White’s personal odyssey from historical particularism to cultural evolution is discussed below, but it is important to mention
the similarities between White’s theory of culture and Malinowski’s functionalism (see pp. 138–44). Central to White’s evolutionary theory is a functionalist conception of culture.
There are important differences between the two positions.
Malinowski ultimately saw culture as functioning to meet individual needs, whereas White posited that culture met the needs
of the species. This difference is not insignificant: Malinowski
was interested in accounting for specific cultural patterns—
usually exhibited by the Trobriand Islanders—while White was
concerned with broader cultural developments exhibited by
humanity, as White himself explained, “Man is unique: he is
the only living species that has a culture. By culture we mean
an extrasomatic, temporal continuum of things and events dependent upon symboling” (1959a:3). By extrasomatic—from
the Greek soma for “body,” therefore, literally, “external to the
body”—White stipulated that culture had a “suprabiological
character”:
Although culture is produced and perpetuated only by the human species, and therefore has its origins and basis in the biological make-up of man . . . after it has come into existence and
become established as a tradition, culture exists and behaves
and is related to man as if it were nonbiological in character.
(1959a:12, emphasis in the original)
Culture exists separately from the individuals who are born
and die in a society. A baby learns culture from other individuals; culture is not genetically transmitted. But this is not to suggest that culture has no biological functions; in fact, White
writes, “The purpose and function of culture are to make life secure and enduring for the human species.” In contrast to other,
cultureless organisms:
Man employs the extrasomatic tradition that we call culture in
order to sustain and perpetuate his existence and give it full
expression.
Specifically, the functions of culture are to relate man to his
environment—his terrestrial habitat and the circumambient
cosmos—on the one hand, and to relate man to man, on the
other. (White 1959a:8)
This functional notion is a key element in White’s theory of
evolution. It is a utilitarian notion that Elman Service has traced
back to the nineteenth-century evolutionist Herbert Spencer. According to Service, White, by his own admission, borrowed this
utilitarian notion “more or less unwittingly” (1976:614). Regardless of White’s intent, the consequences of his emphasis on the
functions of culture are diverse and profound in American anthropology. This is particularly true for American archaeology,
which fully embraced that position from the mid-1960s until
very recently.
This functionalist interpretation of culture was central to
White’s theory of evolution because it implied that the most important dimensions of culture were those that imparted adaptive, biological advantages. It logically followed that the most
important cultural realm is the one that transforms energy and
makes it available for human use—technology. And, by extension, the evolution of cultures could be measured by their relative capacities to obtain and divert energy. Those two concepts
underlie White’s theory of evolution.