Patterns, Nonsharing, and Cultural Organization

The common presence of the understanding that balance is vital for proper functioning unites the social and bodily domains in what can be thought of as a single cultural organization. Benedict's "patterns" (1934) as well as Opler's "themes" (1945) are based mainly or entirely on just this source of relationships between different cultural domains. A well-known example of this is Benedict's finding of common elements in the understandings that guide ritual and in those concerned with personal gratification. The same sort of organization of cultural elements has been identified by more recent researchers, as, for example, Geertz's tracing of the understanding tjotjog (to fit) in quite different complexes concerned with medicine, arithmetic, and a number of other domains of Javanese culture (Geertz 1973a :129–130).

This "common element" organization seems likely to increase the probability that the understandings in the different sets will actually guide behavior. The fact that an understanding is taken as important in one area of life does not necessarily affect its standing in another area, but it probably gives it an inevitability it would not otherwise have. When the understanding has sacred or value-laden connections in one of the areas in which it occurs, as with the Swahili understanding that balance is essential to proper social relationships, its obviousness and importance in another area is probably increased. This seems to be what Benedict, Opler, and others imply when they identify patterns and suggest that cultural conformity—whose presence is implied by a ubiquitous "style" of behavior in different domains—is enhanced by their presence. It is surely true that for those who share the Galenic views about the body as well as the commonly held values concerning social relations, the importance of the balance understanding in both gives the Galenic complex an appeal it might otherwise not have.^[8]