Page 58 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

RETHINKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURE

in it, each individual relates to another on an equal basis; its principle and value
is autonomy; and only then the individual responds to the aggregation.

Hierarchical and holistic organization
In reply to hierarchical and holistic morphologies, the whole de fines the parts
and the prevalent rule is that each individual should have a de fined place in
society. Individuals are expected to occupy a position in a social pattern that is
seemingly stable, and that tends to elude change. In the natural world, flocks of
birds and beehives are products of a holistic morphology. Among humans, caste
formations are underlined by such structure type of subordination.
Bearing in mind that cultures provide the rules that mirror a morphology,
and examining Indian culture, we can see an example of an extremely hier-
archical and holistic cultural system. In it, one element embraces the other in a
relationship of encompassing and encompassed (Dumont 1967 and Khare
1971). The individual social actor does not construct a social identity from
scratch. Individuals receive their identity from social personae that antedate and
specify their possibilities for life. In Indian society the form of the social frame
is like a cusp. At the top of the social gathering, we find Brahmins, or priests,
and going down the social slope, we find ‘below them the Kshatriya, or war-
riors, and then the Vaishyas, in modern usage merely merchants, and finally the
Shudras, the servants or have-nots’ (Dumont 1970: 67). Besides these four
social categories, Dumont also identifies a fifth category, composed of the
Untouchables, which is outside of the classification. Brahmins and
Untouchables are as opposed to one another as purity is to impurity, as high is
to low.
The Indian order of castes is a complex cultural system with restrictions
placed on food, sex, and rituals. Social order is maintained through the com-
munication of ideas concerning the purity of its members, and through kinship
ties that direct endogamous connections, creating binds that anchor ‘the Hindu
to its place in society and curb the desire to strike out on his own’ (Yalman
1969: 125). Therefore, to secure such order, Indian society generates cultural
products that emphasize the message of social subordination. Culture creates a
constellation of messages powerful enough to act upon individuals. In the case
of Indian society, the basic idea of subordinate contrast comes from the distinc-
tion between purity and impurity that culminates hierarchically in the figure of
the Brahmin priest.

Individualistic organization
The other possible morphology would inevitably invert the idea of hierarchical
subordination. In nature, the counterpart is the cloud of mosquitoes (Thom
1975: 319), where the movements of the swarm are oriented from the point of
view of the individual organisms interacting in the cloud. The glimpse of other

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