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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 1. A Methodological Note on Valuations and Beliefs - 2. Theoretical Critique of the Concept “Mores” - 3. Valuation Dynamics
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1032 An American Dilemma
is the following: By stowing the commonly held valuations into the system of mores,
conceived of as a homogeneous, unproblematic, fairly static,* social entity, the inves-
tigator is likely to underestimate the actual diflference between individuals and
groups and the actual fluctuations and changes in time. He is also likely to lose sight
entirely of the important facts, that even within a single individual valuations are
operative on different planes of generality, that they are typically conflicting, and
that behavior is regularly the outcome of a moral compromise.
It might be that Sumner’s construction contains a valid generalization and offers
a useful methodological tool for studying primitive cultures and isolated, stationary
folk-communities under the spell of magic and sacred tradition. It might even be
that the most convenient definition of such a folk-culture is the applicability of the
theory of folkways and mores. The theory is, however, crude and misleading when
applied to a modern Western society in process of rapid industrialization, moving in
swift trends rippled by indeterminate cyclical waves: a society characterized by national
and international mobility, by unceasing changes and differentiations of all valuations
and institutions, by spreading intellectualization, by widening intellectual communi-
cation and secularization, by ever more daring discussion even of fundamentals and
intimacies, and by a consequent virtually universal expectation of change and a firm
belief in progress. If Sumner’s construction is applied to such a society, except as a
contrast conception to mark off some remaining backward cultural isolates which
are merely dragged along and do not themselves contain the active factors of social
dynamics, it is likely to conceal more than to expose. It conceals what is most
important in our society: the changes, the conflicts, the absence of static equilibria, the
lability in all relations even when they are temporarily, though perhaps for decades,
held at a standstill. The valuation spheres, in such a society as the American, more
nearly resemble powder-magazines than they do Sumner’s concept of mores.
3. Valuation Dynamics
In our view, changes in valuations—of the type known as ‘‘revolutions,” “muta-
tions,” or “explosions”—are likely to occur continuously in modern society. “Stability,”
or rather lack of change, when it reigns, is the thing which requires explanation.
Individual persons in modern society are in the same sort of labile equilibrium as the
molecules of explosives. Their valuations are inconsistent, and they are constantly
reminded of the inconsistency. Occasionally the moral personalities of individuals
burst, and a modification and rearrangement of the valuations in the direction of a
more stable equilibrium is accomplished.
Since similar influences work upon all individuals in the society, the cumulative
results include continuous changes of “public opinion.” Such changes are “intentional,”
in a sense, and part of a democratic development. The trend of opinions and
changes in institutions in a democracy—^the “reforms”—usually have their core in
the cumulation of such valuation explosions in the minds of people. When the
inconsistency between people’s valuations is large and has effectively been exposed,
the change might occasionally be sudden and quite big, and we speak then of a social
• Summer recognized a ‘‘strain toward consistency” within the mores because of conflicting
principles, but his main emphasis—and the same is true when the concept is used by con-
temporary writers—is always upon stability, inertia, and resistance against induced change.
Compare Appendix 2, Section 3.
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