Toward a Definition of Cultural Crisis

In recent years, the word “crisis” has been on everybody’s lips, but there has been little attempt to analyze its meaning. Since so important a concept requires clarification, the present article is an attempt to clarify its import. Although I shall seek to define the general meaning of cultural crisis, I shall use as illustration mainly the contemporary word crisis, partly because it is a good example and partly because it is of intense concern to us today. I assume that it is unnecessary to argue that the world is in a state of crisis, and that the time of danger and tribulation through which we have been living did not suddenly terminate with the capitulation of the Axis.

When in the present context I speak of a “culture,” I am employing the term as the anthropologist customarily employs is as denoting not just a few of the activities of a society but the entire range of its activities, conceived as a more or less systematic whole. In employing “culture” in this sense, I do not mean that every crisis is total in penetrating all the activities of a society. Indeed, most crises are partial and restricted. There may be a crisis in art, for example, that has very little if any effect upon politics or economics. Moreover, I do not mean to imply that the severity of a crisis is directly proportionate to its extent. A restricted crisis may be much more severe than an extensive crisis. An intense disturbance tends to be pervasive but is not necessarily so. However, the great crises of this century, manifested in two vast wars and a tremendous economic depression, have been both very severe and very comprehensive. For the first time in history almost the entire globe has been engulfed in catastrophe and few phases of culture have been immune from the shock.