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Anthropological Systems Theory | Anthropological Relativity | Symbolic Transformation | The Anthropology of Knowledge | The Cultural Construction of Reality | Ethnocultural Studies
Symbolic Transformation
There is no human behavior that is not symbolic upon one level of another. Even extremely aberrant or psychologically deviant behavior can be construed within some kind of symbolic framework implying a relative sense of noetic equilibrium with one's life world. In fact, all human behavior is symbolic upon multiple levels of significance simultaneously, and may be said to be intrinsically, noetically complex. This is the central basis and thesis of the doctrine of the anthropological relativity of human reality. Human beings are products of their knowledge, and their knowledge is largely a consequence of their cultural patterning and orientation. Culture does not cause behavior in any determinative manner, but it definitely constrains and shapes behavior within certain dynamic ranges of possibility.
Symbolic transformation summarizes the central characteristic of human consciousness and knowledge. It describes the process of the symbolic integration of human perception, cognition and behavioral response, and the constructive processes that are attributed to human cultural patterning. In a sense, symbolic transformation is what occurred to the entire species of humankind, when Homo sapiens became wise. It describes the condition of being human not only in a grand collective sense, but also in an individual and idiosyncratic sense of a person's phenomenological experience of and interaction with the world. Symbolic transformation is what occurs when an infant grows into a walking, talking little adult, with one's own opinion, demands and ways of dealing.
Symbolic transformation can be described as the consciousness awakening experience that people have as a consequence of learning and development, and as the product of adaptive interactions with their effective life-world. It appears that humans are to some extent pre-programmed for this kind of transformation to occur, with the stipulation that certain patterns and signals in an effective life context are prerequisites to its occurrence.
Symbolic transformation does not occur all at the same time. It appears to be a gradual but graded stadial process, that occurs continuously under the right circumstances. It is apparent as well that circumstances are critical to its occurrence, as it is possible that adverse environmental conditions can frustrate and inhibit this process rather than facilitate and trigger its occurrence.
The effective environment critically shapes the outcomes and state-path trajectory of symbolic transformation. It defines the potentiality and the direction that this process willl undergo.
Symbolic transformation is critical to the understanding of human systems and the anthropological relativity and limitations of such systems, especially from the standpoint of cybernesis. It creates what is called the condition of "world openness" upon which human constructive capacities are based and through which we come to realize cultural patterning. This leads to the realization of alternative adaptive systems, human made artifices, that have the net effect of augmenting reality in basic ways and to the realization of new systems that did not previously occur in any natural or derivative form in nature. This has both positive and negative sides, for it has served to enhance human destructive capacities and potentials for violence as much as it has helped human beings in a purely adaptive manner.
Understanding the basic processes of symbolic transformation that underlie all forms of human experience, perception, knowledge and skill acquisition, as well as human mental and psychological integration, is a key to understanding how human systems are articulated and can be manipulated in a deterministic manner for developmental purposes.
The links to the primary portals of this framework are found below:
