Wow, its very nice to see my field being mentioned (evolutionary biology). Yes, these "functional explanations" are very problematic. They can also be called "state explanations" -- that is, explanations (or rationalizations) of states of affairs. They can be curiously compelling in a psychological sense, even when having no basis in fact. (That's a topic for the psychologists to investigate.) But an important point is that many people (at large in the world) *do* believe them, and so regardless of whether they are factually correct, people may act as though they were.Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox
(The stronger alternative to state-explanations are change-explanations: explanations not of states of affairs, but of events [changes]. But to offer change-explanations, you first have to establish a factual chronicle of events, and for some cultural products this can be difficult to do.)
This is accurate and important, and it strikes at another central concept in evolutionary biology: essentialism vs. population-thinking. Those who think there is an "authentic" version of a culture are essentialists: they think cultures have essences, and to deviate from the essence is to be inauthentic. (We all know Clarence Thomas isn't *really* black; nobody who is pro-choice can be a *real* Republican; if you don't support violent jihad you can't be a *real* Muslim; etc., etc.) Essentialism is always false when applied to cultures, societies, races, biological species, and lots of other things. But it's a persistent psychological bias in most human thinking. The rejection of essentialism (and its replacement with what we call "population thinking") was a central achievement of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, because until you dispose of essentialism, evolutionary change can't be correctly understood. So also with cultural change.We were talking about interfering with cultures. What culture? Yesterday, today or tomorrow? Who judges what the "authentic" version of the culture is? Does authenticity matter anyway?....
Personally, I think the more you think about cultural authenticity, the more controversial the whole concept gets. This is one of those postmodern insights that I actually agree with. If we can't even define what the "authentic" culture is, how can we exercise caution towards changing it? If we did inadvertently or deliberately change a culture through our interactions with it, on what basis would we be able to say that the first version of the culture was somehow more authentic, and hence better than, the one we ended up with after the change? Finally, who gets to define the authentic culture? The Supreme Leader in Iran? Osama Bin Laden? Why should I accept their definitions, in countries with widely varying norms and customs and degrees of conservatism or liberality (both within and between countries, I mean)?
I could go on about this favorite topic, but it tends to make people's eyes glaze over.Nevertheless, it's an important foundational issue if one wishes to engage in the contest of ideas across cultures.
Bob
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