THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL LAG RE-EXAMINED.

The concept of cultural lag is meaningless unless it is limited to a single culture pattern at a particular time. Eskimo culture traits cannot lag behind French traits. Portuguese women may wash their milk bottles on sandy beaches in Portugal, but their practice is not lagging behind the American technique involving mechanical devices, nor are they in advance of the practices of other women who may scrub theirs with brushes. In the above paragraph, a clue to the conditions that may produce, if continued, cultural lags, is found. The discovery of lags, the shifting and reshifting of traits, the checking and rechecking of their functions, the general manipulation of culture pattern, all the details involved in the process of rationally and consciously amending and directing the evolution of culture, will have to be done by men trained in the social sciences, and disciplined in the spirit of science and objectivity.