Cultural fallacy

Culture is often known as the set of values, beliefs and rituals that a certain group of people within a society abide to and practise. In a sense, culture is functionalistic in that it binds the people within a society together and promote social solidarity which is basically a sense of belonging. In other words...culture promotes synergy and supposedly helps to minimize anomie which is the strain that individuals feel when there is an inability to fulfill certain societal goals due to the lack of means available. Essentially, culture when seen in this perspective promotes social order in that it serves to create norms and certain sets of behavior that is acceptable to society.

Let's just step back a bit now....and see. Well basically who creates the culture in any given society? It is usually the dominant group...the governing authority..the upper strata..officialdom..the institutions.. They police the norms, the values and create certain forms of acceptable behavior. And basically everyone within a given social group, a given society looks at the world through these norms. In a sense everyone of us whether you like it or not is looking through this veil..this glass.

The thing is this..functionally speaking having a given culture is good. But when it is brought to the extreme to the point that it becomes ethnocentric and take the form of a bias actor I think that's when the process of acculturation of dubious perspectives within the members of that social group or society occur.

In every society there are cultural goals..and the culture within a given social group may be such that according to Robert K.Merton, an American sociologist, it will lead individuals to center their emotional convictions upon the complex of culturally acclaimed ends with far less emotional support for prescribed methods of reaching out for these ends. With such differential emphases upon goals and institutional procedures, the latter may be so vitiated by the stress on goals as to have the behavior of many individuals limited only by the consideration of technical expediency. In other words..individuals are socialized into accomplishing goals in the most technically efficient and effective way. As this process of fervent strive for success continues..deregulation within a social group occurs which leads to "anomie".

Basically anomie as mentioned before is a state when there is an insatiable desire to achieve a given cultural goal. Anomie according to Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist was even considered as a pathological state of sin. It is this state where the insatiable desire to achieve a given goal due to perhaps unavailable means...lead to strain and stress. According to Robert Merton..there are 5 types of individual adaptation in a culture when anomie occurs.

1. Conformity..essentially working harder within the prescribed means to achieve the cultural goals. It is the most commonly subscribed conviction. The continuity of a society, a social group, the prevention of an internal split would otherwise not be possible.

2. Innovation...This is basically manipulation. This is usually practised by people from the lower starta due to the inability to achieve the cultural goals using prescribed means.

3. Ritualism...This can be readily identified as the rejection or scaling down of the cultural goals to stay where you are as the goals seem to be almost unachievable. It's liken to you asking them.."Why don't you want to do more?" And all you get may be perhaps a muted response. It is a subscription to the fact that they will never be able to be in any leadership position due to the seemingly exclusive nature of the cultural goals.

4. Retreatism..These people have relinquished culturally prescribed goals and their behavior does not accord with institutional norms. The continual pressure on the group members to perform may cause them to detach themselves from the social group or society.

5. Rebellion... Basically these are the people that seek to bring in a new social structure. In other words this adaptation sees the victims of suppression replacing the machine. Essentially like a revolution.

My point is this...the existential nature of culture brings with it many forms of advantages..but when a certain form of culture with its norms and goals becomes dogma, it suppresses individual freedom. The emphasis on its merits without an objective form of self-reflexivity amplifies any form of detraction as devianization. This fear of devianization, of being labeled as someone that is not loyal to the vision of the cultural goals further stifle the emotive development of this social organism through the suppression of free expression. The very fear of devianization within the social organism may actually amplifies the development of anomie with its accompanying responses.

I think an interesting question to think about is this...which individual adaptation will you choose when you realize if ever you are in a suppressive culture?