Mahmoud Dhaouadi

In other words, the cultural symbols that the human species possesses must be the main source that psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists ought to consult and refer to in any ambitious scientific endeavor which seriously aims at improving the levels of understanding and explaining the behavior of the individuals as well as that of human collectivities. In short, being central to the very identity-making as well as to the behavior of social actors in any society and any culture, human cultural symbols could legitimately be called the Culturo-Symbolic Soul of human social actors.2

Giving cultural symbols a prominent role in the study of the social actor’s and his/her society’s behavior restores the essential humanistic touch to the mainstream work of behavioral social sciences. That humanistic dimension has been lost considerably under the impact of both Behaviorism and Structuro-Functionalism. The former often studies human behavior according to S-R contingency or the rules that govern animal behavior. Modern Structuro-Functionalism, on its part, examines social action as shaped and determined by no more than the constraining social facts (faits sociaux) and the social structures.

The major thesis to be developed throughout the pages of this study aims essentially to accomplish two goals: to establish a theoretical framework on the nature and the role of cultural symbols as key forces to the determination of single or collective human behavior. Viewed in this way, the insights of human cultural symbols are expected to enhance the social scientist’s scientific credibility. In other words, at this level, we aspire to make a social science contribution to basic research in the field of human cultural symbols, and try to apply our theoretical perspective in an empirical manner on a sample of behavior drawn from different societies, cultures, and civilizations.

The full and conclusive success in combining the theoretical and the applied levels in the behavioral social sciences remains, however, an ideal. The measure of one’s theory’s highest credibility is nothing more than coming closer to the realization of a genuine synthesis between the applied and the theoretical in the world of the behavioral social sciences.

To articulate our developing theory on the universe of cultural symbols, we need first to present a transparent analysis of the essence of cultural symbols’ transcendental nature. Their transcendental hidden dimensions have manifested themselves in a rather tangible way as we have increasingly distanced ourselves from approaching them through positivist lenses.

Our Ever Smaller World

Alvin Toffler, the well-known American thinker, has stated that humankind has gone through two major revolutions: the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. Today, humanity embarks on its third and most important revolution. It is the Third Wave in which the Communication/Information Revolution is a prominent feature.3 The latter is especially displayed in the formidable capacity that humans increasingly have in dealing with cultural symbols: word, thought, belief, science, cultural norms and values, voice, image, etc. The modern techniques, in Ellul’s terminology, of printing and sending voice and image have reached a high degree of efficiency and precision in diffusing cultural symbols from one place to another with stunning speed. This breakthrough in the field of communication has made the world renowned Canadian communication expert, Marshal McLuhan, state that our vast world of different civilizations, people and tribes scattered here and there around the globe has become a small village whose quarters are practically separated by no frontiers.4

The continuing advancement in the high quality technology of information and communication since McLuhan’s famous statement ought to oblige us to modify that statement to update it – though surely for a short time – to the new communication/information reality that the earth’s population experiences today. It could be said at this moment of humanity’s history that the entire vast planet earth is no more than a small room. This may suggest that the universe of cultural symbols appears to be of a different nature that does not pertain, more or less, to the physico-materialistic world. The successive milestones that information/communication technology has reached, and continues to reach, in the domain of the diffusion of cultural symbols defy the very basis of the traditional logic of the human five senses.

Today, any individual on this earth or in space could practically hear the voice of any event and watch its image(s) in color at the very moment of its happening. This is regardless of the formidable distances that could separate that individual from the scene where the event is taking place. It is now a common practice all over the world that newspapers and magazines publish their issues of the same content simultaneously in different cities of the same country or in cities in various continents. Likewise, it has become possible for any person to send printed letters, documents, etc., by fax to any individual, institution, or association around the globe. The addressee receives the faxed material in a matter of minutes or seconds. As for emails, they arrive, it seems, instantaneously.

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