THE CULTURE-COMPLEX CONCEPT AS A RESEARCH TOOL.

Sociology is sick. At least so its friends keep telling. Perhaps one should apply the ancient injunction, "Physician, heal thyself!" If sociology is effectively to set about the task of self-healing, some adequate diagnostic instrument will be required. Such an instrument is provided by the sister science, social anthropology. The instrument consists in the concept of the culture complex. The operative ideas are those which provide patterns for the activities of the culture complex. In the aviation complex, for example, the science of aerodynamics constitutes part of the operative idea system. Propaganda ideas have fundamentally different purposes from operative ideas. Propaganda has the purpose of inducing members of the culture complex or of related complexes to conform to the type of behavior desired by the leaders of the complex. In addition to operative ideas and propaganda ideas some culture complexes include ideas for their own sake. Everything valid which sociologists have observed about social groups is pertinent to the study of the group phase of culture complexes.