culture

nationality

American

university professor

University of Chicago

occupation / innovator as

anthropologist

is not just learned behavior (as the failure of behavioralism has shown) and to see culture as cognitive seems might prove equally narrow.

The definition of culture in terms of learned behavior . . . seemed at first to promise a unified theory to social and mental culture. But with the failure of behavioristic learning theories to account for the differentiated processes and kinds of learning involved in the acquisition of language, kinship systems, and other aspects of culture, this promise has not been fulfilled.. . . Taken as a working hypothesis the cognitive conception of culture offers a promising program of research, the results of which should improve cross-cultural understanding. Taken as a definition of the nature of man or as a general theory of human culture, however, it seems just as narrow and one-sided as previous definitions and theories. (1968: 540)

is today, a theory of the functions, patterns, and structures of cultural forms within a plurality of organized contexts rather than a study of distinct traits.

Most characteristic [of recent work on culture] is a shift away from a theory of discrete culture traits within a framework of universal cultural history or cultural evolution to a study of the functions, patterns, and structures of cultural forms within a plurality of organized contexts. . . (1968: 540)

Milton SingerThinkers

Milton Singer