Man and His Works

Summary

The 1948 textbook that introduced ‘enculturation’, a term Melville Herskovits credits E. A. Haggard with devising. It names lifelong learning of one’s culture, absorbed so well that most behaviour sits “below the level of conscious thought”. In early life a person is “the instrument rather than the player”; later, choice enters. His summary: “Culture, being learned, can be relearned.”

Rationale

Added later, as the origin of enculturation, Part 2’s central idea. We said it “initially focused on how culture was inherited”; in Herskovits it already “opens the gate to change”.