Avant-gardism as a Mode of Culture Change

TLDR: Meyer's most important departure from Kroeber's internal dynamic theory is his rejection of the idea that there is a single mode of artistic change that holds for all times.

Abstract: Alfred Kroeber is considered a culturologist because in his major works (1917, 1957, 1969) he argued for a purely cultural level of change. He was so convinced of the primacy of culture that, when Edward Sapir (1917) challenged him to generalize the notion of the superorganic to other areas, he turned to the fine arts, where it was widely assumed that individuals, not culture patterns, had the greatest shaping effect. While Kroeber acknowledged the importance of superior individuals or geniuses as the agents of culture, he saw them as actors who would simply realize the inherent problems and puzzles of existing cultural traditions. In Configurations of Culture Growth, he argued that the fine arts were domains largely free from societal influence and pragmatic contingencies where culture patterns unfolded according to their own internal dynamic. Structural-functionalists have not followed up on Kroeber' s theory of change because it minimizes the idea of reciprocal relationships in society and because it conjures up the almost metaphysical notion of the superorganic. Nonetheless, his ideas have influenced some major style theorists. Notable among these is Leonard B. Meyer (1967) who shares with culturologists a strong interest in the idea of style patterns and their internal workings. Meyer retains the pattern idea because it helps to explain the persistence of long-term trends in intellectual thought and artistic styles through time. He also concurs with Kroeber's point that, on numerous occasions, extra-stylistic forces, even political revolutions, do not impinge upon the development of a major pattern (Meyer 1967:109). Once its premises have been established, a style will change in its own way. Meyer's most important departure from Kroeber's internal dynamic theory is his rejection of the idea that there is a single mode of artistic change that holds for all times. Rather, he speculates that change can take many guises and that directed change is probably specific to particular cultural periods, such as during the early moder period in Europe (Meyer 1967:99-101, 115). Apparently, this hypothesis, which is central in his book, occurred to him as he pondered why no dominant style had emerged in 20th-century music (Meyer 1967:v-vi). In his revision of the internal dynamic theory, he achieves what Gatewood (1987) terms a reasonable solution to the debate between exogenous and endogenous theories of culture and artistic change.