Response to Bateson

Response to Bateson

Bateson begins by introducing his disagreements with the Memorandum written by a Committee of the Social Sciences research Council regarding their strategies for creating categories of culture, and the interactions between cultures. Bateson first points out that the efforts to create categories for culture are a somewhat irrelevant because there was no clear problem to be solved using the categories. This supposedly made the argument for the categories they created weak because they weren't necessary. He insists that it is first necessary to formulate a better idea of the problems for the categories first.

    To state it simply, the council is looking for ways to get groups of people to adapt aspects of another culture. Of the main problems with the original categorical scheme was that its based on the economic profit, willingness to accept foreign values, and ethical and religious practices of the country which is to be accepting culture. However, the only things impact the development of culture is the mechanism of satisfying sexual needs, enforcing social norms, or to supply individuals with food. The former are simply abstractions which are used to describe cultures in words.

    When two cultures are in significant contact with each other, they must either completely fuse communities, persist among one another is dynamic equilibrium, or one or both groups must be entirely eliminated. Bateson describes in detail how aspects of culture contribute to the drastic outcomes of culture contact.

    I thought this writing was very well crafted. It's accessible and driven by, for the most part, 

reasonable logic. He connects his writing to social issues that are relevant in both the 1930's and 

to a lesser extent, today. There are definitely plenty of controversial ideas, but looking at this 

excerpt from an author's standpoint, it's very well written and supported.