Theories of modernization and post-industrial society.

Theories of modernization express the same viewpoints as those advocated in the classical sociocultural theories by defining progress as movement toward developed countries on the Western industrialized model. The basic value judgment is the proposition that Western societies are the most developed, and the rest of the world ought to be helped to achieve that stage of development. The thinking in modernization theories is uni-lineal proposing that all countries are on the same road of development, and with technological assistance developing societies will eventually reach the same level of material culture as developed industrial countries. There is some practical reality to these speculations as the developing world is indeed on a course to catch up, and in some cases like China’s super trains have actually passed the developed Western world.

In modernist theories developmental stages move from traditional societies to more developed cultures if the socio-political culture permits the change required in technology and information. Modernist theories would argue that so-called Third World countries are behind the rest of the world for cultural reasons and needs the efforts of social engineering to emulate the most successful societies. The world economy reflects modernist thinking as all countries see the advantages of technological development, although many have not weighed the costs resulting from globalization.

All theories put emphasis on economic development, but also the connection between progress and democracy, ethical governance, and efficient production. Society must value innovation and personal success found through so-called “free enterprise” before modernization can take place. Individual members of society must also be encouraged to develop to provide a corps of workers and managers that value independent and rational thought and can produce long-term plans for the future.

Modernist thinkers are criticized for the same reasons as discussed for classical social evolution. The focus is seen as one-sided and the Western economic model is used exclusively in developing countries in ways that benefit only the elites. Using Western developed societies as a model is also ethnocentric and may have unforeseen negative consequences when evaluated for outcomes beyond the rewards of economic development. The ubiquitous Great Recession affecting economies worldwide should give pause for reflection. Further, as noted there is increasingly an acknowledgement that not all segments of the populations share equally in the benefits of economic development since economic disparity is getting larger and not smaller. The various regional trade agreements have produced new under-classes in border areas between the U.S. and Mexico, new illegal immigrants as people seek to escape poverty, and the flight of quality jobs to low wage countries. It seems a heavy price to pay for a globalized and integrated world advocated by modernist theory.

Bell (1976) defined postindustrial society by dividing social progress into three stages of pre-industrial, industrial, and post-industrial development. Societies reaching the post-industrial level are characterized by the dominance of the service sector over traditional manufacturing, and by the increasing importance of information technologies. Postindustrial societies also set aside traditional ethics and value systems in favor of technocracy and pragmatic solutions, and depend increasingly on technology. Bell also prophesized that highly educated specialists would dominate the traditional middle classes and upset the traditional social hierarchies. A megatrend expected by postindustrial thinking is what we now understand under the concepts of globalization, the World Wide Web, and the Global Village. It is thought these megatrends will weaken centralized powers as observed during the Arab spring uprisings increasing the importance of local democracy and the power of consumers. Most critics of postindustrial society argue that the predictions and concepts are unclear and it is uncertain whether these megatrends will continue in the future. Nevertheless, we cannot argue that we are in the midst of ubiquitous change brought about in postindustrial society.

Summary

This chapter addressed the research on the origin and transmission of culture. Understanding the origin of culture would respond to many perplexing issues that define us as being human including the evolution of religion, ideology, and life itself. Culture is the complex interaction of biological imperatives with cultural information and transmitted across generations. While other species possess some form of culture, humans have the unique ability to attribute intent to others and utilize symbolic representations. Culture plays a role in survival by creating systems of communication and establishing social structures to enhance the well-being of the community. Our biological foundation requires an evolutionary explanation of human psychology, and both genetic inheritance and cultural evolution must be taken into account to present a full explanation. From the evolutionary perspective when heritable traits increase the chance of survival and reproductive success their frequency in the gene pool and improved reproductive fitness also increases. The natural selection of reproductive fitness is created by the interaction of individuals and cultural groups with their physical and social environments. However, the longer life cycle of humans produce a stronger influence of cultural factors including the social decisions causing migration and the geographic isolation of human groups and the subsequent social rules for selective mate choices.

The construct “race” has both biological and social meanings. Geographic isolation, the stronger effects of the initial gene pool of the immigrant group, and cultural choices favoring ingroup members in mate choices explains the development of phenotypical race categorization. Commonly skin tone is used in defining race, although that is the least useful discriminatory tool as it is a selective evolutionary response to sunlight. Humans with genetic mutations for light skin had selective advantages in northern climates, although the current evidence is that we all arrived from a geneographic journey out of Africa. The changes produced by natural selection are called adaptation. However, it is important to remember we are not just shaped by the environment, but we also work to change it by creating niches for survival and culture.

There is now much research that supports the evolution of human motivation and characteristics. The universal presence of emotions lends support to a genetic basis or architecture of human traits. Emotions provide context to our lives and help us evaluate situations, events and social interaction. However, in contrast with other species humans have the capacity for self-reflection and have morally based emotions. Nevertheless, universal types of temperament and personality traits are evidence of our commonly evolved history. Temperament is present at birth and creates consistencies in individual responses across varying situations. Research supports the presence of universal traits of personality structured in five dimensions also called the Big Five. Heritability is determined by comparing correlations of closely related individuals with those less closely related. Heritability estimates (proportion attributed to genetic factors) is .50 for extraversion-introversion. The results are consistent across cultures presenting a universal model of personality structure that is independent of culture and therefore suggesting an evolutionary mechanism.

Intelligence is also a biological and social construct. Estimates of heritability for intelligence is higher than for the aforementioned personality structures yielding scores around .75. The effect of the heritability of intelligence increases with age as the influence of family and other environmental factors fade away. Unfortunately heritability estimates have been used in the social debate over programs intended to help disadvantaged groups. Some proponents argue that since intelligence is the major factor explaining success in society, and since it is largely determined by genes, social programs to help racial minorities who are limited by heritability are of little utility. However, these flawed arguments do not reflect the reality of the heritability of intelligence. Any population difference in intelligence test scores are impossible to validate since there is always an interaction between genes and the environment. Further, heritability estimates from individual scores cannot be used to evaluate the inherent basis of group or national differences. Further, since we only measure actualized potential, we know nothing of non-actualized potential. Also, all intelligence testing contain measurement problems that include test items not equally familiar to the members of all the cultural groups tested. However, the relationship between behavior genetics and disease is established in cases like Down’s syndrome, and is also implicated in major mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

The role of heritability can also be observed in recent research on hard wired optimism. Humans appear to share a universal bias toward optimism and more so than justified by reality. This persistent optimism is considered essential for survival and cultural progress as it allows us to see alternative futures and thereby stimulate innovation, exploration, and the motivation of our efforts. The suggestion is strong that optimism is based on neural mechanisms that are hardwired into our brains to increase our chances for survival.

Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have had a great impact on the discussion around cultural evolution. Most people have first hand observation of evolution in animals, as dogs, cows and bulls have been bred for selective purposes. In animals behavior patterns appear to be under the control of genes. Ethologists have also observed many similarities between animal and universal human behavior. Sociobiologists would argue that genetic mechanisms are the grammar or architecture of the brain that explain the human communality. These mechanisms in turn interact with culture to produce the variances we observe in different societies. Sociobiology explains human behavior as a response to evolutionary pressures, and in particular the need to ensure reproductive success of those closely related to us called inclusive fitness.

Gender differences follow a pattern predicted by sociobiology. For example men find reproductive success through a variety of partners, whereas for women pair bonding is essential to ensure the protection of children. Following the same kind of thinking females have a greater interest in the financial prospects of their male partners, whereas males seek youthful appearance suggesting fertility.

Is ethnocentrism and racism also manifestations of motivation caused by a desire for the reproductive success of near kin or inclusive fitness? The sociobiologist would argue that we must understand all psychological functioning from the perspective of reproductive fitness. Therefore attitudes toward members of ingroups and outgroups may be a special manifestation of the desire for inclusive fitness and motivated by the unconscious desire that our genes survive and prosper. Nazism was and is a perverted form of social Darwinism that emphasized inclusive fitness through genocide. The pan-European ideology of the Norwegian mass murder Breivik can be understood in the same light.

However, culture matters. The evolutionary basis of higher cognitive functioning does not exclude a role for cultural shaping of behavior or individually based motivation. The biological origin of the structure of personality still requires adaptation to specific cultural values that shape varying emphasizes. The universality of the structure of traits does not reduce the significance of culture. Culture probably provided the initial impetus that increased longevity, and that in turn allowed for further cultural improvements.

Sociocultural evolution as a field has rested on biology as a model to explain similar mechanisms in both biological evolution and in the origin of social behavior. The classical theorists made sweeping assumptions about the nature of progress and forward movement of culture. The proposed stages of sociocultural evolution have been criticized as being illusionary. Further, social evolution was also used as a covering ideology for social dominance by elite societies in the world. Modern theories have been more careful to avoid ethnocentrism and tend to view societies as developing within their own historical contexts. Neo-evolutionism discarded the rigid determinism of the classical thinkers and emphasized instead the role of probability, free will, and accidental happenings in the evolution of society. Sociobiologists argued that humans are the product of both biological and cultural evolution.

Recent researchers have produced dual inheritance and cultural transmission models. Some based their conclusions on quantitative models similar to the mathematics of population genetics in studying the frequency of cultural traits and evidence of cultural evolution. Other researchers advocated dual transmission of genetic information and also culture by means of social learning and imitation. More complex theories followed that recognized the ability of humans to modify their environments and produce niches essential to survival and reproductive success. All these conceptions were based on evolutionary principles that viewed cultural evolution as the selection of traits functional to adaptation to both physical and cultural environments.

More recently we have seen new modernization theories of cultural transmission and of post-industrial society. In many ways these conceptions returned to the emphasis of the classical thinkers including establishing Western society a model for the aspiration of developing countries. It is argued that with technological assistance all societies will eventually reach the same or similar levels of prosperity. In many ways the current world economy reflect modernist thinking as the faith in efficacy of technological change is ubiquitous. Post-industrial societies are characterized by mega-trends including globalization that fundamentally alter culture in most societies in the world. The current economic crisis in the world supports the view that evolution of society is not lineal.

Chapter 4

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: CULTURE AND BIOLOGY

A central concern in cross-cultural and cultural psychology is how people acquire behaviors that we identify as culturally unique. While we are interested in what is different between cultures of the world, there is also the potentially larger area of research into what we have in common. Acquiring culture is partly the outcome of parenting styles employed in the process of socialization. However, broader social institutions including the educational system and dominant religious or political organizations are considered important factors in producing cultural ideologies. Children also grow up with siblings and peers that have an influence on socialization. Since culture emerged out of the struggle to survive, the particular environmental contexts have produced some of the cultural variability we can observe in the world today. Survival requires competencies that in turn vary with the ecological context (Kagitcibasi, 1996). To a large extent cultural learning is implicit perhaps governed by social learning and imitation, but by the time we are adults most of us have learned the cultural rules and customs and they are so integrated in our lives that few people even notice or pass judgment on habitual rituals or behaviors. Other forms of learning have also played a role in the acquisition of cultural values through the reinforcement in the educational system based on operant conditioning or by the association of cultural and unconditioned stimuli that occurs in classical conditioning.

4.1 Socialization or enculturation?

Psychologists investigating comparative cultures make a distinction between socialization and enculturation in how cultures are transmitted from one generation to the next. Socialization as a concept has a long history in both social psychology and sociology. In particular socialization refers to the process of individual development that is shaped by cultural values through the deliberate teaching by culture bearers and enforcers especially the child’s parents. Cultural values are learned when someone deliberately shapes the behavior of children in society. On the other hand, Herskovitz (1948) used the concept of enculturation to define the end product of socialization. Enculturation refers to the assimilation of the components of culture considered essential in order to function adequately in a society. Enculturation describe the influence of the cultural context and the possibilities offered by that environment. In other words enculturation describe to the subjective end products manifested in behavior and represent the psychological internalization of cultural values throughout the process of development. Socialization refers more to the actual means of how children learn the rules of their societies, whereas enculturation are the end products manifested in subjective psychology. We can think of culture as the subjective psychological experience resulting from socialization, and enculturation as the resulting society that surrounds members of the culture with an inescapable context.

The processes of socialization and enculturation are not the only determinants of individual behavior. Members of a culture must also respond to the ecological environment and develop behaviors that support survival and successful adaptation. The transmission of culture is aimed at creating skills in children that support successful living. Still culture must also adapt to changing circumstances. The transmission of culture is not fixed, but is a more fluid process that prevents chaos and promotes social stability (Boyd & Richerson, 1995).

The study of child rearing practices in various cultures has a long history. For example, Whiting and Child (1953) examined child training study archives and concluded that in some ways child training is identical all over the world since parents everywhere confront similar problems. However, there are also some salient cultural differences in how child training differs between cultures. These observations are consistent with a biological perspective of all that we have in common as a species, but also a cultural comparative view based on enculturation and socialization. According to Barry, Bacon and Child (1957), and Barry, Child and Bacon (1959) six dimensions of child rearing were similar in all societies studied. These included training for obedience, responsibility, nurturance, achievement, self-reliance, and independence. Gender differences were also universally similar across cultures with girls being socialized to take on more responsibility and nurturance, and boys being encouraged to be assertive through achievement and self-reliance. However, later investigators found that comparative cultural variations in socialization described as either narrow or broad (Arnett, 1995). Obedience was emphasized in the narrow transmission of a culture that required conformity as a cultural product, whereas broad transmission emphasized personal independence.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1050