Cultural Plunge

[Name of the Institute]

Cultural Plunge

Introduction

In a way, the phrase itself is problematic; after all, culture was formulated as a scientific concept partly for the very reason that customs seemed resistant to change-at least compared with the confusing blur of particular people and events traditionally studied by historians (Tylor, 1871/1924). Indeed, some anthropologists have tried to analyze cultures as if they did not change at all; such approaches, however, seem ever less relevant in the rapidly globalizing world of the 20th century.

In the phrase “Cultural Plunge,” plunge has its usual meaning; Cultural plunge, however, is being used in a sense technical enough to need a bit more discussion here at the outset. There are anthropologists, it should be said, who consider Cultural plunge to be things that only an individual can acquire by virtue of being a member of society. One problem with this is that it excludes features that inherently characterize groups rather than individuals-some of which certainly would seem to be fundamental features of a society's way of life, such as economic inequality, an elaborate division of labor, or (group) religious ritual.

Some anthropologist think of Cultural plunge not only as an acquisition of individuals but also as a particular kind of individual acquisition, namely, mental. Cultural plunge, for them, is strictly in our heads. From their standpoint, neither the automobile nor the computer, say, would be part of American Cultural plunge in the early 21st century; rather, only the underlying ideas of which the things themselves (they maintain) are realizations deserve to be considered Cultural plunge. This, however, makes Cultural plunge difficult to study empirically by making it outwardly unobservable.

Defining Cultural plunge as strictly mental also encourages an oversimplified and misleading conception of culture change. Anthropologists who think of Cultural plunge as essentially mental tend to think of culture change as essentially due to new ideas. This focus distracts our attention from, if it does not quite deny, three key points about Cultural plunge. First, what ideas are “thinkable” depends partly on existing cultural arrangements. Ideas do not really come “out of the blue”; there is cultural wisdom, then, in the scriptural claim that there is “nothing new under the Sun”-nothing totally new at least. Second, new ideas are by no means sufficient in themselves to bring about Cultural plunge. The greatest idea in the world must somehow be acted on before it has any chance to change culture. Ideas that remain trapped in their thinkers' heads, issuing in neither new behaviors nor new artifacts, are of no cultural consequence whatever. Third, behavioral or artifactual consequences are also insufficient for Cultural plunge. These consequences must be greeted by significant social acceptance; and this, like the occurrence of the new ideas in the first place, depends to some degree on existing cultural arrangements.

Personal Experience of Cultural Plunge

The human behavior affects genetic inheritance as well as experiences both. The diverse ways through which people develop and shape the business is a social experience and circumstances in the background of ...