Cultural diversity

“ Backward and forward along peninsular Europe, men communicated to one another their emotional and objective experiences. The result has been a culture amazing only in its diversity,—amazing because, with contact and interchange of racial experiences, the coursing and recoursing of the same blood, stirred and dissolved, it is amazing that such diversity should persist. ”

“ In material culture also there are striking similarities, though here the variations are more definite and obvious, and the apparent uniformity is probably due to the attention given to the customs of chiefs, overlooking the culture of the ordinary people where more diversity is discoverable. ”

“ There are, also, histories of culture. History, from a cultural point of view, without paying regard to national boundaries, seeks to unfold the rise and progress of arts and industry, of inventions, of customs, manners, and institutions. It is the history of culture and civilization. History, from the ethnological point of view, would describe the migrations and experiences of the different races of men, and the formation of the various nationalities by these races, through conquest and intermixture. ”

“ I hope the discussions contained in these pages have shown that the data of anthropology teach us a greater tolerance of forms of civilization different from our own, and that we should learn to look upon foreign races with greater sympathy, and with the conviction, that, as all races have contributed in the past to cultural progress in one way or another, so they will be capable of advancing the interests of mankind, if we are only willing to give them a fair opportunity. ”

“ There was, undoubtedly, some stage in human evolution where the organic basis for culture had not yet been acquired. Can the several races be regarded as transitional forms, each possessed of certain capabilities determining and limiting its cultural achievement? This question can be viewed in two ways. Comparative psychology may give us direct information as to qualitative and quantitative racial differences that would affect cultural activity. ”

“ Now the only natural groups are afforded by the various culture-areas of the world wherein specific developments have occurred in relative isolation. Hence the prime concern of students of savage culture at the present day is to determine how, within such natural provinces, cultural change has in each case proceeded under the joint stress of internal and external influences. ”

“ In this way a process which on the surface was nationalistic became fundamentally a part of the organic evolution of civilization, which redirected the cultural processes of a nation and eventually of what was, then, the modern world. ”

“ Only those who would derive each and every trait similar in different communities of human beings from a single geographical source can ignore such general characteristics of culture, which may, in a sense, be regarded as determinants of specific cultural data or rather, as the principles of which these are particular manifestations. ”

“ The conflict and fusion of cultures.—The survey of the process of what the ethnologists call acculturation, as it is exhibited historically in the conflicts and fusions of cultures, indicates the wide range of the phenomena in this field.
(1) Social contact, even when slight or indirect, is sufficient for the transmission from one cultural group to another of the material elements of civilization. Stimulants and firearms spread rapidly upon the objective demonstration of their effects. ”

“ The difference between the two directions of study may perhaps best be summarized by the statement that American scholars are primarily interested in the dynamic phenomena of cultural change, and try to elucidate cultural history by the application of the results of their studies; and that they relegate the solution of the ultimate question of the relative importance of parallelism of cultural development in distant areas, as against worldwide diffusion, and stability of cultural traits over long periods to a future time when the actual conditions of cultural change are better known. ”

“ By a geographical or racial arrangement the general culture of each distinct race is made the prominent feature of the collection, and it is therefore more strictly ethnological, whereas in the arrangement which I have adopted, the development of specific ideas and their transmission from one people to another, or from one locality to another, is made more apparent, and it is therefore of greater sociological value. ”

“ Of those nations, which in the highest degree enjoy its influences, it is not too much to affirm, that the differences public and private, physical, moral and intellectual, are only less than what might be expected from a diversity in species. ”

“ Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert particularly complex pressures on smaller communities of speakers, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. ”

“ Turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention for human progress. ”

“ Finally, what is the ultimate source of customs, beliefs, languages, religious practices, and all the varied technical devices which compose the cultures of different peoples? What are the circumstances and what are the processes by which cultural traits are independently created? ”

“ Now this known diversity of character is the distributing social force among people in this world, whereby they are arranged into different groups or societies. In general, different races and nationalities do not incline to associate. But Africans prefer the society of Africans; Chinamen the society of Chinese; English. French. Germans, Italians, etc., the society of those of their own nation. And for this obvious reason: that people of the same nation are usually most alike in their tastes, habits and feelings; and people everywhere prefer the society of those who are most like themselves. ”

“ The two great cultural divisions of the human race are the oriental and the occidental. Each is consistent throughout; each has its own philosophy and spirit; they are separated from top to bottom by different mores, different standpoints, different ways, and different notions of what societal arrangements are advantageous. In their contrast they keep before our minds the possible range of divergence in the solution of the great problems of human life, and in the views of earthly existence by which life policy may be controlled. ”

“ The racial life of the species to which we happen to belong is a brief episode even in the brief life of the planet. And what we call civilization or culture, though much older than we used to suppose, is a brief episode in the life of our race. ”

“ The diversity is particularly marked among the civilised peoples, and perhaps in a peculiar degree among the peoples of Europe and her colonies. The extreme diversity of native character, both physical and spiritual, noticeable in these communities is in all probability due to their being made up of a mixture of racial stocks. ”

“ But where works of art can travel, ideas can travel too; and can travel right across the frontiers of race and language and even of religion; meaning at all events by these, the customary observance of each region, and of its endemic population. A few merchants, or craftsmen, or philosophers, work transformations in culture and bring about uniformities, of which language, or cult-edifices give us no indication at all, or at best an aftermath of decadence. ”

“ In general the reply is, Race. But race explains nothing; for it remains to discover what has produced the diversity of races. Race is not a cause; it is a consequence. The first and decisive cause of the diversity of peoples and of the diversity of races is the road that the peoples have followed. It is the road that creates the race, and that creates the social type." And he goes further: "If the history of humanity were to recommence, and the surface of the globe had not been transformed, this history would repeat itself in its main lines. ”

“ If therefore we are to discover in what form the destiny of the Western Culture will be accomplished, we must first be clear as to what culture is, what its relations are to visible history, to life, to soul, to nature, to intellect, what the forms of its manifestation are and how far these forms — peoples, tongues and epochs, battles and ideas, states and gods, arts and craft-works, sciences, laws, economic types and world-ideas, great men and great events — may be accepted and pointed to as symbols. ”

“ To turn from the distribution of culture in different countries, to its diffusion within these countries. The quality of mankind which tends most to make the systematic study of civilization possible, is that remarkable tacit consensus or agreement which so far induces whole populations to unite in the use of the same language, to follow the same religion and customary law, to settle down to the same general level of art and knowledge. ”

“ In this essay I have endeavored to set forth the principles: that the various elements, the aggregation of which constitutes a civilization—especially institutions, creeds, and arts—are the expression of certain modes of thinking and feeling special to each race, and inevitably suffer transformation in passing from one race to another; that they rarely undergo a parallel development among different races. With some, institutions—with others, literature, industry, or art—prevail. ”

“ When two races at different levels of culture come into contact, the ruder people adopt new art and knowledge, but at the same time their own special culture usually comes to a standstill, and even falls off. ”

“ Still, every race has its culminating or concurrent ideal of beauty, Development of racial and national ideals.which is affected, again, by the conditions of life in the different regions of the race's establishment. Each nation, like a rose-tree, draws from the soil and air its strength, and wealth, and material sustenance ”

“ When the cultural dominates, the sign or language experience becomes an interpretation, i.e., a continuation of the semiotic experience. Interpretation of any kind corresponds to the never-ending differentiation from the biological and is representative of the constitution of culture. Under the name culture as used above, we understand human nature and its objectification in products, organizations, ideas, attitudes, values, artifacts. ”

“ Again,—as among people of different races, the Malay and the American, the African and the Caucasian,—the diversity is very wide. And these people are just as different in their mental characteristics as in their physical constitution. ”

“ Culture, its creativity, its process, is akin to the era of great demographic fractionation (six and one-half centuries) , corresponding to each ethnic group in the geographic area in which it is developed. ”

“ But passing on to less material traits, we find even stronger claims to unity of culture. Thus, society itself was almost everywhere composed of the same kind of units, whose conceptions of property and political rights were the same. Ritualism, priestcraft, and shamanism, mythological conceptions, and religious attitudes also show many specific cases of uniformity. Hence, we are fully justified in regarding the New World as one distinct culture province. ”

“ While there is not in any nation, in any race, any such thing as strict purity of blood, yet there is in each nation, in each race, a dominant element--or rather something more than an element--something which is the true essence of the race or nation, something which sets its standard and determines its character, something which draws to itself and assimilates to itself all other elements. ”

“ Human culture is the sum total of ideas, relationships, artifacts, institutions, purposes and ideals currently functioning in any community. Three elements are present in each human society: man, nature and the social structure. Human culture at any point in its history is the social structure: the aggregate of existing culture traits, the products of man's ingenuity, inventiveness and experimentation, set in their natural environment.
Civilization is a level of culture built upon foundations laid down through long periods of pre-civilized living. ”

“ Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the stone-pines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves—but there is no ageing “Mankind.” Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. ”

“ In the same way as we have elected to distinguish the Soul as the possible and the World as the actual, we can now differentiate between possible and actual culture, i.e., culture as an idea in the (general or individual) existence and culture as the body of that idea, as the total of its visible, tangible and comprehensible expressions—acts and opinions, religion and state, arts and sciences, peoples and cities, economic and social forms, speech, laws, customs, characters, facial lines and costumes. ”

“ Thus we have, in this particular, a race which has established a complex civil and religious polity, and made great progress in the useful and fine arts,—as its pottery, textile fabrics, wrought metals, highways and aqueducts, colossal architectural structures and court of almost imperial splendour prove,—on the same level, as regards the quantity of brain, with a race whose social and religious conditions are among the most degraded exhibited by the human race. ”