Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski.

  • Bronisław Malinowski
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Freedom and civilization / by Bronislaw Malinowski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    190/360 page 172
    6 The Nature of Cultural Determinism TO GAIN a still fuller understanding of this argument, we now turn to the problem of cultural determinism, as this is embodied in the various rules which guarantee order and security, and which foster co-operation and concerted action under conditions of peace and progress. We were made already to realize that culture is based on the existence of rules, on their recognition, and their acceptance. Such rules by and large are the essential instruments of freedom. Certain of the rules, however, may be used for discrimination and oppression and thus become in¬ imical to freedom, and at times annihilate it completely. The rules of natural process must be obeyed by man and ani¬ mal alike. If our concept of cultural determinism is valid, man has also to obey the rules of this determinism. We shall have now to establish with greater precision and clarity the distinction between the intrinsic rules of cultural determinism, and rules of tyranny which are an abuse of certain cultural mechanisms, in the interests of some at the expense of others. To anticipate the essential principle in our distinction, rules which are accepted through education, in which reference is made to the learner’s experience, and rules which grow up in
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