Model answer & approach
- Critically discuss how culture determines human behaviour in the light of Leslie White's theory. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Leslie White argued that culture is a distinct order of phenomena obeying its own laws, so that human behaviour is to be explained culturally rather than psychologically. The position is powerful as a method and untenable as a determinism.
Body
1. The core claim: in The Science of Culture White proposed culturology, a science whose axiom is that culture explains culture. The individual is the medium through which culture flows, not its cause; a person born into a different culture would behave differently, so behaviour is a function of the extrasomatic tradition. Culture is stratified into technological, sociological and ideological subsystems, the technological being determinant.
2. The evolutionary basis: the determinism rests on his law of cultural evolution, that culture advances as the energy harnessed per capita per year multiplied by the efficiency of the tools employed. Stages follow the energy source, from human muscle to domestication, then fuel, then nuclear power.
3. The criticisms: the formula measures rather than explains, since choices about which technology to adopt are themselves cultural; the axiom that culture explains culture is circular; the scheme revives Morgan's unilinear evolution and reads as teleological; and it excludes agency, individual variation, history and meaning, the last being Geertz's objection. Steward's multilinear evolution and Sahlins and Service's specific evolution were direct corrections.
4. The verdict: White restored comparison, materialism and a measurable variable to a discipline that Boasian particularism had made descriptive.
Conclusion
Culture is the strongest single predictor of what a person does, and White was right to insist on studying it in its own terms. It is not a cause that dispenses with the individuals through whom it operates.
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