Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis

CHAPTER SEVEN. The Moral Basis of Cultural Change

C H A P T E R S E V E N The Moral Basis of Cultural Change Theories of cultural change have emphasized broad evolutionary patterns . The two theories of cultural differentiation mentioned in Chapter 6, for example—those of Bellah and Habermas—are cast in terms of an explicit evolutionary framework. Others—Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, for example—have adopted similar models. Still others, although rejecting the strict periodization of these schemes, havenevertheless stressed the gradual, linear, and unidirectional character of cultural change. Most of these arguments are framed, explicitly or implicitly,in assumptions about modernization. Most deal with advanced industrial societies and assume that other societies will eventuallyfollow the same patterns. Most emphasize increasingdifferentiation, both among institutions and within cultural systems, as the central dynamic of cultural change. This argument depicts the nature of cultural change largely as a product of preexisting capacities within the cultural system itself. In addition , evolutionary models have often suggested an increasing disjuncture between culture and social structure, as one manifestation of differentiation, that results in cultural change becoming independent of other aspects of the social environment. Evolutionary theories of culture have a number of strong points. They highlight general differences between primitive, traditional, and modern societies. They provide a broad description of the directions in which modern culture may be headed, thereby suggesting some of the important problems with which social inquiriesshould be concerned. In separating culture from social structure, they avoid positing any kind of 215 216 The MoralBasis of Cultural Change one-to-one correspondence between the two that might be taken as a basis for sociological reductionism. They nevertheless posit a loose relationship between social environments and cultural patterns; for example , traditional ideologies are said to be increasingly difficult to sustain in the modern environment. Indeed, these theories are not difficult to reconcile with some of the arguments about the connections among heterogeneous environments, individualism,and rationality in Chapter 6. Yet there is a growing sense of dissatisfactionwith evolutionary models of cultural change. One of their chief limitations is the fact that such large time periods are lumped together and seen operating according to a few linear tendencies. Most of these models consider the entire "modern " period—covering the half-millennium since the fifteenth century— as a single evolutionary epoch and portray cultural changes simply as shifts in the direction of greater modernization. They offer little assistance in dealing with shorter term changes or comparing one century with another. A second limitation is the lack of attention paid by these theories to concrete mechanisms of cultural change. They seem to assume in principle that change is incremental and relatively uniform within each cultural epoch, apparently resulting from the aggregate impact of numerous individual changes or minute adjustments in the culture at large. They do, however, posit profound changes occurring in the transition from one epoch to another. In practice, they also point to concrete events (e.g., the Reformation or the Enlightenment) as having special significance. But no effort is made to account for these events or to suggest what transpires in the shift from one epoch to the next. A third, closely related, limitation is the failure of these theories to focus on specific historical details that would validate or invalidate them. The models seem to be articles of faith—metatheoretical frameworks— rather than testable hypotheses. Seldom are detailed historical studies conducted with an eye toward testing or modifying these theories. Fourth, only progressive, unidirectional changes are emphasized. The progressivism of these theories is a value judgment that may or may not be warranted. Their unidirectionality is more simply an empirical weakness that causes them to concentrate on some kinds of change but to ignore the many ideological movements that fail and to neglect the importance of counterideologies that arise in opposition to presumably dominant cultural tendencies. Finally, these theories are limited by their tendency to be either intrasocietal or asocietal rather than inter- or transsocietal. That is, culture change is depicted in terms of specific national cultures, such as the United States or England, or is treated simply The Moral Basis of Cultural Change 217 as "modern" cuiture—as if there were no important societal distinctions . Seldom has attention been paid to the differing positions of societies in the larger world order, to the ways in which their interaction affects the domestic moral order, or to transsocietal environments that may in themselves constitute...