* Revision to a paper presented to the 1992 American Sociological Association, round table on culture, Pittsburgh, Penn.
John D. O'Brien JOBRIEN@ucs.indiana.edu
NIMH Post Doctoral Fellow, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Program in the Measurement of Affect and Affective Processes
Department of Sociology, 744 Ballantine Hall
Bloomington, Indiana USA 47405
Submitted: Mon, 6 Jun 94 18:07:38 EST
Abstract: There is a weakness in the social sciences. There is no acceptable minimum unit of culture. As a result there are few concepts that can legitimately be used for description, analyses and theoretical cumulation. Contemporary sociological and anthropological concepts of culture do not produce a true minimum cultural unit. The problem is in the treatment of part-whole assumptions. Applying a control logic to a set of constrained holographic assumptions does produce a minimum unit of culture (Powers, 1973). Those assumptions include concepts about propensity and realistic indeterminism.
The existence of a minimum unit of culture implies the possibility of collective phenomena. There are criteria that can be used to test for a shared collective. New definitions of culture and society are offered. These are consistent with those criteria, control logic requirements and the assumptions of constrained holographic organization. Culture does not equate to society. Culture is the structural potential to organize content. It embodies two components: a priori structure and particular content. It is assumed that culture bearers share the structure, but only partially share content. Culture is not deterministic in the absolute sense. Cultural structure only predisposes to social action in given contexts and situations. That occurs through the effect of fields of propensities. These fields contain probability as a real characteristic of situations. This is similar to the concept of a force in physics. That permits the structure to change. Change occurs as a result of dynamic reconstitution that derives from the day-to-day interplay of agency and agents.
This paradigm resolves many contradictions in idealist, materialist, positivist, post-modern, interpretive, constructionist and interactionist arguments. Theoretically, it allows for a viable link between culture, social structure and micro interaction. It also allows for an internally and externally integrated definition of culture that includes ideational and socio-cultural systems.
"Eliminate the impossible and whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be true!" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Most culture theory aligns with the objective-subjective dichotomy. The tendency is to view culture as either a preexisting reality with superordinate causal authority, or totally constructed and impotent epiphenomena. This work offers a review of historical and contemporary approaches to culture, and submits the nucleus of a new theoretical approach. Fresh definitions of culture and society are made that are consistent with principles of control logic, and with principles of holonomic organization.
What is culture? How is it to be defined? Collectivism, situationalism and individualism offer the common answers to those questions. These approaches correspond to the sociological strategies of determinism, constructionism and interactionism. Alternative versions of each exist. There is culture-as-collective, culture-and-action-as-adaptive-system and culture-as-cognitive-or-material-epiphenomenon. In those strategies the conceptual definitions of culture are primarily descriptive. Purely descriptive definitions are not useful for theoretical cumulation. Some modern analytical models do exist, but they are insufficient for large scale theoretical cumulation.
Consider contemporary culture theory. The systems-functionalist idea is that culture is implicit. It is signified by social life in the field of relationships where action takes place. Implicitness also permeates social psychological attitude research. It also pervades the French Annales school and the interpretive strategy characterized by Geertz' thick description. Neo-functionalism's role for agency within the framework of social action reflects the same concept. Diametrically opposed to the implicit view is the explicit. To some conflict theorists and cultural materialists culture is only a constituted byproduct of activity. It is information or ideology (Wuthnow and Witten, 1988: 49-52).
That is a good idea, but it does not resolve the question of an acceptable minimum cultural unit. Social scientists are genuinely frustrated. They have been unable to replicate the precision of the hard sciences. At present that precision is impossible for cultural concepts, in the terms of hard science. There are no cultural units that can be used with such accuracy. Culture theorists have compensated for that by using higher levels of abstraction. The expectation now is that if shared cultural universals exist at all, then they are a different order of phenomena than manifest particulars. "What universals there turn out to be will - most interestingly, at least - be universals of process, of logic, of structure (and) of organizational principles rather than of substance" (Keesing, 1974: 86).
Archer suggests that the concept of unitary culture be discarded altogether (Archer, 1988). Her reasoning is that culture has never been successfully defined as a minimum unit, but social scientists use it as if it had. The problem is conjectural. We try to deal with the concept of culture, but we have not resolved core philosophical issues that are essential for its conceptualization. For example, we have not solved the objective-subjective paradox. The clash between positivism and post-modernism evidences that. The emic-etic debate and the structure-process debate are unresolved. Cultural materialists still argue for epiphenomenal definitions of culture. Cultural idealists argue for conflated definitions, as in structural-functionalism. There is also an anti-positivist trend. Suggestions for minimum units of culture are associated with positivism. Those suggestions are usually legitimately rejected, since attempts to define culture do not usually distinguish between universal causal connections and particular internal logical consistencies. That is particularly true of Durkheim's, Kluckholn's, Blumer's and others collective concepts. Adler's minimum social act and Greenfield's behavior item are flawed in the same way. The only recent exceptions are Heise and Durig's case-frame grammar of macro action, and Fararo and Skvoretz' idea of the production unit. Still, those do not generate a genuine minimum unit definition for culture in the purely scientific sense.
The problem is that no culture-as-collective proposition addresses the core issue. That is the part-whole relationship that would be intrinsic to the concept of a genuinely shared and integrated culture. Although collective schemes of culture do posit unitary relationship, they do not do so in a way that provides for an empirically measurable minimum unit. That does not mean that such a unit is impossible. Nothing absolutely prohibits the existence of real structured, integrated or causally effective collectives. More, there are definite criteria that can be used to establish their existence.
Is the quintessentially human only individual? We are strongly predisposed to assume that it is. Contemporary theory, research and applications are based on that presumption. If it is not, then how does collective order derive from indeterminate behavior? Where would an inquiry into the properties of culture begin? The social sciences have a massive data base of qualitative and quantitative information, collected during the last two hundred years. One example is the relatively recent ethnomethodological work on emotion production and display rules (Gregory, 1982). Portions of that and similar information can be reexamined in a search for the loci and effects of culture, applying the criteria that would identify collectivity.
What is culture? Is it a preexisting causal collective? Is it a secondary non-causal construct of interaction? Is it an internal psychological system, or an external entity? Is it a combination of those things? Whatever the theoretical position, belief in a holistic collective is still very much a part of our thinking. We have notions about emergent-systems and varieties of deep versus surface structure relationships (Knorr- Cetina and Cicourel, 1981). Collectivity so embeds in the way we think that if it is not being asserted in some form, it is being argued against.
In this work, I assert that there is sufficient cause to propose that culture is an organizing potential that joins the particular knowledge content of ideational and material artifacts. It is not a collective in the sense of a superordinate authority. It does have characteristics of a shared, preexisting, integrated and structured unity. A theoretical perspective to explain those characteristics is submitted.
The first approach is the adaptive-systems model. It is a holistic, evolutionary and ecological technique. Its distinctive characteristic is the assumption that the ideational components of cultural systems are constructed. A second characteristic of the model is the assumption that ideational components may occasionally have adaptive consequences in controlling population, contributing to subsistence, maintaining the ecosystem and so forth. Harris' cultural materialism is the most recent example of the scheme. The strategy has also been used by White, Service, Sahlins, Rappaport, Vayda, Carneiro, Flannery, Longacre, Sanders, Price, Meggers, Cole, Wobst, Earle, Wolf, the Binfords and many other anthropologists, ethnologists and archaeologists. The specifics of how proposed evolutionary processes operate separate historical materialists from cultural materialists, and from Service's cultural evolutionism. The same difference separates cultural ecologists such as Steward from human ecologists such as Rappaport and Vayda. Differences aside, everyone except Rappaport views infra-structure as the level of prime cause. Super-structural ideational systems and social structure are assumed to be derived from infra-structure. Infra-structure generally refers to economic and material factors in the socio-cultural system. Marxists stress dialectical conflicts in the socio-cultural system. They are seen as the engine that generates and guides social and cultural change. The other varieties of the adaptive-systems strategy focus on more general evolutionary adaptations.
The second approach is the cognitive-systems model. This is advocated by Chomsky, Metzger and Goodenough. Goodenough's version is effectively a culture-as-mind-organization perspective. That development is the same theoretical path that was taken by Garfinkel when he initiated ethnomethodology. It is the attempt to understand subjective reality, and how other people's minds he search is for objective and ideal rules for constructing reality (Psathas, 1968: 500-520). Levi-Strauss is an advocate of the third approach. This is the reductionist, structural-mental-system model that posits culture as isomorphic with organic and learned structures of the mind and brain. The fourth approach is represented in the work of Dumont, Parsons, Geertz and Schneider. They tend to describe culture a shared-system-of-symbols-and- meanings.
There are two mutually exclusive tactics for causal explanation: idealist and the materialist. Idealism refers to the belief that super- structure is the only source of prime cause. Materialist refers to the idea that infra-structure is the only source. In that sense Durkheim, (1976) Kroeber, Kluckhohn and many structural-functionalists are idealists (Harris, 1968). They advocate explanation based on the collective or superorganic. These classical theorists attribute properties of a superordinate independent entity to culture. It has power over the individual.
Modern sociology and anthropology tend to reject the concept of a preexisting superordinately powerful and controlling culture. This is particularly true of Collins (1988), Harris (1968) and like minded social scientists. Those scholars argue that culture is constructed through the interaction of context or environment, situations and individual actions. They also argue that the construct is effectively a powerless representation.
The idealist-materialist debate reflects the process-structure argument. Is culture a collective entity? Is it an aggregate system of mental processes? Is it nothing more than a weak reflection of what people do and think? Collins, Cicourel and Harris argue that culture is the repetition of environmental and mental artifacts in day-to-day interaction (Harris, 1980; Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981: 26-27). Is culture an emergent entity? Is it a mental or other system that derives from the intended and unintended consequences of all interactions? Harr' advocates that point of view (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981: 139-159). Giddens believes that it is, as evidenced by his description of the process of structuration (1984).
If culture is an emergent, is it necessary to accept some form of Mead's social behaviorism (1962)? Mead rejected classical determinism in his perception of the relationship between agent and agency. In the place of determinism, he substituted emergence. Emergents have recently been interpreted as stochastically determining systems, with characteristics unpredictable from their components. That formulation raises an important consideration. Culture may not be a hierarchical system at all; but, a hierarchical system is what virtually all culture theory suggests. It could be a field generated from and implicit to the total range of individuals' cognitively and emotionally derived interactions. Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel advocate the position that culture is only a situationally constructed representation (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981: 31-42). Their position has an advantage over other culture theories. It does away with the problem of hierarchical determinism. The disadvantage is that the idea leads to an epiphenomenal view of culture. Agents and agency, people and culture are so conflated that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. That precludes speculation about interplay between culture and individuals.
Proposing culture as a superordinate determining entity avoids that problem, but we nearly universally reject the idea. There is also a trend away from points of view that evolved from the superordinate. Those are holistic concepts, and the overall thrust of contemporary definitions of culture are not holistic. Instead, they tend to narrow the concept to include less in the hope of revealing more. Roger Keesing notes that the great apes have tool making and symbol manipulating abilities. Therefore, we are precluded from defining culture as a particularly human result of learned symbolic behavior (1974). Besides, culture is no longer the particular shared heritage of the people in a society. There has been a world wide diffusion of culture. A more humble and relative viewpoint replaced the superorganic idea. Keesing has said that ". . . an assumption shared by most of us, I think, (is) that culture does not have some true, sacred and eternal meaning we are trying to discover; but that like other symbols, it means whatever we use it to mean; and that as with other analytical concepts, human users must carve out and try to partly agree on, a class of natural phenomena it can most strategically label" (1974: p. 73).
Holistic concepts of culture are rightfully criticized for not accounting for, nor distinguishing between, universal causal connections and particular internal logical consistencies. This dissatisfaction has become so prevalent that Archer suggests that we stop using a holistic metaphor as an explanatory tool (1988). Her reasoning is that in all cultures the causal connections between agent and culture are distinct from the culture's internal logical consistency. Therefore, it is doubtful that all of the systems that comprise a given culture are integrated. Instead, she assumes that causal connections are part of particular socio-cultural systems, and that internal logical consistency is specific to the particular culture's ideational system. She also assumes the two systems are not consolidated. Her dual systems strategy examines the interface between these two subsystems in a given culture. She argues that this tactic permits an adequate role for the individual in agent-agency relationships. Her contentions of systems disunion and the lack of agency attributable to individuals in a hypothetically consolidated culture invalidates the concept of a determining collective (Archer, 1985: 352).
Archer makes clear that there is a serious problem with proposals that culture is a collective, and with attempts to use the collective model for description and analysis. There is no universally applicable, descriptively valid defined minimum unit for culture. Therefore, attempts to cumulate theory based on concepts of collective and holistic culture are not valid. Without being able to empirically demonstrate the collective aspects of culture and its constant causal effects, it not sound to claim that cultures are integrated collective entities with causal roles.
Archer is not the only scholar to acknowledge the problem. Ethnologist and archaeologist Steward called for a reevaluation of culture, based on levels of socio-cultural integration. He hoped to stimulate the search for valid cross-cultural laws. He felt that past working definitions of culture were inadequate (Steward, 1986). Rollwagen also raised the issue (1986). He noticed very basic micro versus macro contradictions in the current paradigms of culture, and he called for the redefinition of cultural units as something other than nations or societies.
There are serious theoretical problems with the culture-as-collective, culture-and-action-as-system and culture-as-epiphenomenon approaches. The major flaw is the failure to provide adequate explanations of culture's contradictory properties: determination and constitution. The logic of culture-and-action-as-a- system results in conflation. It is predisposed to reduce everything to the psychological level. The strategy assumes cognitive primacy located in psychological systems. The culture-as-a-collective view point does not satisfactorily address the issue of what culture is. It also tends to assume a reductionist position of cognitive primacy.
There is another complication. It has to do with interpretations of the concept of collective conscience. Early anthropologists followed Durkheim's lead when they tried to define culture through traits (Harris, 1968; Keesing, 1958). Some contemporary theorists argue that Durkheim asserted that the collective was constituted out of the interplay of individuals in society. What they seem to have overlooked is what Durkheim said about the origin of the collective, and its relationship to the individual. "Collective representa- tions are exterior to individual minds . . . it means that they do not derive from them as such but from the association of minds . . ." (Durkheim, 1974: 25-26). Moreover, he described the collective of particular peoples as the moving force behind the primacy of morality, and the mechanical solidarity of small scale societies (1976). He also insisted that "each member of an Australian tribe carries in himself the integrated whole of his civilization" (1974: 54). Durkheim used an emergent-systems idea, but he included an additional ingredient. That was the idea of a real, separate, causal collective that survives over long periods of time. He implied that the collective initially emerges from ritual interaction. He also stated that there is a minimum cultural unit that is replicated in the mind of every culture bearer. The problem is that Durkheim never specified what that unit is, or how it can be empirically measured.
The flaw in contemporary culture-as-epiphenomenon approaches stems from rejecting a concept of culture with the characteristics of separateness and preexistence. This is true of ritual frame interaction theory (Collins, 1988: 201). Durkheim insisted on those characteristics, and without them a true minimum cultural unit is not comprehensible.
It is not popular to argue for causal superorganic collectives. This especially true if the argument is for a preexisting collective with real unitary qualities that are distributed equally among the members, and in some manner replicated within each member. One reason for that has to do with agent-agency relation- ships. It is difficult to precisely describe the different ways that varieties of macro phenomena function, and are maintained by micro interactions. They obviously have to vary according to their respective structural properties. It is taxing to specify both structure and variation in collective terms, and then empirically demonstrate it.
To consider the possibility of a fully integrated distributed-order-collective or any other form of collectivity requires a high level of abstraction. The possible part-whole relationships that could characterize the collective have to be identified. Criteria have to be established that can be used to determine its existence, or lack of same. Normally, analyses of the part-whole relationships in abstract social and cultural phenomena are analogical. These analyses look at similarities between the identifiable parts of different structures. Another technique is better suited for visualizing collectivities. That is the homological method. Homologies are similar relationships between corresponding structural parts of different things. Homological analysis does not look for similarities between the parts. It looks for similarities in the relationships between corresponding parts That is an acceptable technique for exploring agent-agency relationships. For example, it is easy to see the concrete similarities between a chimpanzee and a human being. Both have similar parts that are organized in similar manners, i.e., hands, arms, legs, skeletons, etc. It is more difficult to discern the abstract similarities between a cockroach and a human being, or between a human being and a social structure. The parts are patently different. They are organized differently. Feelers are not hands. Skeletons are outside, not inside. The long arm of the law is not an appendage to a corporal body. There is a level in which the roach and human beings are the same, and distinct from non-living matter. Both creatures have the characteristic of bilateral asymmetry. Each side of each organism is a nearly mirror image duplicate of the other, and they have nearly mirror image functions. They are not exact duplicates (Bateson, 1980: 250). Where analogical thought might fail, homological reflection discovers a deep relationship.
If the criteria for homology are equality and difference, there is only a set of six possible categorical part-whole associations. One, a whole can be equal to the sum of its parts, where each part is different from the whole. Two, a whole can be equal the sum of its parts, where each part is the same as the whole. Three, a whole can be less than the sum of its parts, where each part is different from the whole. Four, a whole can be less than the sum of its parts, where each part is the same as the whole. Five, a whole can be more than the sum of its parts, where each part is different from the whole. Six, a whole can be more than the sum of its parts, where each part is the same as the whole.
The first category corresponds to the idea of methodological individualism. It can equally be the underlying assumption of a taxonomic approach or the culture-as-aggregate option taken by Collins and Cicourel (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981: 25-26). The trouble with this assumption is that it leads to theoretical epiphenomenalism. The best illustration of that is Collins' non-Durkheimian interpretation of organic solidarity in modern society (1988).
Category two also leads to epiphenomenalism. It is the paradigm of choice behind ethnomethodology's social realism. This part-whole relationship is also characteristic of the shared-beliefs- collective. It represents a non-individualistic, non-superorganic interpretation of agent and agency in the solidarity of societies. That is the presumption behind Geertz' interpretive concept of culture-as-shared- semiotic-systems, as well as concepts of culture as shared knowledge. Chomsky's universal grammar and Garfinkel's universal rules as deep structure are examples. The problem with the assumption is that when it is abstracted as has been done by Knorr-Cetina, the approach so conflates agent and agency that they are virtually indistinguishable (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981).
The part-whole relationships in the third and fourth categories are difficult to imagine in day-to-day life. To the best of my knowledge, they have no counterparts in culture theory.
Category five assumptions are typical of definitions of real-relations-structured-collectives, for example the cultural anthropology of Harris, Sahlins, Service, White, et al. The same part-whole relationship is what I believe Benedict presumed in her configurational model. It is found in Gestalt psychology, and in emergent-systems definitions such as those proposed by Parsons, Giddens, G. H. Mead (1932), Heise and Durig, et al. This categorical assumption is also typical of collective speculations such as the anthropological superorganic, Durkheim's society and Levi-Strauss' ideas of collectivity. It is in Vygotskii's learned differentiation between society and the individual, and Piaget's learned unification by socialization (O'Brien, 1991: 22; Vygotskii, 1962; 1978).
I believe that there is a simple reason for this. Differences between personal Gestalt projections of a socio-cultural whole versus perceptions of a real, structured, integrated cultural system would be virtually indiscernible to an observer. To that observer an impression of a whole derived from personal Gestalt process is no different than an impression of a whole gained from external stimuli that are delivered by the operations of an integrated phenomenon. Social scientists are familiar with the Getalt principles. They are not equally familiar with holonomic organizing principles. The natural tendency is to assert Gestalt processes as an explanation of phenomena, rather than making a holonomic formulation.
Gestalt principles are not useful for defining a viable minimum unit of culture. They lead to views that agency is epiphenomenal, if it is assigned to the socio-cultural system. This occurs since a Gestalt is composed of distinct elements. By definition elements do not necessarily have to share anything, nor do they necessarily have to be part of any true whole. Following from the initial assumptions of Gestalt theory, it can only be the perceptions of the observer that create a whole. It is a manner of organizing what is observed. That is taxonomic projection, and it corresponds to extreme post-modern arguments about relativism.
Category six appears to have potential for the definition and analysis of culture. The feasibility of asserting that a whole can be more than the sum of its parts is demonstrated through the principles of holographic photography. Social or cultural theorists rarely apply the theory. To the best of my knowledge there are only a few examples of its use. Vygotskii's social psychology (1962, 1978) theorizes that the collective and individuals are identical at birth. People detach through the learning process (O'Brien, 1991). Pribram reports that parts of the human brain organize and operate holographically (Bradley, 1987; Gardner, 1985: 282-284; Pribram, 1986; 1989; 1991). This implies that what we conceive of as mind contains subcomponents that are identical to it in some way. As an illustration, we can hypothesize that certain cognitive and emotional schemata are parts of another unified phenomenon (Franks 1989). Bukowski created a discrete model of holographic memory in the context of perception and recognition (1989). In cybernetics this part-whole relationship is the assumption of choice, if the concern is to discriminate between what a person chooses versus what a person knows. Ravn (1986) and Glazer (1988) use holonomic principles to trace cybernetic linkages. In organization and management, Morgan (1986) and Raynolds (Raynolds and Raynolds, 1988a; 1988b) both imply that holographic organizations and processes are part of day-to-day life. A holonomic metaphor is implicit in category six. It provides the interdisciplinary links between general systems, organization and cybernetic theories (Teson, 1986: 117-132).
As of the preparation of this manuscript, culture theory applications of category six do not extend beyond Bradley's research (1987; 1989) into the effect of charisma on status and power relationships, and my own work in the areas of economic and energy utilization choices, organized value differences in the decision-making processes of deviants and peak experiences versus social experiences in religious activities (O'Brien, 1989; 1991). There is also Morgan's acknowledgment of the existence of holographically organized sub-groups in formal organizations (1986).
"Either culture is regarded as wholly derivative from the forms of social
organization, or the
forms of social organization are regarded as behavioral embodiments of
cultural patterns. The
dynamic elements in social change, which arise from the failure of
cultural patterns to be
perfectly congruent with the forms of social organization, are
largely incapable of for-
mulation" (Geertz, 1957: 992).
Another handicap is that when people engage in social relations with shared meanings, the whole of those meanings must be greater than the sum of the parts. This means that culture must be greater than the individual mental realizations of its culture bearers. Cultural theorists recognize both problems, but none of their proposals resolve the issue. The ethnomethodological answer is to describe culture as an ideal type. It is viewed as a composite of knowledge from different people, in different social niches. That is an aggregate-culture solution. Assumption-wise, it is little different from Collins' approach to interaction ritual chains.
In Goodenough's linguistic ethnoscience the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, but the epiphenomenal ideal construct of culture is greater than the sum of individual meanings. The parts of that system are conceived of as elements. These are individual meaning systems. Goodenough says that they exist in actual and ideal organizational orders. He makes some excellent points. Culture theory must explain in what sense we can speak of culture as shared, or as the property of groups. Culture theorists must also identify the processes by which sharing arises (Goodenough, 1971: 20; Keesing, 1974: 84). Goodenough's answer is a dual system approach. He insists that people learn as individuals. His interpretation of that is that the ultimate locus of culture must be with individuals, not groups or socio-cultural structure. The same part-whole assumption is in Heise and Durig's work concept of macro action, in sociology. It is the underlying idea behind phenomenologically oriented affect control theory (Smith-Lovin and Heise, 1988).
A different strategy to distinguish between culture and society is the structural-mental-systems model. It evolved from Durkheim's and Mauss' ideas. Levi-Strauss now personifies it. He suggests that there are such things as pan-individual and pan-ethnic neurologically based collectives. These entities and their representations reflect and reveal biologically determined polar structures and processes. Those isomorphically exist in the minds of the people who create the collective. As Goodenough does, Levi- Strauss assumes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts are elements: separate from and unequal to the whole in form or content.
Another scheme is Geertz' shared-system-of-meanings. The interpretive argument is that meanings are a natural phenomenological process. Culture focuses and spatio-temporally locates in the distribution of individual culture bearers. The locus of culture is between and not in individuals' minds. Culture is a field of emergent relationships, greater than the sum of its parts. This is similar to what Gregory describes in synchronization studies (1990). Parts and whole are unequal, and the whole is unpredictable from its parts. To Gregory, culture has no biological root. It is an emergent, but it can have some characteristics of an apriori causal entity.
A fourth effort to resolve the impasse is Schneider's methodological existentialism. This differs from Geertz' shared-system-of-meanings in that Schneider proposes that culture has a real prior existence, independent of individuals and agents. Culture is not a generated field, rather it truly preexists and is a separate entity. The idea is reminiscent of early theorists like Durkheim, in that a minimum cultural unit is implied. Like Durkheim, Schneider does not follow through by specifying what that unit is. His approach to organizational ordering is only to differentiate norms and symbolic meanings. As with all proposals for a deterministic collective, that tactic leads to conflation between agent and agency.
None of the proposed answers deal with culture as a unit of scientific description and analyses in a manner that allows for theoretical accumulation. This is due to a virtual failure in philosophies. Pure individualism denies collectivity and cultural structure. Reductionism and positivism deny the unique emergent qualities of macro level phenomenon. Mechanism denies the vital transformational role of interstitial points, as emergent phenomena move from a continuous present state to a redefined past and future where social change exists, and can be measured from individual actions. Pure interactionism denies the superordinate preexistence of macro normative structures. Pure idealism postulates a determinism that we can deny through observations. Pure materialism has the same problem. These failures lead us back to the formulation of a true collective, in order to overcome the part-whole relationship problems in other approaches. How can we continue to use the holistic culture concept? It has been rationally discredited. It does not provide a real minimum unit that is useful for description, analyses and theory building (Archer, 1988). How can we even think about collectivity. It has been shown that Park's, LeBon's and Blumer's work on crowds applies only to exceedingly rare instances of human behavior. Those scholars failed to specify, define and carefully describe the collectivity they tried to explain (McPhail 1991: ix-24).
Comparative taxonomies could be developed that would describe distinctions between culture and society. That approach breaks down in the argument between positivism and post-modernism. If reality is absolute, then taxonomies are universal. If reality is relative, then taxonomies are a relative construction in the mind of the observer. At that point, a fresh theoretical paradigm is required to overcome the objective- subjective impasse. I believe that the nucleus of a new paradigm is a reconceptualization of culture in terms of the sixth part-whole category and the principles of holonomic organization. Holographic or holonomic systems display tremendous redundancy. Their multiple representations appear to change, if observers alter their perspectives. I believe that is why the demarcation of cultural traits and their systematization into patterns of culture have been unfruitful. At times culture traits appear chaotic, random and non-integrated. In holonomic systems the components may appear to be separate to the observer, but from the proper perspective the embedded collectivity is apparent.
Harr' says that there are structural criteria that could be used to verify the existence of a real integrated, apriori cultural collective (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981: 141-150). First is the exhibition of observable causal features. Second is the existence of observable mutually constitutive part-whole properties, on the basis of internal relations. Third is the observation of properties of group bounded structure. Archer's work adds to that. Propositions of a cultural collective must not be epiphenomenal, deterministic nor conflationary. I believe that reductions, metaphysical transcendences, teleologies and tautologies are to be avoided. I also believe that maximum parsimony is the goal for any attempted collective proposal.
According to the criteria, a useful formulation of collective cultural phenomena must have the following qualities. It will be parsimonious. It advances both explanation and understanding. The formulation cannot explain through reduction, transcendence, tautology or teleology. It will explain empirically observed properties, such as group bounded structures and universally shared phenomena. The formulation cannot be based on a logic that demands that collective phenomena are exclusively derived from individuals' interactions. It cannot logically require that the collective determines peoples' behaviors, exclusively. It will consider mutually constitutive part-whole properties. That consideration has to originate in clear descriptions of real internal relations, and real collective integration between ideational and material components.
Those criteria prevent the use of taxonomic approaches for analyzing real collectives, but the technique does have some value. Taxonomically shared categories are developed in the mind of the observer. Those categories can then be used to make a preliminary proposal about collectivity. The problem develops when the proposed members of a taxonomically derived cultural collective do not consistently behave the same way, in the same context (Gregory, 1982). That suggests that whatever they appear to share is clearly a formulated projection. Lack of demonstrable universal sharing also eliminates the possibility of a real- relations-shared-collective. Anything proposed as truly shared has to be precisely delineated, and universal sharing has to be empirically demonstrated as invariant among every member of a culture.
The criteria also eliminates traditional proposals for collectivity based on category five and category six part-whole relationships. (SEE: THE DISCUSSION OF PART-WHOLE RELATIONSHIPS, page 6) This includes early theories such as Durkheim's, Kluckholn's, LeBon's, Blumer's, etc. For example, Durkheim believed that the collective conscience and the individual had mirror image moral contents and structure. He also believed that the collective controlled the moral behaviors of the individual (Durkheim, 1974). In his formulation, all things moral are equally shared by every member of the society. It is transcendent conflation if culture bearers are defined as smaller but identical images of the collective.
The majority of contemporary proposals about culture are category five paradigms. They assume a part-whole relationship where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but the parts and whole are unequal. The standards for collective phenomena not only invalidate taxonomic and traditional approaches, they invalidate approaches that assume epiphenomenal emergence or aggregation. Conflation is unacceptable. Knorr-Cetina's and Geertz' ideas confuse culture and the individual. Teleology is unacceptable. Piaget's (1916: 29), Vygotskii's (1962) and Marx' theories propose an ultimate purpose and end to socio-cultural development (O'Brien, 1991). Tautological constructs are unacceptable. Harris (1979) and Collins' (1988) circular schemes assert that material factors cause social forces and ideational forces. In turn, those factors cause social forces, which again influence the material factors. Levi-Strauss' organic model appears to be reductionist. It proposes universal physiological structures as the ultimate explanation for psychological, sociological and cultural phenomena.
Every one of the approaches has similar problems. Any formulation of genuine collectivity must deal with the possibility that it divorces macro phenomena from the minds of the people that create, shape and constrain culture. That is penultimate determinism. It leads to spurious beliefs that culture is a metaphysically integrated whole. This would invalidate conceptions transcended from the individual's mind- brain. Cognitive formulations of culture tend toward reductionism or metaphysical transcendence. They miss the partial overlap between the psychological world of the individual and the code of cultural meanings.
Early collective or superorganic theories did presuppose minimum units, at the order of social facts, social forces and social phenomena. The criterion is that a unitary specification must be made that is empirically demonstrable across levels. Those classical theories never met that requirement, since they asserted that people are the units of culture and society. Cultural artifacts are not exclusive to individuals' ideational systems. There are material and social ones, as well. Different people know different cultural information in the same culture or society, and everyone accumulates ever more cultural knowledge during their lifetime.
Recent attempts to develop all inclusive social and cultural units also fall short. Sociology is a discipline that deals with norms and values at the level of the cultural ideational system, and with structures such as status and role in the socio-cultural system. Adler suggested that the social-act or behavior-item is the minimum unit for theory building (1960: 356-64). Greenfield argued that the social-act was not a true scientific minimum unit (1964). He pointed out that there are two conceptual categories in science. First, there is the manipulation and organization of perceptions of reality. Second, there is the construction of theories and models. Greenfield contented that the social-act was only an excellent starting point for observation, description, comparison and classification. His reasoning was that scientific minimum units are essentially analytical constructs. They are not observational realities. An observed social-act could have no use as a minimum unit for the deductive and theory building processes. Greenfield submitted an alternative, the abstract status-role. He asserted that associating norms or expected behaviors met both categories of scientific thought. The problem with the social-act is that it is a dynamic. It demands an epiphenomenal result. Social order has to be derived from interactions. The problem with the status-role is that it is an abstract static notion. It logically leads to conflation between social actors and social orders.
Heise and Durig have developed another proposal for a minimum unit (n.d.). They began with Adler's social-act, and revised it. They state that a different idea of events can be a unit for both description and analysis. The belief is that collaborative, productive social activity is shaped by both subjective and material reality. It is through the process of defining situations that people assure their own subjective belief in causality. This is the concept of macro action. It is a definition of a social happening. It is also a causal action in which the individual employs the social system as an instrument to accomplish a purpose. Allport's gestalt psychology strongly influenced the approach. Nevertheless, macro action is an eclectic concept. It contains heavy doses of Parsons, Shils, Goodenough's ethnoscience, Pike's universal delineation of structure, Harris' cultural materialism and Chomsky's transformational grammar. The argument for what makes the minimum event unit practical is a modification of Fillmore's case-frame linguistics. This is the proposal that event frames are "universal, presumably innate, concepts which identify certain types of judgments human beings are capable of making about the events going on around them" (Heise and Durig, n.d.).
The technique has real merit, even though it tends to reduce everything to the biological level. The assumption is that human physiological processes result in universal categories for defining event frames. Macro action is quite effective for analyzing affect laden subjective and interactive definitions of situations. It can also analyze related behaviors at the social and social psychological levels. It is a valid fundamental unit. However, technically it is not a minimum unit. Macro action does not specify what is distributed within and across all levels. Macro action is also based on Gestalt assumptions. (SEE: PAGE 6ff.: THE DISCUSSION OF PART-WHOLE RELATIONSHIP, AND THE CONTINUING DISCUSSION OF THE GESTALT IN RELATION TO MINIMUM UNITS) The approach tends to conflate agent and agency, and it leads to conclusions that culture is an epiphenomenon.
If macro action were combined with a proto-theoretical concept for a cultural minimum unit, it is possible that physical, individual, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, aggregate and collective level control systems could be integrated into a single theory.
A holonomic formulation of culture accepts that a whole may have many components, be subdivided internally and organized into hierarchies and heterarchies. Every component of a single holonomic system contains some minimum unit of information out of which the total system can be constructed. Minimum units distribute and process in parallel within a given holonomic system, and the units may be located in various levels. The formulation is that the same patterns that order the structural probabilities of the whole also appear in the units, at every level. The exact content of each level is indeterminate. It is not a precondition of holonomic organization that each part exactly duplicate the total system. Parts and whole are the same in some way, but any given component may be perceived as having a different set of properties by an observer. That is due to the principle of complementarity.
Theoretical perspectives such as Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Parson's action theory propose hierarchies of different orders and levels of organization. So does a holonomic formulation of culture. It conforms to Parsons' ideas about hierarchies and levels of organization and control (1959: especially Ch. 1). Relationships within distinct orders are essentially hierarchical; but, the holonomic formulation does not assert any necessary hierarchy of causal levels. It is probable that tiers of different levels are embedded in every order of such a system, and that each level contains many different holonomic systems. Any one of those systems not only contains a minimum unit that discretely organizes it, but the system itself may be an element of another minimum unit that organizes a greater class of system.
When holonomic systems are organized hierarchically, that hierarchy can account for unitary relationships within a given order, across different levels. Organizing non holonomic systems hierarchically can account for relationships between separate elements, regardless of whether they are located in different orders or at different levels. These separate elements may or may not be holonomic systems, themselves; and, they are not part of any encompassing greater order. Heterarchy is non hierarchical organization between equal components (Crumley 1985). Theoretically, it can account for relationships between separate elements or orders within a single level.
A holonomic formulation of culture is based on the assumption that common patterns exist at different levels. These include the physical-material, biological, psychological, sociological and cultural. That implies that non reductionistic, non transcendent or non metaphysical pattern identification, description and analysis is possible. It also explains the curious mapping of phenomena across levels. To illustrate, holonomic formulations are used by neurophysiology and neuropsychology to describe brain transformations in the organization of perceptual stimuli (Pribram, 1986; 1989; 1991). They are also used by photographers to create three dimensional photographs.
The formulation does not demand exclusively top down communication, or unbalanced authority and power relationships. The principle behind that is that in holonomic systems there is a mutually constituting two-way communication between the whole and its parts. This flows from greater to lesser, as well as from lesser to greater.
There is also an assumption that conflicts between truly mutually exclusive elements that are not manifestations of a complementarity relationship may result in the generation of a new proto level holonomic system. Couple holonomic organization to the concept of tendency, and logic suggests that communication, power and authority are essentially interactive processes in society. Because of the tendency assumption in the formulation, change in the structure of any lesser component's minimum unit, not in the particular content that is associated with it, must to some degree also alter the structural organizing potentials of the entire system. The tendencies of every component in that order change simultaneously, not the specific contents. Those are simply reorganized. This is theoretically true, regardless of if those components are inter- individual, intra-individual, trans-individual or embedded in cultural artifacts.
Even when the minimum units of a holonomic system are distributed in different levels, they interact with the greater organizational whole. That interaction is at the level of the structure of cultural organizing potentials. It is not interaction between the elements of cultural content. Serial interaction and contingency processes may occur separately, by way of content. The part-whole relationships in holonomic organization mutually constitute. That is consistent with the criterion of unity for internal cultural relations and the socio- cultural system.
A holonomic formulation also explains change and stability. We usually analyze for serial change, and linear cause and effect. Effects may be due to the temporal contingency between two or more unrelated elements of cultural content. They may also be due to non-serial transformations that are part of the process of communication between parts and whole in a holonomic proto order. Static or dynamic cultural phenomena can be represented through holonomic transformation processes. At the micro level, changes that are due to indeterminant agency produce minute but cumulative changes in the macro order. These changes are found in the real qualities of tendency or probability. In due course they become observable.
Analysts usually misinterpret the cause of what is observed and described. The overall preference for explanation is to suggest linear causality or contingency. There is also a inclination to fall back on epiphenomenal or conflationary explanations. A proto theoretical holonomic formulation of culture eliminates that problem. The formulation contains the empirically verifiable proposition that implied orders of patterning are separate from, embedded in and common across levels. Change or stability is not seen as the exclusive outcome of one or another of the levels. That mediates the problem of agency (Archer 1988).
The holonomic formulation provides for constraining and enhancing effects from the cultural whole, but it does not denigrate the agency of the individual. This is accomplished through the proposition that all situations are intrinsically interpenetrated with the tendencies, and those are developed from mutually constituting part-whole interactions. The holonomic formulation of culture satisfies both the processural standard of interactive constitution, and the structural requirement for a steady state system in time. Change in any order or level may be seen as originating in agent-agency interactions.
This formulation of culture is consistent with all of the criteria established for the existence of true collectivity. It is parsimonious. The inherent constraint satisfies the criteria for bounded structure. It is not teleological. No necessarily foreordained nor guided end state is proposed. It corresponds to known biological, psychological and material processes. It does not depend on reductionism to explain any phenomena. It does not require that any micro, macro or physical-material level be the sole locus of cause. On that basis, a revised structural definition of culture is justifiable.
I submit a new definition, based on category six assumptions and grounded in holonomic principles. Those principles include the concept of mutual containment, as implied by the parallel distribution of a minimum unit. Culture is a multi-ordered, multi-leveled, constituted but preexisting holonomic system with particular content. It is greater than the sum of its components. Structurally, its units mutually contain it. Its elements do not. It originates in the interactions of individuals and their environment and context. It transforms through perspective, context and the meanings related to the definition of a situation. All members of the culture essentially share it, but it is unequally accessible and unequally manifested due to context and situation. It transmits in a transformed manner within and between generations. It does not determine behavior. It is the underlying guide of propensity, mutually interacting with and changing in response to its units.
The definition divides culture into two components. First, there is the structure of the organizing potential. That is assumed to have real existence in the Popperian realm of tendency. Second, there are specific and particular contents. They are what the structure organizes. As far as cultural integration is concerned, the definition suggests that culture is a preexisting organizational field. It has varieties of patterning around which traits and artifacts originate and congeal. The abstract integrating structure enfolds within those traits and systems, and distributes throughout culture bearers and artifacts. In a manner of speaking, it genuinely replicates itself.
A corresponding definition is that society is the aggregate sum of all elements (interacting agents and manifest artifacts) that share, jointly help create and maintain a common culture and that are overtly or covertly are members of it. Its elements unequally share and manifest it. Through contingency processes, it transmits and changes spatially and temporally within and between agents.
This definition of culture as a holonomic system provides an empirically verifiable formulation of culture as a form a real unitary collective with multiple characteristics, some of which are complementary and some mutually exclusive. The definition of society does not do that. This meets the criterion that culture must be unequivocally separate from the social system, yet likening to but distinct from concepts of agent.
". . . within any given level of system, ignore what goes on inside its
component sub-systems
and attend only to what passes about among them, in the form of inputs
and outputs. ... trace
through what happens to the inputs received, how they are processed
within the sub-system unit,
and how the relevant output is generated. . . . proceeding upward until
you have reached
society as a whole as your final system-referent, and downward until you
are dealing with the
exchanges within individuals between the organic system and the
personality system ... in terms
of the continuous flow of phased and interlocking processes . . ."
(Black, 1961: 62).
The structure versus content definition of culture establishes an effective formulation for measuring affective values. A set of empirically measurable negative feedback loops can be proposed that relate directly to culture. These begin at the level of cognitive and affective processes. From that genesis, the theoretical foundation exists for further development of a cultural control logic based on holonomic principles. Parsonian expressive aspects have to be considered, in order to implement that. For example, affect has to be appraised. Because of the assumptions of holographic organization, the complementarity structures of cognition also have to be considered.
Osgood identified three factors inherent in meaning, during the development of the semantic differential scale. These are evaluation, potency, and activity (Osgood, 1965: 70-75). They relate directly to concepts of status, power and action. Each is a cross cultural universal (Osgood, May, and Miron, 1975: 111-190). The evaluation factor of the semantic differential directly measures embedded affective responses for denoted items. Those are an inherent part of the ideational system of culture. Subject responses identify values and relative attitudes. Those are created individually by the association of connotative meanings, such as good and bad or nice and awful. Connotative meanings are symbolically associated with ideational, material and behavioral artifacts. Over time, the mean of repeated measures for each denoted item effectively establishes a person's aggregated response norms. Those then act as that same individual's fundamental sentiments. Solitary measures of the same items for the same individual establish measures of transient affect.
The affect control model presumes that a multi-stage process accounts for the results of individual interactions. During stage one the feedback comparisons are exclusively between inputs from one person's different mental schemata (Smith-Lovin and Heise, 1988). These include that actor's situationally relevant evaluation of themselves, choices for situationally appropriate behavior and evaluations of object or others in the interaction situation. The choices for appropriate behavior are assumed to reduce deflections, not the actions or behaviors themselves. In stage two, it is the actions of that first person that become input to others in the interaction situation. The first person's choices of appropriate behavior do not become direct input to others. The others then respond through the same kind of process. Those response produce choices and behaviors for the others. The new choices become output into the others' control system. The new behaviors become new input to the first person's control system. That fresh information alters the definition of the situation, and that produces a new set of transient affects. The same mechanism repeats ad infinitum throughout day-to-day life. It is a continual process of internal and external feedback that occurs serially. This deals with contingency situations exceptionally well.
The assumption behind a cultural control logic is the same as the corresponding assumption in affect control theory. Fundamental sentiments act as standard references against which transient affects are innately compared. Differences between the fundamentals and the transients are deflections. The presumption is that we act to minimize deflections during the process of making day-to-day choices (Smith- Lovin and Heise, 1988).
Cultural control does differ from affect control, in that it is not restricted to individual interactions. It theoretically allows for simultaneous effects on the tendencies of all the components of a holonomic interaction system. This includes cognitive emotional schema, individuals, groups or cultural fields. It is also not limited to contingency relationship in the dimension of linear time and space. It considers the orthagonal dimensions of energy and momentum, i.e., intensity and change. The assumption is that the cultural organization of denotative and connotative meanings create a hierarchical cultural structure that exists in time and space, but is constrained orthagonally through the energy-momentum dimension. The existence of cultural structure in the dimensions of energy-momentum, constraining and organizing content in the dimension of time-space, is why phenomena may appear to be collective.
The affect control model does not deal with culture. It is confined to two levels, the individual and the social. The model only generates statistically aggregated norms. The assumption is that cultural components are embedded in the evaluation, potency and activity factors that are derived from semantic differential measures.
If the affect control model is reinterpreted in view of a holonomic formulation of culture, it allows for multi level intra- and inter-individual analyses. A cultural control logic based on the same mechanisms as an affect control model should generate individual or group results. The following expands that statement. Theoretically, an interaction system could span cognitive-emotional schema, individuals, groups and cultural fields. Assume that evaluation, potency and activity factors are universally shared by all interactors in a culturally specific definition of a situation. Assume that the same evaluation, potency and activity factors are holonomically distributed throughout the fields of probable interpreted meanings generated in the interaction situation. Two principles allow for simultaneous effects on the tendencies of all the components of the interaction system. There is a distributed minimum unit. It is processed in parallel, within an order of phenomena. This implies that it is reasonable to propose simultaneous transformations in both the socio- cultural system and the ideational system. Theoretically that takes place through the establishment of real fields of probability or tendency for cultural meaning. The ideational and the socio-cultural system can then be viewed as integrated and unified, at the level of the structure of fields of tendency for organization.
There are criteria by which a real structured and integrated collective is identifiable. A new bifurcate definition of culture that includes a priori universal structure and particular content is based on the principles of holonomic organization. This definition is also built around assumptions of realistic indeterminism and propensity. The formulation of culture as a holonomic system meets all the standards for a real, integrated ideational and socio-cultural collective with internal and external consistency. It does not propose that culture is a superordinate entity with exclusively causal characteristics.
Because of its non-isomorphic correspondence with known neurological organization, a holonomic formulation of culture is suited to developing a cultural control logic. This control logic would deal with cultural fields of inter- or intra-agent or agency relationships. Theoretically, the concept of a minimum cultural unit can be applied to micro and macro levels for description, analysis and theoretical cumulation. The implication is clear; the individual can and does have a powerful impact on social structure and culture as a matter of natural processes.
Adler, Franz (1960) "A Unit Concept for Sociology." American Journal for Sociology LXV (January):356-64. Archer, Margaret S. (1985) "The Myth of Cultural Integration." British Journal of Sociology 36(3):333-353. ---------- (1988) Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge University Press. Bateson, Gregory (1972) Steps to an Ecology of the Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. ---------- (1980) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam New Age Books. Benedict, Ruth (1959) Patterns of Culture. New York: Mentor. Binford, L. R. and S. R. Binford (eds.) (1968) New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago: Aldine. Black, Max (1961) The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall. Bradley, Raymond Trevor (1987) Charisma and Social Structure. New York: Paragon. Bradley, Raymond Trevor and Nancy C. Roberts (in press) "Relational Dynamics of Charismatic Organization." Journal of General Evolution Washington, D.C.: World Futures Society. Bukowski, Edward Daniel (1989) A Discrete Holographic Model of Neural Memory in the Context of Invariant Perception and Recognition. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation) Dissertation Abstracts International 49/01B:88-89, DA8802989. Collins, Randall (1988) Theoretical Sociology. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich. Crumley, Carole L. (1985) "Pattern Recognition in Social Science." Social Science Newsletter 70(3): 176-179. Durkheim, Emile (1974) Sociology and Philosophy. New York: The Free Press. ---------- (1976) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London, England: Allen and Unwin. ---------- (1984) The Division of Labor in Society, translated by W. D. Halls. New York: The Free Press. Durkheim, Emile and M. Mauss (1963) Primitive Classification. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Franks, David D. (1989) "Alternatives to Collins' Use of Emotion in the Theory of Ritualistic Chains," Symbolic Interaction 12:97-101. Gardner, Howard (1985) The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, Clifford (1957) "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example," American Anthropologist 59:33. ---------- (1963) Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press. ---------- (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. ---------- (1975) "Common Sense as a Cultural System." Antioch Review 33:5-26. Giddens, Anthony and Jonathan H. Turner (1987) Social Theory Today. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Glazer, Rashi (1987) "A Holographic Theory of Decision-Making," Avis Working Paper Series: Columbia University Graduate School of Business. ---------- (1988) "Pattern Recognition and Individual Choice: A Test of the Holographic Theory of Decision- Making." Paper presented to the Third Conference on Holonomic Processes in Social Systems. Big Sur, California (April). Goffman, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. ---------- (1971) Relations In Public. New York: Basic Books. ---------- (1981) Culture, Language and Society (2nd. ed.). Menlo Park, Calif.: Benjamin Cummins. ---------- (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Origin of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. ---------- (1979) Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor. Goodenough, Ward H. (1957) "Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics." In P. Garvin's (ed.), Report of the Seventh Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Study. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Monograph Series, Language and Linguistics 9. ---------- (1961) "Comment on Cultural Evolution." Daedalus 90:521-28. ---------- (1971) Culture Language and Society. McCaleb Module in Anthropology. Reading, Mass.: Addison- Wesley. Greenfield, Sidney M. (1964) "A Unit Concept for Sociological Theory." Indian Journal of Social Research 3(December):252-260. Gregory, Stanford W. Jr. (1982) "Accounts as Assembled from Breaching Experiments." Symbolic Interaction 5(1):49-63. ---------- (1985) "Auto Traffic as Verdant Grammar." Social Psychology Quarterly 48(4):337-348. ---------- (1990) "Analysis of Fundamental Frequency Reveals Covariation in Interview Partner' Speech." Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 14(4):237-251. Harris, Marvin (1968) The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. ---------- (1979) Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Vintage Books. Heise, David R. and Alex Durig (n.d.) "Social Events and Sociological Analysis," (1991 - unpublished seminar paper - Indiana University). Kasper, Joseph E. and Steven A. Feller (1987) The Complete Book Of Holograms. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Keesing, Felix M. (1958) Cultural Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Keesing, Roger M. (1974) "Theories of Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 3:73-97. Kluckhohn, Clyde and W. H. Kelly (1945) "The Concept of Culture." In Ralph Linton's (ed.). The Science of Man in the World Crisis. New York. Knorr-Cetina, K. and Aron V. Cicourel (1981) Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Kroeber, Alfred and Clyde Kluckhohn (1952) "Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions." Peabody Museum Papers. 47(1). Mead, George H. (1929) "The Objective Reality of Perspectives." Pp. 75-85 in Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Philosophy: (1926). ---------- (1932) The Philosophy of the Present. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. ---------- (1962) Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McPhail, Clark (1991) The Myth of the Maddening Crowd. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Morgan, Gareth (1986) Images of Organization. London, England: Sage. O'Brien, John d. (n.d.) "Culture, Society and Cognitive Dissonance: Predicting Religious or Paranormal Experiences." (1987 - unpublished seminar paper - Kent State University). ---------- (1989) "Culture and Agency: A `Unit' Approach." Paper presented to the 1989 American Sociological Association meetings, San Francisco, California (Aug.). ---------- (1991) "Units, Elements and Values: The Issue of Social Collectivity." Paper presented to the 1991 North Central Sociological Association meetings, Dearborn, Michigan (Apr.). ---------- (in press) Culture, Cause, and Order. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen. Osgood, Charles E., May, William H. and Murray S. Miron (1975) Cross-cultural Universals of Affective Meaning. Urbana, Illinois: The University of Illinois Press. Osgood, Charles E., Suci, George J. and Percy H. Tannenbaum (1965) The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana, Illinois: The University of Illinois Press. Parsons, Talcott (1959) "General Theory in Sociology." In R. K. Merton, et al., (eds.) Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects. New York: Basic Books. Piaget, Jean (1916) La Mission de l'Idee. Lausanne, France: Edition la Concorde. ---------- (1970) Structuralism. New York: Basic Books. Pirsig, Robert M. (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: Bantam. Popper, Sir Karl Raimund (1966) Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man. St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University. ---------- (1982) Quantum Physics and the Schism in Physics: From the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. Popper, Sir Karl Raimund and John C. Eccles (1977) The Self and Its Brain. London, England: Springer International. Poulton, James L. (1987) An Empirical Test of the Primacy of Cognition. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation) Dissertation Abstracts International 48/02B, p. 571, DET87-10977. Powers. William T. (1973) Behavior and the Control of Perception. Chicago: Aldine. Pribram, Karl H. (1966) "Some Dimensions of Remembering: Steps Toward a Neuropsychological Model of Memory." Pp. 165-187 in Macromolecules and Behavior, edited by J. Gaito, New York: Academic Press. ---------- (1968) "Toward a Neuropsychological Theory of Person." Pp. 151-61 in The Study of Personality: an Interdisciplinary Approach, edited by William M. McCord, Edward Norbeck ane Douglas Price-Williams. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. ---------- (1971) Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ---------- (1982a) "What the Fuss is All About." Pp. 27-34 in The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science, edited by Ken Wilber. Boulder, Co.: Shambala. ---------- (1982b) "Localization and the Distribution of Function in the Brain." Pp. 273-96 in Neuropsychology After Lashley, edited by J. Orbach, New York: Earlbaum. ---------- (1986) "The Cognitive Revolution and Mind/Brain Issues." American Psychologist 41(5):507-20. ---------- (1991) Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing, the MacEachran Lectures. (Appendices in collaboration with Kunio Yasue and Mari Ji-bu, Notre Dame Seishin University, Okayama, Japan). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Pribram, Karl H., Nuwer M. and R. Baron (1974) "The Holographic Hypothesis of Memory Structure in Brain Function and Perception." Pp. 416-67 in Contemporary Developments in Mathematical Psychology, edited by R. C. Atkinson, D. H. Krantz, R. C. Luce and P. Suppes. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman Psathas, George (1968) "Ethnoscience and Phenomenology." Social Research 35:500-20. R'Amogino, Nicole (1987) "Renouvellement de Paradigm ou Traduction - Trahison de la Tradition Sociologique: pour une Positivite' de l'Objet Sociologique (Paradigmatic Renewal or Translation/Betrayal of the Sociological Tradition: For a Positivity of the Sociological Object)." Sociologie et Societes 19(2): 37-50. Ravn, Ib (1986) "Idealization as the Common Element in Interactive Planning and Social Research Methodology." S3 Papers 86-05, Department of Social Systems Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104. ---------- (1988) "Local and Distributed Order in the Natural and Human Worlds." Paper presented to the Third Conference on Holonomic Processes in Social Systems. Big Sur, California: (April). Raynolds, Peter and Gennie Raynolds (1988-1989) "Jog Your Right Brain." Journal of the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society XIII(3):7-22. Rollwagen, Jack R. (1986) "Reconsidering Basic Assumptions: A Call for a Reassessment of the General Concept of Culture in Anthropology." Urban Anthropology 15(1,2):97-133. Schneider, D. M. (n.d.) "What is Kinship All About?" Page 38 in P. Renig (ed.), Kinship Studies in the Morgan Memorial Year, (Washington, D. C.: Anthropological Society of Washington. Smith-Lovin, Lynn and David R. Heise (1988) Analyzing Social Interaction: Advances in Affect Control Theory. New York: Gordon Breach Science Publishers. Stephenson, William (1986a) "William James, Niels Bohr, and Complementarity: I - Concepts." The Psychological Record 36:519-27. ---------- (1986b) "William James, Niels Bohr, and Complementarity: II - Pragmatics of a Thought." The Psychological Record 36:529-43. Steward, Julian H. (1986) "Levels of Socio-Cultural Integration: An Operational Concept." Journal of Anthropological Research 42(3):337-53. Teson, Nestor Eduardo (1986) "Ultimate Reality and Meaning and the Social Cybernetics Approach." Ultimate Reality and Meaning 7(2):117-132. Tylor, E. B. (1871) Primitive Culture. London. Vygotskii, Lev S. (1962) Thought and Language, edited by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. ---------- (1978) Mind in Society, edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner and Ellen Souberman. London, England: Cambridge University Press. Wuthnow, Robert and Marsha Witten (1988) "New Directions in the Study of Culture." American Sociological Review 14:49-67.