Re: 'Face' cultures (Re: Frankfurt School)


Take a few weeks off and have a thread taken over by the briganti.

Now, where were we?


"Sylvia Knörr" <Sylvia.Knoerr_NoSpam_@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Aardvark J. Bandersnatch" <somebuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im
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Quite some years ago there was a sociological study correlating the
population trends of a culture and its relationship towards tradition,
social conditions, or personal endeavor. Basically, a stable society with
an
increasing population tends to look more like modern American society;
stable societies with stable populations tend to look much like European
social culture; stable societies that "get by" (a stable population that
could fall into horrid famine at any minute) tended to look more like
Asian
cultures. The latter groups tended to be very tradition-oriented, tended
to
place great value on personal status (cast-oriented), and tended towards
strict adherence to social norms and mores.

These correlations immediately make some sense to me, and also immediatly
the question about "which is hen and which is egg?" rises.
Does the attitude of a society towards traditions etc cause the particular
prosperity and stability, or is it vice versa, that a certain level of
prosperity and stability leads to certain traditions?

If one relates this to reproductive trends, the data makes more sense.
"Wenn" a population is quite stable for long enough, then the majority of
that population come to realize (especially subconsciously) that the
individual genetic heritage will continue; in that case, there will be no
urgency to bear more than sufficient children to continue the line. With
that kind of "thinking" going on, there comes concommitant the unconscious
social desire to have just exactly this set of conditions continue into the
foreseeable future. Thus a large, but stable population would lend itself
toward tradition-oriented culture. It is similarly possible to connect other
population-culture trends to reproductive access, success rates, and
relative security (of reproduction and continuance).



Oh yes! David Riesman! That's whom I was thinking of.

http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mayjun02/indextwo.html


I tend to be suspicious of climatological explanations because there
isn't
a
very high degree of correlation or consistence. EVen beyond that, we need
to
look for the biological bases that drive these trends.

Climatological conditions may not have a monocausal effect on human
societies, but climate is surely linked with human societies because it
provides some basic conditions, like landscape. Climate makes a difference
on how harsh or comfortable life can be, and climate does not permit the
same levels of competiton, cooperation or individual autonomity in every
place.
Effects may be blurred since humans moved around a lot, and a society may
live far from its place of origin today, so their traditions were shaped
in
a different climate.

A most excellent point, Sylvia. Climate does make *A* difference, but may
not necessarily be *THE* difference.* Then again, cultures, like weather,
are vastly complex phenomena with several hundreds of possible causal agents
and agencies.

* How do peoples without definite/indefinite articles in their languages
make explicit the difference between "a" and "the"?


A bit late, but Happy Groundhog Day!


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