Some Principles of Sociocultural Integration

The purpose of this paper is to discuss certain principles of sociocultural integration. Preliminary discussion of sociocultural systems includes consideration of the basic aspects of such systems, personnel and customs (behaviors that are socially learned and socially shared). The basic, irreducible functional unit of all sociocultural systems is seen to be a combination formed from cultural elements. This unit may form part of a cultural complex, the various parts of which may be linked in several ways-concurrent or simultaneous, consecutive, tangential, or feed-in, feed-out. Wider than the cultural complex in its significance in the life-space of participants is the institution; still more inclusive is the subculture. Goals and values are associated with patterns at all levels of the system. The situation in which a sociocultural system operates is characterized by features that are given, among them the natural environment, human beings, learned behavior, and foreign influences, and features that are produced by the operation of the system, among them social subdivisions of the population, sociocultural aspects of personality, material features, and resultant states. The principles of sociocultural integration include boundary maintenance, consistency-neutral or positive-among the component patterns of the system, compatibility, adequate communications, leadership, power, and dominant goals

Population · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Psychology · Social Psychology · Socioeconomic and Demographic Analysis

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