Cultural Systems and Organizational Processes: Observations on the Conference Papers

All of these papers share a concern with producing analyses of culture that are comprehensive and internally coherent. All agree with van der Leeuw that formalization can be used to achieve this. All assume that such analyses will be more than mere categorizations or remote analogies and will help expose the inner dynamics of culture. Though there is a common commitment to formalization as a basis for descriptive precision, nonetheless there is disagreement over what is being described. Over the past century most ethnologists have assumed that the most basic empirical question regarding culture is: What is it? These papers ask an even more basic question. Is culture one thing or system, or is it or several things or systems of different kinds? Just three of the papers assume that culture is one kind of thing that makes up one system which can be represented by one kind of formalization. All the rest assume that it consists of several different kinds of things and different systems that must be represented by distinct formalizations. The papers that assume culture is one kind of system are those by Jorion, Ballonoff and Ezkhova. Each does so, however, in a different way. Jorion's article is mainly about theoretical physics, as he sees it, in general terms. He does not develop an idea of culture except as a general heading under which one puts what people do. He ties his view of physics to culture only with seemingly opportunistic examples: language, an army marching, and the notion of environmental carrying capacity. Since language is associated with creating action at a distance, he argues that it should be analyzed with the idea of a field. An army marching may be analyzed as a beam since its footsteps have possible harmonic properties. Environmental carrying capacity is discussed in terms of " pressure " leading to " fission. " However, the links Jorion makes to physics are not through physical analyses but physical metaphors, thus his is an argument by analogy. It therefore depends on the strength of the presumed analogical relationships. This strength is not always self-evident. The influence of a field, for example, is a direct exponential function of distance. That of language is not. Ballonoff also takes culture as a given and rather than defining or describing it he begins with the idea that culture is transmitted and focusses on the conditions for its transmission. …