Economic Systems

It is the division of labour along accupational lines. There are found many kinds of specialists: metalworkers,scribes,astrologers,soldiers,dancers,musicians,alchemists,prostitutes,
eunuchs and so forth.
Production of goods is everywhere followed by distribution and exchange. A gives something to B who gives a gift to A a later date. This takes place in a network of rights and obligations among kindred;one has both an obligation to give and a right to receive on certain occasions and in certain contexts. The whole process is of a mutual aid and cooperation. Exchange or circulation of goods and services take place in a sociocultural system where division of labour finds expression in specialization; the ironworker must obtain food and the horticulturalist needs iron hoe.
Exchange of goods between sociocultural systems is universal.

Social Organization

A sociocultural system presents itself under two aspects: structure and function.
Systems have only two significant kinds of parts: the local territorial group and the family. There is a corresponding minimum of specialization, limited, with but few exceptions, to division of function or labour, along sex lines and to division between children and adults. The exceptions are headmen and shamans, they are special organs, so to speak, in the body politic. The headman is a mechanism of social integration, direction and control expressing the consensus of the band. The shaman is also an instrument of society; he may be regarded as the first specialist in the history of human society.
All human societies are divided into classes and segments.

Class: indefinite number of groupings each of which differ in composition from the other or others, such as men and women: married, widowed and divorced; children and adults.

Segment: indefinite number of groupings all of which are alike in structure and fuction: families,lineages, clans and so on.

On more advanced levels of development there are occupational classes such as farmers,pastoralists, artisans, metalworkers and scribes and territorial segments such as wards, barrios, counties and states.

Segmentation: is a cultural process essential to the evolution of culture, it is a means of increasing the size of a society or a grouping within a sociocultural system, such as an army. Segmentation is a means of maintaining solidarity and at the same time it enlarges the social grouping. A tribe for example could not increase in size beyond a certain point without resorting to segmentation: the formation of lineages, class, and the like.

Cultural Types

The relationship between culture and topographic area suggests the concept of Culture Type, such as hunting and gathering or a special way of hunting. Culture is viewed in terms of meaningfull organizations of traits: areas, occupations,configurations( art, mathemathics, physics) or patterns ( in which psychological factors are the bases of organization). Clark Wissler's " universal cultural pattern" was a recognition of the fact that all particular and actual cultures possess the same general categories: language, art, social organization, religion, technology and so on.

Diffusion of Culture

Culture is contagious, that is customs,belief,tools,techiniques,folktales,ornaments and so on. These elements may diffuse from one people or region to another. To be sure, a culture trait must offer some advantage, some utility or pleasure to be sought and accepted by people.
The degree of isolation of a sociocultural system brought up by " physical barriers" such as deserts, mountains ranges and bodies of water has an important bearing upon the ease or difficulty of diffusion. (Tobacco,coffee, the sweet potato are examples of diffusion).

Culture related to the environment

Every sociocultural system exists in a natural habitat and the environment exerts an influence upon the cultural system. The environment permits, at times encourages and also prohibits the acquisition or use of certain cultural traits but otherwise does not determine culture change. The introduction of the horse in certain cultures for example made great changes like power and speed. If the culture lives near the ocean or in the mountain, these, will exert an influence on how they dress or what they eat.

Another marvellous view of Atacama

Evaluative grading

Culture has ponderable values as well as imponderable, and the ponderable ones can be measured with objective, meaninful yardsticks. A Culture is a means to an end: the security and continuity of life. Some kinds of Culture are better means of providing food than hunting and gathering, also some Cultures have more effective means of coping with desease than others and this superiority is expressed mathematically in death rates. It should be noted this is not equivalent to saying that man is happier or that the dignity of the individual is greater in an industrialized or agricultural sociocultural system than in one supported by human labour alone and sustained wholly by wild foods.