W. Davd Phillips

In the last post, which does require a password (sign up for my newsletter on the left and I’ll send it to you), I noted that Hunter has condensed his alternative view of culture into eleven propositions – seven about culture itself and four about cultural change. In this post, I will describe the four propositions about changing culture.

Proposition 1: Cultures change from the top down, rarely, if ever from the bottom up.
It is sometimes true that economic revolts and social movements occur from the “bottom up” – through the mobilization of ordinary people – and while they can tremendous influence on their own terms, the specific ends are often limited and/or short-lived. Yet the deepest and most enduring forms for cultural chane nearly always occur from the top down. The work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of the elites: gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life. Change does not happen until it is embraced and propagated by the elites.

Proposition 2: Change is typically initiated by elites who are outside of the centermost positions of prestige.
When change is initiated in the center, then it typically comes from outside of the center’s nucleus. Wherever innovation begins, it comes as a challenge to the dominant ideas and moral systems defined by the elites who possess the highest levels of symbolic capital. Innovation, in other words, generally moves from elites and the institutions they lead to the general population but among elites who do not necessarily occupy the highest echelons of prestige. The novelty they represent and offer calls into question the rightness and legitimacy of the established ideas and practices of the culture’s leading gatekeepers. The goal of any such innovation is to infiltrate the center and, in time, redefine the leading ideas and practices of the center.

Proposition 3: World-changing is most concentrated when the networks of elites and the institutions they lead overlap.
The impetus, energy, and direction for world-making and world-changing are greatest where various forms of cultural, social, economic, and often political resources overlap. In short, when networks of elites in overlapping fields of culture and overlapping spheres of social life come together with their varied resources and act in common purpose, cultures do change and change profoundly. Persistence over time is essential; little of significance happens in three to five years. But when cultural and symbolic capital overlap with social capital and economic capital and, in time, political capital, and these various resources are directed toward shared ends, the world, indeed, changes.

Proposition 4: Cultures change, but rarely if ever without a fight.
By its nature, culture is a realm in which institutions and their agents seek to defend one understanding of the world against alternatives, which are always either present or latent. That work is the work of legitimation and delegitimization; of naming one normal and right and its competition, deviant, inferior, stupid, un-American, or just plain evil. Yet conflict is one of the permanent fixtures of cultural change. It is typically through different manifestations of conflict and contest that change in culture is forged.

Q4U: Do you think Hunter is correct? What other ideas would you suggest?