elements of culture as explained by White provide a holistic explanation of how culture is produced and changes over time due to a need to survive. White contends that human beings produce culture and that one's understanding of culture is through symboling or a sharing of values and meaning.

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