The Cultural Core
The Cultural Core
Two groups of elements
- Group I: universals and specialties, persisting and largely unchanging.
- Group II: alternatives, unintegrated and often inconsistent, surrounding the core.
What the cultural core is
- The central body of elements: universals and specialties.
- The fundamental rules, knowledge, and skills by which people live and conduct themselves.
What the core does
- Gives the society its stability and vitality.
- Underlies all social institutions and grounds moral and social judgment.
- Gives the individual personal stability and emotional security.
Linton’s three categories are not just a list; they fall into a shape. The universals and specialties cluster into a stable centre, while the alternatives circle around the outside. That stable centre is the cultural core, and it carries more weight than anything else in social diagnosis.
Two groups of elements
Linton’s three categories regroup into two when you ask how stable they are.
Group I holds the universals and specialties together. These elements are more or less persistent and unchanging. They are mutually compatible, though not always logically consistent, and they form a stable body of tried and accepted elements. Because they are settled, any attempt to add to them or delete from them tends to face resistance.
Group II holds the alternatives. These elements surround the central Group I elements like an outer ring. They are unintegrated and frequently inconsistent. Crucially, they are the candidates for admission to the central body: the place where new elements wait, some of which may eventually be accepted into the core.
| Group | Contents | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Group I | Universals and specialties | Stable, persistent, resists change |
| Group II | Alternatives | Unintegrated, shifting, candidates for the core |
Group I is universals and specialties; Group II is alternatives
Group I is the stable, persistent core that resists change. Group II is the shifting ring of alternatives around it, unintegrated and inconsistent, holding candidates for admission to the core.
What the cultural core is and does
The cultural core is the central body of elements, the universals and specialties of Group I. It is the set of fundamental rules, knowledge, and skills by which people live, carry on their conduct, rationalise that conduct, and build their hopes and expectations. It is the part of a culture people rely on without questioning.
The core does heavy work for a society. From its elements a society draws both its stability and its vitality. The core underlies all social institutions and forms the basis of moral and social judgment, the shared ground on which people decide what is right and acceptable. It also shapes the general pattern and spirit of a culture, which in turn determines a people’s political and economic habits: the kind of institutions they build, the extent to which they compete or collaborate, and the way they control those who deviate from accepted conduct.
The central body of universals and specialties a society lives by
It is the fundamental rules, knowledge, and skills by which people conduct and rationalize their lives. A society draws its stability and vitality from it, and it grounds moral and social judgment.
The core and the individual
The cultural core is not only a fact about societies; it reaches into each person. An individual largely gains their personal stability and emotional security from the cultural core. It is where a person finds their deepest sentiments and their most cherished objects of allegiance and faith.
This closes the loop of social diagnosis. The core holds a society together and, at the same time, holds the individual together. A curriculum that passes on the cultural core is doing something profound: it is giving learners both their place in a society and a source of their own steadiness. That is why reading a culture carefully, all the way down to its core, is the groundwork for building a curriculum that fits the people it serves.
It gives them personal stability and emotional security
A person finds their deepest sentiments and most cherished allegiances in the cultural core. It holds both the society and the individual together, which is why a curriculum attends to it.
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