Just as Galton enthusiastically propounded his Eugenics, some human geographers took the opposite view and attributed differences in society and in the behaviour of human beings to the natural environment. Way back in 1924, Ellsworth Huntington published his titled Climate and Civilization to press the point that the geography of the place—which includes its climate—determines the kind of culture lived by the people inhabiting that area. Huntington made a global comparison between health and energy indicators (on the basis of climate) and the distribution of civilization. The two world maps drawn by him show a striking correlation. However, his critics challenged this static view and invited attention to the history of civilizations, which suggests changes in the location of centres of civilization despite the fact that the geography of those areas has remained unchanged. Ogburn and Nimkoff have argued that ‘the striking similarity does not prove that one is the cause of the other, or that the climate is the cause of civilizations’. The northeastern part of the United States, shown in the map as an area of advanced material culture, was only 300 years ago a locale of primitive tribes with a much simpler culture. During this interregnum, the climate did not change, and yet the arrival of the migrants to the New World caused this change. To quote MacIver and Page, ‘The geographical environment alone never explains the rise of a civilization’ (p. 103).
To reassert this point, here is another quote from Arnold Toynbee (1934, Vol. I: 269):
It is clear that a virtually identical combination of the two elements [non-human and human] in the environment may give birth to a civilization in one instance and fail to give birth to a civilization in another instance without our being able to account for this absolute difference in the outcome by detecting any substantial difference in the circumstances, however strictly we may define the terms of our comparison. Conversely, it is clear that civilizations can and do emerge in environments which are utterly diverse. The nonhuman environment may be of ‘the fluvial type’ which has given birth to the Egyptiac and Sumeric civilizations and perhaps to an independent ‘Indus Culture’ as well; or it may be of the ‘plateau type’ which has given birth to the Andean and the Hitite and the Mexic civilizations; or it may be of ‘the archipelago type’ which has given birth to the Minoan and the Hellenic civilizations, and to the Far Eastern Civilization in Japan; or it may be of ‘the continental type’ which has given birth to the Sinic and the Indic and the Western civilizations, and to the Orthodox Christian Civilization in Russia; or it may be of ‘the jungle type’ which has given birth to the Mayan Civilization.
The main point is that the same culture or civilization can flourish in different environments, and different cultures can coexist in the same or similar environment. In the Indian state of Punjab, we have the culture associated with the Sikh religion, where every male follower of Sikhism wears a turban and remains hirsute. However, proponents of other religious faiths with different dressing styles also reside here. The new Punjab has become urbanized without ‘turbanization’. The portion of Punjab that has gone to Pakistan still speaks Punjabi, writes in the Urdu script and pursues Islam. The turban (tied in a particular style) is the symbol of a religion and is not necessitated by the climate of the province. The Indian diaspora has settled in different climes, and yet they have retained their identity as Indians.
Climate and Civilization
These two maps showing estimates of health and energy and of level of civilization show considerable similarity, with the help of the proper shading. Yet these supposed correlations may be due to influences other than climate and health. (From Ellsworth Huntington, Climate and Civilization, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1924, p. 295.)
Of course, this is not to deny the role of geography either on physical types or on social formations. What is emphasized is the point that
Not all the differences in physical types among human beings are the result of geographical location. Many are the result of biological mutations, minor ones, such as hair form. These mutations occur in the genes. The carrier of hereditary traits, which are pretty well protected from most climatic influences, though they may be affected, for instance, by radiation (Ogburn and Nimkoff 1958: 104).
The same is true of cultures.
In the southwestern part of the United States the Hopi and the Navaho Indians have lived for centuries in the same locality, but their cultures are quite different. The houses of Hopi are built of adobe and may rise several stories like apartment houses. The Navaho live in single-room dwellings. Shaped much like the Eskimo domed snow house, but built of branches of trees. The Hopi are agriculturists and harvest crops. The Navaho are nomads and graze sheep. The religion and family life of the two groups are quite different (ibid.: 110).
In our discussion on the influence of biology or ecology on social life, that is, culture, we have tried to provide evidence to counter the extremist claims of biologists and environmentalists. The fact that both have over-accentuated their points of view indicates that the truth lies somewhere in between. We have not said that biological or ecological factors are of no relevance to human society, nor are we claiming that human culture has complete control over biological or ecological phenomena. In the early phases of human civilization, humans must certainly have been circumscribed by the limitations of their locality, but as they lived and created culture, they modified their environs. What MacIver and Page have called the ‘outer’ environment is the product of this interaction between Nature and Man. In fact, this aspect is broadly covered by economic life, which deals with the problem of meeting ever-increasing wants with decreasing resources.
It can safely be said that at lower levels of cultural (which also includes technological) development, there was a greater dependence on nature. As nature placed limitations, so did the biology of humans, on the range of human interventions in a given context. Nature and biology conditioned the personal and social lives of the individual. It is through inventions and discoveries that Man has been able to convert some of these conditions into means to attain desired goals. The geographical distance between one place and another remains unchanged, but it can be covered either on foot or on a vehicle. In this instance, geographical distance remains a condition, and the individual overcomes this hurdle through movement. When he uses a vehicle, the time taken to cover the distance is minimized—thus, distance is shortened without altering the geography. Again, a horse ride can be replaced with a mechanized car of several horse-power to reduce the distance, that is, the time taken to cover the distance. With an aeroplane, the distance is measured as the ‘crow flies’, which is geographically shorter. The recent construction of a bridge over the sea in the midst of Mumbai has reduced the time taken to reach the same destination using the same mode of transport. With technological advancement, culture has overcome the limitations of geographical conditions. Through technology, we have also overcome biological limitations: aviation technology has made it possible for us to fly, cover long distances and overcome the geographical hurdles posed by mountains, oceans and deserts. We have succeeded in inventing planes that fly faster than the speed of sound (average speed 2,140 km/ph).5 The revolution in information technology has made us psychologically mobile (empathetic), so that we are connected to each other despite a distance of thousands of miles. We have even ushered in an era of Internet marriages.
Our geography provides the basic materials needed to build items of our material culture. However, we do not use all of them either because of a lack of manpower or because of a different set of priorities. And materials not found in a given setting are imported from abroad. It is only after the depletion of resources that we have launched programmes of research for alternative sources of energy. Through our interventions, we have also created conditions for ‘climate change’, which has led to concern for the survival of our own species. The big hole in the ozone layer is caused by humans. Today, it is not that climate change is affecting our lives, it is that we have been responsible for climate change and have been called upon to halt this process. Technological intervention will save us from the evil consequences of the impending climate change.6 It also reminds us that technology and science have enlarged the realm of the possible—several things regarded as humanly impossible in the past are now within reach. Today, though, we are alerted to another aspect of our cultural life: all that is technologically possible may not be socially desirable or culturally acceptable. Humans today do not deal with only their present, but also engage in fashioning the future of our societies and cultures.
Society educates its young for future roles and fashions the future through socialization and enculturation. It is to these processes that we now turn.
SOCIALIZATION
At birth, a human child is hopelessly dependent on others, and this dependence is much longer compared to other animals. At age 12, a dog, for example, is already a great-great grandparent and is ready to leave the world; at age 12, a human is still a child, a juvenile, and needs continued care in all respects. The period of intensive learning continues until he/she attains adulthood—variously defined as age 18 + or 21+.
To quote Harry M. Johnson:
At birth the human infant is unable to take part in any human society. What its mental life is like we cannot know directly, but we do know that it has no interest in regulating its bowel movements, no sense of propriety about revealing the various parts of its body—indeed, no conception of its body as something distinct from other objects, or of its fingers and toes as distinct parts of its body ….
Gradually, as the child grows and interacts with the members of its immediate family, then with members of the neighbourhood, and then comes in contact with various other formal and informal groups, he/she begins to behave as others do, comes to know what is right and what is wrong, what is appropriate and when. His id—the animal in him—gets tamed, and he learns to control himself. The child is rewarded for ‘proper’ behaviour and punished for ‘mistakes’ or unwanted behaviour—what is proper and what is not is certainly a matter of cultural definition. And thus, through this process he learns the culture of his society. Rewards are a source of gratification, while punishments cause deprivation. A smile, a kiss, a hug is a reward; a refusal to converse, to pay heed to the child’s demands, or even a slap on the face is a punishment. The more severe the punishment, the more likely is the child to refrain from repeating the act.
The process by means of which an individual is integrated into his society is called socialization. It involves the adaptation of the individual to the fellow members of his group, which in turn, gives him status and assigns to him the role he plays in the life of the community. He passes through various stages, each distinguished by certain permitted and prohibited forms of behaviour, such as playfulness in the young or the manipulation of power among the elders. As sexual maturity is reached, he again participates in a family grouping, but now as a parent, protector and teacher (Herskovits, 1969: 325).
This process is common both among infra-human animals and humans; however, it is much more complex in humans. ‘This means … that the process of socialization is only a part of the process by means of which men adjust to their fellows in working with the total body of traditions—economic, social, technological, religious, aesthetic, linguistic—to which they fall heir’ (ibid.: 326).
Herskovits calls all this process ‘Education’. The initial process common to all animals is, for him, socialization; however, induction into culture is enculturation. Learning beyond this is a continuous process. This entire process of learning is, for him, education. Herskovits defines enculturation thus:
The aspects of learning experience that mark off man from other creatures, and by means of which he achieves competence in his culture, may be called enculturation. This is in essence a process of conscious or unconscious conditioning, exercised within the limits sanctioned by a given body of custom …. Like any phenomenon of human behaviour, this process is most complex. In the earliest years of an individual’s life, it is largely a matter of conditioning to fundamentals—habits of eating, sleeping, speaking, personal cleanliness—whose inculcation has been shown to have special significance in shaping the personality and forming the habit patterns of the adult in later life. Yet the enculturative experience is not terminated at the close of infancy … (ibid.: 327).
Herskovits regards enculturation as a life-long process, which involves not only learning, but much more besides. To quote the author once again: ‘The enculturation of the individual in the early years of his life is the prime mechanism making for cultural stability, while the process, as it operates on more mature folk, is highly important in inducing change’ (ibid.). A close reading of the subtle distinction between these two interrelated processes would suggest that socialization is a process through which the ‘animal’ in man is made ‘social’; but his cultural colouring is provided by the process of enculturation, which begins to overlap as the infant grows older. You have to be social in order to become cultural. Other animals become social but not cultural; culture is unique to humans. Since the world is characterized by cultural diversity, a person socialized in one culture can move to another society and get enculturated in it. A human can live in two cultures, and may even create a sandwich culture when pressed between two cultures—the parent culture and the host culture. This is an important distinction, but in most sociological writings socialization is the only term used to convey the differing concepts of socialization, enculturation and education.
Socialization is not a one-shot affair. It is a lengthy process and occurs in stages commensurate with the stages of a child’s growth. It should be emphasized that not all learning is socialization. This process relates to the internalization of social roles. As a new member, a child is taught about his roles and those of others in the social system. Distinctions of gender, age and social proximity are learnt through this process. The child also develops skills of communication through which he convey his feelings and demands, and also learns and understands the messages relayed by others in the sphere of social interaction.
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