Anthropologists and the Rise of a Global Civilization

Anthologists have largely ignored the emergence of a global civilization which is affecting al contemporary sociocultural systems. Yet, the signs of an emerging planet wide civilization are all around us.

Sometimes they are trite, and almost in the realm of the cliche, such as the spread of the "Blue-Jeans and T-Shirt Complex" around the globe, creating problem s for parents in conservative and progressive societies alike. At other times the signs are ominous such as the activities of multinational corporations which are busily integrating the most exotic societies into the global economic system, and are seemingly impervious to the control of either capitalist or socialist states.

Less threatening, but sometimes having dire consequences for many societies, are the labor migrants overflowing national boundaries, apparently undeterred by laws, fences or oceans. The underdeveloped countries lament the loss of their educated classes in the "brain drain," but welcome the exodus of their unemployables. The developed countries willingly permit their own well-trained people to go off to help the underdeveloped world, blithely ignoring that these persons are in effect high-paid migrants. Yet the developed countries attempt to keep out unskilled foreigners.

Given the interest of almost all the founders of modern anthropology in the evolution of human sociocultural systems and their diffusion through space and time, it is surprising that the global processes of change have not attracted the attention of more anthropologists. One only has to mention the works of Edward B. Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Sir Henry Maine, J.F. McLennan, Adolph Bastian, Leo Frobenius, G. Eliot Smith, and Father Wilhelm Schmidt, to note that whether "evolutionists," or "diffusionists," these men asked fundamental questions about the development and spread of human civilizations.

Even the later American anthropologists such as Clark Wissler and Edward Sapir sought answers to more restricted developmental and diffusionary problems by utilizing such theoretical notions as the "culture-area" and the "age-area" hypotheses. There was the so-called "Boasian" reaction to speculative evolutionary and diffusionist theories, but even Franz Boas felt that diffusionist studies could be empirical. He only insisted that attention be paid to individuals as agents of this process.

The disenchantment with evolutionary and diffusionist schema was not only linked to the concern with the absence of empirical data, but also to the development of a fieldwork tradition. The goal here was to study small aggregates (often in the then colonial world) where, by participant observation, the anthropologist could observe behavior judged to be the basis of social structures and cultural systems. A few anthropologists also hoped to use this methodology to plumb the feelings of the people studied.

While the fieldwork approach was intellectually rewarding, if often ignored the wider universe in which these so-called primitive isolates existed. Anthropologists could and did blithely ignore that the people being studied were being colonized, missionized, and affected by worldwide economic, political, and social processes.

The irony here is that it was practical needs of the benefactors of anthropologists that led some scholars to deal with the issues of change in the societies they were studying. Thus, although the did not do it, Radcliffe-Brown's lectureship in South Africa led him to suggest that anthropologists should study the impact of the West on the African peoples in that region. It was primarily to meet the needs of the British colonial Office, concerned with the nature of the "clash of cultures" and "culture contact," that Malinowski and his students undertook the study of culture change in Africa.

The more parochial among these scholars studied the impact of change on one society; the more perceptive ones examined the processes that were linking the colonial societies with their European metropoles, and with the wider world.

A number of American anthropologists concerned with the fate of Native Americans, whose sociocultural systems were being disorganized by those of Euro-Americans, also started to study culture change. Significantly, these persons seldom saw the larger picture. The reason was that they viewed Native Americans, as "wards" of the U.S. government rather than workers engaged in producing materials for the American economy. It was primarily those American anthropologists who studied non-American societies who saw culture in more global terms.

World War II, which saw the greatest migration of people the world had ever known and highlighted the interrelationship of the world's people set the stage for a revival of an interest in global sociocultural change. Leslie White resurrected the interest in general evolution, emphasizing the relationship between technology, amount of energy and the complexity of sociocultural systems. Julian steward stressed both multilinear evolution and modernization.

Perhaps because he did extensive field work in North American, South American, and Caribbean societies, Steward was quite conscious of the particulars within the universal, and remained suspicious of the grand sweep of general evolution as characterized by the "Whiteans." He recognized that modernization was making for worldwide similarities, but balked at the notion of a truly global civilization. Steward insisted that empirical research would show differences among sociocultural systems that seemed quite similar.

Alfred Kroeber, a contemporary of both Steward and White, appears to have had a greater sense of the evolution of a world culture. In his 1945 Huxley Memorial lecture entitled "The Ancient Oikoumene as a Historic Aggregate," Kroeber declared that "the Oikoumene may perhaps be redefined as a great web of culture growth, really extensive and rich in content. Within this web or historic nexus, first of all, inventions or new cultural materials have tended to be transmitted, sooner or later, from end to end."

Kroeber felt that the "primitives" in the area, or adjoining it, derived third cultures mainly from the civilization characteristic of the Oikoumene as a whole, through reductive selection, and that these groups preserved old elements which their retardation made them unable or unwilling to accept. He added that these backward cultures usually added to what they shared some lesser measure of their own proper peculiarities and originations, and that they often developed a distinctive style of their own. Yet, Kroeber felt hat in the man, the so-called backward cultures derived their main thrust from the great civilization ad whether "geographically interior or marginal: the relation remain as equally one of dependence."

By and large anthropologists have not followed the seminal thoughts of Kroeber, nor have they attempted to theorize about the processes by which the underdeveloped societies are being brought into the scope of the global civilization. After the post-World War II disorientation caused by the feared "disappearance of the primitives" and the end of colonialism, many anthropologists sought refuge and fame in structuralism and symbolism--issues having to do with the human mind. In reaction to this, other anthropologists became "Structural Marxists."

While debating the issues of structuralism, symbolism, idealism, and materialism, anthropologists are ignoring the implications for humanity in the rise of a global civilization. In contrast, political scientists in such publications as World Politics and International Organizations, are treating such issues as the growth of "worldwide social structures," and "the impact of television on rural populations of the Third World."

Understandably, anthropologists are amused that these other social scientists are misusing anthropological concepts; yet paradoxically they hesitate to use their unique approaches to bear on the major world problems created by communication satellites and supersonic aircraft shrinking the globe, making neighbors of al humanity, and providing the basis for a revolutionary type of sociocultural development.

Perhaps one of the reasons why anthropologists have not paid too much attention to the rise of this global civilization is their concern that the results may not be good for our species. A possible second reason is that in the absence of the proper methodology to study this phenomenon, anthropologists may return to non-empirical speculation about it.

Lastly, there is the wonder that if a global civilization is indeed developing, would it contain sufficient elements from all of the world's national and regional cultures to produce a truly ecumenical civilization that would benefit all of the world's peoples?

The anthropological concern for the survival of individual cultures is not based on chauvinism or ethnocentrism. Instead, it is due to the recognition that these cultures provide important designs or models for behavior-norms for what is considered proper, or moral, or even same. These cultures provide a body of knowledge and tools by which people adapt to specific environments; rules by which they relate to each other; a storehouse of knowledge, beliefs, and formulae through which humans try to understand the universe and their place in it.

Finally, through the use of shared symbols, culture provides the distinctive ways for each society to order the world, rendering it intelligible, telling people what to expect from others and thereby furnishing a degree of mastery and confidence in social situations. Therefore, faced with what they consider to be alien cultures and the implied threat to their hallowed values, human beings become alarmed and fear the worst.

Anthropologists are fully aware that cultures have never remained static, and that due to such processes as invention, discovery, diffusion, culture contact, acculturation and transculturation, cultures change. Their great concern for the fate of the traditional cultures is that they do not believe that cultural dependency in any form is good for people. The question they ask is how can people retain their cultural autonomy, the basis for their self-respect and social viability, in the face of a world civilization whose power is being felt, but whose character is still unknown.

There is a need for anthropologist to develop new theories to facilitate the understanding of the emerging global civilization. On a purely theoretical level, Steward's suggestion that empirical research would demonstrate that beneath the surface regularities there are historically derived differences is, I believe, only way of saying that sociocultural homogeneity is undesirable and inimical to human beings.

Steward's suspicion of homogeneity probably stems form the grounding of this ecological multilinear evolutionary theories in Darwinian biological theory, which postulates that it is mutations that lead to survival and evolution and that homogeneity can be the death of any species. In the case of human beings, this would amount to sociocultural stagnation and decline. But even if one were to accept the biological analogy when dealing with sociocultrual systems, the question is: what does sociocultural homogeneity and heterogeneity mean? How much difference is necessary for the survival and evolution of sociocultural systems?

The fact is that no organic or superorganic system has been able to resist change, for to do so would result in ins demise. Change is necessary to survival. During some periods, such as the present, changes are macro in nature and quite rapid; at other times the changes are micro and almost imperceptible. The question that has never been satisfactorily answered is whether people can hasten sociocultural change or frustrate it.

Anthropologists are still not sure that they understand how and why societies change. They do know that changes come about as societies adapt to changing ecological factors. Yet, it is not always clear why some societies adapt and survive and why others do not. Anthropologists are aware that inventions and discoveries that radically change cultures often occur simultaneously and independently in many areas. Yet they do not quite understand why this happens.

Diffusion, that process by which culture traits from one culture are borrowed by another, and one o the major reasons for the rise of this global civilization, is easier to understand. But it is not clear why societies take some traits and reject others. Nor do anthropologists understand how and why receiving cultures reinterpret and modify the traits diffused to them.

What is becoming clearer, however, is that the more complicated the trait-complex, the more difficult it is for the receiving culture to modify it. This is increasingly true of the major industrial technologies being diffused by the developed world. Instead of being adapted to the local cultures, these cultures are forced to adapt to these traits.

Anthropologist know much more about "culture-contact" and "acculturation"--those processes during which groups of persons having different culture come into long-term face-to-face relations with each other. The changes that take place could affect one or both groups. Moreover, one is never quite sure whether the aggressive culture always imposes itself on the one contacted. For example, historians tell us that successive waves of the Manchus who invaded China were ultimately Sinicized. The reason perhaps is that the Chinese culture was much more complex than that of the pastoral invaders. On the other hand, the aggressive Westerners appear to have imposed more aspects of their culture on subject peoples than vice versa.

Largely unknown to anthropologists are the results of conscious attempts of people to borrow traits and adapt them to their culture in such a way so as to avoid cultural domination. There are examples of populations which attempted to close their doors to innovations, but were ultimately forced to yield, and often suffered as a consequence. There are also cases where people have attempted to purge their cultures of borrowed elements.

For example, the French attempted to halt development of Franglais, that mixture of French and English, but all indications are that they have not succeeded. Parisians still talk about "le drug store," going away for "le weekend," and eating "les hamburgers." Can societies control cultural exchange without being completely dictatorial?

It is possible that a systematic and judicious approach to dealing with the elements of the global civilization that are impinging on all the cultures of the world can be beneficial to all humanity. This would involve a careful study of the ways in which local cultures can contribute aspects of their "own proper peculiarities and originations" to the developing ecumenical civilization.

Faced with a choice of adopting some foreign elements of the global civilization when a local analogue is available, the latter should be used. On the other had, when given the opportunity to contribute an important local cultural trait to the global civilization, societies should take the opportunity to do so.

It is possible that conscious human action can ensure that the emerging civilization would be truly universal as well as global. Its universality would be underscored by the basic similarities in the local aspects of this global culture. However, this would not prevent he persistence of those differences due to local traditions.

Perhaps it is in these peculiarities that people would find the uniqueness that gives life meaning and purpose. But the major convergences being brought about by the spread of a global civilization will probably still occur.

The issue for the future will be how to deal with the imponderables of his global civilization. There is likely to be great indeterminancy and peril, but also greater possibilities.