Page 29 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

EDWARD C. STEWART

United States, for instance, where the effect of political ideology on culture has
been especially intense, and in other Western societies (Wilson 1998: 184–5).
But outside the American academic world and other ‘contained areas’, cultural
relativity is difficult to defend with respect to human nature. Wilson observes:

Where cultural relativism had been initiated to negate belief in heredi-
tary behavioral differences among ethnic groups – it was then turned
against the idea of a unified human nature grounded in heredity.
A great conundrum of the human condition was created: If neither
culture nor a hereditary human nature, what unites humanity? The
question cannot be left hanging, for if ethical standards are molded
by culture, and cultures are endlessly diverse and equivalent, what
disqualified theocracy, for example, or colonialism? Or child labor,
torture, and slavery?
(Wilson 1998: 185)

The social sciences are thus unable to make valid and powerful explanations
because they lack consilience and generally ignore deep origins. The ‘Standard
Social Science Model’ has endured primarily by authority of its moral appeal,
not for its truth.
Evolutionary psychologists take a contrary position to direct mental or cul-
tural descriptions, and argue for consilience. For them, the mind is biology, and
its state of nature for human beings is genetic inheritance as it has developed
throughout the millennia of human existence. Tracing its history in the bio-
logical process of evolution and reconstructing its nature through the science of
cognitive archaeology establishes the configuration of abstract human nature.
The original contemporary inheritance probably was in place some 100,000
years ago. The differences that anthropologists describe between groups of
modern people today are matters of constructed culture, as well as biology.
Moreover, those differences were certainly not self-evident, valid social values
present in the cultural life of early humans; in fact, quite the opposite is true.
The actualization of inherited cultural potential is what I call nuclear culture,
to be discussed later. In the world today an urgent need exists for a paradigm of
cultural analysis that places culture at the center of the social sciences, not at the
periphery. The solution for accomplishing such an ambitious and important
project rests in large measure in operations of the mind, processes of meaning
construction, and human communication generally.

Culture as meaning
Culture defined as a ‘reserve of meaning’ is now gaining favor among anthro-
pologists, communication theorists, sociologists, and other social scientists. Ulf
Hannerz (1992) is among those who theorize culture as meaning. All the major
elements of culture are mentioned or implied in the following passage

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