Cultural Variation: Considerations and Implications by Dov Cohen - Essay Example

Cultural Variation: Considerations and Implications by Dov Cohen 2007 Dov Cohen’s article is dedicated to the variations of cultural systems across the world. The author summarizes findings and theories of scholars from different fields of social science in attempt of elaborating a more appropriate working scheme, which would afford a richer analysis and better understanding of the complex phenomena of cultural systems evolution. Modern social science bases its study of the cultural systems on their dependence on the environments. Indeed, different environments often produce different cultures. However, similar environments can produce quite different social systems, while similar cultures may exist in different environments. Examining cultural variations in terms of game theory, dynamic systems theory, evolutionary biology, political science and economics, Cohen argues (p.451) that constant interactions and adjustments of actors within a social system may lead to multiple social patterns or equilibriums, mapping onto definite cultural systems of norms, rules and sets of common meanings and expectations. He also proposes that in order to better understand the ways how cultures are created and recreated one should consider them in terms of mutual interdependence, historical development and meaning, game theory principles and crucial choice points and junctures. The author’s suggestion is that cultural systems are processes too complex to be viewed only as a functional response to the environmental impact. Cohen also offers that the emergence and stability of cultural traits should be examined within four types of niches shaping cultural patterns, such as physical, social, intracultural and intercultural. Part 1 of the article deals with the traditional approach to the emergence of different cultural adaptations due to different ecologies and economies. Being widely researched and proved by scholars, this fact is undoubtedly a starting point of cultural variations studies. Numerous examples may be found. For instance, the works of anthropologist David Gilmore (1990) demonstrate that the conceptions of masculinity depend on the environmental conditions of the social group. In cases, where the conditions of life do not demand males to fulfill their major functions of protecting, procreating and providing, one may observe relatively androgynous sex roles, while harsher environments and scarcer resources lead to more distinct male functions and stressed manhood. Different environmental circumstances predispose different cultural “traits’ at the microlevel and different social structures at the macrolevel. Multiple regularities have been traced. So the availability of food, foraging economies and mild ecology lead to looser social arrangements, less inequality between the sexes and social interdependence of individuals, and vice versa, harder conditions cause tight social arrangements, sexual inequality and greater degree of individual self-regulation and control. The availability of domestic plants and animals brought Eurasian societies to specialization in labor, dense population and rapid technological development, which in its turn caused cultural similarity (p. 452). However, it often happens that cultural adaptations to environmental niches are imperfect and clumsy. In this case it seems more productive to consider such systems from the evolutionary perspective of historical meanings and adaptations in the past. This provides us with explanations for cases of cultural or conservative lag and cultural morphism or hybridization. Cultural lag is connected with derivation of patterns from the old circumstances that has become “functionally autonomous” from those circumstances. The culture of honor still preserved in the South of the United States is an example of lag. Cultural morphism allows understanding of cultures that emerged due to blending of different cultural systems. For instance, places like Deep South in the United States demonstrate the blending of older European and African cultures. Such blended cultures may represent an entirely new type of social systems. Thus it is significant to view present social systems as ones built on the adaptations of the past (p. 453). Part 2 of the article contains theories and notions highlighting the reasons of cultural variations within similar environments. These are notions of multiple stable equilibriums and the ways they are affected by mutual interdependence, sensitive dependence on initial conditions and crucial choice points and junctures. “A state of mutual interdependence leads to multiple possible equilibriums” (p. 453). This rule stated by economists, legal scholars and game theorists suggests that starting at similar initial conditions but influenced by contingencies, choice and enforcement norms cultures may reach different equilibrium points. Mutual interdependence causes people support a social system, because other members of the system do so. Though having their own preferences people usually behave according to expectations of the society. However, people tend to support the system only if enough others do, while a number for “enough” can vary greatly from one individual to another. This presupposes different shapes of curves between the actual and expected support axes in each particular case (p. 454). The notion of mutual interdependence throws light on the reasons of political and social changes that occurred in the twentieth century. Collapse of the USSR and communism, the Iranian revolution, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the abolition of Prohibition and the struggle for civil rights in America, even the rise of Nazism can be understood in the light of dynamics in public opinion caused by mutual interdependence and tipping points, massive pluralistic ignorance and hidden individual preferences (p. 455). The stability or mobility of a social system depends largely on the issue of transparency, that is, ‘the extent to which people are able to express their internal beliefs through their behavior’ and ‘the extent to which people believe that other’s behavior reflects their private preferences’ (p. 456). Thus cultures differ in transparency and in the shape of curves linking actual and expected support, causing different equilibrium points even on similar initial conditions (p. 456). Mutual interdependence leads to multiple equilibriums for not only social norms but also antisocial behavior. In social systems, where the law is weak and individuals have to protect themselves there may develop two opposite types of cultures, a cooperative system and a competitive one. Alexrod and Hamilton suggested the existing of two developmental strategies, tit-for-tat and all defect, both of them being based on mutual reciprocity, which is expressed in a formula: “Do unto others as they do unto you or do unto others before they do unto you” (p. 456). Tit-for-tat strategy resulted in a cooperative social system, where potential violence and dangerous environment led to mutual politeness and congeniality. This pattern could be observed in the South of the USA. All defect strategy, characteristic with the inner-city culture of poor districts, makes people act aggressively before others do so (p. 457). The North and South of Italy represent bright example of two opposite systems, the first is being known for cooperation, while the other for ‘amoral familism’ and highly aggressive and competitive patterns of behavior. These different social systems appeared due to prevalence and durability of the two strategies. However, such a difference can be explained only from a historical perspective. The origin of the cultures roots in the medieval period, when the northern Italy had a social system based on ‘horizontal’ institutions and communal norms, while the southern territories, ruled by the Norman king, had a top-down, autocratic social structure. The importance of initial conditions is evident. Thus Cohen argues that sensitive dependence on initial conditions is another notion to be considered in the process of studying cultural variations (p. 457). This argument seems especially fair in relation to different U.S. regions, once settled by people who came from other places bringing their cultures and ways of behavior with them. Original patterns often tend to reveal continuity during the entire history of the culture’s evolution. However, it has been noticed that more stable social systems are associated with less violent behavior, while social or economic instability and changes lead to an increased number of violent manifestations. Sometimes, dependence on initial conditions is so sensitive that even tiny differences, accelerated by reverberating causes and trigger changes, may have tremendous effects. Cohen calls this phenomenon “the tsetse fly effect”, with an allusion to the famous butterfly effect and unusual cultures in Africa, the development of which was preconditioned by the environment infested with tsetse flies that made it impossible to keep herds, the condition, eventually, having produced a tradition of a long postpartum sex taboo and severe initiation ceremonies (p.458). The process of cultural formation is not that simple and inevitable yet, suggests Cohen. There is a variety of plausible pathways for the cultures having the same initial conditions, especially, when the chains of causal sequences are long. Preoccupied by such ideas, historian David Hackett Fisher (1996) offered a model of autogenous change, stating that: “The causal sequence is not fixed and rigid in its determinism. It develops as a chain of individual choices, and as a consequence its structure changes from one great wave to the next” (In Cohen, p. 459). Not only human agency, but also the natural world contributes to the development of this probabilistic chain. All the said leads us to a conclusion that paths to and from a social system are not predictable. Moreover, an unpredictable change may occur at any point of time launched by various circumstances. As a result of different initial conditions and paths chosen, two cultures may never converge or the resemblance will be only superficial even in case their environmental and material circumstances become similar in the course of time. Divergence between cultures is often maintained due to cultural transmissions and selective borrowings, adapted so as to strengthen the core values of the recipient culture. Huntington designated this process of borrowing, changing and modifying for the sake of enriching the indigenous culture as “the inventiveness of tradition” (In Cohen, p. 460). As one considers the unpredictability, suddenness of changes and multiplicity of cultural variations, it becomes obvious that it is necessary also to understand how cultures remain stable for thousands of years. The traditional reference to social inertia does not seem entirely satisfactory in this case. Certainly, inertia takes place, and yet it is astonishing how cultures manage to recreate anew in each generation. Cohen offers to explain cultural conservatism involving both content (ideas) and process (cognitive tools). Cultural ideas and models lead to selective cultural practices and meanings, while the cognitive styles or “tools of thought”, embodying the culture’s intellectual history, contain those models and theories, making users accept them unconsciously and thus supporting the social practices and beliefs (p.461). In Part 3 Cohen concentrates on the issues of cultural constraints and regularities and factors able to limit cultural variations. Indeed, given all the said above, the divergence between the cultures could be stronger. The three plausible explanations offered by the author include the path convergence, optimality and evolutionary constraints on the human animal. Under the influence of mutual interdependence, cultures may derive similar features from quiet different causes. Prescriptive and descriptive norms are the elements of social systems that may lead to similar behavioral patterns. The fact is that social norms function both when people are committed to them and when people only believe that others are committed to them. This may also be another explanation of the cultural lag. Segregationist norms remained the reality of American life, even when many people stopped supporting them, but thought that others did. Payoffs structures, when undesirable outcomes become likely as in case with violence in the inner-city cultures, also may lead to the same equilibrium point and path convergence (p.462). Evolutionary constraints on the human animal also impose limitations on cultural divergence. All the human beings come through the same developmental stages, enjoy and reject similar things. Human capacities and necessities for communication, survival and reproduction cause a kind of ‘universal cultural syndromes’ associated with human adaptive problems being common for the entire humanity and generating similar cultural forms: human beings tend to get along in groups (emergence of reciprocity norms and modes of sociality), avoid contamination (various disgust norms), produce healthy offspring (incest taboos), raise the young to maturity (parental love and investments) (p. 463). At last cultural constraints are predisposed by the world’s constraints, with a limited number of optimal solutions to common problems. Being the best or even the only paths to adaptations, these optimal solutions independently arise in separate cultures, without being transmitted across cultures (p. 464). Taken into account everything said, we understand the degree of predictability in relations between the environment and cultural forms. Without doubt, culture is a product of a functional response of a social system to the environment, ecology and economy it exists in. However, the three being a starting point of examination, it would be absolutely insufficient to study cultural adaptations in terms of a linear, X causes Y relationship. One should also consider the correlation between the independent environmental variables and dependent cultural variables. First, new adaptations always emerge on the bases of past meanings and adaptations. Second, the phenomena of mutual interdependence, multiple possible equilibriums, sensitive dependence on the initial conditions, choice points and junctures, as well as a probabilistic chain of causal events result in the fact that similar environmental conditions generate different cultural systems. Third, there exist certain restrictions on the range of cultural variations, these including: path convergence, constraints on human animal limiting the possible forms cultures might take and optimal solutions of the universal adaptive problems, independently re-discovered by all the social systems. Though cultural systems lack predictability, they are created and recreated with coherence and sense, each of them having their own logic of evolution, sometimes unclear to the outer observer (p.465). The fact that western scholars cannot put the evolutionary regularities into a strict and simple framework does not mean that cultures develop without logic. There is logic in the world’s evolution, which the humanity is not able to catch yet. The article cannot be viewed as a controversial one. It is a wonderful attempt of elaborating new, multi-dimensional approaches to the scientific research of cultures. Dov Cohen offers us the perspective on the culture from the above. It is like we would examine the Earth form the space, instead of studying it staying on the ground. The picture would be quite different in two cases. Without such an abstracting from the traditional ways and approaches it would be impossible to see the full picture, and that is, to comprehend the ways cultures evolve. The linear approach certainly lacks the depth of insight. There are two mistakes the social science of the west is still disposed to. First, it is the habit of judging the rest of the world, taking a narrow view and looking through the prism of western models and cognitive processes. Second, it is the fear of deviation from the rules, once set by our scholarly tradition. The humankind with its science resembles a human, just coming out of a period of childhood. Children learn the world in small parts, gradually developing the ability of abstract thinking and operating with universal ideas and laws. Some truths once learnt by children may continue functioning during the rest of the life. Each time when shown a bit more, or announced that their truths are not truths at all children, and then adults, get surprised and wonder that they have not seen it before. Dov Cohen clearly shows the opportunities for examining cultures as systems and proposes several implications for his study. First, it proves the usefulness of combining a meaning and equilibrium perspectives in studying culture. Cohen demonstrates that it is necessary to study cultures as they cohere and have meaning, change over time, with new cultural forms emerging, persisting and evolving. We still need to understand how initial conditions, history, chance, mutual interdependence and choice points function shaping cultures, as well constraints placed by the human and natural systems. That is, we are to understand the forces and processes bringing cultures to different equilibrium points and the ways cultures set coherence and sense. Second, the author shows that cultural traits should be examined form the perspective of four niches, four levels of cultural adaptations to the physical niche, the social niche, the intracultural niche and the intercultural niche. The physical niche being created by the environment, environmental conditions and human restraints lead to emergence of universal solutions to basic evolutionary problems. Human necessity to live in a society conditions the influence of mutual interdependence, thus making social niche bring cultures to different equilibriums. Whereas cultures do not exist in isolated manner but constantly interact, we should consider cultural evolution in terms of both intracultural and intercultural niches. Then we will be able to trace how cultures reinforce the traits of each other, and how they selectively borrow and assimilate traits from each other in order to strengthen their uniqueness. At last, Cohen outlines the potential directions and tools for future research in different areas of social science (pp. 464-467). This a profound and coherent study highlighting the mainstream, adjoining and possible cluster approaches to the examination of cultural variations. Read More