Cultural Models: A Constructed Reality

By a cultural model I will mean a model constructed around conceptually framed rules that are part of the enculturation of community members, with the understanding that their behavior follows rules that are part of enculturation and the latter does not require repeated, day-to-day learning through imitation for its implementation. Several examples of cultural models of this sort will be discussed in this chapter, such as the well-known Friend-Enemy model with its four rules regarding the behavior that a Friend has to a Friend, a Friend has to an Enemy, an Enemy has to a Friend, and an Enemy has to an Enemy. Thus, a cultural model, as the term is used here, is a mapping from the ideational level to the phenomenal level rather than the reverse as is generally assumed. For this reason, the focus here is on the logic through which the structure of a cultural model is generated and not on its implementation at a phenomenal level. A key result stemming from this view of cultural models is the discovery that structurally isomorphic cultural models are found in different domains when the same property is being addressed. Here, the same property for two concepts that is being addressed is the logic by which a logical opposition between two concepts (such as Friend-Enemy, Positive Numbers-Negative Numbers, −1 versus +1 with binary addition, or // [“parallel”] kin terms versus X [“cross”] kin terms, among others) is created. Cultural models, in the sense being used here, are not limited, though, to binary oppositions based on two concepts. Also subject to cultural modeling with focus on the underlying logic of a cultural model are more complex cultural constructs such as kinship terminologies with their deep history going back at least to the Upper Pleistocene. All told, cultural models that link the ideational level to the phenomenal level provide a powerful way to make evident the underlying logic that underlies the different kinship terminologies that have been developed in human societies and have been a major topic for theorizing in anthropology about the formation of social and cultural systems at the societal level. To be shown in this chapter is how the logic underlying Lewis Henry Morgan’s well-known seminal division of kinship terminologies into classificatory versus descriptive terminologies derives from the logical implications of the distinction between primary and secondary sibling kin terms, respectively, thereby bringing closure to almost two centuries of debate in anthropology over the origin of the classificatory terminologies. Cultural models, in the sense developed in this chapter, provide a powerful way to make evident the logic underlying the generation of the cultural constructs that provide the foundation for the cultural systems distinguishing the various human societies and are central to anthropological analysis and theorizing.