The
“figure” above concisely summarizes the points we have been discussing in class
for the last couple of meetings. If we think about human life being lived
within the confines (boundaries, what have you) of a given “social reality,” it
is helpful to conceive of that reality as consisting of two very broad
dimensions: to wit, culture and social structure. Culture generally
refers, again imperfectly, to the realm of the meaningfulness and
appropriateness of social action and interaction; hence, we spoke of the symbolic and the moral dimensions of reality. The symbolic dimension – and we will
discuss this in much greater detail a bit later in the semester – corresponds
with we humans’ capacity for signification: communication by way of signs,
linguistic and otherwise. As we discussed, language is the quintessential
example of this capacity. Having construed what is essentially a system of
interconnected barks, grunts, clicks, and the like for characterizing the world
and what happens in it, we then – and each collection of people fitting under
the classification of “literate society” has taken this same step – assigned a
corresponding set of signs denoting a given sound: the alphabet. So, the
barking-like sound “buh” is denoted by the sign, “b” (or “B”). Once we all
agree on these significatory conventions, we then reify them, creating rules (and the inevitable exceptions) for
signifying “correctly.”
It
is in and through these symbolic systems that other discrete symbolic systems –
comprising disciplinary boundaries (of which college majors and departments
are, as Geertz puts it, the social forms of that cultural substance) are
built-up, marked off, and clarified. The symbolic forms can and do vary – not
only between and among cultures, but within them, as well: to language (from
which theories derive & through which they are expressed), we can add, as
we’ve discussed, mathematics, music, the visual arts, computer science, etc..
Social
structure, on the right side of the page, refers – as I’ve said, I know, ad nauseum -- to repeated and more or
less predictable patterns of behavior. Those patterns, as we’ve discussed in
class, tend to cluster around tasks that any society deserving of the name must
successfully organize if it is to survive: child-rearing, division of labor in
the household (and between the household and the larger economy), relations
between the sexes/spouses; division of labor need for survival, distribution of
those subsistence needs; etc. etc.
As we have discussed, the
distinction between these two dimensions of reality is more analytical than
actual. That is, we separate the two dimensions from one another in order to
get fuller analytical “purchase” on how they operate, but, as Geertz says,
“Society’s forms are culture’s substance.” (P. 28, in my much-read, much-loved,
and battered old edition of Interpretation
of Cultures ) Or, as Max Weber would
put it, social organizations and institutions are what he called “cultural
carriers.”
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