Society, Race, Civilization, Nation-1

As mentioned, the first signifying orders were forged in tribal settings. These came about, arguably, to help tribal people regulate and safe­guard the ways in which they lived, planned, and communicated. The early tribal orders thus probably emerged to satisfy the apparent need... the first sentient and reflective human beings felt to preserve and transmit to subsequent generations any experiences they perceived were meaningful, any communal forms of expression they thought were useful, and any knowledge or skill they felt served some benefi­cial function.

Archeological evidence suggests that as the members of the early tribes became more culturally sophisticated around 10,000 in a society agreed to accept so that they could protect themselves from their own brutish instincts and make possible the satisfaction of desires.Political and legal systems probably started out in the shadow of human needs, urges, and fears, as Hobbes maintained. But the fact that they overlapped with religious spheres in early societies suggests that there was more to the emergence of politics in human affairs than just the regulation of brutish instincts. The rise of the political sphere in human cultures probably reflected the reorientation of the "communal gaze" away from looking "up" or "beyond" to the gods for guidance, as it was accustomed to doing in tribal contexts, to looking "down" to­wards the more immediate, secular world of human leaders. As the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) observed, this is why political and legal systems, unlike religious ones, can be legitimately overthrown if they fail to discharge their functions to the people since, unlike relig­ious systems, these are perceived as being totally the brainchildren of human minds.

The Legal Sphere

Rudimentary types of legal systems existed in early tribal cultures. They were a blend of custom, religion, and magic grounded in consen­sus about what was appropriate and right for the tribe as a whole. The visible authority was the powerful clan member and/or the religious ruler; the ultimate authorities were the gods, whose will was thought to be revealed in the forces of Nature and in the revelations of the relig­ious leader. Wrongs against the tribe, such as acts of sacrilege or breaches of custom, were met with group sanctions, ridicule, and hos­tility. The wrath of the gods, on the other hand, was appeased typically through ritualistic ceremonies ending in sacrifice or in the expulsion of the wrongdoer. Wrongs against individuals, such as murder, theft, adultery, or failure to repay a debt, were avenged by the family of the victim, often in the form of actions against the family of the wrongdoer.In the early super-tribal collectivities, secondary legal spheres grew in tandem with political systems. Courts and written laws were estab­lished to replace religious principles or rules and the advice-giving practices of tribal chieftains, elders, or shamans. One of the first set of written laws dates from Hammurabi (died 1750 BC), King of Babylon, who united the diverse tribes in Mesopotamia by strategically conquer­ing territories in the region from approximately 1792 to 1750 BC.The first significant example of a written legal code is the ancient Roman one—a code that has influenced most of the legal systems of the modern world. In the eighth century BC the legal sphere of Rome was characterized largely by a blend of custom and interpretation by magistrates of the will of the gods. But the magistrates eventually lost their legitimacy as the plebeian classes threatened to revolt against their dis­criminatory practices. This led to one of the most consequential devel­opments in the history of law—the Twelve Tables of Rome, which con­sisted of laws engraved on bronze tablets in the fifth century BC. Con­cerned with matters of property, payment of debts, and appropriate compensation for damage to persons, these tables are the source for the widespread modern belief that fairness in human affairs demands that laws regulating human conduct be expressed in writing.The common-law system of England is another well-known his­torical example of a legal code that was devised to replace previous systems. Before the Norman Conquest (1066), England was a loose con­federation of societies, whose laws were largely tribal in origin. The Anglo-Norman rulers then created a system of centralized courts that operated under a single set of laws that superseded the rules laid down by earlier societies. The resulting legal system, known as the Common Law of England, began with laws for common customs, but over time involved the courts in constantly revising laws.

The Economic Sphere

Economic activities in tribal societies were based on hunting, gathering, and the exchange of manufactured goods. As such activities expanded in new super-tribal collectivities, the economic sphere gained more and more autonomy, taking on a greater role in the development of tech­nology and in shaping signifying orders.The importance and legitimacy of the economic sphere in the West­ern world were discussed by Adam Smith (1723-1790) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Although the two had many differences of opinion, they shared the view that private property and free markets were the cornerstones of all successful modern economic systems. Opposition to the Smith-Mill view came primarily from social theorists like Karl Marx (1818-1883), for whom the very principle of private property and free markets was the key to the inequities and exploitation that characterize modern societies. Marx believed that this principle was certain to falter because it reflected the inequitable practice of concentrating income and wealth in ever fewer hands, thus creating increasingly severe crises of unemployment and social unrest.

The Educational Sphere

In tribal cultures, the vital function of transmitting the signifying order to subsequent generations was, and continues to be, carried out within the primary spheres. In ancient Egypt, for instance, the priests of the society also taught writing, science, mathematics, and architecture in temple schools. To this day, these spheres are still perceived as critical in guaranteeing the preservation and perpetuation of the signifying order—i.e. they are felt to be fundamental in imparting to young chil­dren what they should know first about the world, what language they should learn to speak, and what values they should acquire. But in modern cultures today the function of educating the young after the neonatal and early infancy periods of development is expected to take place through a secondary sphere—known more commonly as the school system—which provides professionally-trained individuals for this task.It was the ancient Greeks who dislodged schooling from the relig­ious sphere. In the Greece of classical times the practice of assigning the teaching of the liberal arts, mathematics, philosophy, aesthetics, and gymnastic training to secular teachers trained in each of these areas grew out of the notion of a "well-rounded" education. After an initial period of intense loyalty to the old religious traditions, Roman society approved the appointment of Greek teachers, but eventually developed its own highly-trained secular educators.

According to the first-century educator Quintilian (c. 35-95 AD), the proper training of the child was to be organized around the study of language, literature, philosophy, and the sciences, with particular attention to be paid to the develop­ment of character. As the Roman Empire declined, Christianity became a potent cultural force in the countries of the Mediterranean region and in several other areas of Europe. Since then the history of education in Western society has been marked by a struggle between religious and secular forces for control of this vital sphere. The early Fathers of the Church, especially St. Augustine (354-430 AD), emphasized the devel­opment of educational methods and curricula that reflected Christian ideas. Two revivals of learning took place in the ninth century, one on the Continent, under Charlemagne (742-814 AD), and one in England, under King Alfred the Great (849-899 AD). Between the eighth and the eleventh centuries the Moorish conquerors of Spain revived the secular idea of the Roman university in the capital city of Cordoba, which be­came a center for the study of philosophy, ancient civilizations, science, and mathematics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.In the same centuries, education came under the influence of the ideas and doctrines of the Scholastic theologians, who reconciled Chris­tian theology with the pre-Christian philosophical ideas of Aristotle and Plato. The theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142?), pupil of St. Thomas Aquinas, and other renowned Scholastic teachers attracted many students, laying the intellectual foundations for the establish­ment of universities in the north of Europe in the twelfth century.Of significance to the development of schooling systems during the Middle Ages were the views of Muslim and Jewish scholars. Not only did they promote advanced forms of education within their own socie­ties, but they also served as translators of ancient Greek writings, thus bringing the ideas of the classical world to the attention of European scholars. Many excellent teachers of the Greek language and literature who had migrated from Constantinople to Italy influenced the work of European educators such as the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536?) and the French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). The major emphasis of this period was, therefore, on the classical sub­jects taught in the Latin grammar school, which remained as the chief secondary school of Europe until the early twentieth century.During the seventeenth century, the emphasis shifted towards sci­entific disciplines. Influenced by the writings of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Christ's Hospital in London was probably the first secon­dary school to introduce a curriculum based on scientific subjects. That was also the century in which the French philosopher and mathemati­cian Rene Descartes (1596-1650) emphasized the use of logical reason­ing as a fundamental skill to be honed by educational curricula, while John Locke (1632-1704), like Bacon before him, recommended a cur­riculum and method of education based on the empirical examination of demonstrable facts before reaching conclusions. But the greatest educator of the century was Jan Komensky, the Protestant bishop of Moravia, better known by his Latin name, Comenius (1592-1670). Comenius emphasized stimulating the pupil's interest and teaching with reference to concrete things rather than to verbal or logical de­scriptions of them. He clearly foreshadowed modern-day educational techniques.The foremost educational theorist of the eighteenth century was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who insisted that educators should treat children as children, not as miniature adults, cultivating the per­sonality of the individual child with great care and devotion. Moti­vated by Rousseau's persuasive arguments, governments in England, France, Germany, Italy, and other European countries established obligatory national school systems designed to actualize Rousseau's idea that true education was to be based on the needs and potentials of the child, rather than on the needs of society or the precepts of religion.

This "child-centered" view of education was entrenched further in the Western mindset by the work of the American philosopher and educa­tor John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey's ideas continue to inform the major methods of instruction in elementary schools of the United States and other Western countries to the present day.In the twentieth century secular educational systems became preva­lent throughout industrialized societies. But even in such cultures, cer years ago—i.e. as their signifying orders grew in complexity to meet increasing technological and agricultural needs—they sought larger territories with more natural resources within which to live. This brought about a breakdown of some of the early tribal cultures. As they expanded, the tribes came to accept and accommodate, by necessity or coercion, members of other tribes within their broadening habitats. This led to what the anthropologist Desmond Morris (1969) calls the formation of super-tribes—expanded groupings of people that came about as a consequence of tribal expansion and tribal admixture. The evidence suggests that the first super-tribal arrangements were estab­lished on the basis of a dominant signifying order—typically that of the founding or conquering tribe—so that social interaction and shared activities could unfold efficiently and routinely. The first super-tribes date back only 5,000-6,000 years, when the first cities came onto the scene. Given their larger territorial extension and their acceptance of competing tribal signifying orders, these constituted true societies in the modern sense of the word.

Kaynak: Analyzing cultures: an introduction and handbook / Marcel Danesi and Paul Perron. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1999.