INTRODUCTION
unifying bond was difficult to find. The position of the
anthropologist seemed like that satirized by Geethe.
Wer will was Lebendig’s erkennen und beschreiben,
Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben,
Dann hat er die Teile in seiner Hand,
Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.
The occupation with living cultures has created a
stronger interest in the totality of each culture. It is felt
more and more ‘that hardly any trait of culture can be
understood when taken out of its general setting. The at-
tempt to conceive a whole culture as controlled by a
single set of conditions did not solve the problem. The
purely anthropo-geographical, economic, or in other ways
formalistic approach seemed to give distorted pictures.
The desire to grasp the meaning of a culture as a
whole compels us to consider descriptions of standardized
behaviour merely as a stepping-stone leading to other
problems. We must understand the individual as living in
his culture; and the culture as lived by individuals. The
interest in these socio-psychological problems is not in any
way opposed to the historical approach. On the contrary,
it reveals dynamic processes that have been active in cul-
tural changes and enables us to evaluate evidence ob-
tained from the detailed comparison of related cultures.
On account of the character of the material the problem
of cultural life presents itself often as that of the interre-
lation between various aspects of culture. In some cases
this study leads to a better appreciation of the intensity or
lack of integration of a culture. It brings out clearly the
forms of integration in various types of culture which
prove that the relations between different aspects of cul-
ture follow the most diverse patterns and do not lend
themselves profitably to generalizations. However, it
leads rarely, and only indirectly, to an understanding of
the relation between individual and culture.