Culture and mind in reconstruction bartletts analogy between individual and group processes

Chapter X Culture and mind in reconstruction: Bartlett’s analogy between individual and group processes Brady Wagoner Aalborg University, Denmark SUMMARY Frederic Bartlett is widely recognized for his insight that remembering is (re)constructive, rather than reproductive However, there is much misunderstanding about what precisely he meant by this Many cognitive psychologists, for example, now assume that reconstructive means ‘distorted’ or ‘inaccurate’ memory This paper aims to clarify the concept of reconstruction through an analysis of how Bartlett uses it to describe individual and group processes It will be argued that for Bartlett ‘schemata’ are to the individual as ‘cultural patterns’ are to the social group After briefly describing what schemata and cultural patterns are, five points of comparison will be made: (1) readiness to receive, (2) dominance of the past over the present, (3) stability through plasticity, (4) radical reconstruction, and (5) de- and re-contextualization The paper will conclude by suggesting that the similarities between individual and group processes go beyond analogy, by highlighting how the two levels are interdependent INTRODUCTION: SCHEMATA AND CULTURAL PATTERNS A central idea of Bartlett’s approach is that culture (e.g stories, ideas, designs, ceremonies, scientific theories) is continuously reconstructed (rather than simply reproduced) in action and communication Bartlett’s early experiments aptly demonstrated this process by highlighting, for example, how images and stories are transformed when they are repeatedly or serially reproduced outside their culture of origin He theorized this process of transformation at both individual and group levels At the group level, Bartlett (1923) refers to ‘cultural patterns’ as group norms, which regulate the behavior of the group’s members He borrows heavily from his anthropological mentor W.H.R Rivers (1914), who had argued that the most important factor in social change was cultural contact between groups When groups come into contact they exchange cultural elements, which in turn are transformed in the direction of the ‘cultural patterns’ of the recipient group, a process named ‘conventionalization’ (Rivers, 1912) At the individual level, Bartlett (1932) developed the concept of schema, from the neurologist Henry Head (1920), to articulate the way in which the accumulated past operates en masse in the present Any new action or experience always occurs against the background of an organized mass of previous experience (i.e., schemata) Bartlett (1932) says schemata operate at the intersection between an organism and its environment and are ‘actively doing something all the time’ (p 201) Thus, his concept of schema is incompatible with cognitive psychologist’s understanding of it as a relatively static knowledge structure in the head which functions to store experiences (see Wagoner, under review) Parallels between Bartlett’s theorizing of individual and group processes are apparent even in the unstable terminology he uses to refer to them: one of Bartlett’s (1932) preferred names for schemata was ‘active developing patterns’, whereas he later discusses ‘cultural patterns’ using the phrase ‘group schemata’ In what follows I will outline five conceptual parallels between the two levels in Bartlett’s work COMPARISON 1: READINESS TO RECEIVE A person is not equally ready to receive all impressions What is experienced of the world is a function of the person’s attitude, interests, personal history and group membership These factors constitute a person’s active orientation to the world, aspects of which change from moment to moment, while others endure through ones lifetime The role that a transitory attitude plays in shaping experience can easily be demonstrated with a simple experiment: briefly present subjects with nonsense syllables of different colors, letters and arrangements and instruct them to observe a particular feature Although there is sensory experience of all aspects of stimulus, subjects will remain oblivious to those aspects that are unrelated to the experimental task (Ogden, 1951) Attitudes are (for Bartlett) an active, holistic and variable orientation to the world, which are powerful determinants of what is remembered from a situation His experiments on ‘perceiving and imaging’ (Bartlett, 1916) are apt demonstrations of what the person brings to an experience or reaction, rather than assuming that the stimulus itself determines a response In like fashion, groups not notice or adopt every new element of culture they encounter in other groups Only those elements of cultural for which there is some active interest or perceived utility for the group enter into it As such new technologies are frequently adopted while social organization is particularly resistant to outside influence History is replete with examples of cultural contact without transmission For example, groups without large administrative structures found little interest in adopting or recreating systems of writing (Diamond, 1997) or Asian painters did not adopt the new perspective painting developed during the Renaissance, though they knew of it In short, groups like individual need to be ready for some material if they are to act on it COMPARISON 2: DOMINANCE OF THE PAST OVER THE PRESENT ‘If the experimentalist in psychology once recognizes that he remains to a great extent a clinician, he is forced to realize that the study of any well developed psychological function is possible only in the light of consideration of its history’ (Bartlett, 1932, p 15) This idea of the experimentalist is in direct contrast to the contemporary practice, in which one attempts to manipulate one variable so as to cause a change in another Such an approach becomes untenable once one recognizes that a person’s life history plays no small role in guiding their present response In Bartlett’s (1916) early experiments on perceiving and imagining, he found subjects seeing an image, presented for a faction of a second, according to conventional expectations Also, the ostensively same inkblot would remind subjects of entirely different things, as a function of their previous experience Thus, subjects’ past experience played equal or greater role in the reaction than the stimulus This is because all mental acts for Bartlett involve “an effort after meaning”—that is, a general tendency to connect up some present material to a setting or scheme, which in turn is an organized mass of previous experience As Moscovici said somewhere, “we see what we know, we don’t know what we see” This applies equally to the life of social groups Any new thing must be given a setting and explanation within the group’s existing frame of reference What is not given a place will not be attended to by the group In his book Psychology and Primitive Culture, Bartlett (1923) emphasizes the conservative nature of primitive groups They tend to hold on to traditional ways of acting in and interpreting the world Even when change is compulsory, such as forced conversation to Christianity, natives have been found offering Christian paraphernalia to their overthrown deities, thus retaining their traditions at a deeper level (Bartlett, 1925) COMPARISON 3: STABILITY THROUGH PLASTICITY Both schemata and cultural patterns impose a stable framework on the novelty of the present In this way, there is continuity in change Thus, change and stability need to be understood as interdependent opposites: it is precisely through the flexible application of a stable framework that continuity through time is ensured As Bartlett (1923) said, “it is because the group is selectively conservative that it is also plastic” (p 151-152) In other words, the group is able to persevere its traditions by flexibly adapting them to meet new needs Similarly, at an individual level, we are told that schemata are active and developing, they are the constantly updated standard against which any new response is made The fact that a continuous standard exists ensures continuity, while the fact it is developing in response to present conditions ensures change Bartlett (1932) famously gives the example of a stroke made in a game of tennis: When I make the stroke I not, as a matter of fact, produce something absolutely new, and I never merely repeat something old The stroke is literally manufactured out of the living visual and postural 'schemata' of the moment and their interrelations I may say, I may think that I reproduce exactly a series of text-book movements, but demonstrably I not; just as, under other circumstances, I may say and think that I reproduce exactly some isolated event which I want to remember, and again demonstrably I not (p 202) This, however, does not yet describe what happens in remembering in the full human sense of the word, which is a conscious and self-reflective act Bartlett (1932) calls this “turn[ing] around upon [ones] own ‘schemata’ and construct[ing] them afresh” (p 206) It is this activity that he associates with more radical forms of reconstruction COMPARISON 4: RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION Bartlett implicitly discusses two forms of reconstruction In the first changes are introduced through assimilation, simplification and retention of apparently unimportant details (Bartlett, 1932, ch 16) This describes the conservation through plasticity discussed above Bartlett illustrates this process through both his own experiments and with anthropological reports on the transformation of decorate art and cultural practices as they move from one group to another (see Bartlett, 1923, 1932) However, a more radical reconstructive process can also occur, which he calls ‘social constructiveness’ With this concept Bartlett intended to highlight the fact that groups not only assimilate cultural elements into a familiar cultural framework but are also capable of developing genuinely new forms by welding “together elements of culture coming from diverse sources and having historically, perhaps, very diverse significance” (Bartlett, 1932, p 275) Groups have both a past and an orientation to the future—what Bartlett (1923) calls their ‘prospect’ Social constructiveness points to the creative development of new cultural forms in a group’s movement towards its future An example would be efforts during the First World War to develop radar detection systems (Bloor, 2000) or new scientific theories like Bartlett’s own (see Bartlett, 1958, ch 7) Likewise, at an individual level remembering is said to be constructive because of the interplay of different schemata in the act of remembering Bartlett (1935, p 224) gives the example of an enthusiastic journalist’s account of a cricket match: “To describe the batting of one man he finds it necessary to refer to a sonata of Beethoven; the bowling of another reminds him of a piece of beautifully wrought rhythmic prose written by Cardinal Newman” Bartlett (1932, p 206) called the individual’s radical reconstructive activity “turning around upon schemata and constructing them afresh” COMPARISON 5: DE- AND RE-CONTEXTUALIZATION In radical reconstruction at both individual and group levels parts of one setting must be picked out and placed in another without loosing their identity With regard to social groups, cultural elements are picked out of one group and brought into another This happens under various conditions of cultural contact For example, when an individual group member goes abroad to another group and then returns with new cultural elements, or where two groups live in close contact and a cooperative relationship The latter case can be contrasted with asymmetrical power relations between groups, which tend to foster an all-or-nothing adoption of the dominant group’s culture (Bartlett, 1923) Thus, whereas symmetrical relations between groups enables a free exchange of cultural elements, asymmetrical relations creates conditions for whole bundles of cultural elements to be accepted together Bartlett’s mentor W.H.R Rivers already articulated this theory of cultural dynamics, using a model borrowed from his own work in neurology In a well-known experiment, Rivers and Head (1908) severed a nerve in Head’s arm and a period of five years detailed the return of sensation to the arm They found that first a holistic all-or-nothing sensitivity returned (i.e protopathic sensibility), which registered blunt pressure on the skin but was completely insensitive to stimulation with cotton wool, to pricking with a pin, and to all degrees of heat and cold Later localized sensitivity (i.e., epicritic sensibility) returned and suppressed the influence of the former Following the neurologist Hughling Jackson, they thought the former was evolutionarily a more primitive response The idea of two kinds of sensitivity moves from physiology to culture and then to psychology in Bartlett’s work At an individual level, Bartlett (1932) argues it is through the function of images that elements of one setting are picked out and inserted in another Images, like cultural elements, should not be seen as fixed entities but rather as living and constantly changing In so doing, they are able to better respond to new demands in a changing environment Still, in some cases images (especially visual) remain disconnected in consciousness, yet they have the potential to be integrated with others Returning again to the social group, Bartlett (1923) describes how often new subgroups develop around newly adopted foreign cultural elements and thus tending not to mix with other existing elements In these cases, social constructiveness will only occur to a minimal degree CONCLUSIONS: MORE THAN AN ANALOGY? Although there are conceptual parallels between individual and group levels, schemata and cultural patterns, neither one is reducible to the other On the one hand, properties of social groups (their norms, values and traditions) cannot be reduced to the sum of individual members within them Certain behavior does not occur outside of a social group’s framework On the other hand, the individual is not the automaton of the group One can say that their character is shaped by the social group but not determined by it As a result of their unique history and combining of different schemata an individual’s experience has a personal quality To say that individual and group processes cannot be reduced to the other, however, is not to say that they are independent of each other In many ways they overlap and support one another As already mentioned, Bartlett even uses the phrase ‘social schemata’ and ‘group schemata’ to refer to what in Psychology and Primitive Culture he called ‘cultural patterns’: ‘It may be that social conventions, institutions and traditions formed by persistent group tendencies constitute ‘group schemata’; just as the individual images, ideas and trains of thought formed by persistent interests constitute ‘individual schemata’ (Bartlett, 1932, p 299) Yet, at the same time, Bartlett is critical of applying certain psychological terms, such as ‘memory’, to a social group Criticizing Halbwachs (1925), he argues that remembering is done in a group, not by a group (Bartlett, 1932) By this he meant that psychological acts are socially situated and should be interpreted as such The locus of causality rests with the person making a response, not in the social group This notion that mind is a social formation and yet irreducible to social processes comes close to other social-cultural theorists, such as Vygotsky, Mead and Janet (Rosa, 1996) Bartlett’s work is particularly insightful in that he offers us both a socially situated psychological theory as well as a psychologically informed theory of cultural dynamics In this chapter, I have shown how these two inform each other in Bartlett’s thinking This was done in part to overcome the traditional interpretation of Bartlett as a protocognitive psychologist, by illustrating how his early work on cultural dynamics, to a great extent, informed his work on remembering, which he is most famous for In sum, this chapter can be seen as reconstruction of Bartlett’s theory for the development of a culturally inclusive psychology REFERENCES Bartlett, F.C (1916) An experimental study of some problems of perceiving and imagining', British Journal of Psychology 8: 222-266 Bartlett, F.C (1923) Psychology and Primitive Culture Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Bartlett, F.C (1925) The social functions of symbols Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy 3: 1-11 Bartlett, F.C (1932) Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Bartlett, F.C (1935) Remembering Scientia, 57, 221-226 Bartlett, F.C (1958) Thinking: An experimental and social study London: George Allen & Unwin Bloor, D (2000) Whatever happened to 'social constructiveness'? In A Saito (Ed.) Bartlett, Culture and Cognition (pp 194215) London: Psychology Press Diamond, J (1997) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies W.W Norton & Company Halbwachs, M (1925) Les Cadres Sociaux de la Mémoire Paris: Alcan Head, H (1920) Studies in neurology Oxford: Oxford University Press Odgen, R M (1951) Oswald Külpe and the Würzburg school American Journal of Psychology, 64, 4–19 Rivers, W.H.R (1912) Conventionalism in primitive art Reports of British Association for the Advancement of Science (Sección H), 599 Rivers, W.H.R (1914) The History of Melanesian Society Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Rivers, W.H.R., & Head, H (1908) A human experiment in nerve division Brain, 31, 323–450 Rosa, A (1996) Bartlett’s psycho-anthropological project Culture & Psychology, 2(4), 355-378 Wagoner, B (under review) Bartlett’s concept of schema in reconstruction Theory & Psychology ... the individual? ??s radical reconstructive activity “turning around upon schemata and constructing them afresh” COMPARISON 5: DE- AND RE-CONTEXTUALIZATION In radical reconstruction at both individual. .. on perceiving and imagining, he found subjects seeing an image, presented for a faction of a second, according to conventional expectations Also, the ostensively same inkblot would remind subjects... of social groups Any new thing must be given a setting and explanation within the group? ??s existing frame of reference What is not given a place will not be attended to by the group In his book