American Economic Association

Selective Culture Change Author(s): Sol Tax Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 41, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Sixtythird Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1951), pp. 315-320 Published by: American Economic Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1910806 Accessed: 04/01/2010 16:57
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ECONOMIC PROGRESS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

SELECTIVE CULTURE CHANGE

By SOL TAX University of Chicago

I suppose that the phrase "economic progress" in this symposium refers simply to improvement of material well-being, health, and the like, as seen through the eyes of our European and American tradition. From this point of view it is easy to say that we are advanced and other people and places are backward. Most anthropologists, trained to take a broader view, reject this notion of progress as ethnocentric, which it is. It assumes that our own values are or ought to be universal and that the practices of other peoples should be changed accordingly. This general view once accompanied the little-brownbrother variety of imperialism which has so dramatically defeated itself. We are now anxious to respect the cultural independenceof other peoples while we help them to material betterment.This means embarking upon a program of carefully selective culture change. It is the purpose of my paper to ask whether this is a possible program. The answer to which I shall come is easy to state at the beginning: What we have learned about culture change tells us that such a program is, while certainly,difficult, theoretically feasible. But in practice we are almost certain to fail, basically because too few of us are free enough of an ethnocentric view of the world to be able to administer the program. My first proposition, that it ought to be possible-theoreticallyto bring about selective culture change, will be easily accepted once the terms are made clear. The term culture was defined by Edward B. Tylor' as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquiredby man as a member of society." The recognition and isolation of culture as a separate object of study has distinguished and characterized anthropology ever since. Culture is our central concept. We devote our efforts to the history of human culture and the processes of cultural growth and decay; to the nature of the interrelations of parts of culture and of cultures as wholes; and lately to the interrelationsof culture and the personalities of men.
i Primitive Culture (1871), p. 1.

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By drawing together the materials of archaeology and linguistics, of folklore and physical anthropology, of ethnography and geography and history and psychology, it has been possible to trace with some confidence the development of technology, religion, marriage, mythology, the state, and other institutions and aspects of culture. Painstakingly the assumptions of the nineteenth century pioneers have been tested and our historical understandingrevised. The relatively simple picture of social evolution propoundedby men like Lewis H. Morgan has become infinitely complicated by newer data and second thoughts. We no longer speak glibly of progress, for example. The human store of knowledge is generally increasing and at an accelerating speed; it is quite easy, therefore, to speak of progress in technology, or in science, or in similar elements where accumulation is a factor. One can also speak of progress from smaller to larger social units, for example, provided we recognize the arbitrarinessof the measurementsinvolved and do not too heavily evaluate "progress."But for most aspects of culture, not at all cumulative or measurable on a scale, the word progress has no meaning whatever.2 As Robert Frost has observed: "Whatever progress may be taken to mean, it can't mean making the world any easier a place in which to save your soul." (Quoted in Time, 1950.) Our picture of the way culture develops is, however, no less clear because it is complicated. Mainly, we know three essential things: first, that although culture grows in response to human needs-physiological, psychological, and social-it becomes elaborated far beyond such needs. If nature has a law of parsimony, culture clearly follows a law of exuberance. Therefore, on the base of a common human nature, cultures come to differ in extraordinary, even fantastic, degree. The second main thing we know is that no people invents more than the tiniest fraction of the cultural heritage it calls its own; borrowing or the pooling of cultural items through processes of continual diffusion of new items is a major law of cultural growth. That is why cultures can become so elaborate-people are such copycats. Third, we know that any particular culture gets set in its ways, and while it borrows from others, it reinterpretseverything borrowedto suit its own peculiar taste. (A classic popular statement is Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture.) That is why, although we are such copycats, the elaborations of culture are so variegated. It sometimes seems as though anything is possible and it has already been done. As in a kaleidoscope, the patterns appear again and again in different combinations; the difference is that once a pattern of culture has become set, further
2A. L. Kroeber (Anthropology, 1948, pp. 296-304) suggests possible meanings in "the atrophy of magic based on psychopathology" and "the decline of infantile obsession with the outstanding physiological events of human life" (p. 304), measures which are suggested by history and by the values of our culture. With Kroeber's position I fully agree.

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changes are no longer random but determined in large part by the pattern. The pattern or the twist or bias of the culture thus becomes a principle of selection. In a state of nature, so to speak, it can therefore be said that all culture change is selective. If one is consciously directingculture change (or simply trying to get along), he must obviously take account of the initial bias of the culture. However, this is not the sense in which I am using the phrase "selective culture change." The problem of selection in democraticallyplanned culture change is to respect the general cultural bias and the institutions and beliefs held dear by a community of people, at the same time that their level of living is raised and they are given both new wants and the means to attain them. The economically backward population is to get the benefits of our technology and science, our chemistry and bacteriology without important damage to their values and their traditional way of life. The reason this is a difficultprogramis that in general a culture is a functional system of interdependent parts; it is more or less in equilibrium. A change in one part tends to effect changes in all the rest. To introduce an important change in the economy is therefore likely to begin a chain of reactions that may well end in disorganization and death. As a result of contact with Europeansociety many cultures hlave been utterly destroyed, and populations deprived of their way of life have been wiped out. People can be very stubborn. We are familiar with the analogy that just as reptiles once became too specialized to survive, so we in cities are so dependent upon our technology that when something deprives us of that cushion between us and nature, we must perish. But we are less aware of the fact that peoples also perish because they simply will not live in a world that is unfamiliar or, perhaps, unpleasant. So a program to change a culture selectively presents serious difficulties. But it is clearly possible. We know it is possible, first of all, because it has been done. The success of the Incas in incorporating alien cultures into a thousand-milemountain empire without destroying them is one case in point; another is the success more than once of the Japanese in changing substantial parts of the national culture. But the best evidence that selective culture change is possible is that it is a normal occurrencein nature, and the process is no secret. When we bring milk bottles to the Hottentots (milk they have had from time immemorial) it is true that we may be breaking into a closed system of equilibrium. But it is also true that the Hottentots once took the cattle complex into their culture; and this too must have upset the equilibrium.Indeed, every people has adopted culture traits; every culture still extant has clearly survived innumerable shocks to

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it. Therefore the problem is to see that the damage done when a Point Four administration initiates the changes is not much greater than when it happens in other ways. The question becomes one, then, of practical means to an end. Before discussing this question I want to suggest that it is not knowledge of the theory of culture change or new principles of acculturation that are lacking. The very general statement that I have made here-and which can be found in any good textbook (for example, Melville Herskovits, Man and His Works, 1949)-can of course be elaborated indefinitely. It can also be reduced to propositions on a social-psychological level, where statements about reinterpretationof cultural elements become problems of misunderstanding in the communications between men. Such elaborations and reductions should and will continue. They will create excitement in our scientific journals during the next century, after which our propositions will be slightly more comprehensive and exact than they are today. But even today our knowledge goes far beyond the minimum need in the case. What is needed is not more general knowledge but rather some clinical experience. Suppose somebody seeks the advice of an anthropologist on our famous programfor the Hottentots. The anthropologist will know from the literature enough about Hottentot culture to prescribe in a general way. But if he is wise, he will want to look at the patient as of the moment. He will want to know more than the formal social structure and the values and practices characteristic of Hottentot culture. He will want to know the Hottentots. He will want to know the leading families and why they happen to be the leading ones. He will want to understandthe current issues and personalities in Hottentot politics. He will want to know what they think of anthropologists and of Point Four bureaucrats. He will, in short, want to visit the Hottentots. But as soon as he talks to his first Hottentot, it will occur to him and to the Hottentots alike that he is not an inert observer of an inert mass. He is part of the situation being affected and will be part of the program whether he wills it or not. Everything he says and does is either in the right direction or the wrong direction. He is meddling with the patient. The sad fact is, however, that our hypothetical anthropologist is probably on his very first case. He is learning by doing, getting his first clinical experience. This is because almost none of us has had this experience. We have had some opportunities in our Indian service and in programs in Latin America and in the wartime Japanese relocation project. But they have been few. The experience of colonial administrators and the anthropologists who have served under them is almost useless because they have been trained to manipulatethe culture but not to get the people to participate

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democraticallyin the important decisions. The latter is both the critical and the difficultpart. It may well be asked why an anthropolo6gist without clinical experience is better than an administrator or a public relations man or a politician who is used to dealing with people and situations. Clever salesmen artfully enough suit their technique to different circumstances. Perhaps if they are sufficiently briefed in the peculiarities of the culture to be changed, they can do the job. Needless to say, it is not a degree in anthropology that is needed as a license to practice. But training in anthropologyis a necessary ingredient. What is required is the detachment from our own culture that comes with studying many others. It may very well be that training is not as important as the selection of persons who embark upon careers in anthropology. Or it may be the informal indoctrination by fellow graduate students that either transforms the student's point of view or else drives him into another field. Whatever the mechanism, anthropologytends to produce a scholar with the power both to understand and to respect another man's culture-not as he respects another man's opinion but as he respects the deepest characters of another man's personality. This is essential because only through such respect can the long-time confidence of most people be won by a stranger. Without this confidence the difficult operations are foredoomed to failure. That is not all, however. Anthropologists by training or selection reach for the common people of another society. Just as an economist reaches for a price index, so a field ethnologist gravitates to the lowly hut. We want to see the society from the ground up and the functionaries in perspective. In fact, we have an occupational distrust3 of officials, as we do of managers or missionaries; and we apologize profusely for quoting information from a source that a journalist calls unimpeachable.This keeps us from making perhaps the most common and the most fatal colonial mistake-that of working through established leaders who are presumed to understand how the people feel about things and who of course also know what is best for them. But perhaps most essential is the substantive knowledge of cultural variations. Considering that most of his training involves discussion of the variety of cultures, it is not surprising that a good ethnologist will within a few hours catch on to enough of the culture so that he does not misbehave; that he will quickly get enough feeling for the essential biases of the culture to enable him to ride with rather than against them; and that he can quickly enough come to take the alien culture so for granted that he can begin a co-operativeplanning opera"In the sense not of impugningtheir motives but of doubting their knowledge.

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tion in its own terms before his participation in the situation hardens in such a way as to destroy any chance of success. Timing is important. Perhaps I should make clear that anthropologists also have limitations. We are used to working personally in small communities. Do not expect us to sample properly or to read statistical tables. Our forte is interpersonalrelations, not documents. But I think that the vices of our profession do not limit us to villages or small tribal societies. In India no less than among the Navaho one faces an alien culture as well as many constituent cultures-with all of the attendant problems. It is a fact that though there may be a hundred million bearers of a culture, each of them when he is met must be met on the same terms as if there are but a hundred. It is also patent that the problem of working through supposed leaders is intensified in a large society. In most places where Point Four programswill go into effect they will fail because we shall have perforce to use national leaders to put the program into effect, without even noticing that such leaders are almost as far removed from the population as we are ourselves. And finally, of course, the problem of dealing with cultures is greater rather than less when there is a complex of hundreds of them rather than only one. Obviously there are not nearly enough anthropologiststo go around. We need more, and we need to give more of them the clinical experience required to work out with people improvements in their way of life. But clearly we shall have to settle for very much less. Everybody connected with a Point Four program, from the top policy makers to the second secretaries, ought to get a minimum briefing in the problems posed by cultural differences,as well as in the culture of the area to which he is sent. But however much we do along these lines seems so little that I am afraid the case is hopeless. I am afraid that we shall blunder into other societies and misbehave blissfully on the assumption that our ways must also be their ways, that these undeveloped people must want what is good for them, and will surely be grateful to us for supplying it. And our first fatal assumption may well be that economic progress is an absolute good.