Culture Matters

Essays In Honor Of Aaron Wildavsky

Richard J Ellis, Michael Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367315313
• eBook ISBN: 9780429980787
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Culture Matters explores the role of political culture studies as one of the major investigative fields in contemporary political science. Cultural theory was the focal point of the late Aaron Wildavsky's teaching and research for the last decade of his life, a life that profoundly affected many fields of political science, from the study of the presidency to public budgeting. In this volume, original essays prepared in Wildavsky's honor examine the areas of rational choice, institutions, theories of change, political risk, the environment, and practical politics.

Part One

Rational Choice and Cultural Choice

Chapter One

Social Science as Cultural Science, Rational Choice as Metaphysics

HARRY ECKSTEIN

The ideas of political culture and of rational choice—or, to use a more appropriate term, utility, or utility rationality¹—underlie the currently dominant approaches to constructing theory in political science. The opposition between these approaches is nothing new. It goes back to the very beginning of the idea of positive (that is, empirical) social science in the early nineteenth century.

Starting then and continuing over a century or so, the idea of culture was worked out as a solution to a problem first raised by Auguste Comte in The Positive Philosophy (1830–1835). This was how the social sciences would differ from the other sciences when they finally developed. Comte had argued—convincingly, I think—that all of the sciences developed through three stages: first a theological stage, in which the natural was explained by the supernatural; then a metaphysical stage, in which understanding of experience is sought through pure thought; and finally a positive stage, in which explanations are constructed inductively. The progress of the positive sciences, Comte argued further, was a developmental order, in which the sciences of the simpler phenomena developed first, the more complex later, and the most complex, social science, last—a development that in Comte’s time was still to come.

Comte thought that all of the sciences are a single enterprise in that they have the same fundamental aim_ to discover the laws that govern experience. Different subject matters, however, require different tacks to accomplish that aim, although each science can learn from others. All of the sciences also have a single epistemology, the ultimate arbiter of the truth-value of scientific theories being observation. Special subject matters, however, also call for special methods of inquiry, although, again, inquirers should apply methods from other areas, if applicable.

The idea of culture was thus intended from the start to be a foundation concept for empirical social science, as against essentialist metaphysical thought, which disdained observation. Moreover, the idea was developed in explicit opposition to the rival notion of utility that underlies what we now call rational choice.

The most basic argument of the cultural approach is that actions have meaning to the agents who take them, and that explanations in social science therefore should characteristically be couched in terms of underlying meanings that “orient” agents to the situations in which they have to act. The most basic difference between cultural theory and utility theory is that in the former, orientations to situations are not fixed in human nature but are variable, whereas in the latter, they are invariable, always consisting of the calculation of cost-benefit ratios. It should be manifest that this difference compels choice between the two approaches, for it is impossible for the same thing to be both uniform and variable.

In this chapter I argue that the cultural conception of how empirical social science should proceed is correct and the utility approach deeply flawed. I will do this first by outlining the basic traits of cultural science as it can and should be practiced—as a science—and then by showing that utility theory, despite its claims to be proper science, is a regrettable reversion to prescientific, that is, metaphysical, thinking.

The second part of the argument is important because in justifying the cultural approach it does not suffice merely to argue that the cultural tack makes sense; it should also be shown that the cultural approach makes more sense than alternatives. The first part is important because basing political science, let alone the social sciences generally, on the notion of culture has often been perceived as contrary to the scientific spirit. Contemporary culturalists who practice “interpretation” and “phenomenology” take this position themselves, as if it were a virtue. It is thought, even more generally and by scholars who otherwise would be supportive of cultural science, that culturalism condemns one to the use of loose methods and inexact, impressionistic observations—exactly what the practice of science seeks most to avoid.

I will try to show here that these beliefs are unwarranted. Cultural science no doubt is difficult to practice; its proper practice requires discipline and ingenuity; its elaboration will be the work of many people over much time; and its early achievements will be woefully inadequate. But these statements can be made about all of the sciences.

Outline of the Nature of Cultural Science

The Axiomatic Basis of Cultural Theories

Every positive theory and system of theories makes certain assumptions about the nature of its subject matter that can and should be stated in axiomatic form. Doing so permits deductions from the theory that should be corroborated by observations if the assumptions are to receive assent. The assumptions are never just assumptions. They are claims that the surface appearance of observed phenomena has been penetrated to a deeper level that validly explains the surface.

Elsewhere I have argued that cultural theories rest on four related axioms at their “theoretical core”² and spelled out numerous empirically testable inferences that can be drawn from them about the nature of political change (Eckstein 1988). These axioms can also be regarded, jointly, as a complete technical definition of what exactly culture means as a scientific concept. I will summarize the axioms here, referring the reader to the cited article for elaboration.

The Postulate of Oriented Action. This is the keystone of cultural theories. It says that actors have general dispositions to act in standardized ways in sets of situations. Orientations are not the same as attitudes. They are general dispositions evidenced in sets of attitudes. If, for example, an actor acts tolerantly toward some particular group, say, gay people, that is an attitude. To say that someone is tolerant is to say that he has a general disposition toward tolerance vis-à-vis groups (in the plural) perceived as “different” from normal. Thus statements about orientations are generalizations about how agents invest their world with meaning as a condition of acting in the situations that confront them.

In the case of individuals, the postulate says that their behavior follows a “mediated stimulus-response” model (Osgood 1958), with orientations doing the mediating. In the case of societies or subsocieties, it says that they manifest certain typical orientations that frequently occur in them.

Both individuals and collectives may manifest a relative lack of standard orientations; that is the essence of anomie. The postulate of oriented action implies that such a state of affairs will be accompanied by pathologies, because particular orientations to action and general sets of such orientations perform indispensable functions in the economy of human existence, individual and collective. These functions are principally twofold:

1. Orientations have an economizing function, so to speak: They relieve actors of the impossible burden of decoding and encoding every situation afresh before acting. When, for example, I feel drowsy late at night, I do not calculate whether, on balance, I should go to sleep, where, how, and for how long. I simply go through a routine: I check whether it is (culturally) normal bedtime, do my normal ablutions, don the normal sleeping uniform, go to the normal sleeping place, and use the normal sleeping furniture. If I had been forced to calculate all this out, I would probably not have slept at all.

2. Orientations that are shared also make social interactions and relationships predictable. Without predictability the relationships could hardly exist at all. Orientations are an indispensable source of “negative entropy” in social relations and systems. You sleep better if you are reasonably sure that no one will telephone you after the (culturally) normal bedtime. Likewise, if you are telephoned later than that, the other party will generally know where and in what state to find you. Nearly everyone’s life, happily, is replete with such observed routines. When that is not the case, troubles ensue.

Since these functions are vitally important, the postulate further implies that there will be a tendency, successful or not, to reduce anomie where it exceeds some threshold. Anomie is a force of social entropy; integrated culture is “negen-tropic.” Like all the rest of existence, social life can be regarded as a battleground on which entropic and negentropic forces—in this case anomie and culture— constantly contest.

The Postulate of Orientational Variability. This postulate says two things (which could also be stated as separate axioms). It says that orientations are not simply epiphenoma of objective situational conditions; that is, they cannot be inferred directly from situations. The same situations can be interpreted to mean a virtually unlimited variety of things. If this were not the case, one could simply reason directly from situations to action, bypassing a great deal of troublesome stuff, such as how to find out what actors’ orientations actually are. The postulate also says, of course, that orientations are not all the same.

The postulate does not say that orientations must necessarily be appropriate to the situations actors face. However, since orientations furnish understandings of situations, problems must follow if for any reason the orientations come to be seen as having little utility for comprehending experience—for instance, as a result of noncultural social changes.

The Postulate of Socialization. This postulate extends the second. It says that since orientations do not vary by objective conditions and are not fixed in human nature, then they must have an external cultural source; that is, they must be imparted by previously socialized carriers of culture. The postulate does not say that learning leaves no room for individual creativity. It does imply that creativity in regard to meaning is always tightly constrained, and indeed presupposes a great deal of prior learning.

The Postulate of Cumulative Learning. This postulate says two things:

1. One is that early learning is more important than later learning; it acts as a sort of filter through which later learning must pass. No one is free at any point to return to a state of infancy in regard to culture, or even to regress any great distance toward such a state. One reason for this is that if it were otherwise, culture would be infinitely malleable and fragile and therefore incapable of performing its functions. Another is that advanced and complex learning always builds on earlier and simpler learning. No doubt learning goes on in some measure throughout life; it must do so because orientations must be relevant to life-changes in situations in the normal course of life. But early learning limits greatly the extent and ease of later learning.

The related questions of just how much late learning is possible, how much early learning can be undone without incurring grave dysfunctions, and under what conditions substantial “reorientation” may be required and/or feasible, must be answered through research. Adaptation to changed conditions, which includes relearning, is critical to individual and social functioning, no matter what core axioms are used in theorizing. The axioms of cultural theory, however, lead one to suppose that reorientation is always difficult to accomplish and usually fraught with dangers of pathology.

2. The postulate also says that there is a tendency to make the bits and pieces of learning into a coherent (consistent, consonant) set. To the extent that orientations are contradictory, or even just eclectic, they cannot effectively serve their functions. The postulate does not say that all actors or cultures have consistent orientations, but it implies that, to the extent that this is not the case, problems ensue. A counterpart of anomie, then, is what we might call cultural dissonance, to which what I said earlier about anomie also applies.

The Inertia Theorem. Even if we knew nothing about any specific culture, we would be able to develop a considerable body of testable hypotheses from these postulates. The postulates themselves, to some extent, may be directly testable as hypotheses—for instance, against the very large literature we have on socialization, general and political (Hyman 1959).

One deduction that may be made from the postulates and that is clearly of first importance is that cultures, other things being equal, will display a high degree of continuity, or “inertia?’ This does not mean that cultural changes do not occur, any more than the principle of physical inertia implies that there is never change in the direction or velocity of objects in motion. Both physical and cultural inertia, however, imply that continuity in motion is the “normal” state, and that changes are always a result of certain contingent forces and must always take certain forms. I developed this point in the article cited earlier (Eckstein 1988), in which a number of other hypotheses about cultural change and inertia were also developed from the core postulates. One of these is what might be called the adaptation theorem. This says that changes in culture “normally” are adaptive to changes in situations, unless large-scale radical change is deliberately pursued or unavoidable. Adaptive change is change that is made for the sake of continuity: pattern-maintaining change. The two theorems, which appear to point in opposite directions—toward continuity and toward change—are thus reconciled, as logically they must be.

An important point that follows from the inertia theorem is that research into processes of reorientation will provide telling tests, perhaps even crucial tests, of cultural theory. If large-scale reorientation occurs readily, without the risk of serious dysfunctions, and especially if this is so even in cases that are not somehow “naturals” (most-likely cases) for reorientation, then cultural theories are refuted wholesale. This point should be elaborated separately, and then researched. I indicate it here to show that axiomatization can lead not just to pertinent research but directly to potentially severe empirical tests of theory.

A Technical Definition of Culture. We are now in a position to formulate a concise definition of “culture” as a scientific concept: Cultures are the variable and cumulatively learned patterns of orientations to action in societies. The modifiers of “orientations”—“variable” and “cumulatively learned”—are required because orientations might not have these traits, in which case they would not constitute culture. This definition is elaborated in the four postulates in such a way that definition and theory are immediately linked.

Cultural Interpretations as Hypotheses

Every culture and subculture has its distinct signs, norms, and cognitive beliefs governing meaning. Each may be treated as a separate behavioral world. When we state what its signs, norms, and cognitions are, we “interpret” the culture; this includes describing it in concepts designed for comparison and generalization. We also interpret when we account for particular actions or action sets in a culture on the basis of the particular traits of the culture.³

In Weber’s principal methodological writings on what he called “interpretive sociology;’ he insisted that any interpretation must be treated as a hypothesis. As such it can have no claim to validity except through testing against evidence. A cultural interpreter may be ever so steeped in the details of a culture; he or she may have observed it closely and over a long period of time as a participant observer; he or she may be ever so sensitive and clever; but while one may award an extra benefit of doubt for such virtues, the “proof” still is in the inductive pudding.

I mean this to apply especially to what has been called “thick description” (Geertz 1973). Thick description has sometimes been offered as an alternative to positive social science, and a preferable alternative. It involves an epistemology that is antiscientific and supposedly atheoretical. However, even in the hands of a Geertz interpreting Bali, thick description yields nothing more than plausible hypotheses, like every other theoretical construction. The claim that an interpretation is “thick” does not alter the fact that it is more than just description. It is a claim that something underlies surface appearances, and therefore it is theory. As long as no attempt is made to test thick descriptions as hypotheses, they are just surmises, or perhaps very high-level travel literature.

In the following I offer an example of interpretation in both senses of the term from my own work and through it try to show that interpretations of particular cultures, treated as hypotheses, can be part and parcel of positive social science.

Political cultures, and authority cultures more generally, contain as an important component certain decision rules: norms about the conditions under which collective decisions are considered to have been taken properly, so that they are binding on the collectivity. These may be rules stated explicitly in a constitution, but such formal rules may or may not be the operative rules.

In a book about Norway, written mainly in 1964 (Eckstein 1966), I argued that a kind of “consen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface: Remembering Aaron Wildavsky, the Cultural Theorist
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Rational Choice and Cultural Choice
• Part II Institutions and Culture
• Part III Cultural Theories of Change
• Part IV Risk and Culture
• Part V Culture and the Environment: Empirical Studies
• Part VI Cultural Theory and Practical Policies
• References
• About the Book
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index