ABSTRACT

Basic to Julian H. Steward's commitment to a search for meaningful regularities in cultural patterns and dynamics has been a belief in a unity and creative capacity of the human mind far outweighing the relativistic effects of social conditioning and racial differentiation. Concern with the ways in which different cultures structure varying assemblies of traits pragmatically, cognitively and emotionally has long been evident in Western anthropology. For Steward, art styles constitute patterns of special types, relatively independent of major technological and sociopolitical trends, readily diffused and sometimes subject to sharp discontinuities. However, World War II brought to the fore as acute practical problems both major national differences in behavior and the effects of nationalism and colonialism on particular societies. The identification and interpretation of cross-cultural regularities of pattern and process are the crucial elements in the development of any potential science of culture.