Toward a New Central Europe

CULTURAL PLURALISM AND THE STUDY OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY.

ALEXANDER GALLUS

"The dogma that public issues are beyond the interest or
competence of those who study and teach about man is myopic
and sterile professionalism and a fear of commitment
which is both irresponsible and irrelevant."

(Berreman, 1968, p. 391)

IN modern anthropology there is mounting awareness of shift towards new subject matters. The rapid development of new national states in the area of former colonial territories, has created a new situation in which the term "primitive" has acquired derogatory meaning. (Hsu, 1964; Clearhout, 1965).

Peoples which around the turn of the century still lived under traditional and more simple ("primordial") conditions, have moved out of their heritage and are in the process of adapting themselves to prevalent forms of a technologic civilization, which after the Second World War developed into a global stage.

"Acculturation" becoming inevitable, the traditional subject matter of anthropology, the study of "primitive peoples," (or peoples still living under "natural" conditions, = "Naturvolker"), became either impossible or obsolete and anachronistic.

A new approach towards understanding man and towards a systematisation of his behavior, had to be found. Especially in America a vivid reaction to the new situation can be observed. In America the traditionally maintained broad, synthetic approach towards anthropology as a study of man and of his behavior in general, has been redefined. A spirited discussion about a "holistic", or a "compartmentalized" approach to anthropology took place in recent years (Marshall and Thompson, 1967; MacLachlan, Marshall and Thompson, 1968; Hultkranz, 1968). The emblem of "Current Anthropology, A World Journal of the Sciences of Man," sees anthropology as the sum of the following specific disciplines: Prehistory, Archeology, Linguistics, Folklore, Ethnology, Social Anthropology and Physical Anthropology. This holistic approach is coupled with a scrupulous

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concern about scientific objectivity, to the extent of consciously avoiding personal and nationalistic bias. (Embres, 1950; Haring, 1951; Macquet, 1964; Gjessing, 1968; Nurge, 1968).

Redefinition of a holistic approach makes it possible to embrace the study of phenomena, which are characteristic for the new, global phase of human history: acculturation, the interaction and integration of human ethnic units within a larger society, the nature of "complex societies", or in other words the nature and structure of larger human administrative and political organizations, which embrace a certain number of subcultures and ethnic groups.

Recent discussions have shown, that "complex societies" have already long ago elicited interest, only, no attempts have been made to conceptualize the specific nature of this study. Papers followed the personal inclinations of researchers, who have occupied themselves with some detailed aspects of the structure of human behavior within the confined sphere of a particular society.

A large literature exists on "acculturation", "culture change", "culture growth" and "culture contacts", with attempts towards generalizations in these particular fields and the formulation of "models", which apparently is a modern expression for "working hypothesis".

These studies created an awareness for the importance of limitations in the spheres of human contacts and understanding, which limitations have their source in restrictions caused by traditional ways of thinking, and in the compulsive force of culturally ingrained forms of behavior (including institutions and organizations). These limitations often lead to difficulties in communication between human groups, a low level of tolerance and understanding and a breakdown of cooperation.

A general review like this, cannot even in the slightest way give adequate references to the scientific trends, which exist in this field, but let us note the conceptualization of "cultural drift" (Sapir, 1921; Herskovits, 1948; Eggan, 1941, 1963).

"Cultural drift" means day by day small variations, whose continued accumulation results in long range directional changes in the character and form of human social life. It is the progressive summation of minor variations in accordance with preexisting tendencies. Contact with other modes of behavior, which may lead to acceptance of foreign influences (acculturation) or to resistance against change, seem often explicable in terms of this "drift", which represents the organic and specific flexibility of the cultural life of a human group. According to this "model", only those values and traits are assimilated, which lay in the direction of the organic process of change (its potential and its possibilities) within a particular human group.

Cultural development ("drift") of a particular human group thus depends on basic traits of human behavior, which must have been

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operative at the time of the formation of this group and which is equivalent to the history of cultural change. The already consummated process of change, with its accumulated results stored in tradition, language, institutions etc., determines the future direction, constancy and limitations of the "drift", and thus determines the latitude of acceptable influences. This "drift", of course, cannot be constructed as an absolute determinant. It appears as a determinant of limitations within which free choice can take place.

Already Spengler in his "Untergang des Abendlandes" made it clear, that it is much nearer to reality to conceptualize so-called "influences" in a positive way, that is, to understand them as a positive activity ("choice"), as an "acceptance" of new values, because they fit into the established pattern of a particular group. Thus ìinfluence" does not depend so much on the originator, but much more on acceptance, which is a positive and not passive activity.

It clearly follows from such conceptualization ("model',) that human cooperation and the building up of a more complex human society cannot be achieved by contact alone and will be absolutely hopeless when existing different cultural trends are overcome by administrative means and force alone.

The uniqueness of cultural behavior, its persistence in cultural drift, tradition and institutions, and the specific limitations which exist for the acceptance and assimilation of foreign values, will be shortly referred to in the following with the Aristotelian term "Entelechia" ( = specific "form of being" of a human group, its individuality or "essence").

The above "model" makes it possible to understand, how ethnic "Entelechia" (national groups) persists through centuries of alien domination, without leading to higher forms of organizational unity but leading to immediate segregation, when historic opportunity arises. (Examples are legion: rebirth of the Irish Republic in our times, the strong Entelechia of the Scottish people, the nationhood of the Jews, the Finns, the Baltic peoples, and finally the emergence into nationhood of ethnic groups after the end of colonial unification.)

It seems clear that lasting human organizations, which extend over geographic areas larger than the homeland of an ethnic unit can only be built upon acceptance and never against it, short of genocide.

G. P. Murdoc has noted as characteristics of "drift,', in connection with the evolution of social organizations, the following: ". . .limitation in the possibilities of change, a strain towards consistency, shifts from one to another relatively stable equilibrium, compensatory internal readjustments, resistance against any influence from diffusion, that is not in accord with the drift.. ." (Italics mine)-(Quoted in Eggan, 1963, p. 348).

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Krober, 1952, in a most important conceptualization, stated that drift can be understood as a "momentum quality". The performance of a culturally patterned activity appears to carry with it implications for its own change, which is by no means altogether random. Forms in general as D'Arcy Thompson has shown, have "momentum qualities". They might even be "cultural orthogenesis within particular limited scopes, that is the direction of at least some culture change is more predetermined by earlier forms of the culture, than caused by environmental stress and individual variability." (Italics mine) - (Quoted by Eggan, 1963, p. 348). It seems clear then that we are faced with the presence of flexible human social units, which ,when regarded in a historical perspective (that is in the process of change), show the quality of a specific and consistent "drift" or momentum.

It seems further clear that the ideals of modern global society tend towards peaceful organization of the globe and not towards the application of force, according to dogmatic preconceptions, as in the past. In such a historical situation then, the modern trend towards applied anthropology becomes especially meaningful.

It can be rightfully asked that in the present situation of awareness in which anthropologists have advanced to meaningful conceptualizations, why should these conceptions not play an important role in the formulation of practical policies, which need a deepened understanding of the "Entelechia" of human social units?

This question is now asked with increasing urgency in anthropologic literature (Reyes and Medina, 1963, p. 320; Bunzel and Parsons, 1964.)

The need for insight and understanding for the planning of human relations, cannot be enough emphasized today, and the results of a methodical and disinterested scientific approach are not only ready to be applied in international policy decisions, but their application is absolutely necessary.

As an aftermath of a recent meeting of USA Anthropologists in 1962, it was suggested that anthropologists should analyze "conflict resolution mechanisms in a variety of societies, to emphasize the complexity of non-technical determinants of conflict". It was voiced that "anthropologists stand for cultural pluralism; they are against imposing the cultural ideals of any one political bloc on the rest of mankind." They devoted much time "to outlining anthropological research that could provide insights or useful information for problems of peace and international stability".

Work on three levels was suggested: 1. Basic research on the nature of war and peace and the socio-cultural process involved in conflict and conflict resolution. 2. Research on immediate problems of international and internal tension. 3. Strategies for improving communication and extending anthropological influence on world affairs.

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It was recommended to study: "social change with attention to the conditions under which social integration takes place. Relevant areas of study would be the development of confederacies and nation states in the past" To study "current situations of culture contact and the readjustment and new syntheses involved in the integration of units and the abolition of war between social components."

Attention should be directed towards "intercultural relations in a world of nations. The apparent paradox that a relationship exists between increased communication and interdependence, and the growth of national consciousness and hostility should be examined in the light of larger concepts of cultural process."

Anthropologists stated: "We must anticipate the emergence of completely new institutional structures. The study of the implications of these changes in the light of general theories of culture change is a proper field for anthropological research..." "Anthropologists possess certain skills, as well as conceptual tools, and a considerable body of knowledge, that are relevant to the problems of world peace." (Italics mine). (Bunzel and Parsons, 1964).

It is pathetic to observe with what prehistoric (in the sense of being outdated and thus completely inadequate) methods, was the reorganization of Central Europe attempted after the end of the First World War. It has been pointed out already by contemporary analysts how the statesmen at that time were still influenced by conceptions of power politics. (Gallus, 1966). Organization of human life in that part of the world has been attempted along the lines of preconceived ideas of strategy, aimed at the military and economic defense of a situation which was deemed advantageous, for those, who won the war, and which strategy caused the withdrawal of the United States from the Peace Treaties.

For sure, thus was the way, how treaties were negotiated in human history, after victorious wars, in the past.

But only few observers realized the necessities of a new human situation, the dawn of the breakthrough of human existence into a global stage, in which the strategies and endeavors of the past were no more adequate. Only after the logical consequences of the post-1918 treaties became evident, only then began conscientious statesmen and political historians, formulate the need for new concepts to be formed and applied in human relations and international politics.

These new concepts are only able to emerge in an objective and scientific atmosphere, and thus the ideal statesman of today and in the future is envisaged as a person of mature and broad intellect, whose decisions are influenced by an adequate body of facts about the behavior of human groups, and about their "Entelechic" limitations. Propositions relating to human organization, cooperation and coexistence must in the future depend on what is acceptable (as established on the ground of objective, scientific inquiries) to all the

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groups concerned, and not on what seems desirable from the egotistic point of view of a potentially dominant power.

It is typical for the human and scientific situation around 1918 that the anthropologic concept of "Cultural Pluralism", which could have helped to understand the human scene in Central Europe, was apparently first developed only in 1939, by J. S. Furneval, in connection with an analysis of the former colonial territory of the Netherlands Indies (Furneval, 1939). He noticed, (it sounds incredible that anthropologists should have avoided so long to generalize on this subject) how different "cultures" lived side by side without much mingling and observed that "Nationalism within a plural society is itself a disruptive force, tending to shatter and not to consolidate its social order." (Quoted, Despres, 1968, p. 11). Steward, (in discussion, Despres, 1968, pp. 21-22) also remarks that Indian cultures in the USA we}e first viewed by American anthropologists as "ethnic minorities within the United States", only in the mid thirties. It can be noted that there is still reluctance in Australia, e. i., in regard to the aborigines as an "ethnic minority", with the status of an independent human social unit!

Furneval's trend of thought (which, let us confess, to us Central Europeans, seems to be rather commonplace truth) was since used by political scientists for the analysis and explanation of the situation in now independent, former colonial areas, (Almond and Coleman, Ed. 1960; Smith and Kuper, Ed. 1960; Despres, 1968), a situation which led to political and ethnic catastrophes in many parts of the world.

"Plural Societies" according to Despres, 1968, following Smith, 1960, are societies in which "groups living within a political unit have very different systems of . . . basic institutions,'. (Italics mine). In a plural society the cultural plurality of the society corresponds to its social plurality: the culturally distinct units of a plural society are its "cultural sections". Generally these "cultural sections" are "historically deep-rooted" and highly exclusive in the sense that each displays and area of common life-form, beyond which relationships with the larger, encompassing society, of which they form part, are only segmental, governed mainly by economic and political structures (Despres, 1968, pp. 11-12).

There are several interesting features in this text. First: how is it that so many anthropologists have failed to notice the frequently "ethnic,' or "tribal" character of the "cultural sections" in question? It is the ethnic aspect which turns these "cultural sections" into socalled "minorities" in respect to another ethnic group, the dominant partner in the organization of a plural society.

These ethnic groups can be regarded as covered up "tribal societies,' of anthropologic interest, which on the level of their rural

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settlement-areas remain strictly intermarrying gene-pools, often preserving characteristic regional physical features. They maintain distinct tradition (folk-lore, "traditional norms", religion), language, organized and spontaneous social and behavioristic habits (Siverts: "conceptual and valuational systems", quoted in Despres, 1968, p. 21). They are still near a stage of natural units where "shared meanings and values are homogeneous and a wide range of different activities are carried on in terms of uniform structure', (Despres, 1968, p. 12).

In Central Europe these primeval groups interpenetrate in their habitats but do not mingle substantially with each other. (Matl, 1963). This still primordially ethnocentred life is overstratified but never extinguished by an administrative level of a more sophisticated social structure. At the present stage of social organization in Central Europe, "Western European Type" national states are forced onto the area, every small state having been constructed by the Peace Treaties in such a way, that one dominant ethnic group retains the possession of state administration, the other groups remaining "minorities" (Gallus, 1967-68) .

That this must lead to mutual oppression and unnecessary deprivation and human suffering, should be clear by now to every historian and rationally thinking human.

As the aim of a future reorganization must be the elimination of the "Western Type" national state; the elimination of "minority" status; and the substitution of a more realistic model of state organization: further scientific approach must rest on the study of the ethnic groups themselves, and on the study of the best way of solving the coexistence of these groups, who all have a different emotive-reactive matrix, embodied in their past history, entelechia and tradition, which they want to preserve.

The second outstanding feature of the Despres-Smith treatment of plural societies is the strange fact, that none of the authors so far mentioned by us and quoted by them, has ever thought to cast a glance on Central Europe. They had acumen enough to recognize problems and difficulties in Africa and Asia, where the formation of new states was hindered by ethnic (tribal) rivalries and wars (called "cultural units" by Despres, 1968, but "tribal" or "ethnic" groups by Cohen in his comments on Despres paper, Despres, 1968, p. 18). Gjessing, 1968, p. 402, approvingly quotes the findings of an Anthropologic Conference (Bunzel and Parsons, 1964) that one of the major areas on which anthropologists might contribute to the solution of world problems, is the study of emerging nations, of the non-western world. Apparently anthropology is still struggling with its traditional focus of interest in "non-western" peoples!

If conceptualization would have been developed on the lines of "ethnic" groups or units, or "minorities", instead of "cultural sections",

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a large array of phenomena could have lent itself to generalization from Ireland and Scotland, through Bretagne and Central Europe, to Ukraine and Georgia and Transylvania or to the ArabIsraeli war and tribal warfare in the Congo and Nigeria.

Thus it must be pointed out that the problem treated in this essay is not confined to Central Europe, but it is a world-wide phenomenon, which becomes especially acute when viewed in the light of world-organization and world-peace.

If then a solution can be worked out and applied successfully in Central Europe (as it has worked in Switzerland) such a successful solution will have its repercussions and applicability on a worldwide scale.

Conceptualization and analysis thus cannot rest on the idea of "cultural sections" alone, because the eruptive dynamism and persevering ability of these groups cannot be understood on such a simple basis. A scientific discipline whose conceptualizations should clearly have relevance in this respect for the scholar, is "Ethnology", as we shall see lather.

This leads to a third peculiarity of Despres' theory or "model". Despres talks of "functional integration" "on the societal level" which holds together the different "cultural sections". But how this "functional integration" works, remains rather obscure. "A minimum core of shared values" is mentioned, which when absent, the "integration of society" can only be maintained by force, and apparently for many anthropologists the only society which is maintained by force seems to be exclusively "colonial society". (Despres, 1968, p. 12).

Thus in concentrating on "colonial society" the theory neglects the role of integrating force in the structure of the so-called "national states". Whereas a proper analysis of power-structures in the administration of the modern centralized states would have directly led again to the discovery of the problems of "plural society" under the surface of "national states" in Central Europe and elsewhere.

This omission is the more strange as the theories of Nadel, 1957, have already pointed into the right direction. (Nadel, 1957, pp. 114127, quoted by Despres, 1968, p. 8). According to Nadel, a systematic theory of "social structure"' can be deducted from two "criteria of relevance":

1. The differential command that one actor has over the actions of others.

2. The differential command that actors have over existing benefits or resources.

Despres comments: "In short Nadel concludes that power relationships are the essence of social structure in formal terms." In Nadel's words: "Society has no single structure, and the many structures which it contains are neither logically nor empirically articulated".

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What actually has structure is the "Polity" (i. e. the State).

If we accept Nadel's distinction, then we can state, that a new organization in Central Europe, must have the aim to build a "Polity", so that the struggle for dominance between groups can be controlled. Such a control can be achieved in many ways. It is, however, maintained here that a solution in terms of the "National State" is destructive on the long run. The maintenance of single national states in Central Europe, needs a large amount of power organization, which gives "differential command" over "existing benefits and resources and "over the actions of others", to one ethnic group only, which appears as the state-building factor in every single state. This need for power, leads to the need of support from foreign powers and results in imperialistic control over the whole area by a foreign state, with the exploitation of local resources (economic and human) for the benefit of the organizing foreign state.

Thus the organization of "Polity" in Central Europe must be in future built on the consent and coexistence of the different ethnic groups themselves (the unit of administration being the ethnic group).

The anthropologic concept of "Plural Society" or of "Cultural Plurality" must be regarded as a specific variant of the more general and comprehensive phenomenon of our modern, so-called "Complex Society", where the existence of "subcultures" (industrial city, country town, rural village society, age groups, professional groups, religious communities, social strata etc.) is further complicated by the survival of ethnic entelechias ("nationalities") within the administrative system of the state. A large amount of detail has been in the past accumulated by anthropologists on "Complex Society" and the ground has been fairly laid for an understanding of "cultural" (i.e. ethnic) plurality. (Mitchell, 1960, Eisenstadt, 1961; Depres, 1968; Banton, 1966; and further literature quoted by these authors).

Further analysis must lead to a situation where the questions of ethnic minorities will be lifted out from the realm of administrative, strategic and legalistic thinking (minority "rights", "rights" of selfdetermination), and will be solved with reference to anthropologic insights into human behavior, or in other words will be solved on humanistic grounds only.

It must be admitted that back in 1918, the mental tools of Anthropology and of the Social Sciences in general, were not yet elaborate and clear enough in this field. We can safely assert that conceptualisation about the nature of the interaction of human ethnic groups and in general the nature and psychology of these groups, has been primitive or nonexistent, even a generation ago, but a breakthrough of rational and scientific thinking and an objective solution should be available by now, for a settlement, which does not need physical force and constant foreign intervention for its maintenance.

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The neglect of an objective and scientific analysis of problems of coexistence of different ethnic groups within the same administrative unit, is astonishing, but it might be due to the prevalence of traditional ideas about "state sovereignty" until the end of the Second World War. It must have been felt as undue interference with "internal problems" of a state, if e. i. an American postgraduate student with a state grant, would have visited, say, Rumania, with the aim to inquire into aspects of the Hungarian minority there, or would have arrived in Hungary, to study the life and status of the German minority or perhaps of the Gypsy population. This practical field study would have been impossible in many instances. On the other hand much of the available descriptive and statistical material is suspect to machination by interested parties ("propaganda"), which in itself appears, of course, as proper subject of anthropologic study. Berreman, 1968, has rather forcefully suggested, that the pressure of state interests ("governmental, military and corporate elite") inhibits free scientific inquiry into all aspects of human behavior. Or as Gjessing, 1968, says (p. 399): "the social sciences are to a fairly great degree dependent on the socio-political values of the establishment".

These difficulties, though not yet overcome, have diminished since.

Scientific disciplines themselves are parts of trends within human history. (Gjessing, 1968, pp. 397-99; Moses, 1969).

The science of Ethnography, whose adept study "the folk component of their own cultural heritage" (Hofer, 1968, p. 311), began as an offshoot of the romantic movement (Herder, Grimm), which drew its inspiration from the ideal of national culture of the monolithic state. Thus their efforts linked up with the "centralized, Western Type National State" (Gallus, 1967-68), or in other words with the ideal of one ethnic entelechia, which enforces dominance within rigid state boundaries. As a necessary corollary, the concept of "minorities" has been developed, who were supposed to be safeguarded by so-called "minority rights", which, however, were seldom put into operation, as "assimilation" of the minority ethnic groups was a desirable aim. The whole situation was supported by the presence of an officially fostered fixation or idiosyncrasy in the minds of the leading class of the dominant ethnic group, to the effect, that they are in possession of specific human values. These values were regarded as representing human progress in the area, and to be more valuable than those of the other ethnic groups.

Thus dominance within an area and its state boundaries was built up on specific conceptualizations of: "vocation", "talents" (e.i. "talent for organization"), inborn "leadership" etc. which all added up to the necessity of rendering special service to the area under dominance, which no other nationality could fulfill. All this racionalized or else mysticized the simple fact of dominance of one ethnic

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group over the others. The National State has created initial euphoria, but on the long run, it became the most traumatic experience in Central Europe.

Today the differences between Ethnography (the study of one's own people) and Ethnology (the study of foreign people) have lost significance and meaningfulness when regarded in the light of emerging universalistic trends in modern Anthropology. We thus might define the comprehensive study of "Pluralistic Society" as the development of Ethnography towards "Comparative Ethnography", where especially the underlying common human behavioristic elements are analyzed and an objective aspect of mutual tolerance can be gained.

Comparative or "cross-cultural" ethnographic analysis can be regarded as a modern equivalent of both, Ethnology and Ethnography, which appear today anachronistic in their "paradigmatic" (Despres, 1968, p. 6) limitations.

Most of the conceptualizations quoted by Janowitz (1963), who also analyzes Nadel, 1957, appears of significance in this respect. Human social structure is made up of a variety of social structures with a great variety of potential and real conflict situations. We have already quoted Nadel's view (1957), that within social organizations, differential command exists over one another's actions and over existing benefits or resources. The stability of such a situation rested in the past and still rest in many areas upon ideas of sovereignty and organized power.

Dobzhansky (1963, p. 138) has strongly and rightly emphasized the role of conscious and intelligent (rational) willpower in influencing the direction of human development, which is not "foreordained or immutable". "Man and man alone has it within his capabilities to refuse to accept the evolutionary direction of blind forces of nature as his inexorable fate. Man may be able to understand, to control and to guide his evolution."

In our era of growing consciousness (Nurge, 1968, p. 422: "Increased self-awareness"), in which many hitherto unconsciously regulated, or rather subconsciously acting processes become conscious and rationally approachable (conception, influence on mental processes through drugs or psychoanalytic treatment, the analysis of so-called "ethnocentrism" in anthropologic field-work and method of researchers, definition of the so-called "cultural bias", the dragging into consciousness of everything hidden before, see the copious literature on sex etc.) in this era, it seems legitimate to overcome instinctive and emotionally biased ethnocentric behavior through rational and scientific insight, and to arrive through rational and objective inquiry at rationally based solutions of hitherto unsolved problems of coexistence and mutual tolerance.

Natural selection operates in a mechanical way by assuring the

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survival of those spontaneous variants which as a matter of fact contain an optimal array of physical and behavioristic features, best suited to a particular environment. ("Adaptation").

Human adaptation has already for several thousand years followed a path, which favored selection not so much for fitness within a natural environment (the main difficulties here have been long ago overcome), but fitness within an artificial environment, that is: natural environment modified by cultural activity.

Dobzhansky, 1963, p. 147, called this new man-made environment "socio-cultural" environment.

Survival of human groups within this highly competitive, artificially created human environment, was largely determined in the past by wars, and the requirements of power politics. The "winning of wars" depended in the last two world wars on the possession of raw materials, the development of engineering, the development of the sciences and the number of combatants. It is possible to see the present "population explosion" as a biologic adaptive response to this ever-increasing need for competitive potential, which a large populace undoubtedly possesses. This competitive potential is consciously emphasized by nationalism, or patriotic anxiety about birth rate as compared with that of surrounding nations. Dobzhansky, 1963, p. 148, sees in "reproductive fitness" the measure of fitness of a genotype, in relation to its environment.

If we want to lead mankind into a new global phase of existence this "competitive" character of the artificially modified natural environment, must consciously be changed. Human behavior must be based on "coexistence" and "cooperation" in order to liberate the energies and resources, which hitherto have been bound by, and annihilated in competitive behavior. Considerable resources could then be employed for the creation of a non-competitive human milieu. Of course, aggressive competitiveness is a human instinct, or in other words a human adaptive trait, which has evolved through many hundreds of thousands of years. But being an adaptive trait it depends on a milieu, in which this trait is an advantage. If by an effort of consciously applied will-power we can change this milieu into one, in which "aggressive competitiveness" is no more an advantage, the possibility for selection for other behavioristic traits arises, at least in the field of international relations and intergroup behavior. A shrewd observer might perhaps point out, how aggressive statesmen of the old type have lost popularity in recent history (Sukarno, De Gaulle, Johnson), and how wars in foreign territories ("aggressive wars") elicit spontaneous resistance and sympathy for the attacked (Vietnam, Czechoslovakia).

The prevailing trend in human evolution is towards increasingly conscious, rational control of human relations, which in the past have been governed by behavioristic traits which have evolved as

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adaptation to a form of artificial human environment, which was based on competitiveness.

Emphasizing the rationality of this trend, we again must come back to the importance in the present world situation, of "scientific inquiry" as a guide. To quote Dobzhansky (1963, p. 148): "Natural selection is the sole known mechanism, outside of human contrivance, which can translate the challenges of the environment into adaptive alterations of the organisms, responding to these challenges." "It is in other words the biological regulatory mechanism which makes possible the feedback relation between the genotype and the environment, the relation which is the basis of adaptive evolution". "Man if he chooses may introduce his purpose into his solution." "He may choose to direct his evolution towards the attainment of the purposes, which he regards as good.,' "The ultimate function of anthropology is no less than to provide the knowledge requisite for the guidance of human evolution." (Italics by me.)

Thus we can see a modern movement towards a functional role of anthropology. It shows an essential transformation in the attitude of scientists towards society. Academic detachment of scholarly investigation is by no means imperiled by the new trend. Objectivity is still needed to discover "truth". And unless the insight into human behavior does not reflect the true working of the human mind, social organization cannot be influenced, as a false notion of matter cannot lead to the right manipulation of matter. Thus the very essence of the new trend depends on the most rigidly objective treatment of the subject matter, as far as it is humanly possible. (Gjessing, 1968, pp. 399-400, emphasizes the recognition even of "our unconscious motivations" to attain at objective truth in the human behavioristic sciences.)

Gough, 1968, p. 406, in an enumeration of modern goals for anthropologic research, has mentioned "comparative studies of modern inter-societal political and economic dominance which would help us to define and refine such concepts as imperialism, neocolonialism etc. How, for example, does Russian power over one or another of the East European countries compare with that of the United States over certain Latin American or Southeast Asian countries with respect to such variables as military coercion, the disposal of the subordinate society's economic surplus and the relations between political elites. How does Chinese control over Tibet compare historically, structurally and functionally with Indian control over Kashmir, Hyderabad or the Naga Hills, and what have been the effects of these controls on the class structures, economic productivity, and local political institutions of these regions?"

It has been further pointed out by Cohen, 1968, pp. 410-11, that in ultimate analysis such concerns of functional anthropology stem

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from a "commitment to humanism" of the scholar himself, who is by conscience bound to use his knowledge and insights for the benefit of mankind. This commitment is a "moral commitment of man as an ethical being", and thus "applied anthropology" becomes "applied ethics". It is the "ethics of humanism" and such values as "service of mankind", leading the scientists by means of essentially moral experiences towards a definition of a range of "acceptable goals", which "exclude those goals, which seem to him clearly wrong." This attitude leads to moral decisions in concrete situations. ( Italics mine. )

The Studies for a New Central Europe has steadily developed towards an ideal of the application of objective scientific research in order to arrive at a practical and workable solution of the problem of the coexistence and cooperation of ethnic groups within a larger administrative area in Central Europe, which would eliminate "aggressive competitiveness" within that area. Our Review offers its pages to anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists, who want to contribute to functional ("applied") anthropology in the area of this Review's particular interest: Central Europe (The "concrete situation" of Cohen). They can even regard it as a test-case, an experiment of great importance, whether the rational phase of global human evolution, as diagnosed above, really exists?

Toward a New Central Europe