Kluckhohn Is Foe Of Fixed Culture Types

Every family has its own individual character, and stereotyped culture patterns should never be applied to it, Clyde Kluckhohn, professor of Anthropology, warned 1500 educators and social workers in Now York City Thursday.

He was discussing "Variations in the Human Family" before one of the sessions of a three-day symposium sponsored by the Community Service Society, a hundred-year-old New York social service organization.

Professor Kluckhohn insisted that human families throughout the world are all organized as to form and function in essentially the same manner. No matter how weird or barbaric certain family structures may seem to the western eye, they are all really "variations on a basic theme."

Some Set Elements

There are certain phases of the family system that must remain the same, no matter what the culture is, he declared. Among others, these common elements include: the care of children and the aged, the physical superiority of the male, and the institution of marriage.

Kluckhohn concluded with a plea to applied social scientists that they not be "taken in " by a system of cultural stereotypes, any more than they would believe that there is something called "human nature" that will explain all man's actions.

Last week's three-day symposium was the first of a series of four that the Community Service Society will hold throughout 1948. On April 28, President Conant will be a guest at the Society's centennial dinner.