The Social Organization of Tradition

Abstract

Out of that anthropology which rested on studies of isolated primitive or tribal peoples arose the concept, “a culture.” The Andamanese had a culture, the Trobrianders, the Aranda of Australia, and the Zuni. Each culture came to be conceived as an independent and self-sufficient system. Recently words have been found to make clear this conception of an “autonomous cultural system.” It is “one which is self-sustaining—that is, it does not need to be maintained by a complementary, reciprocal, subordinate, or other indispensable connection with a second system.” Such units—such cultures as those of the Zuni or the Andamanese—are systems because they have their own mutually adjusted and interdependent parts, and they are autonomous because they do not require another system for their continued functioning. The anthropologist may see in such a system evidences of past communications of elements of culture to that band or tribe from others, but, as it now is, he understands that it keeps going by itself; and in describing its parts and their workings he need not go outside the little group itself. The exceptions, where the band or tribe relies on some other band or tribe for a commodity or service, are small and do not seriously modify the fact that that culture is maintained by the communication of a heritage through the generations of just those people who make up the local community.

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