Leslie A. White (1900-1975)
Leslie White is considered to be the most controversial neoevolutionist of America. Although he was a greater admirer of Tylor and Morgan and therefore, from the very beginning he believed in the progressive course of evolution. Searching for a universal principle of explaining the evolution, he went a step further than Childe and Steward and considered “energy” for the same.
White was of the opinion that culture is basically a survival mechanism and that energy is required to provide man with the necessities foil his continued existence. In the earliest stage of human development, man used his own body as the major source of energy, but soon he began to capture other natural sources of energy, and utilised fire, water, wind etc., for his own purposes.
His famous book “The Science of Culture” (1949) which brought a dramatic change in the thinking of evolution. White explained his scheme of neo-evolution in this book, his scheme of neo-evolution is considered to be an important theoretical contribution. White points out that the efficiency of technology increased as culture evolved, for the tools became increasingly efficient, animals were domesticated, engines constructed etc., and so the amount of energy harnessed per capita. He further argues that each type of social organization conditioned a specific type of social viz. pastoralistism, agriculture, metallurgy, industry, militarism etc., and each found sponding expression in a social system.
Thus Leslie White attempted to study cultural evolution in terms of technological and scientific development. To Leslie White culture is an integrated and organized sytstem in which there are four four main aspects of culture or cultural components.
- Ideological aspects of culture ( philosophical aspects viz like belief, morals etc.)
- Sociological aspect of culture (like marriage, kinship etc.).
- Technological aspect of culture (tools, implements etc.)
- Sentimental aspect of culture (like totem, taboo etc.)
However, out of these four aspects, technological aspect dominates over all other aspects. Again, when these aspects of culture, according to White, are arranged vertically, the sentimental dimension of culture occupies the position at the bottom, followed by the technological, sociological and ideological dimensions.
Thus, Leslie White’s approach to the Cultural evolution is based on the use and applicability technology and energy. Hence he talks about the technological determinism. The integrated study of technology and energy, according to White, gives an idea of the evolution of culture and , therefore, he defines culture as:
T x E = C
i.e.
T stands for Technology
E stands for Energy
C stands for Culture
In his famous paper “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” published in American Anthropologist (1943), White also threw light on the evolution of social and economic organisation of the primitive societies. According to White, then, social organisation is a network on relationship between living material bodies and the function of which is to maintain and perpetuate their status living beings through the processes of Nutrition, Protection and Reproduction.
A social organisation is, thus, according to Leslie White, is determined by these three processes viz. how the members of a social system nourish themselves?; how they protect themselves?; and how they produce their kinds? etc. Thus, these three are the determinants of social organisation, according to White, which may be formulated as
N x P x R = S.O.
Leslie White also talked about the economic organisation and pointed out that whether an event is economic or not?, it must be decided on the basis of the following characteristics:
(i) It must be socio-cultural in character,
(ii) The things from the external world,
(iii) The things should be used to satisfy the human needs,
(iv) Human energy must be used in making these things.
After pointing out the above-mentioned characteristics, White says that the household is very important unit in the economic organisation of a tribe, as it is the principal organisation of production, preparation, distribution and consumption of food.
Leslie White also threw a new light on the concept of property . He says that the property should have the following characterstics
- Something in nature that is capable of serving human needs and which has been incorporated into an economic system by a social device called – ownership.
- A thing taken from nature, the extraction or appropriation of which involves and requires human labour.
- Human labour power, exercised or expressed in an economic context.
According to White ownership is a concept correlative or complimentary to property: property is that which is owned. Ownership is the nature of property. He further argued that property is a compound made up of two elements: a thing and human labour or effort. A thing is not property unless human effort is extended upon it; to make and to hold is, of course, in human society, an expenditure of human effort. Thus, property is made of two things according to White, which may be formulated as
T x L = P
i.e.
T stands for Things
L stands for Labour or effort
P stands for Property
White further says that T & L are integrated, which are inseparable in the context of constituting property.
In this way Leslie White put forward his various views on the evolution and organisation of different social institutions, which were based on scientific and technological developments. He also codified and formulated various evolutionary schemes and attempted to explain them precisely in scientific form with special reference to cultural evolution.
Criticism
- Whites emphasis of capture of energy is useful and applicable to human culture everywhere . However, his confidence in the positive aspect of technology and his evolutionary premises questioned in 1970’s when over exploitation energy by western pose threat to survival humans.
- The one to one correlation between technology and social origin has not been supported by ethnographic evidence.
- They did not consider the role of diffusion.