Module 2 - HUMAN SOCIETIES AS SOCIOCULTURAL SYSTEMS

0.  OBJECTIVES

• the notion of system as an entity made up of interrelated parts
• the notion of society as a system made up of 5 basic components (population, culture, material products, social organization, social institutions)

1.  SOCIOCULTURAL SYSTEMS

Thus the notion of system = component parts + their interrelationships.

Q - Give examples of systems

The 5 basic components of a sociocultural system are:

1. POPULATION
2. CULTURE
3. MATERIAL PRODUCTS
4. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
5. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

2.  POPULATION

1.  Genetic constants

The role of genes in human behavior is difficult to assess because:

• one cannot observe humans outside of culture (But what about Mowgli?  Do [real] feral children give us a useful picture of "pure" human nature unadulterated by culture?)
• the complexity of the genetic system, because:
• often one trait depends on many genes (EX: height, IQ)
• often one given gene affects several traits (pleiotropy; EX: a gene for myopia is also associated with higher IQ)
• a trait can be affected by the environment as well as by genes (EX: height, IQ, skin color)

• tongue-curling ability
• which thumb is uppermost in hand-crossing

• dependence on society for survival (especially children)
• immense capacity for learning
• capacity to create & use symbols
• tendency to put own needs and needs of close family ahead of those of others (called by Edward O. Wilson "the mammalian ambivalence"). Mammalian ambivalence implies that:
• human societies are not as "tight" as insect societies
• utopias based on assumption of perfect altruism are likely to fail

2.  Genetic variables

• traditional notion of human races as distinct types of humans with fixed characteristics (abandoned)

Exhibit: The Four Races of Men (from G. Bruno.  1877.  Le tour de la France par deux enfants, p. 187; this is a reader that was widely used in French elementary schools)
• modern notion (used in Human Societies textbook): races defined as subgroups of the human species with substantial differences in the frequencies of some genes; boundaries of racial groups are fuzzy
• a recent concept that may displace the concept of race is that of biogeographical ancestry (of an individual or a population), defined as the proportions of ancestry (of the individual or the population) from aboriginal (native) populations of Europe/South Asia, Africa, East Asia, and the Americas.  Biogeographical ancestry is estimated from ancestry-informative markers (AIMS): "An ancestry-informative marker (AIM) is a gene, generally of humans, which has several polymorphisms that exhibit substantially different frequencies between groups of descendants derived from mutually inbred ancestral groups (often referred to as races by some sources). For example, the Duffy Null allele (FY*0) has a frequency of almost 100% of Sub-Saharan Africans, but occurs very infrequently in other races. A person having this gene is thus very likely to have some Sub-Saharan African ancestors. By using a number of AIMs one can estimate the ancestral (racial) proportion of an individual, as well as confidence intervals of the estimates."  Ancestry-informative marker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exhibit: triangle plot showing ancestry of self-identified racial/ethnic groups in the US estimated from ancestry-informative markers (AIMs) (from Wikipedia article "Race and multilocus allele clusters"). Triangle plot shows average admixture of five North American ethnic groups. Individuals that self-identify with each group can be found at many locations on the map, but on average groups tend to cluster differently.

• skin color (an adaptation to intensity of UV radiation?)
• frequency of gene causing sickle cell anemia (In the U.S. why is sickle-cell anemia more common in the African-American population?)
• ability of adults to digest milk (adult production of lactase allowing absorption of lactose) differs across human populations, but variation does not correspond simply to continental aboriginal populations (e.g. ability differs among Caucasian and among African subgroups).

Exhibit:  Adult lactose absorption in 60 populations (Durham 1991, Table 5.1 pp. 234-5)
Exhibit (html version):  Adult lactose absorption in 60 populations (Durham 1991, Table 5.1 pp. 234-5)
The ability of adults to digest milk (absorb lactose) is a genetically-determined trait.  The frequency of lactose absorbers is higher in populations with a tradition of dairying.  High frequencies of lactose absorbers must have evolved by natural selection in dairying populations within the past 10,000 years at most (since herding did not exist before then).

• male-female differences in mental test scores

Exhibit:  Studies of sex differences in mental tests scores by outcome (favor males, females, or neither)  (Jensen 1980, Table 13.1 p. 622.)
Females also tend to have lower variance in scores compared to males.
In his book The g Factor (1998) psychologist Arthur Jensen concludes his review of male female differences in scores on 5 major batteries of IQ tests by saying  [g is a concept more or less equivalent to "general intelligence"]:
 
• "The sex difference in psychometric g is either totally nonexistent or is of uncertain direction and of inconsequential magnitude." (p. 540)
• "The generally observed sex difference in variability of test scores is attributable to factors other than g."  (p. 541)
• "The theoretical importance of finding a negligible sex difference in g is that it suggests that the true sex differences reside in the modular aspects of brain functioning rather than in whatever general conditions of the brain's information-processing capacity cause positive correlations among all of the modular functions on which there is normal variation and which account for the existence of g." (pp. 541-542)
• male-female differences in sexual attitudes

Exhibit:  Questions from masculinity-femininity scale of sex attitudes  (Eysenck 1973, Table 1 pp. 29-30)
Exhibit:  Distribution of sex-attitudes scores by sex  (Eysenck 1973, Figure 1 p. 31)
We will discuss other sex differences later in Module 6.

3.  Demographic variables

• EX: birth & death rates
• age & sex distribution

The age distribution may contribute to explain the kinds of social problems that are most salient in developing societies with a large proportion of young people (such as Mexico) as compared to industrial societies with a large proportion of older people (such as the U.S.) (see next exhibit)

• Exhibit:  Comparison of age & sex distributions of Mexico & the U.S. in 1970  (HS 4^th ed., Figure 2.2 p. 37)

• When the cohort of younger women is large relative to older men, men can impose their preference for a more promiscuous style of sexual relations (as during the "sexual liberation" of the 1960s and 1970s for the "baby boom" cohort)
• When the cohort of younger women is relatively small, men compete more intensively for scarce women and engage in more conservative behaviors (as for the "baby bust" cohort)

• Exhibit:  U.S. population by age and sex in 2000

 

3.  CULTURE

1.  Symbol systems

1.  Language

• humans have an innate, biologically-determined capacity to learn to speak any language.  This is called the language acquisition device, or LAD.  (This thesis was proposed by famous linguist Naum Chomsky; see Steve Pinker. 1994. The Language Instinct.)
• which language we speak is purely culturally determined
• in contrast with signals (such as yawning, the waggle dance of bees,...) symbols of language are genetically independent and for the most part arbitrary. (Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's principle of "l'arbitraire du signe".)

Q - What is an  onomatopoeia ?  Do onomatopoeias contradict de Saussure's principle that linguistic symbols are arbitrary with respect to meaning?

The call of the rooster around the world:

• in the U.S. -  "cockadoodledoo"
• in France - "cocorico"
• in Japan - "kokkekkokko"

• evolution of language is:
•  in part random: e.g., evolution of "bureau"; EX: origin of "gerrymander" from (Elbridge) Gerry + (sala)mander (Gerry was governor of Massachusetts in charge of the 1812 redistricting)
• part systematic: e.g., "MAHARAJAH" (Sanskrit):  "MAHA" related to Latin "magnus" (whence magnify, magnificent, 44 magnum, ...), to Greek "mega" (whence megabyte, megaton, ...);  "RAJAH" related to Latin "rex, reg-is" (whence regal, regicide, royal, ...), German "Reich"

• recognition that different languages belong to the same family, and presumably have a common ancestor language
• in some cases the detailed reconstruction (by "reverse-engineering") of the ancestral language, e.g. the proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, spoken about 4,000 BCE and ancestral to many languages of Europe and Asia.

Exhibit: Identification of families of languages (from Ruhlen 1994)

Exhibit: Solution to previous example

The reconstruction of PIE began with the realization that cognates ( = related words) in different languages exhibited systematic sound correspondences, for example

Latin d corresponds to English t: Lat. duo 'two' , Eng. two; Lat. decem 'ten', Eng. ten
Latin p corresponds to English f: Lat. pes, ped-, Gr. pous, pod- 'foot', Eng. foot; Lat. pater 'father', Gr. pater 'father', Eng. father
etc.  (there are thousands such correspondences)

Latin p corresponds to English f because both are derived from PIE *p (where the asterisk * denotes that a form is reconstructed rather than attested in a text).
One can explore the PIE roots of English words by looking up the word in the American Heritage Dictionary, which is accessible in print and online.

• Exhibit:  Look for the development of the Indo-European root *leuk- in the American Heritage Dictionary (first look for the etymology of lightning, then click on the root)

2.  Body language

3.  Written language

• Exhibit:  Pattern of evolution of writing systems from pictographs to alphabet
• Exhibit:  Minoan scripts (Davies 1996 p. 1217)

• Exhibit:  Locations of early writing systems (Diamond 1999 p. 219)

• Exhibit:  Development of the alphabet (American Heritage Dictionary 4e at entry "alphabet")

• blueprint copying - copy and/or modify an available detailed "blueprint" (ex: Saint Cyril designed the Cyrillic alphabet in the 9th Century to represent Slavic languages, by modifying the Greek alphabet)
• idea diffusion - borrow the basic idea of the innovation but reinvent the details (ex: probable derivation of Indian scripts from the Aramaic alphabet of the 7th Century BC, by adoption of the alphabetic principle but independent design of letters, etc.)

2.  Information

All societies maintain cultural information about:

• biophysical environment (EX: how to recognize poison ivy)
• society itself (EX: myths of origin)
• what is good, just, beautiful,... (EX: standards of male & female attractiveness)

  Q - How similar / different are notions of goodness, justice, beauty and physical attractiveness across societies or periods of history?

• ideology - information used to interpret experience & help order societal life.  Ideology includes
• beliefs about the world
• general moral values
• norms on how to act in various circumstances
• technology - information about how to use the material resources of the environment to satisfy human needs and desires.

• ideology is composed of beliefs, not behaviors nor institutions
• the term ideology is used in neutral, not pejorative sense
• the definition of technology is broad: it includes cooking, military organization, what herbs are good for headaches,..., not just computers!

• the Communist Party
• Christianity
• the Catholic Church
• Communism
• Capitalism
• the belief that the earth is round
• the belief that the earth is flat

Thus, knowing the technological level of a society one can deduce with considerable accuracy many other characteristics of that society.

Please refer to the textbook Human Societies for the next 3 components of the sociocultural system.

4.  MATERIAL PRODUCTS

5.  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

6.  SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS