Culture, power, technology

The meaning of the term ‘culture’ has a long and intricate history and is now used in different intellectual disciplines with diverse meanings. The word culture is traced back to its early use as a noun denoting a process: the culture of crops, or the culture of animals (rearing and breeding). In the sixteenth century this meaning was extended metaphorically to t he active cultivation of the human mind; and in the late eighteenth century, when the word was borrowed from the French by German writers, it acquired the meaning of a distinctive way of life of a people. In the nineteenth century the plural cultures became especially important in the development of comparative anthropology, where it has continued to designate distinctive ways of life.

In the meantime, the older use of culture as the active cultivation of the mind continued, indeed, it expanded and diversified, covering a range of meanings from a developed state of mind as a cultured person, to the process of this development - cultured activities, to the means of these processes. In our time, the different meanings of culture that are associated with the active cultivation of the mind co exist with the anthropological use as a distinctive way of life of a people or social group. To analyse a social reality there is a need to focus on the meaning defined as the integrated system of socially acquired values, beliefs, and rules of conduct that delimit the range of accepted behaviours in any given society. It is created by a social network involving multiple feedback loops through which values, beliefs, and rules of conduct are continually communicated, modified, and sustained, it emerges from a network of communications among individuals and as it emerges, it produces constraints on their actions. In other words, the social structures, or rules of behavior, that constrain the actions of individuals are produced and continually reinforced by their own network of communications. The social network produces a shared body of knowledge, including information, ideas, and skills - that shapes the culture’s distinctive way of life in addition to its values and beliefs. Moreover, the culture’s values and beliefs affect its body of knowledge. They are part of the lens through which we see th world. They help us to interpret our experiences and to decide what kind of knowledge is meaningful. The meaningful knowledge, continually modified by the network of communications, is passed on from generation to generation together with the culture’s values, beliefs, and rules of conduct. The system of shared values and beliefs creates an identity among the members of the social network, based on a sense of belonging. People in different cultures have different identities because they share different sets of values and beliefs. At the same time, an individual may belong to several different cultures. People’s behavior is informed and restricted by their cultural identities, which in turn reinforces their sense of belonging. Culture is embedded in people’s way of life, and it tends to be so pervasive that it escapes our everyday awareness.
Cultural identity also reinforces the closure of the network by creating a boundary of meaning and expectations that limit’s the access of people and information to the network. Thus the social network is engaged in communication within a cultural boundary which its members continually recreate and renegotiate. Social boundaries of meaning are not necessarily physical boundaries but boundaries of meaning and expectations. They do not literally surround the network, but exist in a mental realm that does not have the topological properties of physical space.

One of the most striking characteristics of social reality is the phenomenon of power. The exercise of power, the submission of some to the will of others, is inevitable in modern society, nothing whatever is accomplished with out it… power can be socially malign, it is also socially essential. The essential role of power in social organisation is linked to inevitable conflicts of interest. Because of our ability to affirm preferences and make choices accordingly, conflicts of interest will appear in any human community, and power is the means by which these conflicts are resolved. Coercive power wins submission by inflicting or threatening sanctions; compensatory power by offering incentives or rewards; and conditioned power by changing beliefs through persuasion or education. To find the right mixture of these three kinds of power in order to resolve conflicts and balance competing interests is the art of politics.

Relationships of power are culturally defined by agreements on positions of authority that are part of the culture’s rules of conduct. In human evolution, such agreements may have emerged very early on with the development of the first communities. A community would be able to act much more effectively if somebody had the authority to make or facilitate decisions when there were conflicts of interest. Such social arrangements would have given the community a significant evolutionary advantage.

Indeed, the original meaning of authority is not power to command, but a firm basis for knowing and acting. From the earliest times, human communities have chosen men and women as their leaders when they recognized their wisdom and experience as a firm basis for collective action. The origin of power lies in culturally defined positions of authority on which the community relies for the resolution of conflicts and for decisions about how to act wisely and effectively. In other words, true authority consists in empowering others to act. However when the invested authority, rather than the wisdom of a leader, is the only source of power, where its nature changes from empowering others to the advancement of an individual’s own interest, power becomes linked to exploitation.

Today, more often, individuals and groups seek power to advance their own interests and to extend to others their personal, religious, or social values.

In terms of technology, critics have emphasized the increasing tensions between cultural values and high technology. Technology advocates often discount those critical voices by claiming threat technology is neutral, that it can have beneficial or harmful effects depending on how it is used. However, specific technology will always shape human nature in specific ways, because the use of technology is such a fundamental aspect of being human. The fact is that as part of our culture, technology has an influence on the way in which we behave and grow. The process, however, can not be stopped nor the relationship ended; it can only be understood and directed toward goals worthy of humankind - the management of human organisations, the challenges of economic globalization, and the design of sustainable communities.