Classifying Cultures and Identifying Cultural Identities by Relations in Groups: Drawing from Models in Psychology and Ecology
Journal Title: Social Evolution & History - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
This piece offers a preliminary test of approaches adapted from psychology and ecology for use in classifying and explaining choices of cultural strategies and identities. The paper adds two methodological dimensions to the traditional ethnographic and comparative approaches used in social an-thropology: comparisons based on relations of a large number of cultures to each other, and relative changes of cultures over long time frames. The approach, used in psychology in the study of group dynamics and role theory for individuals in groups, seems promising when applied to cultures, using analogous patterns of cultural identity formation as part of a larger relational dynamic of cultures within groups or clusters of multiple cultures. Though this is just a first step, there may be a set of constant relational patterns that consistently reas-serts itself and forces individual cultures into particular roles relative to other cultures. This could contribute to re-construction of a predictive social and cultural anthropology that classifies and explains cultures based on geographic adaptation, technological sophistication, and position and roles relative to several other cultures at once and over time.
Authors and Affiliations
David Lempert
Keywords
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