THE STUDY OF CULTURES.

The article discusses the questions on the sociological uses of culture. These questions initially became evident in the studies of the newer social patterns which accompanied the continuing modernization of American life and its latter-day partial transformation into a post-modern society. In some cases, culture has become an open-ended and residual category, to which are assigned all those behaviors and values which cannot be accounted for by other factors. Reduced to this elementary level, it offers little power of explanation. There are other cases in which the concept has been practically abandoned in study designs. One of the standard indicators of what culture denotes is a social heritage (some sociological writers define culture as the social heritage). The heritage of a society commonly is defined as all that which is regularly transmitted from generation to generation in a relatively unchanged form. Its principal attributes are elucidated by indicating that it generally includes the customs and normal solutions to life's recurring problems which have been gradually worked out in the historical development of a society. A cultural theme is neocolonialism and its practical alternatives. Given the fact that every new country must have continuing access to scientific knowledge and technology to maintain its growth and development and to compete in the world markets, questions are raised about what kinds of scientists are required, what should be their national identity, and what resources in an economy of scarcity can be afforded for the use of scientific work in the national interest.