199. Culture Contact and Schismogenesis

Bateson, Gregory

doi:10.2307/2789408

Cited by 251 publications

(119 citation statements)

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“…Although an enormous number of studies have attempted to delineate the dimensions of relational judgment, Parks (1977) notes that virtually all trace their conceptual lineage to Bateson's (1935Bateson's ( , 1958 analysis of social interaction among members of a New Guinea tribe. While it simplifies Bateson's thinking somewhat, it is accurate to say that he was primarily concerned with relational control (i.e., dominance).…”

Section: A Brief History Of Research On Relational Communicationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Structuring the concept of relational communication

Dillard

Solomon

Palmer³

1999

Communication Monographs

129

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Section: A Brief History Of Research On Relational Communicationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Structuring the concept of relational communication

Dillard

Solomon

Palmer³

1999

Communication Monographs

129

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“…For example, human groups under pressure often exaggerate the differences to make ethnic barriers -a process Gregory Bateson dubbed 'schismogenesis' [39]. Whereas in other species drift may make mating signals unrecognizable, thereby hastening speciation, humans may artfully change the signals, thus engendering cultural sub-speciation as it were (see [40] for a classic study).…”

Section: Processes Of Language Diversificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tools from evolutionary biology shed new light on the diversification of languages

Levinson

Gray

2012

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

120

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Computational methods have revolutionized evolutionary biology. In this paper we explore the impact these methods are now having on our understanding of the forces that both affect the diversification of human languages and shape human cognition. We show how these methods can illuminate problems ranging from the nature of constraints on linguistic variation to the role that social processes play in determining the rate of linguistic change. Throughout the paper we argue that the cognitive sciences should move away from an idealized model of human cognition, to a more biologically realistic model where variation is central.Variation is the key Evolutionary scientists study variation. A key element of the Darwinian revolution was the insight that variation within species was not some superficial noise that should be stripped away to reveal the underlying species essence [1]. Variation is the signal -over evolutionary time variation within species becomes variation between species. As a legacy of the 1950s Cognitive Science movement, cognitive scientists have often thought of language on a par with vision, olfaction or memory -a human faculty with a universal organization, subject only to minor variation. But compared to animal communication systems one of the most remarkable things about human language is that there are 7000 of them, and they are culturally variable at every level of their structure, from the sound system, to the grammar, to the semantics. In this review we explore why this is, what has driven the diversification of languages, and how these processes can be systematically studied. Rather than viewing this diversity as noise distorting underlying principles, we argue that this variation is a vital resource for understanding the crucial capacity that makes us human, and that tools derived from evolutionary biology give us powerful new ways of analyzing this variation [2][3][4].Why do languages vary? Darwin [5] pondered this point, noting the curious parallels between languages and species, and indeed similar processes of speciation, drift, and adaptation can be observed in the language domain. Processes of group boundary formation account for change under demographic pressures, drift accounts for change by geographic or social isolation, and adaptation for the changes that can be observed as languages reflect the cultural uses to which they are put (with e.g. color words reflecting the technology of dye and paint [6], kinship terms the systems of marriage, residence and inheritance [7], and highly embedded sentences the growth of literacy and its specialist genres [8]).These observations are not new (although there is much recent literature providing new data and insight). What is new, however, is the recent development of highly sophisticated computational tools for exploring these processes of diversification. What these tools make possible is the meticulous inference of detailed past processes from the current diversity in all its complexity. This is time travel of a kind we could in the past onl...

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“…More broadly, many of the dualities that result from hybrid identities are so critical to organizational effectiveness that if an outgroup did not exist as an identity foil to one's ingroup, then in a real sense the ingroup would have to create one (Smith and Berg, 1987). Thus, we suspect that if, say, the pragmatists suddenly left Natura en masse, a schism (Bateson, 1935) would soon develop within the idealist camp as some individuals began to fill the void left on the other side of the duality, articulating the need for pragmatic restraints.…”

Section: Why Not Compromise or Integrate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Functions of Dysfunction

Ashforth

Reingen

2014

Administrative Science Quarterly

306

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The authors are listed alphabetically. We're deeply indebted to Jim Ward for his tremendous assistance with every phase of this project, and to the members of the Co-op for opening their doors to us. We thank Kevin Corley, Spencer Harrison, Kristie Rogers, and the six anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. And we're very grateful to former Associate Editor Robin Ely who provided extremely insightful advice throughout the review process. 2 Friend and Foe? The Dynamics of an Organizational Duality in a Natural Food CooperativeDualities are very common and consequential to organizations, but the processes through which they play out are poorly understood. Our ethnographic study found an inherent tension between idealism and pragmatism in the mission of a natural food cooperative and explores the dynamics through which the associated tension was managed and the duality was constructively engaged. The findings suggest that the value of each side of the duality was recognized at both the individual and organizational levels of analysis. Members' discomfort with the duality encouraged them to split the mission in two and project their less-favored half on others, creating an identity foil (an antithesis) and heated intergroup conflict. However, ingroup members nonetheless identified with the outgroup because it embodied a side of themselves they continued to value. Individuals who exemplified their ingroup's most extreme attributes were seen by the outgroup as prototypical, thus serving as "lightning rods" for intergroup conflict; this paradoxically enabled other ingroup members to work more effectively with the outgroup. The duality was kept continually in play through oscillating decisions and actions, coupled with ongoing rituals to repair and maintain relationships disrupted by the messiness of the process. Thus, ostensible dysfunctionality at the group level fostered functionality at the organizational level. 3Organizations are often messy things, with mixed agendas and bruising politics. Growing research on hybrid organizational identities (e.g., Albert and Whetten, 1985;Battilana and Dorado, 2010) and multiple organizational logics (e.g., Kraatz and Block, 2008;Pache and Santos, 2010) indicates that organizations often embody and pursue seemingly conflicting goals, values, beliefs, practices, and so on. And research on the role of contradictions (e.g., Koot, Sabelis, and Ybema, 1996;El-Sawad, Arnold, and Cohen, 2004), dilemmas (e.g., McLaren, 1982;Weber and Messick, 2006), paradoxes (e.g., Smith and Berg, 1987;Smith and Lewis, 2011), double binds (e.g., Soldow, 1981;Tracy, 2004), tensions (e.g., Ashcraft and Trethewey, 2004;Meisenbach, 2008), oxymorons (e.g., Ashforth and Pratt, 2003;Boyd, 2004), ironies (e.g., Hatch, 1997; Johansson and Woodilla, 2005), and dialectics (e.g., Benson, 1977;de Rond and Bouchikhi, 2004) is revealing the disorderly complexities of organizational life. What these literatures share is a focus on the dynamics of oppositional tendencies: how the complexity, ambiguity, ...

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199. Culture Contact and Schismogenesis

Cited by 251 publications

References 0 publications

Structuring the concept of relational communication

Structuring the concept of relational communication

Tools from evolutionary biology shed new light on the diversification of languages

Functions of Dysfunction

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