Cultural Lag

I learned about the concept of cultural lag (originating with William F. Ogburn, Social Change) from Richard L. Brinkman, author of Cultural Economics, in his courses (two undergrad and one grad) in U.S. Economic History. Knowledge is understood as akin to DNA, coding human behavior and changing (mutating) as a result of the impact of constantly changing environmental, political, and economic factors. (In the language of overdetermination knowledge is the product of these other factors and necessarily changes as they change, the way a hologram changes as the laser light and mirrors change). What we know is a product of past experiences. Culture is, then, the store of knowledge at any given moment. Societies are porous vessels for this knowledge (knowledge knows no political boundaries). However, the more closed a community, the more its social DNA (culture) will vary from that of other societies. Brinkman (and Ogburn before him) understood knowledge as capable of providing human beings with the ability to solve problems, to make decisions that lead to successful (survival) results, but that the degree to which a culture is permeable to useful knowledge depends upon the store of prior knowledge in that community, as well as existing political and economic arrangements. For example, a community may reject ideas that would help that community to solve problems because of a history of religious belief that the knowledge in question is evil and individuals attempting to spread such knowledge should be silenced and punished. It may also reject new knowledge because parties in the society have an economic interest in blocking the adoption of this knowledge and the political or economic power to squelch it.

The possibility that knowledge could exist that might help those humans living in community A to solve problems but be blocked from being adopted into the knowledge-DNA of community A, even under conditions where the unsolved problems lead to negative consequences, even deaths within community A, while other communities, such as B, accept this knowledge (the knowledge permeates the culture and changes it) and are able to solve the related problems, produces a cultural lag, where A lags behind B in this particular aspect of human knowledge evolution. A concrete example is stem cell research. U.S. culture includes cultural aspects (forms of what Thorstein Veblen would call ceremonial knowledge) that view such research as evil. Those who are most influenced by this particular ceremonial knowledge have sufficient power to block the permeation of stem cell research into many sites in U.S. society, thus slowing the advance of this particular knowledge (both Brinkman and Ogburn would use the teleological term "advance," so I follow their lead in this particular blog entry and welcome post-modern/post-structuralist critiques of that use). China, on the other hand, is more permeable to such knowledge. Stem cell research faces fewer road blocks in China. This creates the possibility for a cultural lag (in this particular branch of human knowledge), with China taking the lead over the United States.

This concept of cultural lag could also be used to make sense of the differences between the former slave states of the United States and many of the so-called blue states (which include the Northeast, the Pacific Coast states, and other states with a longer history of industrialization, higher levels of educational achievement, a longer history of highly organized, skilled self-employed artisans (ancients), and a more constricted or nonexistent slave experience). Past differences in class and other experiences in these sub-societies (of the larger U.S. society) continue to influence life in these states, and not only political life. Slavery is, in that sense, alive and well in the culture of the former slave states (and influences U.S. culture as a whole). What this tells us is that culture is very resistant to change (often requiring a crisis for the cultural lag to come under effective attack). But this should not be so surprising. Culture represents collective habits, reinforced by peer pressure. It is difficult enough for an individual to change an ingrained habit (I once heard it takes about sixteen weeks of continuously doing something (non-addictive) to form a new habit). The habits that comprise cultural behaviors have been shared and passed along for generations. Add to this that it may very well be in the narrow economic interests of certain institutions to perpetuate aspects of culture that block the adoption of certain types of knowledge and it is all the easier to see why cultural lag (in the Brinkman/Ogburn sense) is not only possible but likely.

Anyway, to end with a bit of levity (I think), here is an interesting story from one of the red states (by the way, when and why did the Grand Old Party become the party of red, instead of blue?). Categorize it under the heading: Anecdotes of Cultural Lag.