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Concepts and Principles
Anthropological Systems Theory / Antistructure / Peranakan Studies / Ethnoculture /
The Global Imperative / Culture / Metaculture / Education / Symbolization


If we start with some first precepts of human metacultural patterning.

All humans share some form of cultural pattern--the fact of sharing culture is basic to the definition of human reality.

Cultural patterning varies continuously over space and time, and tends to be dynamic in terms of its pattern of change.

Cultural patterning is complex, variegated, heterogeneous and multi-faceted. It is evinced at different levels of articulation of human reality, and takes many different possible forms.

All human cultural patterning is symbolically articulated, represented and modified.

The symbolic articulation of human culture relates and integrates every aspect of human reality into a common frame of reference.

The symbolic articulation of human cultural patterning tends over time to become conventionally stylized and to take on distinctive directions that become constraining to the patterning of culture in the form of cultural tradition.

Cultural patterning always emerges and develops in context to other forms of human culture--i.e., it exists and achieves development in a human metacultural context that serves to constrain and provide direction and limitation to the direction and pattern of development.

No human individual can escape the constraints of some form of cultural patterning, and no human grouping can escape the consequences of metacultural or transcultural contexts.





The links to the primary portals of this framework are found below: