Invoking "Shared Beliefs and Values"—and Why Not

Perhaps the enduring value of the community is not surprising. The Swahili are a "traditional" community with a long, unbroken history, and one expects the culture of such a community to be effective. The temptation to explain this effectiveness by reference to "shared beliefs and values" is a powerful one. It can, after all, hardly be doubted that shared beliefs and values are the bedrock of life in this, as in every, community.

The fact that these beliefs and values, these understandings, are shared by some and not others complicates the explanation. But even if the issues focusing around sharing are set aside, major difficulties in understanding culture's effectiveness on the basis of calling attention to its contents remain. Thus, if all the understandings shared by community members were identified, the accomplishment would be only a very limited contribution to an explanation of the nature of the community and its members' behavior. In part, this is be-

cause, as Spiro has shown (most recently, in Spiro 1984), the sharing of culture does not always or necessarily entail behaving in accord with that culture.

In addition, then, to identifying the beliefs and values that people share, it is also necessary to address the vital issue of cultural conformity. If a large enough portion of the population is not influenced by the understandings shared among community members, it is hard to imagine how the group can be said to have an effective culture—or how it could exist.

Simply determining whether or not group members are guided by cultural elements is insufficient in assessing the contribution of the elements to the culture's effectiveness. This is because cultural elements that are not associated with the behavior they call for can nevertheless contribute to the effectiveness of the culture as a whole.

This last consideration has been discussed here (see chap. 6) as the part "tokens" play in social life. In short, people sometimes give indications of sharing beliefs or values with others even though those cultural elements do not actually guide their behavior. The indications themselves, however, encourage and smooth the course of interaction and the continuation of relationships, thereby contributing to culture's effectiveness despite the fact that they do not affect behavior in the way their contents seem to indicate.

"Tokens," as these not necessarily guiding understandings are called, are one aspect of processes that proceed on the basis of limited sharing. Another important issue, and one that has received virtually no attention, is how understandings affect group members who do not share them. Several processes by which this occurs have been described here. A brief review of them may be useful.