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Culture and Civilization-12
- Mr. Vachaspati V.

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Leslie White (1900-1975) In his famous book, the Science of Culture (1949) and The Evolution of Culture (1959), White dealt with the theoretical issues related to his approaches of neo Evolutionism. The basic strategy of White’s Evolutionism is cultural materialism phrased in energy terms. For White, process related to socio-cultural system consists of three parts: 1. Techno-economic. 2. Social 3. Ideological. Thus, Culture become primarily a mechanism for harnessing energy and of putting it to work in service of man. Secondly, of challenging and regular behaviour not directly concerned with subsistence and offence and defence. Social systems are therefore, determined by technological systems. Philosophies and arts express experience as it is defined by technology and refracted by social system. For White Culture is an ‘extrasomatic temporal continuum’ of things and events dependant upon symbolism. Specifically and concretely, Culture consists of tools, implements, utensils, clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, belief, rituals, games, works of art, language etc. The definition of Culture by White is like Tylor’s definition of Culture. But he has placed emphasis on extrasomatic temporal continuum, which is key concept in White’s sequence. This approach of White can be understood in following series of logical steps: · Culture depends upon men for its existence, but can be analysed as a system in and of itself. Man need not be considered as variable in the system, so long it is understood that the level of analysis is the totality of Culture throughout time, not specific Cultures at specific times. · All life can be understood as a process of capturing and utilizing free energy as trees convert so large light energy into protoplasm, and man converts food energy into new cells. Thus, Culture is fundamentally a means for capturing and utilizing energy that is its primary function. When Culture is considered as a system in and of itself, its dynamics are analogous to those operating at the organic level i.e. Culture system captures and utilized by the energy. In organic Evolution energy captured and used by the system increased, the system itself becomes more complex and highly organized. · The cultural systems can be divided into three subsystems. The most basic one is technology, tools, weapons and knowledge of their use. Here lies the means of capturing and utilizing energy as well as for meeting two important requirements for cultural survival, protection from elements and defence against enemies. The other two subsystems are social structural and ideological of philosophical (For example, marriage, kinship and family, belief systems, totems, taboos etc). All the three are mutually influencing interrelationships, but technology dominates by operating through social structure on ideology. Thus, both social structure and prevalent ideology are shaped mostly by the technology, even though they occasionally operate to limit the extent of technological development. · Technological systems controls the amount of energy captured and utilized by the cultural system. As the technology becomes more efficient more energy is captured and utilized, which leads to development in the Culture as a whole. White stated this formally as the law of cultural development, which is as follows: “Culture advances as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year increased or as the efficiency of energy of the means of controlling the energy is increase or both”(1959:56). This law of cultural development can be expressed as a formula, which is as follows: E X T = C Where E is energy, T is technology and C is cultural development. Energy is more important than technology, however, technology can conceivable become extremely efficient without leading to development, if the amount of captured energy is, thereby, increased. Technology is vehicle, means, scaffolding and the skeleton, whereas energy is the dynamic and living force that animates cultural system and develops them to higher levels and forms. The operation of this law is potent in the history of mankind. Hunting and Gathering subsistence produced a somewhat low level of usable energy in the portion to the amount expanded by hunters. Neither fire nor winds were significant as sources of energy in this earliest and longest stage of cultural Evolution. Energy captured as limited to what men’s own muscle could provide as means. White estimated that in such hunting and gathering societies, the amount of energy was limited to about 1/20 horsepower per capita per year. As soon as agriculture and animal husbandry were discovered, a new quantum jump in cultural Evolution took place. Now man could control his sources of energy, which meant greater yields in usable energy with less energy expenditure by man himself. This was agricultural Evolution as a result of which labour specialization, large population, ever more sophisticated technology in short civilisation like ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome etc came into existence. Energy exploitation by capture then hit plateau, until next break through, the fuel Evolution. This corresponds to growth of industrial production, which used as coal as a major source of energy, much greater than the potential of farming and herding. The amount of energy per capita per year went another quantum jump upward. This time, the development was more spectacular than what occurred as a result of agriculture. Guided by war in search for large shares of economic market, mankind developed their industrial technology to a point at which they could no profitably continue the full production in their factories. Thus, there was another plateau, but a brief one, until the next and most recent one breakthrough in the harnessing the energy, the atomic Evolution. Hence, White’s stages of development were Savagery, Barbarism, Civilisation and Energy Revolution. He added one more stage in stages suggested by Tylor and Morgan. Throwing light on social organisation, he opined that it is combination of three processes i.e. nutrition, protection and reproduction. He formulated social organisation as: N X P X R = S Where in N is nutrition, P is protection, R is reproduction and S is social organisation. Like wise, White formulated Property as follows: T X L = P T is thing, L is labour and P is property. When a thing is added or developed or nurtured with labour, one will become owner of it. Hence, White was interested in general Evolution of the mankind. Hence, Julian Steward called him as Universal Evolutionist.

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