We want to take up this issue from our breaking the frames perspective.
First, what does the term‘change’mean? The answer is that it means too
many things to be used as a simple counter in any debate. The critical case
that Jarvie took up for extensive examination was a case where changes of
various kinds were obviously, if not glaringly, implicated in the activities of
people in cultural contexts that had been theorized as formerly in a stable
and unchanging state. How, then, did the changes arise that led to the
activities labeled as‘cargo cults’?
It hardly takes much time tofind numbers of responses to this conun-
drum. First, the question is based on wrong or inadequate assumptions. It
was the arch-functionalist, Radcliffe-Brown, who pointed out that in cases
where we have no means of reconstructing histories, all we can do is to
produce synchronic analyses of the present. By the same token, however,
when we do establish some lines of enquiry into history, we do not
necessarilyfind stable or long-lasting situations of complete continuity.
Rather, wefind from oral history or from literate sources where these exist,
that change of one kind or another is a normal state of affairs.
Second, it is not entailed by a synchronic functional account that
change is precluded. Functionalist accounts are models of how the analysts
think that structures of social relations replicate themselves over time.
They may show that elements of structure work together towards this
replication. But they do not in any way show that if circumstances change
this‘system’will automatically adjust by resisting introduced changes
rather than by accommodating to them and thereby unleashing a series
of changes (and thus exemplifying Jarvie’s own point about unintended
consequences of action). Moreover, a demonstration of the imputed
functions of an existing state of affairs in no way precludes that individuals
may introduce changes in accordance with their own wishes, whether
there is outside influence or not. Individual creativity is always potentially
present, especially if it is not stifled by inequities of power; or, those
holding power may also desire change and be able to institute it.
Third, andfinally here for this part of the argument, change covers
many things, from big to small; but even small changes can lead to bigger
ones. There is the famous study by Lauriston Sharp of how the introduc-
tion of steel axes into one Australian Aboriginal community is said to have
caused an extensive set of resultant changes in the structures of power and
influence (Sharp 1934 ). Whether this story covers the whole set of events
or not, it exemplifies how a technological change may trigger further
changes without its instigators intending to unleash these. Technology,
12 BREAKING THE FRAMES