Matti Sarmela

A curiosity from 1970’s.

Matti Sarmela

Studia Fennica 18/1974 (SKS)

Folklore, Ecology and Superstructures

Introduction

The aim of the present paper is to explore the theoretical approaches that have been taken in a study, which is now being made of the structural differences of the old Finnish-Karelian "tribe cultures". The object of the study is to expand ecological approaches so as to embrace the social and spiritual traits of regional subcultures, one of which is their folklore. Roughly speaking, the study proceeds at three levels: (1) the economic structure of subcultures, (2) their social structure and (3) their folklore. Ecological studies are bound to lead to a reanalysis of the forms of economy to be found in various societies and to a re-expression of familiar ethnological facts in a fashionable, newfangled terminology unless the study models can be extended beyond the present-day biological barriers. At least since the emergence of agrarian cultures man has ceased being a passive factor in the nutritional cycle and has built mutability into his environment, making it turn out a "cultural surplus".

Society is not a biological organism that fits straightaway into a niche designated for it by surrounding or circumstances. Up to now culture-ecological investigations have stood on the firmest ground when constructing ecological models for the economies of gatherer-hunter or nomadic communities and for the adaptation of such communities to the natural resources at hand. But in order to be of true service to cultural anthropology, ecologists must be able to clarify the way in which economic systems are connected with the most abstract strata of human culture and, conversely, how human culture affects the utilization of the environment and the interaction between the community and its environment.

Socio-cultural factors, the intellectual and social climate of the community, constitute the dynamic, supra-organic dimension of the ecosystem of human cultures, the effects of which are often difficult to pinpoint and which may be termed, following Spencer's lead, the superstructure. The Finnish-Karelian-Lappish cultural area is well adapted to a holistic ecological approach for several reasons. Although Finland and Karelia have in their entirety belonged to the area of (European) agrarian culture and cultivation by plough, Western Finland, Eastern Finland and Karelia (former Orthodox Eastern Karelia) have been sufficiently diverse in their economic structures. This is due perhaps primarily to the fact that there exists a large body of information on this old and in many respects archaic culture.

It is reckoned that folklore materials began to be collected in Finland as early as the eighteenth century. The folklore archives of the Finnish Literature Society alone have by now amassed some 2.3 Million variants or units of folklore or ethnological descriptions. To be sure, this material is often stereotyped and has been gathered for specialized folklore studies or for motif analyses and not for "sociological" studies. For example, the oldest material is completely lacking in contextual information. With the approach of the twentieth century the differences between forms of economy and in folk traditions in general had to a large extent leveled out. Theoretically speaking, folklore is diffusive; it spreads rapidly and is independent of particular economic and social structures. The Finnish-Karelian area is nevertheless rich in clearly defined, localized cultural phenomena.

We are still able to construct the economic and social infrastructures (Levi-Strauss) and ideal types (Weber) of the regional "tribe cultures". Differences in a folk tradition are often also to be seen in the so-called gathering frequencies. The prominence of a folklore phenomenon in a given area is reflected in the statistical distribution of the archive's collections, if gathering has been as extensive as it has in Finland. The local frequency of a genre or individual motif compared with that of other areas indicates its popularity, inveteracy or special functionality in the tradition of this area. Statistical comparisons can often be used to show in what area a given culture historical phenomenon has most clearly crystallised into a true collective tradition and what are its local ecotypes.

The comparisons of the study are based on (1) cartographic observations of the true empirical ranges, (2) quantitative distributions or gathering frequencies of notes or variants and (3) statistically measured internal differences in customs, institutions, genres or other phenomena. Statistical comparisons are also fraught with limitations and it is not a foregone conclusion that a quantitative study of the archive collections will always reveal the relationships that did actually prevail or isolate the factors affecting the diffusion of a genre. These questions have been dealt with in my work “On quantitative content analysis of folklore and ethnological material", 1970 (in Finnish). Since Finnish collections of folklore material are uniquely comprehensive, there is nevertheless reason to believe that by means of modern data processing methods we can sift from these collections the distributions that truly reflect the structural differences of the areas being compared. The study now being carried out is basically a continuation of the ecological approaches that were described in "Reciprocity systems of the rural society" (Sarmela 1969). At the same time it is a more thorough going analysis of the results obtained while the Atlas of Finnish Folk Culture was under preparation (is published in 1995). In the present paper it is not possible to go very deep into the structure and differences of the old subcultures of Finland and Karelia. The lists given below are in many respects rough and allusive. Also while the study was being done it was necessary to limit the subject matter. A content-analytical breakdown and codification of archive collections is a task of such magnitude that it was possible to include in the study only a very limited amount of varying cultural phenomena.

Ecological Notes

Culture-ecological investigations have so far employed two lines of attack: the deterministic and the possibilistic. According to the former approach the environment (habitat, climate, vegetation and other physical factors) have a decisive effect on the ecosystem of a community. Possibilistic theory, however, admits the ability of human culture to adapt. The environment does not determine the economic and social structure of the community, but it limits the array of choices open to the community. The admission that culture is capable of adapting has widened the field of ecological investigation, which had increasingly become oriented towards biology; but at the same time it raised the question of what really belonged to the domain of ecological investigation. The terminological diversity is an indication of the tentative methodology. Along with ecology people began speaking of cultural ecology, human ecology - and its opposite, animal ecology - social ecology, urban ecology, rural ecology, etc. Even mapping of cultural phenomena and cultural geography has been grouped with ecological study. The history and problem formulation of ecological investigation have been admirably surveyed by Vayda and Rappaport (1968; also contains an extensive

bibliography). The scope of ecology has been set forth in numerous articles and papers. One such publication with which I am particularly familiar is Ekologi och kultur (ed. Orvar Löfgren and Åke Daun), which is jointly sponsored by the Northern Countries. A recent source is also James Anderson’s article in Handbook of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ed. John Honigman 1973),

Cultural ecology, or that ecology concerned with man, can further be divided into two main approaches or schools which are to some extent mutually opposed: culture-oriented or technology-oriented studies. In culture-centred ecology, unique human factors such as the history and religion of a community, diffusion or other external cultural influences are considered an essential part of the ecosystem. Daryll Forde, an acknowledged pioneer in the field of ecology, has underscored the influence of the socio-cultural superstructure of a community on the development of means of livelihood and the entire economic system (1934). In various studies numerous examples have been given of how the same environmental conditions, the same habitat, can give rise concurrently to a variety of means of livelihood, or ecosystems.

In my opinion the concept of superstructure contains precisely those culturally relevant ideological, political and social factors (conducive to peace or war; violent intrusions on other communities or cultures; or historical causes; conceptions regarding administrative hierarchy, social classes, ownership of land, religion and ideology, etc.), which may decisively govern the interaction between a community or group and its environment. These factors determine the realized niche (Hutchinson 1965), which each group has been able to occupy. For the representatives of physical ecology, however, human and cultural factors have only been troublesome, sporadic or unknown variables, for it is difficult to assign them a place in the mechanistic models that explain the phenomena of natural science.

The second, and perhaps a now predominant approach, can be termed technological or economic ecology. Of the renowned adherents of this school, let us mention only Julian Steward, who proclaimed that the primary target of ecology is the study of the relationship between the economic system of a community and its environment. Only thereafter should it attempt to explain how economic systems affect the behaviour of the members of a society and the structural characteristics of its culture. The focal point of this line of research is the question how each community or human population is able to exploit, at its own level of activity or ecological niche, the economic opportunities offered by its environment. The concept of niche has been borrowed from the natural sciences and it has been defined in a variety of ways, as e.g. Hardesty (1972) has observed. According to him "human ecological niche is viewed as multidimensional space defined by the requisites of human survival" (1972, 465) Hardesty in fact agrees with Barth's definition that niche is "the place of a group (i.e. limited population, community, social class etc.) in the total environment and its relation to resources and competitors" (1956, 1079). The human ecosystem would thus have only one materialist ideology or active principle: to make use of nature, to produce food (energy) and ever more effectively to insure the preservation of the population.

Technological ecology has expanded to include those internal and social systems by means of which the group/community/culture regulates the distribution of food and maintains a balance between production and resources. Thus Whiting has it that in low-protein tropic and sub-tropic areas the prolonged post partum taboos and polygamy are aspects of an "ecosystem" which seeks to provide for the protein requirement of mother and child (1964). In a study of certain New Guinean tribe, Rappaport has elucidated the hidden functions of cyclical rites and local wars in the distribution of protein-rich food (pork) and in population control (1967; 1969). The control of protein-rich food and man's adaptation to low-protein nutrition is a new perspective especially in the study of gatherer/hunter peoples (e.g. Meggers 1971). Ecologists have endeavoured to see functionality also in such economic customs as are generally considered to be purely reflections of religious or other ideological thought (e.g. the sacred cows of India, Harris 1971). As a rule ecologists who have studied economic system have constructed their models of research to the "spiritual forces", traditions, values or attitudes that prevail within a given population (cf. nevertheless, Environment and cultural behaviour, ed. Vayda or, especially, Edgerton 1965). This tendency may result from an attempt to restrict the field of investigation to homogeneous, intimately inter-related populations, to small communities whose ecological system and niche can be most easily sorted out.

From the standpoint of macro-ethnology, ecology on the one hand and cross-cultural studies on the other have again raised the question of the classification of cultures and ecosystems and of the development or evolution that has occurred in them. In point of detail and in different cultures this development has naturally taken place in a multi-linear fashion and even in a chronologically different order. Nevertheless universal cultural development can be divided into three main phases in accordance with the established practice in ethnology or Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas: (1) ecosystems that are dependent on nature for their nutritional or so-called exploitive cultures such as gatherers; hunters, fishers or extensive, clearly exploitative forms of agriculture (slash-and-burn cultivation), (2) economic systems that produce food and chiefly depend on what they produce, intensive agriculture and animal husbandry (so-called cattle economies) and (3) industrial cultures or mass production cultures which focus the greatest part of their productive capacity on goods other than foodstuffs.

This classification is poorly adapted to economies based on trade or the transference on goods or to handicraft communities. The breakdown into exploitative and productive forms of economy is open to interpretation, too, as has often been pointed out. In industrial societies the exploitation and consumption of natural resources has skyrocketed. The only communities that have really managed to strike a balance with their environment have been agricultural ones which, through fertilization and irrigation of their fields, have created an ecosystem that continually increases its productivity, yet still maintains an "energy balance". Primitive, exploitative cultures have been either doomed to destruction or have come to a standstill (e. g. in population growth) in their development. What lies in store for the mass-production cultures of today, bent on squandering their natural resources, has long been an inexhaustible topic of speculation for futurologists.

Assuming the perspective of macro-ethnology, we can divide ecosystems according to their entire technical and socio-cultural capacity into (1) minimal, (2) mediate and (3) maximal systems. This breakdown would contain (a) the productivity of the ecosystems, which White et al. call the capacity to produce surplus energy, technology and consumer commodities, which are not necessarily connected with the procurement of food; (b) the capacity to change their environment, the natural plant and animal populations (biotopes) of the habitat and the entire cultural milieu; and (c) the ability to create culture: organizations, institutions, to increase the range of choices open to the individual, to increase the stock of knowledge or "culture" etc. This sort of multidimensional breakdown would not be bound to the traditional classification of types of economy. To be sure, gatherer-hunter and other pre-agricultural communities have without exception been minimal ecosystems. These societies depend on human labour as their only source of energy and they have an undifferentiated social structure (in general so-called stateless societies) etc. Mediate ecosystems would be represented by agrarian cultures and nomadic groups, but also by many communities engaged in trade and handicraft.

 Agrarian folk have harnessed adaptable sources of natural energy (water mills, windmills), as have many trading peoples (beasts of burden, sailing craft, etc.). In terms of their socio-cultural capacity these ecosystems have been more vigorous than cultures based on gathering, hunting and gardening. The modern industrial societies stand out as ecologically truly maximal economic, social and cultural systems.

In the grouping based on socio-cultural capacity, those dimensions could be taken into account, which have been proposed in an attempt to define the degree of adaptability of ecosystems or populations (e.g. Cohen 1968). Here belong the stability of food production or its independence from natural cycles, the ability of the population to maintain its nutritional balance in the face of natural disasters or wars and in general the economic, political and social independence of the population from cyclical variation in nature. These dimensions express the productivity or technological level of the ecosystem rather than its adaptative capability (cf. Hardesty 1972, 464). The concept of adaptability seems to be the sort of term that ecologists try to apply to human populations in the same way as they do to biological organisms without taking into account the supra-organic components of the community.

Broadly speaking, the only human populations that have adapted to their environment are those, which have minimal ecosystems. As means of eking out a livelihood become more refined man has increasingly changed his environment and endeavoured to occupy an ever more dominant position and to create newer and more specialized niches. However, he has not at all made an effort to adapt to his environment or to live in balance with other organisms.

Structures of Local Cultures in the Finnish-Karelian Area

Only three main areas are compared in the following list: Western Finland, Eastern Finland and (orthodox) Karelia. Western Finland comprises the oldest closely-knit settled area: Häme, Uusimaa, Satakunta, Southwestern Finland as well as the parishes or "tribe cultures" of Pohjanmaa. The area is characterized by intensive agriculture; the land tilled lying in valleys or on plains. The nature of the farming is due to the fact that in the southern areas loose soils were washed into the valleys during the ice age. The earth has been adapted to the ploughing up of relatively even and rock-free fields. This has enabled the use of "heavy" farming implements like the pronged plough. In the south-westernmost parts of the area even oxen have been set to the yoke. Prior to the so-called "great division" (1749-) a typical settled unit was the ''group village", which was surrounded by fields. As a cultural milieu, this sort of village can be compared to the farming villages of Central Europe.

Eastern Finland (Eastern and Northern Savo) includes the areas where the eastern dialects are spoken (Savo, Northern Karelia, Kainuu), sometimes including the Arctic region. Eastern Finland is partly a supra-aquatic geological region, in the high-lying portions of which remained above sea level in the period following the ice age. Loose soils were thus able to build up on the flanks of the arctic mountains, and as the lower areas consisted largely of lakes and bogs, the cultivated fields, and the settlements accompanying them, moved up to the slopes.

Eastern Finland is an area of scattered hill settlement and cultivation and is characterized by lone farmsteads of kinfolk villages. Demographically it is young and was, for the most part, not permanently settled until the 18th and 19th centuries. In Eastern Finland settlement has been made possible by slash-and-burn cultivation, thanks to which forested slopes can be put to the plough.

Karelia, here taken as old orthodox Eastern Karelia or the Viena (Dvina) and Aunus (Olonets) districts, was formerly an economy based on intensive hunting and fishing, and slash-and-burn cultivation. Owing to the importance of fishing and inter-lake travel routes, settlements were concentrated on the shores of watercourses. Typically Karelian landscapes are endless moors spotted with densely populated, Russian-style villages: the dwelling, cow barns and storage sheds form a single (two-stored) complex. Despite its relatively small population, Karelia is the most straightforward village settlement area. Ethnologically, Viena in particular lies at the periphery of the old Finnish backwoods culture, which still preserves the most archaic strata of the Finnish-Karelian culture. It is chiefly in Viena that scholars have gathered the epic poems in traditional metre, which form the core of the Kalevala national epos.

The fundamental economic and social differences of the areas compared have been dealt with in my work Reciprocity Systems of Rural Society in the Finnish-Karelian Culture Area (1969). Western and Eastern Finland can be described as static agricultural areas that underwent a change in the course of the 18th and 19th centuries from family-centred to group-centred integration. The most important reference groups of individuals have gradually become the so-called secondary groups: peer and special groups. The formation of new groups has tilted vertical socialization and the transference of values, norms and traditions more to the horizontal. Individuals show a tendency towards increased acquisition of influences from those groups and social classes with which they actively wish to identify and which constitute their status groups. The differentiation of the groups is reflected in their increased social activity, in the nearly blind adherence to the values and norms created by the group and in social competition.

The culture of Western Finland has produced symbols of the status competition among the farming folk. Examples of such symbols, which scholars have called folk art, are immense two-stored dwellings - in the Pohjanmaa district each farmstead had at least two of these - enclosed manors, stone barns, ornamented furniture either in peasant style or in imitation of bourgeois style, decorated sledges, carts and harnesses. Many such objects were specimens of the skill of the hand that had crafted them, indications of the need to show competence in the group and in the individual's social class; examples of this for the master and mistress of the house are the handsomeness and prosperous aspect of the farmstead. Also according to Wolf’s (1969) study the static nature of the settlement, the productivity of the means of livelihood, the formation of groups and the division of classes, the decline in importance of the family and the integration of young people are factors affecting the development of art.

In comparison with Western Finland, the "cultural landscape" in the East is gray and pedestrian, lacking in colour and ornament. The social climate of Savo areas is individualistic and passive. This area shows a paucity of special groups and voluntary integration and group activity - outside the family group. In the densely populated villages of the farthest reaches of Karelia there exist, to some extent, characteristics of group life that are similar to those in Western Finland; for instance, a taste for architectural ornamentation. Nevertheless, Karelia represents an archaic from of Finnish culture that is totally different, a form in which the social superstructure was based entirely on family organizations (with the exception of formal state and church organizations). The bilateral family was the only true reference group; all customs or institutions were linked to the interaction between families. A good indication of the viability of the family institutions of the eastern areas is the fact that they are among the last peripheries of western European culture in which the cult of ancestors has survived: sacrifice trees and sacrifice stones in Eastern Finland and memorial ceremonies and food offerings for ancestors in Karelia.

The way in which the Eastern Finnish slash-and-burn farmer and pioneer looked at the world can perhaps best be seen in the abundance of incantations and magical rites and beliefs. Eastern Finland has been the true spawning bed of incantations and charms, whereas Karelia, again, can be described as the last retreat of epic poetry in the old (Kalevala) metre.

Western and Eastern Folklore in the Finnish-Karelian Area

The regional differences in folklore can also be seen in the distribution of the material in the folklore archives of the Finnish Literature Society, though the classifications of these collections are so general that they cannot be used as a basis for measurements of true structural differences. In the code system of the archives "mythical tales and narrative recollections" includes, among other things, tales of treasure, which have fired the imagination everywhere, and not the least in the remote villages of Karelia. Nevertheless, these treasure tales contain clear western and eastern narrative formula and motifs; among others, in the impossible conditions, which must be fulfilled before the treasure can be got.

In the Savo areas the most popular dominant or eco-typical figure in the tales is the Devil. Yet there is no moral aspect in the tales, rather the contrary. The Devil's "antagonist" in these tales is usually a hired man of parsonage, the same as in other mythical tales from the east, and the gist of the tale most often lies in the way the hero deceives the Devil or plays an amusing trick on him. The content of the Savo people's mythical tales is playful rather than moralising or didactic.

As an example we may mention "good fairy" tales or stories out mythical beings (para) that brought prosperity to the household. It was believed that farmer's wives who practised witchcraft could give birth to these in order to increase the well being of the household. In Eastern Finland the most popular of the different para tales is one in which a peasant surreptitiously observes the birth of para but gets the "commands" mixed up, whereupon the para begins carrying dung into to house (different versions of the so called "Carry shit" tale). The Savo people have been the quickest to cultivate those elf tales, which have a droll message.

In passing through the filter of the Savo community the para tales have changed in character. Western Finns have deprecated para-keeping farmers' wives and households and felt towards them the same aversion as they did towards trolls and witch wives who paid visits on Easter Eve to their neighbours' barns for the purpose of stealing cattle luck by cutting off hairs or bits of hide from the cows or lambs. They were believed to be in league with the Devil and to fly to an Easter rendezvous. The troll tradition is particularly well demarcated and is of Western characteristic (the districts of Satakunta, Häme and Pohjanmaa). The only such tale to have spread to the Savo area is one with a clever plot relates the "hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye" machinations of a “pitchfork troll". A troll who is caught unawares in a cowshed changes itself into a pitchfork and when a prong is broken off this pitchfork, which has mysteriously turned up, the mistress of the neigbouring farmstead simultaneously breaks her leg.

The people of Savo did not have a negative attitude toward magic. Indeed, rites, charms and magic activities pervaded the cultural atmosphere of Eastern Finland, but for the people of Savo and above all for the Karelians (who knew neither troll tales nor para tales), the social competition reflected in these tales, the ill will, envy and appropriation of cattle luck were apparently curious elements the same as was their moralising and judgement-passing tone. The troll tales and, at the start, para tales, too, as well as tales dealing with house spirit who brought various kinds of material wealth into the house are part and parcel of the "rich West" where people were engaged in a group-centred social competition which manifested itself in the prosperousness of the house, the handsomeness of its buildings, the size of the harvest, in the number of fine horses and cows, in butter, cream and milk and even in the size of the flour bin. The stealing of cattle luck was a part of Western Finnish magic and it has shown remarkable vitality. As late as the 1960's Easter newspapers regularly carried stories about the evil deeds of trolls.

Among tales proffering moral instruction and admonition are ones, which have spread exclusively over the western regions. Here we find tales about an illegitimate child who is murdered and hidden in the woods, but who nonetheless succeeds in exposing his mother (cf. Pentikäinen 1968 for more details), tales about a ghost who shouts on the borderline (so-called tales of boundary sprites), that give a warning about the fate of all those who move boundary posts. Even the moralistic motifs of so called Christian incantations have been restricted to the West, though other Christian elements have found their way into incantations from Eastern Finland and Karelia. In Western Finland the only forms of metaphorical formulas for blood-stopping curses are ones like "stop blood as stops in Hell the blood of a criminal, perjurer, one who does work on the Sabbath or a false judge"; in Eastern Finland and Karelia the function of a metaphorical curse has been fulfilled by the epic poem of Väinämöinen's knee wound. In Western Finland listeners were carried away by stories of notorious bandits and "equalizers of property", who stole only from the rich. And it is perhaps indicative of the social background of the class-dominated society that the most important function of soothsayers was to expose thieves. Crimes against property have accompanied the increase of property values and the broadening gap between social classes.

In his study dealing with the sprite tradition in Ingria, Honko (1962) attempted to explain the functions of tales and beliefs concerning sprites as preservers and strengtheners of social norms. A sprite, which throws card players out of the threshing barn, is an interpreter of the offence-taking attitudes of the community. Even the sudden appearance of a sprite or its wailing raise questions about the identity of those in the household who by their bad behaviour have aroused it and what this apparition forebodes. The sprite is of course only one of the supernatural beings that have served to transmit moral and normative admonitions, albeit in narrative form. In the Savo area the Devil is usually in the same role, though not, however, in the easternmost regions. A closer examination of the sprite tradition nevertheless illustrates those basic differences which exist between the western and eastern variants of the mythical tale yet which are usually not "visible", but statistical.

1. A List of Certain Differences in the Local Cultures of the Finnish-Karelian Area before industrial development

Western Finland            Eastern Finland             Karelia                           

Socio-economic

background

Livelihood                  intensive farming;             extensive farming:           fishing, hunting;                                                                                           cultivation of                    slash-and-burn                dynamic incipient

                                 valleys and plains;            cultivation; slope             slash - and - burn 

                                animal husbandry            and hill farming;               cultivation;

                                animal husbandry;            animal husbandry,                                                                                                                                                                   fishing, hunting.     

Mode of                    settlement clusters           scattered hill                   settlement clusters

living                                                              settlement             

Dwelling                    large (two-storey)            scattered single              Russian-style two

                                houses; enclosed             buildings which                storey buildings,

                                yards; buildings               are small and                  cattle shelters etc.

                                painted, furniture              neither painted                under the same roof

                                decorated and                 nor decorated;                as the living quarter,

                                painted                           undecorated and             wood carvings

                                                                      unpainted                      and other de

                                                                       furniture                         objects; furniture

                                                                                                            adorned with carving

                                                                                                            (often)                                                                                                       

Most important          peer groups                     bilateral kinship              bilateral kinship

reference                                                         extended family             extended family

group                        age groups (youth            (recent phenomena)

                                groups), peer groups 

                                (social classes) ;       

                                interest groups and    

                                organizations             

Economical               common mills, saws,        common mills

organizations            co-operative funds,    

guilds                        

Formal                      alderman institutions  

organizations             (village government)                                              (village government)        

Instrumental              political mass

organizations             movements

Expressive                village fight groups,

organizations             young people's

                                societies, patriotic

                                movements

Common                   bees or other                  (recent)

work                         voluntary group

                                work occasions

Varieties of                skill in handicraft,

competition                skill in work,

                                work ability (in

                                bees); strength,

                                daring (in village

                                fights); status

                                symbols (buildings,

                                 well tended fields,

                                horse cart etc.)

Traditions

Rites:                        (Christian church              Christian Church            Greek Orthodox)

                                non-Christian                   preserved partially,         preserved 

                                have generally                 offerings victims              (offering feasts)

                                disappeared                    (lamb, ram)                    

                                before the                       as an old cyclic     

                                19th century                    rite at the turn of   

                                                                      the year

Hunting                                                            bear feasts           

rites                                                               

Ancestral                   disappeared                    sacrifice trees,                memorial ceremonies

worship                     (sacrificial stones)           sacrifice stones,             or the deceased

                                                                      lopping of                        (in cemeteries)

                                                                      memorial trees                setting out of food

                                                                      for ancestors                  for the dead

Sorcery:                    witches outside the     sorcerer occupies           sorcerer occupies

witchcraft                  community (witch             important social              important social

                                hunting)                           roles                               roles (as spokesman,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                           leader at weddings)

Chief aims                 stealing of                       curing of diseases,         curing of diseases

magical rites              cattle luck from                protecting livestock         protection of livestock,

                                of catching thieves           from wild beasts or          to insure marriage

                                                                      preventing them              luck to girls

                                                                      from wandering off

                                                                      into the forest

Marriage                   more open system           quite open system           most closed system

customs:                   (within social                                                         (between kinship

                                classes)                                                               groups)

authority                     youths  themselves         youths themselves           arranged marriages         

                                (youth groups)

spokes-                      role or professional         spokesman (friend,          father, mother,

man                           spokesman among          esteemed                       godfather, relative

                                 the wealthy)                   neighbour);sorcerer         sorcerer

persons who              age peers                       age peers,                      relatives, sorcerer

assist the bridal                                               relatives

pair                          

active                        “professional"                  relatives                         relatives

participants               actors of the role       

at the wedding           (cook, waiters,          

(actors of a role)        dresser of the bride,

                                musicians)                 

direction                    rites of passage                                                    rites of passage

of transition               from unmarried to                                                  between two

                                married, between                                                  kinship groups

                                age/social groups                                                 

social                        long weddings as a                                               competition

competition                family status symbol,                                             between kinship

                                guests are invited,                                                 groups, mutual gifts,

                                wined and dined;                                                   demonstration of

                                weddings are an                                                   bride's skill, e. g.

                                indicator of the                                                      knowing how to

                                prosperousness of                                                go through

                                the farmstead, at the                                             lamentations. The

                                feast strict seating                                                 bride and groom

                                arrangement according                                          are the

                                to social rank is                                                     representatives

                                observed, decorations                                           of their kinfolk

                                and other wedding                                                Guests usually not

                                trappings                                                              invited, no common

                                                                                                            meal

Folklore

Folk-                         stereotyped motif            historical tales,                historical tales,

tales:                        tales, mythical                 tales explaining                tales explaining

general                     tales                               origins, local                    origins, legends

favour                                                             tales                    

                                moral and normative        realistic, everyday 

                                (murdered                       and amusing motifs         

                                illegitimate children,          (war tales, autobio-        

                                boundary fixers,               graphical tales,     

                                tales of highwaymen        years of famine,    

                                and murderers,                prestidigitators or  

                                witches trolls)                  other special figures)      

Mythical                    giants,                            dead-being and spook    

tales                         subterranean                   stories, ancestors 

                                beings, mountain            

                                elves etc. ancestors        

Tutelary spirits

dominant                   house spirits                    nature spirits                   nature spirits

 spirits                                                            (water, forest

                                                                      and earth spirits)

dominant                   man, elf                          ancestor                         (ancestor)

figure

origin                        first occupant or              first one to light

of                             deceased person in         a fire, first

house                        the house                        occupant or de

spirit                         ceased person

treatment                  food sacrifices,                food sacrifices,               casting spells

of house                    setting out of food            casting spells                  (magical acts)

spirit                         (cult of spirit)                   (magical acts)

crystallized                the spirit does work,        tends the livestock,          favours animals

motifs                       threshes in the barn,        favours animals of           of a certain colour

                                ensures prosperity,          a certain colour,

                                warms the threshing         brings livestock

                                barn, guards the fire,       luck

                                extinguishes fires,

                                drives away

                                burglars, uninvited

                                night guests,

                                watches over the

                                morals and propriety

                                of the house

saving                       wakes the master            wakes

spirit                         or mistress of the 

                                house (in case

                                of fire, when a cow

                                is calving at night,

                                when a mill is

                                grinding empty)

irate                          kills (the master or           blots out happiness,         causes infirmity

spirit                         mistress), burns the         causes infirmity

                                house, causes

                                infirmity, pilfers

                                things from the

                                house, brings

                                poverty down

                                on the house

Incantations

e.g. blood-                moralistic curses,            ancient unchristian           ancient chanted

stopping                    Christian metaphors         chanted curses or           curses or prayers,

                                (may your blood              prayers                           blood boiling-motif,

                                stop flowing as in                                                  mythical first incident

                                hell a perjurer,                                                       e.g. Väinämöinen's

                                one who works                                                     knee wound-motif

                                on the Sabbath,

                                false judge, etc.)

General distribution of folktales

Folklore archives of the Finnish Literature Society contain more folktales collected from the western areas (46 %) of the country than from the eastern areas (39 %); table 2 (not scanned here).  There is a greater proportion of historical and etiological than mythical folk tales in the eastern areas; the proportion of mythical folktales decreases consistently when moving eastward and northward. The western character of the mythical tales is most clearly evidenced if the distribution of material dealing with guardian sprits of house; 60 % from the material is from Western and 26 % from Eastern Finland. The most widespread stereotype of guardian spirit is a diminutive, gray-suited, long-bearded elf (tonttu) with a red cap, similar to the Christmas elves commonly seen as illustrations on Christmas cards. Of the oral tradition dealing with house sprites in Southern Finland and Ingria, approximately 50 % deals with one frequenting a barn or house. In Eastern Finland and Karelia, on the other hand, tales about house sprites appear infrequently; those that do appear to have established themselves as an integral part of the oral tradition, being restricted in their subject matter. In this cultural area the vast majority of folktales concern beings that are ensconced in the ground, water, forest or other natural habitat.

In the south-westernmost region, Varsinais-Suomi and Satakunta, 70 % of the folktales dealing with guardian sprites are beliefs or tales involving beings living in houses or in "cultural localities". In Viena and Aunus the opposite relation holds: 70 % of the variants are folktales dealing with beings appearing in the nature. Of the tales, dealing with beings appearing in the nature, collected in the westernmost regions of the country, the vast majority seem to deal with the forest nymph and näkki (a water sprite), both of rather recent origin. In the easternmost areas the sprites residing in the cultural or human environment are represented by the mill sprite topos (this particular type of tale relating how the mill sprite awakens the miller has, for some reason, enjoyed great popularity in northern areas) and the forest sauna topos. In Viena and Aunus there are a number of tales dealing with beings that frequent shelters for cattle (16 %). Beliefs concerning the actual appearance of these beings are not as well established in the eastern regions as in the west. What might be called the prevailing conception is that of a white-suited, long-haired being, with a long burial garment, who seems to resemble a stylization of a person recently deceased, not unlike the popular conception of the spirits who haunt cemeteries. The western character of the tradition of sprites that belong to human environment can be seen in the accompanying simplified diagram (no.3, not scanned).

In the class labelled "other tutelary spirits" the largest group is that containing spirits of the church, mill, and the tales dealing with the nymph of the forest. The rather restricted area of distribution for the last mentioned sprite is limited to westernmost Finland.

Of the folktales dealing with tutelary spirits in general, those concerning house sprites represent the stratum which is most formalized, best established, and in which the motifs are crystallized to the greatest extent. These tales also contain the clearest moral or didactic motifs. The house sprite observes the morals of the inhabitants of the house, becoming upset if they do not lead a good life, if they misuse alcohol, or quarrel. A benign house sprite protects the house, extinguishes fires, chases thieves away, and takes care of the cows and horses, generally benefiting the house by ensuring its prosperity. He helps the house in the social competition for prosperity and wealth, but he can also "destroy" the house by burning it or even by killing the man or woman of the house if he is not treated properly (i. e. fed, honoured etc.). The western Finnish house sprite has become concrete to a certain extent, having acquired a clearly humanoid form. He is active and even performs tasks just as do the other family members. As a guardian of both the prosperity and morals of the house he plays the same role as do the Eastern Finnish ancestors, although ghosts have not been imagined to have such a concrete front or to function in quite so active a manner. There is a definite connection between beliefs concerning the origin of the house sprite and ghosts.

In Eastern Finland beliefs concerning sprites are on a pre-animistic level; the concept of the image of the being is less definite, nor is it as well established. Furthermore, a house sprite does not act, but only influences people's lives indirectly. The house sprite brings happiness into the house when he enters it, taking it along with him when he leaves. He can cause illness, but unlike the similar being of Western Finnish folktales, he does not strike the man or woman of the house dead. From Eastern Finland there are also a few reports of sacrificing to the house sprite or feeding him regularly. To attain happiness various magical acts were performed, such as the offering of alcoholic drinks. There are few moral aspects in the Eastern Finnish and Karelian folktales concerning sprites. A house sprite haunting a cattle shelter may exert his influence on the cattle by favouring cows of a certain colour if they milk well, or by hating a particular colour if animals of this colour do not milk well. The presence of a house sprite only explains happiness or lack of it; the attitude of the being has nothing to do with the moral behavior of the occupants of the house, but is much more dependent of factors that are seemingly irrational at first glance, like the colour of animals.

The only normative motive seems to be in the superstitions that a sprite haunting a house, forest sauna or other building must be greeted and, if someone would like to spend the night in a forest sauna, he must first request the permission of the sprite haunting it. The same requirement holds in the case of a person who wishes to erect a building in the forest. As a rule, nature sprites have no function in interpersonal relationships although the fact of their presence may be used to frighten children from going swimming etc. Their existence may be used as an explanation for getting lost (forest sprite) or drowning (water sprite), but these beings do not exact punishment, nor dies the fact of their existence have any connection with interpersonal moral norms or standards of behaviour.

In the west the social function of both hobgoblin stories and of mythical motif tales in general is different than in the east. This is well illustrated even by the role of the narrator and by the entire narrative setting. In the Savo areas one does not find narrators of folktales who assumed the role of performing artists; neither does a clearly defined role for the narrator appear. This is in contrast to the situation in Western Finland, even though the inhabitants of the Savo region are renowned for their colourful style of speaking and repartee. A folktale is narrated in the style of a news bulletin rather than as a programmed number with a set style of presentation. The Western Finnish village milieu with its deep-going social contacts and tendency to create normative and collective folk traditions have favored stereotyped dramatic tales with a definite plot, thus standardizing the traditional narrative style. In the eastern areas a narrative style in the first person singular seems to have been somewhat more general than in the west, with the exception of the village culture of Greek Orthodox Karelia. The narration of a supernatural vision as a personal event or recollected memory was considered to be one criterion of faith, proving that the supernatural material of the narrative had actually passed through the social controls recognized by the community and taken on the status of collective belief. This collective belief supports the narrator when he explains or interprets a personal experience as supernatural. Narrative style in the first person singular may also have other

The following list provides a summary of the most evident differences in socio-cultural structure in the area under comparison: functions. In the west in which a particular style of narration has taken root, one measure of the credibility or authenticity of a story is how well it conforms to a generally known formula. In the eastern areas characterized by individual folk tradition the credibility or truth-value of a story from the hearers' point of view depends on the person who has experienced the event and on the narrator. A story is deemed credible if the person who experienced the event is identifiable or if both the narrator and the person involved are known to be trustworthy people. An evident result of his is that realistic stories, i.e. those dealing with historical or local events, were more popular in the east than were mythical stories. A historical tale does not relate supernatural events, but is restricted to events of such type as might happen in warfare, exceptional circumstances or to famous people and heroes.

Socio-Cultural Climates in the Finnish-Karelian Area

The cultural climate of western and southern Finland, with its emphasis on social integration and group centeredness has also left its mark on folklore. Examples of this are (1) the formalization and diversification of folktales. (2) an increase in their communicative significance and content in respect of their social and didactic (moral and normative) components, and (3) an increase in and consequently more distinct differentiation of the role of the narrator or separate conveyers of the folktale. Changes in the norms and values of knowledge transmitted by oral tradition could perhaps best be demonstrated by comparing proverbial sayings as to their diffusion, age; and popularity in different regions. Nevertheless, it would seem that the western Finnish stock of proverbial sayings contains more differentiating of good and bad manners, although many depicting an increased awareness of collectivity, the superiority of one's own village, social class or group, financial status, bravery or other positive quality do occur. It is also probable, that in western Finland child rearing and religious attitudes were stricter than in eastern Finland. The social stratification and class structure characteristic of western Finland may be observed in the many customs relating to special occasions and "rules of etiquette", the self-imposed isolation of the wealthier class of farmers and the striving to imitate the customs of the upper and aristocratic classes. In Western Finland there have clearly been more different status symbols and more oral traditions representing the heritage of different social groups.

Sketch 6.

Some Characteristics of the Local Superstructures

Western Finland Eastern Finland Karelia

Agrarian Extensive Extensive

Furthering Resisting Rejecting

integration integration integration

Differentiated peer Less differentiated Not differentiated,

groups, special kinship groups

interest groups

Group-centred Individual attitudes External family-

behaviour and centred attitudes

attitudes

Increased social Little social com- Little or no social

competition petition competition

Increased social Social passivity Social passivity

activity

Increased Individual or Traditional

normativity and traditional control, normativity,

pressure for social public opinion extended

conformity, family control

group control

Increased status Little interest in Few status

symbols status symbols symbols

Western and Southern Finland have received with increasing frequency the distinctive features of a maximal, specialized and highly niched ecosystem. It has, however, been continually changing into a society dominated by class structure with a social climate characterized by increasing normativity and moral rigidity.

From an ecological point of view the cultural differences observable in the Finnish-Karelian area give reason to pose the question of whether these differences are to be attributed to (1) physic-geographical factors, (2) forms of livelihood, i. e. the higher state of development and consequent productivity of Western Finnish agriculture, (3) historical reasons or diffusion, i. e. the fact that Western European cultural influences first spread to Western and Southern Finland, or (4) the difference in the population - Western Finland has been an area with a denser population and larger potential population growth. Geographical factors have had an influence on the techniques used in agriculture and other basic forms of livelihood such as hunting and fishing, although there has hardly been any direct connection between environment and livelihood in the development of different types of cultural climates. Ecologically, slash-and-burn cultivation has not been the kind of marginal and economically insignificant form of agriculture that economic historians have thought it to be. In spite of its apparent primitiveness slash-and-burn cultivation was a more effective means of using natural resources and in its time better suited to northerly conditions than was cultivation of fields. Slash-and-burn cultivation made the spread of a settled population possible.

 An excellent example of the technical superiority and adaptability of the Savo ecosystem is the fact that its inhabitants were able to inhabit forested regions not only in Finland, but also in Sweden (Vermland) which populations practising fixed field cultivation were unable to put to the plough. Slash-and-burn cultivation has also been a very productive method of gaining a livelihood, being at least sufficiently productive to give a reasonably stable economic basis for the social diversification of the society. The slowness of diffusion and the relatively recent arrival of the inhabitants have not been decisive factors in the preservation of cultural differences. The most typical static group-centred agricultural area, Pohjanmaa, was also populated rather recently. The spread of cultural influences was often extremely rapid and Western or Southern Finland cannot be said to have been the only outlets of diffusion. The preservation of cultural differences was not so much influenced by the slowness of diffusion as by the fact that new influences, a new type of oral tradition, new institutions, and technical innovations did not exert a filtering barriers, become established or acculturated, since the acculturation process would also have presupposed changes in the social structure of the area.

Within the cultural sphere of Savo and Karelia certain features exist, such as the important role played by the extended family, the dynamism resulting from the mobility of population, and the susceptibility to continued changes, which have always brought with them the phenomena of disintegration, weakness of norms, and isolation from social life, as again in the industrialization and urbanization phases of society. In the integrational development and cultural growth characteristic of Western Finland, there have probably been general features of such a nature as to justify the investigation of changes in the ecosystems and superstructures from a wider perspective, one overstepping the boundaries of more usual economic-ecological theories.

Evolutionism and Ecology

At least a few dozen indices depicting changes of human nature, behaviour or development of social institutions have been proposed. A background thought in the old evolutionary theories based more on philosophical than on empirical facts, is that human beings have shown development in their intellectual traits. The wild creature which once lived by his instincts and feelings has become homo sapiens, an ethically thinking, civilized being. The basis of social organization has usually been considered to be religious or military integration. The most ancient states seem to have been of a theological-military nature (Comte 1852, Giddings 1898, Spencer 1876). According to Sumner, the beginning of social organization was probably the adaptation of customs based on instinctive or emotional behaviour (folkways), which were followed by traditions, institutions, and finally laws. Human thought would, by this theory, have changed from a process governed by tradition to one governed by reason, capable of taking cause and effect relations into account (1906). Giddings was of the opinion that social thought has changed from impulsive to traditional, finally assuming a rational nature. Military-religious social systems would have changed first into legal and then into ethical (or economic ethical) ones. Comte named the stages in the development of social thought theological, metaphysical and positivistic; Maine's terms status and contract are equally well known being a theory that personal status (and legality) based on power changed to one based on social contract (1861).

Of older theories concerning the spread of social thinking and the ethical development of law and justices, those with a definite sociological or social anthropological aspects might well be mentioned in this connection. Spencer can be regarded as one of the first sociologically thinking investigators to have drawn attention to the increase in social institutions accompanied by the growth and specialization of aggregative needs in a society the economic structure of which is becoming more industrial with development proceeding onward towards an "ethical society". Ward in particular emphasized the continuous growth of knowledge, and the significance of new inventions as man's liberator from drudgery, with a concurrent increase in controls in modern teleological based societies (1902). Hobhouse, on the other hand, divided social development into three stages: familial communities (organizations based on kinship), despotic states, and free national states. In the same way the possibilities for societies to exert social control, as well as to control the environment have continuously increased (1906). The best known of these theories is probably Marx's theory of the development of the state. Primitive communal society develops through the stages of slavery (serfdom) and inherited class division, ending in a capitalistic class society from which development would pass through socialism to a communist or classless society.

The development of human intellectual capacities (and perhaps also of ethical values) has been considered to be less likely during historical times. When functionalism was the prevailing tendency in ethnology and sociology evolutionary theories of the nineteenth century were regarded as obsolete and new unilinear theories were not any more taken seriously among European investigators. In place of evolution, the changes or dynamism of culture have been current topics during the past few decades (Malinowski, Steward etc.). Interest in finding consistent features in multi-linear developmental lines is on the rise at present and in the United States at best, several articles and books have appeared in which new aspects of cultural change have been sought (i. e. Opler 1959, 1962; 1964; Lange 1965; Murphy 1967; Peacock-Kirsch 1970; Service 1972 and The Evolution of man's capacity for culture. The foremost proponent of neo-evolutionism has been Leslie White, e.g. 1949, 1959).

Sociologists especially have been interested in the differences between "traditional" agrarian society and industrial urban society. Urban society may be characterized by at least the following features: mass production, division of labour, specialization, the mechanization of work and of everyday life, a clock-dominated pace of life, social mobility and heterogeneity, the anonymity of interaction and social intercourse, impersonality and bureaucracy, isolation and lack of personal control between individuals with a correspondingly increased control mechanism upheld by formal organizations. Social competition among individuals has increased continuously with a gain in the number of status symbols (cf. Anderson 1971, 6-). From the viewpoint of a change in the personality of man, the most significant factor is probably that the network of secondary groups has become extended within agrarian and urban society. If a change in human personality be considered possible, it may be partially attributable to changes brought by increasing social integration, the increase in schooling and general knowledge, and the development of mass media.

The increase in schooling and general knowledge as well as the mass media have had a decisive effect on an individual's frame of reference, the direction in which folklore and knowledge are transmitted, and the entire process of social integration. Sociologists have seen agrarian society as representative of a traditional community in which the transmission of folklore has taken place vertically from generation to generation. Nevertheless, there have been differences between agrarian and more minimal communities in respect of their ecosystem similar to those existing between urban and agrarian communities. In pre-agrarian hunting-fishing-horticulture the basis of social organization has usually been the kinship. The most important frame of reference for the members of the community is the extended family, the kinred or in unilateral societies the lineage, the clan, the phratria etc. Members of the group associate either according to mythical fraternal bounds (totemistic groups) or according to norms determined by the kinship system.

A change takes place in the framework of integration already during the process of transition to an agrarian society. Peer groups begin to replace kinship groups, and different kinds of interest groupings and social classes appear. The increase in governmental hierarchy also brings about the creation of new formal groupings. To an ever-increasing degree, individuals begin to identify themselves with some groups and identify roles, which these groups have created. In evolutionary theories changes in human behaviour have been described in different terms. According to Tönnies's well known theory the group structure of a society has changed from a Gemeinschaft type of organization in which individuals belong either by birthright or tradition, to a Gesellschaft type based on rational explanations and integration based on social contract (e. g. 1955). According to Durkheim's classification, a change in the framework of social integration from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity has taken place (1893). Riesman's division of personality and behavioral types is also well known: tradition directed, inner-directed and other directed types of personality (1950). The basis of Riesman's classification or developmental scale is the evaluation of where individuals receive their impressions from and what they base their personalities upon in communities characterized by different types of economic structure (i. e. societies which are on the primary, secondary or tertiary sphere of the economy).

Margaret Mead has perhaps best depicted changes in the direction of the transmission of culture (1971). She has divided societies into three stages of development: post figurative, cofigurative and prefigurative. At the postfigurative, primitive hunting-gathering-horticultural stage of culture, folklore and knowledge are directly transmitted from parents to children, from generation to generation. In cofigurative societies, represented in Mead's opinion by economically and socially differentiated societies, even including modern industrialized societies, individuals integrate socially with representatives of their own age or peer group. The transmission of culture takes place horizontally and the traditions and traditional values created by the parents loose their significance. The prefigurative community would be the utopia of the future, in which the growth of culture, or perhaps more exactly, overall knowledge could be so great, that only the young would be capable of keeping up to date. In this case, the younger generation would determine the norms of society as well as its ideological goals, with the elder members of society forced to learn from them. In this case, the direction of cultural transmission would be the opposite of that prevailing in primitive societies.

The Change to Group-Centeredness

The terms kinship-centred (community centred) and group-centred are perhaps other examples of the proliferation of useless terminology. In the personal opinion of the author, the concept group-centred depicts more central differences in behavior in respect to the ecosystems prevailing in minimal and maximal societies. Kinship is the universal framework for social integration but in seems evident that the ecosystem, it’s economic and social security and balance have a decisive influence on the significance that the kinship groups has on the individual's frame of reference. Economic insecurity, limited sources of nutrition, and lack of possibilities to insure a livelihood or develop a profession with an eye towards the future seem to result in the type of social climate in which the kinship group or group of biological affiliation has the greatest significance.

Economic and social insecurity can also be due to the overall dynamism of the culture or to uncertain circumstances. Kinship-centred behaviour is thus not necessarily linked to specific economical forms. Strong familial links can still be seen in American industrial society among many former immigrant groups or even in Thailand among the Chinese immigrants who earn their living chiefly as small shopkeepers or as middlemen in the distribution network for farm produce or, organized like the Mafia, as opium smugglers. A study of the insufficient uncertain opportunities to earn a living in the homeland of the Mafia would perhaps provide an answer to the question why family ties are so strong among the Sicilians and other peoples of the Mediterranean littoral. If one wishes to find historical examples of kinship-centred behaviour and social organization, then the Bible gives an excellent description of the strongly family-oriented, semi-nomadic Nation of Israel with its twelve tribes spread over the face of a barren land.

7. Sketch over Development

Economic basis Mainly Transition

integration of traditions

background (values, norms,

culture)

Minimal in the natural unilinear vertical,

social state kin groups, from generation

eco (pre-agricultural lineages to generation

systems gathering, clans. (postfigurative)

hunting, fishing, moieties.

horticulture,

slash-and-burn bilateral

cultivation) kinship

household

| (family,

extended

productive family)

| domesticated |

food production: spatial

agriculture groups

animal

husbandry peer

groups

| special

interest

groups horizontal

Maximal industrial (from peer

social technology, status groups;

ecosystems urban culture groups (cofigurative)

The term group-centred also describes behaviour from a macro-ethnological perspective and the reference background of the whole individual as we shift to socially differentiated societies. Individuals wish to identify voluntarily and actively with their peer and status groups; solidarity is organic and not mechanic as in a member group like a nuclear or extended family. At the same time the influence of secondary groups on the individual's increasing social integration and on the development of the values and norms, which he accepts grow more significant than those of the so-called primary groups. In family-dominated groups the individual's statuses and roles are in a sense determined automatically and there do not occur many situations, which generate competition or the need for comparison. In peer groups the individual has to compete for a level of status, he is drawn into social competition and accordingly feels the need to boost his effectiveness. Behaviour becomes more active, more outwardly directed - and places a value on result. In peer and interest groups the individual's frame of reference broadens and it is apparently necessary for these groups to form before new institutions can take root and new technical innovations spread. Special groups create new values and norms and goals but they also require of their members solidarity and submission to the discipline of the group.

In the latter stage of rural society, group-centred behaviour has even taken extreme forms. Examples of such extremities in Finland are village fight groups (cf. Sarmela 1969, p. 254), which were among the first youth peer groups in the static Finnish agrarian community. Village fights changed from harmless sport to combat with knives, but even then the norms of the fighting group left their mark on the young men's behaviour for a long time. The observance of the group norms was even responsible for the death of 30-40 (60) young men in a certain parish in South Pohjanmaa during 1850-1885 (the culmination). The fighting norms of the knife-junkers spread elsewhere in Finland and acts of violence with a hunting knife have left a stark imprint on the statistics for Finnish crimes of violence. A second more universal example may be taken from political group movements. Without a new behavioral bias created by group-centred thought total political mass movements like Nazism and, in part, Communism do not seem capable of explanation. In a modern urban society Nazism could hardly again command the same support as it did in an agrarian society matured for group-centeredness. And Communism, being a movement, which approves of any means needed to further its struggle, flourishes only in underdeveloped countries having a social structure similar to that of Europe in the 1920's. Blindly fanatical characteristics may still crop up in youth gangs but scarcely any ideology can ever again upset an entire society to the same extent as did those that evolved in latter day rural society and culminated in the marching of disciplined army forces during the II world war.

Group-centred behaviour has belonged to a specific phase of "world history", as did religious mass movements and the rise of high religions more than a thousand years earlier. Using Weber's term we may call this phase the age of charismatic behaviour, an age when the figures at the head of society often succeeded in unleashing true mass movements. Apart from religious or other expressive behaviour, modern society has seen this breed of charismatic leader step aside as political professionals appeared on the stage.

Causes and Effects

It has been easier to describe the changes in the socio-cultural structure of societies than it has been to advance theories about the causes underlying social evolution. Social evolution has been seen to follow technological advance, the increase of available energy, the upheavals in the ecological structure caused by new inventions. Again, others seek its origins in the capricious currents in the history of ideas and in ideologies. Still others assert that the fountainhead of change lies in the social reforms and innovation inaugurated by the great men of history. In Harrier's cross-cultural study population pressure is regarded as a major determinant of social evolution. In pre-agricultural societies population growth has brought about a steadily increasing need to exploit virgin agricultural and mineral resources, to render the utilization of these resources more effective and to boost the productivity of agriculture. A change in the economical structure would cause changes in the

structure of primary groups. For example, unilinear family groups would show a tendency to become cognate or bilateral.

The decrease in agricultural and mineral resources is thus attributable to the gradual but progressive competition for the acquisition and control of productive land. The inequitable distribution of land gives rise to traditional land ownership with a concomitant, and permanent, stratified social structure - with traditional class barriers. The competition for land ownership gradually takes on more complex forms and leads to political integration as different social classes strive to safeguard their own interests. The internal competition, which animates the community, evolves into an intensifying struggle between different tribes and peoples for biospace (Harrier 1970. 68--). Social evolution is thus seen to reflect the same dynamic force as Darwin saw to be primary in his model for biological evolution, the struggle for survival. Harrier's model of explanation is also near to Marxist social theory, though according to him the stimulus of social conflict is not the struggle for the means of production but, rather, the lack of such means.

In the last analysis Harner's study only shows that agricultural societies are socially more stratified (class divisions), politically and administratively more integrated and centralized (cities) than societies whose economy is based on gathering or hunting. His results are, however, in concert with the findings of many other cross-cultural studies (see Textor's correlations, 1967). The correlation between class divisions and the degree of political integration has also been noted by LeVine (1960). Several cross-cultural comparative studies have similarly made the observation that development of means of livelihood goes hand in hand with political and administrative development (Ember 1963; Murdock-White 1969, examinations of a solution procedure for Galton's problem; cf. also Carneiro 1968, Freeman-Winch 1957 and other works by the same authors). An increasingly complex social structure, the differentiation of new groups and social classes, political and administrative integration and specialization are some of the universal consequences of increased productivity of the ecosystem. Population pressure, however, should not be considered a primary cause of economic and social evolution. An adequate population and a reserve of labour are essential requirements for the maximal development of ecosystems, but nowhere has overpopulation led ipso facto to the development of economic or social structures.

8. Sketch. Dynamic of social systems

Population <> Organization Reflections in

pressure pressure superstructures

security of increase of new increase of autocracy

resources roles, statuses, autocratic family,

instrumental or religious or political

stability expressive groups systems

of production classes etc.

legal standards/systems

| male dominance

paternal/patrial authority

Group-centred behaviour

obedience training

|

severity of socialization

Competition <> Socialization

pressure pressure restrictiveness of

moral, sexual, religious

attitudes, opinions, norms

increase of necessity of formalized tradition

possibilities normativeness within groups, classes

status symbols, within groups

material values, stereotyped structures

means of strictness of music, songs, folklore

productions conformity ideological manifestations

Cross-cultural studies also indicate other general trends in development, of which the effect on social evolution has up to now been more or less neglected by social anthropologists. Increased economic productivity and complexity of social structure have been accompanied by a growing social strictness and authoritarianism. The attitudes that take shape in productive ecosystems are more normative and rigid, sexual mores generally more restrictive, religious dogmas and practice more severe, and socialization and education more subordinating than they are in minimal ecosystems. In this respect the studies of Barry et al. are of especial interest. "Their results point to the conclusion that philosophies of child-rearing geared to the inculcation of obedience and submissiveness are more prominent in cultures endowed with sufficient nutritional reserves (societies based on agriculture and animal husbandry) than in those which are far from satiety. Subordinating childrearing would also seem to correlate to some extent with political integration and social stratification (Barry-Child-Bacon 1979).

Tendency towards patrilineality (male-dominance) and parental authority are distinctive traits of agricultural societies, which are reflected, for example, in marriage customs. Stephens (1963, 326-) has characterized such attitudes by the term autocracy. In its entirety the pressure towards greater social integration has become more severe. The more complex a society is, the more the roles it offers and the tasks it assigns require information and technical knowledge, and again the more severe will become the pressure exerted on children and youth in their formative stages. Maximal ecosystems require the individual to subordinate himself to the norms of group-centred development. In fact it is just this group-centred discipline and solidarity that many older scholars have had in mind when speaking about the ethical, "human" or responsibility-oriented behaviour of a civilized society. (Concerning the ethics of responsibility see e.g. Weber). The growth of normativity can be felt in the whole climate of a society, in the increase in significance of traditions and in the content of folklore - in a word, in the communication of traditions.

Social evolution and the tendency of a culture to become complex are a cumulative process or chain reaction which is not set off by one single stimulus: not by population pressure, not by a sufficiency of subsistence resources; not by an individual's invention nor by a change in economic productivity. The growth of the ecosystem is also affected by changes in the super-structure, by social differentiation and by an increasing pressure towards general competivity. These are the stimuli that the values, status symbols and new goals of the groups bring with them. The dynamics of the growth process can be described as in the sketches 7 and 8. Increasing social competition with its effects upon the social atmosphere in the form of interpersonal tension touches not only individuals, but collective groups. Each group must constantly strive to manifest itself, to augment its potential to exert influence outward and to increase the cohesion among its members. The groups must create traditions of self-enchantment, ritualize activities; they must provide themselves with group emblems (apparel, jewelry and insignia, facilities for celebrating special occasions, palaces) and indicators of the rank and power of individual members (crowns, field-marshals' batons, oak-leaf branches, red carpets). The human environment is filled with social trinkets or requisites of social manifestation: initiation ceremonies, festival processions, marches, hymns, songs and myths by means of which the groups insure their signally important objectives, rout their opponents and elevate their own feelings of self-importance - and consolidate, blind, group-centred behaviour. Here again we see competition for the environment and resources of the ecosystem. The human ecosystem is not a dialogue with nature alone. Man has always had a fundamental proclivity to communicate with his fellows and, thus, adaptation to the struggle for social existence figures just as importantly in man's ecosystems as does adaptation to nature.

Thailand 1972.

Translated from the Finnish by Robert Goehel and Eugene Holman 1974.

Table 2. General distribution of Finnish Folk Tales

Table 3. General distribution of Finnish tutelary spirit tradition

Table 4. Profile of Finnish tutelary spirit tradition

Table 5. Profile of interaction systems in the Finnish-Karelian Area (Sarmela 1969)

are not scanned.

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