In January 1900, the American ethnologist, anthropologist and culturologist Leslie White was born in Colorado. It was he who introduced the term "culturology", which designated a separate independent discipline. Leslie White was an ardent advocate of evolutionism. This helped him to stand in cultural anthropology at the very source of the creation of neo-evolutionism. The most significant first works in this area were written by Leslie White.
Biography
In the First World War, the future scientist came to the front at the end of hostilities, he gave a whole year to the US Navy. Only in 1919 did he manage to enter Louisiana State University, and in 1921 he transferred to Columbia to study psychology, which he loved. In 1923, Leslie White received a bachelor's degree, and a year later - a master's degree. In 1927, he was already a doctor in anthropology and sociology at the University of Chicago. From there, the young scientist went on expeditions to study the culture of the Pueblo Indians.
Then his work began at the University of Buffalo (New York). Having visited the Soviet Union in 1929, Leslie White returned very impressed and immediately joined the Socialist Laborparty. From that moment on, articles under the pseudonym John Steel began to appear frequently in the party newspaper. Written by Leslie White. Cultural studies as a science gradually matured in his work, especially after he got a job at the University of Michigan in 1930, where he remained for life.
Scientific and political views
Despite the fact that Leslie White's scientific merits were great, and his work gained almost worldwide fame, for thirty long years he remained a simple assistant to the professor. The reason for such a delay in his scientific career was his political views, as well as the area of \u200b\u200bhis scientific interest. The fact is that America was an extremely religious country, and now there are a huge number of small sects and traditional large confessions.
Views on evolution greatly interfered with promotion, and the Catholic clergy even excommunicated the scientist from the church for such blasphemy. At that time, it was not just a shame, but a real ostracism. And only in the sixties did fame come to him, although Leslie White's theory had long been known to all anthropologists in the world. In 1964, he was finally elected president of the American Anthropological Association. For more than thirty years, I have been waiting for recognition of my work at my home university Leslie White.
Culturology
"Man is able to create symbols, and this suggests that he is characterized by a culture that has its own evolution," said Leslie White. The science of culture, which he founded, considers the process of evolution asenergy. Culture can advance only as the amount of harnessed energy increases per capita, that is, as the economy and efficiency of energy management tools increase, and often both.
The concept of culture given by Leslie White includes three components: ideological, social (where collective behavior and its types are considered) and technological. The latter he considered the basis. That is why many of his contemporary colleagues classify the scientist as a technological determinist (a division in the social sciences). Leslie White wrote several outstanding works on the development of the science of cultural studies, where he clearly identified three delimited processes, and of them three interpretations that are tightly connected with each other, since they complement each other in everything. This is a historical, functional and evolutionary beginning.
Three sets
Leslie White's concept of culture proposes to explore precisely these three principles. The historical approach concerns temporal processes, that is, the sequence of any unique events. Functional analysis is intended for a formal process: the study of the structural and functional aspects of cultural development. The interpretation of formal temporal processes, that is, phenomena that are a temporal sequence of forms, is entrusted to evolutionism.
If we consider, for example, a popular uprising, then, according to the historical approach, specific popular uprisings are studied, from the point of view of formal analysis, general signs are derivedany popular uprisings, and the evolutionary approach will analyze the changes in the forms and types of popular uprisings, considering their cultural and socio-historical aspect. Thus, this phenomenon will be considered and studied comprehensively.
About the theory of evolution
Leslie White promoted the ideas of the American ethnographer and scientist L. G. Morgan, who traced the progressive development of mankind from ancient society, from savagery through barbarism to civilization. While all of cultural America was drowning in triumphant anti-evolutionism, Leslie White, in many polemical works, exposed this militant diffusionism, the denial of cultural evolution. Culture cannot develop outside of evolutionary laws.
White's opponents, in addition to diffusionist schools, were both theologians and creationists, who claimed that evolution is a chimera of a sick mind, and God created all life on earth, including culture. It also worked here that the theory of evolution was used in his works by Karl Marx, and later by other politicians of a radical warehouse, followed by the socialist labor movement. It seems natural that there would be sharp opposition from the entire capitalist system, since its representatives - private owners, the church, capitalists - were afraid of losing their dominant positions.
On the progress of culture
The main reproach of diffusionists was that evolutionists talk about the development of the culture of different peoples according to a single scenario, althoughit is obvious that the African tribes from the Stone Age immediately stepped into the Iron Age, and the Bronze Age passed them by. Here the opponents are wrong. Evolutionism does not deny some elements of diffusion, but cultural phenomena (tillage, metallurgy, writing, and the like) always develop in certain stages.
This does not rule out the fact that cultural contacts may facilitate borrowing, and some stages may simply be skipped by specific peoples. The evolution of culture and the cultural history of an individual people are two different things. Leslie White argued that in terms of progressiveness it is impossible to evaluate different peoples. Objective criteria are needed for such an assessment.
Postulates
There are perfectly logical and adequate ways of assessing cultures, which proceed from the position that culture is a means that helps to make life long and safe. And the progress of culture is an increasing degree of control over nature and its forces, which man uses. Here, not only purely technical achievements are compared, but also the improvement of the social system, religion, philosophy, ethical norms, and all this without the slightest separation from the cultural context that corresponds to them.
White proposed a lot of original ideas, with the help of which the concepts of "sign" and "symbol" are distinguished. Cultural studies was to become a separate scientific discipline, and White began to substantiate its postulates. At first he did it exclusively from researchinterests that were associated with the concept of symbolic behavior, then he was already closely engaged in terminology, taking it beyond the concepts of psychology.
Books
Culture was presented to White as a system, self-adjusting and integral, with all its material and spiritual elements, and cultural studies - a branch of anthropology, where culture is seen as an independent system of elements that are organized according to its own principles. That is why cultural studies exist according to their own laws. White's fundamental works "The Evolution of Culture", "The Science of Culture", "The Concept of Culture" predetermined the emergence of a new scientific discipline - cultural studies.
In our country, culturology appeared quite recently, and it was finally formalized only ten years ago, and therefore the most characteristic problems for it are the clarification of the categorical apparatus, the problem field, research methods, the correlation of all this with the already defined in the world cultural studies. That is why the work of such an author as Leslie White is especially relevant for Russia, since the foundations of Western cultural studies were laid by him back in the middle of the last century.
Main functions of culture
The main function of culture has already been said - it is to provide humanity with not only a long, but also a safe and pleasant existence. Although the consequences of cultural evolution can be called wars, and the ecological crisis, and epidemics, and much more, which does not add safety to human lifeamenities. White believed that only culture determines human existence, since it is not human nature that creates culture, but, on the contrary, culture leaves its mark on one or another species of primates.
In the fifties, the social sciences acquired systems theory, which began to dominate the approach to the study of society. Thus, a behavioral revolution took place, culture as a separate subject of research was refused to be perceived. She was given a completely materialistic definition and placed in the category of abstract.
Controversy
White proposed to consider the phenomena and objects of the social world not only in the context of anatomy, physiology and psychology, but also from an extrasomatic point of view. He promoted the idea of separating the symbolic from the somatic, but with energy control.
Society is capable of recycling energy - and this is a key property that allows you to compare the most different societies and cultures. Here White formulated the above general law regarding the measure of the increase in energy that falls on the head of the population.
Culture functions
Building cultural systems and studying them allowed White to take a different look at the functions of culture. In 1975, he wrote a seminal work on the concepts of cultural systems with a key to understanding tribes and nations. There are, in his opinion, such cultural systems to which ethical or psychological terms are not applicable. They cannot be judged on "good or bad", on "smart or stupid".
Because White was a supportersocial evolutionism, he did not bypass any of the problems of sociocultural dynamics. His book "The Evolution of Culture" has become a reference book for culturologists around the world. In it, he presented a para-Marxist model of the development of civilization. The main cultural systems are the tribe and the nation, the vector nature of the structures of the social system (that is, each has not only a size, but also an orientation). In theory, this is identical to classes and groups.
Features of civil society
White did a lot of analysis of Western cultures of our time, and therefore could not help but turn to the topic of civil society. This topic is very problematic and poorly developed. Here White left a lot of material for the study and subsequent development of existing problems. First of all, he singled out the features of the structure of civil society.
- Civil society is always segmented, and this segmentation is geographical and social. So there are provinces, states, counties, districts, and the like.
- The population of civil society is always divided into classes both socially and professionally. So, each person has gender, marital status, age, and so on.
- Civil society cannot do without hierarchical class division, which is based on the dominance of property rights.
Contradictions
Civil society is filled with internal contradictions, and therefore much less stable than primitive tribes. It containsvery different vectors, which are represented by numerous professional and social groups, and therefore civil society is somewhat disorganized by the diverse orientation that such a multi-vector nature creates. However, modern cultural systems compensate for this instability with the unifying role of church and state.
White was highly respected in the scientific community of the second half of the twentieth century, although his theory of quality in cultural diversity was criticized, as well as for too much love for classical evolutionism. However, his work has received worldwide recognition, albeit not immediately. And the work of Leslie White lives and develops with the help of the best representatives that the "social organism" school has.
