Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas

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Contents

I. CULTURE WARS AND WARRING ABOUT CULTURE The Culture Wars 3 Warring over Culture 12 The Culture Warriors 24 American Culture 26

2. RESPECT FOR RELIGION BUT UNCERTAINTY ABOUT ITS ROLE 31 The Public Sphere and Civil Religion 31 Dilemmas of Church-State Relations 39 Religious Belief and Secularization 47

3. MORAL BUT NOT MORALISTIC 58 Through the Lenses of Morality 59 Abortion and Homosexuality 65 Moral Decline and Relativism 75 Moralizing and Legislating Morality 79

CHAPTER 1 Culture Wars and Warring about Culture

American culture appears to be deeply divided: those who believe there are absolute moral truths contend with those who place moral authority in individual judgment. Armed with these competing visions, “orthodox” versus “progressive” culture warriors clash on issues of abortion, homosexuality, feminism, school prayer, multiculturalism, popular culture, and university curricula. The population is increasingly polarized as a result.

The problem with this image is that it is not supported by survey data. American public opinion is considerably more ambivalent and internally inconsistent than the image of a culture war implies. Most Americans are moderate or centrist in both their political and religious beliefs. Very few are consistently for or against abortion and same-sex marriage, for example.

Proponents of the culture wars thesis acknowledge that most Americans occupy a position between the polar extremes. The issue, they contend, is not about what people think or believe, but about the public culture—the meanings and understandings enunciated by elites who seek to frame how we think. The competing moral visions of these elites inexorably pull all arguments into one or the other of the contending camps, effectively eclipsing the middle ground.

The question thus becomes whether American public culture is divided into the two opposing camps of the culture war, or whether both sides share the same American cultural ideas in propounding their differing visions. I find support for the latter view in my analysis of the 436 articles dealing with culture war issues that were published in four popular political magazines between 1980 and 2000. The culture war debaters in the pages of National Review, Time, The New Republic, and The Nation—magazines representing the mainstream American political spectrum, from National Review on the right to The Nation on the left—adhere to remarkably similar cultural principles.

Rather than dividing along the lines of “orthodox” versus “progressive” morality, the arguments of culture war partisans are nuanced and riddled with internal disagreements. There are abortion rights supporters who regret the immorality of abortion and antihomosexuality advocates who dispute whether or not homosexual behavior is a matter of morality. The symbols and rhetoric of the two sides often mirror each other. Consider the following statement: “A culture that is at once moralistic, self-righteous, alienated, and in a minority will constantly be tempted to break the rules of political discourse.” Are these the words of a progressive describing the efforts of Christian Fundamentalists to influence American politics? No. This is a description of the Left written by a well-known conservative (Bork 1989, 27).

While there are doubtless persons for whom the binary logic of the culture wars is all-important, the elites represented in the pages of these mainstream media—the journalists and intellectuals, feminists and “family values” advocates alike—instead reflect shared cultural patterns. These discussions take place within the context of enduring American dilemmas—about the role of religion in politics and society, the tension between morality and pragmatism, how much individualism should be sacrificed for larger community goals, the meaning of pluralism in a “nation of immigrants,” and how to reconcile the will of the people with standards enunciated by elites.

Though they disagree about specific issues and policies, the partisans on all sides subscribe to the following ideas: (1) respect for religion but uncertainty about its role; (2) use of moral frameworks but without “moralizing”; (3) belief in individualism but not to excess; (4) respect for pluralism but within one culture; (5) ambivalence toward elites; and (6) a high regard for moderation. The first five of these items represent dilemmas to which the high regard for moderation is something of an answer. Thus, religion is of great importance, but American society is both secular and diverse in its religions. Individualism is a supreme American value, but the needs of the community must be respected too. Ironically, the only unalloyed American virtue is that of moderation. Moderation, of course, does not constitute a dilemma. But the very vitality of moderation presents dilemmas for social movements. In a society that views as beyond the pale both ardent feminists and committed traditionalists, the strongly religious and atheists, fervent supporters and opponents of abortion, those who attempt to alter the culture are pressured toward a centrism that may be antagonistic to their basic beliefs.

While issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage may be new, the underlying dilemmas are of long duration. If every culture can be seen as “a kind of theater in which certain contrary tendencies are played out” (Erikson 1976, 82), these are classic American cultural conundrums. And though they may not be the only dilemmas in American culture, they are the ones that are central to the “culture wars.”

Participants and observers alike contend that the culture wars originated in the late 1960s, when challenges to traditional values were dubbed the counterculture. The very idea of a “counterculture” suggests a new self-consciousness about cultural struggles regarding values and lifestyles. In the trajectory from the counterculture to the culture wars, what is new is not the political struggle over cultural issues but rather a heightened awareness of culture itself and those who seek to shape it. Both social scientists and the general public have come to think of culture as changeable and contested. And a self-conscious competition for cultural dominance has become more evident. While the “social construction of reality” has not become a household term akin to “charisma” or “lifestyle,” an awareness of the provisional nature of social assumptions has “entered popular consciousness” (Wrong 1990, 28).

The Culture Wars

In one of the earliest and best-known portraits of the culture wars, James Davison Hunter (1991) described a fundamental split between orthodox and progressive views of morality and suggested that this divide cuts across class, religious, racial, ethnic, political, and sexual lines. In the eyes of one partisan, the culture war is apparent in the simultaneous emergence of “moral disarray” and “moral revival” symbolized by the success of both gangsta rap and gospel rock (Himmelfarb 1999, 117).

A year after Hunter put “culture wars” on the social science map, Patrick Buchanan popularized the idea in his speech to the 1992 Republican National Convention. He told the audience in Houston that “a cultural war” was taking place, a “struggle for the soul of America.” The defining issues were abortion, homosexuality, school choice, and “radical feminism.” In the aftermath of this address, the idea of a “culture war” became a journalistic staple.

But for all the credence given to the idea of culture wars in the press, public opinion analysts present a different portrait (see N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996a, 1996b, 1997; DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996; J. H. Evans 1997; Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2005; A. S. Miller and Hoffman 1999; C. Smith et al. 1997; Wolfe 1998; Wuthnow 1996). Only small percentages of Americans are consistently orthodox or progressive on such issues as abortion, stem cell research, the morning-after pill, gay marriage, and gay adoption (Pew Research Center 2006b). And while “the gap between the ideologically consistent liberals and conservatives may have widened a bit,” there are now fewer Americans “in those fragments” than there were in the 1960s (Fischer and Hout 2006, 238).

Religious conservatives and liberals differ in their religious beliefs, however, and there is a loose correspondence between people’s religious identities and their views on abortion, homosexuality, and school prayer (N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996; Wuthnow 1996). But their views do not clearly differ with regard to the values and moral orientations that are prominent in American culture. Both are guided by self-interest and by what feels good; both are dedicated to work and family and the desire to secure a comfortable life. Differences in political and social views are more related to people’s religious activities than to their conservative or liberal religious philosophies. Those who participate actively in religion “are in substantial agreement on many aspects of their worldviews,” whether they are liberals, moderates, or conservatives (Wuthnow 1996, 326). Furthermore, the religiously orthodox do not take a conservative stance on issues of racial and economic inequality (N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996a); three-quarters of the members of this group favor sex education in public schools, and almost half support making contraception available to teenagers (N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996b, 235; Kohut et al. 2000, 64). Even among people who identify themselves as part of the Religious Right, some 30 percent are Democrats, and 60 percent think abortion should be legal in some circumstances (C. Smith et al. 1997, 182). Among committed evangelical Protestants, one-third believe that abortions should be available to women in circumstances other than rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, and 41 percent of committed Catholics believe likewise (Kohut et al. 2000, 64). The proportion of conservative Protestants who are so consistently pro-life that they reject abortion even when a mother’s health is at stake is only 3 percent, a figure that has not changed in recent decades (Greeley and Hout 2006, 125).

Not only do the religiously orthodox show “little ideological consistency across a broad spectrum of attitudes,” but their attitudes also differ by gender, race, social class, and age (N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996b, 237). This finding runs quite contrary to Hunter’s thesis that the fundamental divide between orthodox and progressive views cuts across all other social categories. Nor is there evidence of enduring alliances across faiths, as conservative Catholics do not share sociopolitical attitudes with fundamentalist Protestants (Billings and Scott 1994, 180). Older alliances between religious groups and political parties continue; to this day, white Protestants are a majority of those who identify with the Republican Party, while Catholics, Jews, and black Protestants are much more likely to be Democrats (Layman 2001, 301). Even among the orthodox, younger people hold more liberal views regarding sexuality and reproduction, gender, and racial issues (N. J. Davis and Robinson 1996b, 242). And the role of moral beliefs in predicting voting patterns and party loyalties appears to differ by gender, again suggesting that something other than a culture war is at work (Kaufmann 2002; Layman 2001).

The division between the progressive and the orthodox camps is not monolithic even with regard to religious doctrines. Thus, some one-third of religious conservatives do not believe the Bible should be taken literally, while almost 20 percent of religious liberals think it should be (Wuthnow 1996, 326). An ethnographic study of one evangelical and one mainline Protestant seminary found that although they maintain competing moral visions, “the more intense battles are internal to each culture” (Carroll and Marler 1995, 18). Among religious elites, such as seminary faculty, neither side appears unified in opposition to the other (Olson and Carroll 1992, 778). Even if religious elites present positions as if they were internally consistent packages, group members show no such attitude consistency (Jelen 1990, 124). Furthermore, differences in religious beliefs are not necessarily reflected in actual behavior. Thus, the family behaviors of religious conservatives were not found to differ from those of religious progressives (Clydesdale 1997).

Within religious denominations, little evidence supports the idea of polarized views on culture war issues. Ironically, the one exception that has been found is among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. These presumptively orthodox groups manifest intradenominational ideological polarization (Demerath and Yang 1997, 35).

Remarkably, the attitudes of religious conservatives and liberals on most social and political issues converged rather than further differentiated during the 1970s and 1980s (DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996, 729). Attitudes toward abortion may be the one exception. Evidence indicates greater polarization here, though this phenomenon peaked in the 1980s, and some analysts using different statistical techniques dispute the finding of polarization (Mouw and Sobel 2001). Evidence also shows increased internal division among both Catholics and mainline Protestants on the abortion question (J. H. Evans 2002). Yet in some ways, realistically, “there are not two political opinions on abortion—pro-choice and pro-life, but three. The third is ‘It depends,’ and is larger than the other two put together,” with large majorities of the population favoring abortion if pregnancy was the result of rape or if the mother’s health is in danger (Greeley and Hout 2006, 121, 123). Even with respect to this most polarizing issue, one recent poll found that 66 percent of Americans support finding “a middle ground,” and only 29 percent believe “there’s no room for compromise when it comes to abortion laws” (Pew Research Center 2006b).

Those who take extreme positions on the issue of abortion do not share a coherent worldview. Thus, pro-life supporters are deeply divided in their attitudes toward the death penalty, civil rights, feminism, and other social issues, while those most in favor of abortion are differentiated into liberal and libertarian camps. Despite their collaboration in antiabortion campaigns, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention do not share cultural or religious outlooks, and even their antiabortion rationales differ substantially from each other (Dillon 1996).

The idea of multiculturalism also is less divisive an issue than some culture warriors suggest. Survey data show that while few Americans support the “hard multiculturalist” position that calls on the government to help racial and ethnic groups to maintain their original cultures, most Americans prefer an “inclusive nationalism” that “coexists with the widespread acceptance of pluralism in cultural practices.” Faced with the option of having different ethnic groups “blend into the larger society” or “maintain their distinct cultures,” 38 percent favored the melting pot position, 32 percent chose the cultural maintenance option, and 29 percent said neither. That a large segment of the public takes a middle position on this question suggests that many Americans do not view assimilating and maintaining elements of one’s ethnic heritage as mutually exclusive (Citrin et al. 2001, 260). And while 63 percent favored designating English as the official language of the United States, only 37 percent agreed that ballots should be printed in English only (261).

Americans appear to manifest both a center-seeking tendency and strong ambivalence about culture war issues. Divisions between those who side with Ozzie and Harriet images of family life and those who align with Murphy Brown, for example, “do not take place between camps of people; instead, they take place within most individuals.” In effect, “the culture war lies within” (Wolfe 1998, 111). While Wolfe’s analysis is based on in-depth interviews with two hundred middle-class suburbanites, Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope report similar results based on national surveys of “tens of thousands” of Americans (2005, 8).

Perhaps such ambivalence is understandable in light of the contradictory pattern of American values. In the World Values Surveys, Americans’ high level of adherence to traditional values (strong beliefs in God and religion, conservative family values, absolute moral standards, and national pride) resembles that shown by the populations of developing and low-income societies. At the same time, however, Americans are attached to self-expression values: “No other society is as traditional and as self-expressionoriented as America” (Baker 2005, 39). Since traditional values and the quest for self-realization may dictate contradictory behaviors, it is no wonder that Americans may experience conflicts over culture war issues and may simultaneously embrace both sides of the debate. Significant numbers of Americans, for example, believe both that homosexual behavior is immoral and that homosexuals deserve civil rights (Loftus 2001). Conservative Protestants are more willing to censure homosexuals but are no less supportive than are other Americans of hate crime laws designed to protect gay men and lesbians (C. Smith 2000, 226).

Data from the World Values Survey also suggest that between 1981 and 1990, Americans became almost evenly divided between “moral absolutists,” who believe there are clear guidelines about good and evil, and “moral relativists,” who believe that what is good or evil depends on the circumstances. This polarized distribution persisted through the 1995 and 2000 surveys (Baker 2005, 79). But such polarization does not indicate the presence of a culture war, since these moral visions are only loosely linked to attitudes and beliefs. Whether people are moral absolutists or relativists, they “tend to share similar religious beliefs, cultural values, and attitudes about social issues and policies” (104).

The orthodox and progressive camps thus are not polarized about social policies. Close elections may reflect not a deeply divided electorate but rather an ambivalent one that is closely divided about the choices offered by political elites who have become more polarized (Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2005, 8, 14-15). For example, a 2003 poll found that although weekly churchgoers are only half as likely to favor legalization of homosexual relations as those who never attend church, 40 percent nevertheless favored such legalization (89). And the single largest disparity found in 2000 between voters in “red” and “blue” states was the 16 percent difference between the 60 percent of Democrats who support gays in the military and the 44 percent of Republicans who do (26). There is little connection between party affiliation and views about abortion, despite the party alignments with “pro-choice” and “pro-life” slogans. The population may well be more divided over such labels than over the actual policy alternatives, just as women are more likely to approve of government policies to improve the status of women than they are favorably inclined toward the term feminist (Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2005, 63). Over time, as the labels have become more widely known, religiously orthodox people have become more likely to categorize themselves as “conservative,” and religious progressives identify themselves as “liberal,” even though their attitudes on issues have not changed. This phenomenon would account for “the paradox of a perceived increase in divisiveness despite a lack of empirical support at the individual level” (A. S. Miller and Hoffmann 1999, 728).

It is not clear that the majority of Americans attach great political significance to cultural issues. When asked to name the most important problems facing the nation or to discuss party differences, less than one-third of National Election Survey respondents in 1992 mentioned a cultural matter (Layman and Carmines 1997, 765), despite the emphasis on cultural issues at that time. Most churchgoing Protestants are not interested in fighting culture wars (C. Smith et al. 1997, 192), and attitudes among Evangelicals are as complex and ambivalent as they are among most Americans. The vast majority of Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and conservative Protestants do not think that public schools should teach Christian values and morals or that teachers should lead classes in spoken Christian prayers. At the same time, however, members of these groups believe that public school instruction should include Christian views of science and history (C. Smith 2000, 206). Evangelicals disagree among themselves about whether to seek “Christian cultural hegemony” or to stress “liberty and pluralism” (36). Furthermore, no “single evangelical elite [speaks] in accord”; evangelical leaders are all over “the political and ideological map” (7).

For political attitudes and behavior to be consistent with the culture wars thesis, voters not only must see cultural issues as salient, they must also perceive the ideological or values standpoints underlying an array of different policy questions and must link a political party to a particular ideology. Such consistency of attitudes and viewpoints has not been commonly found in public opinion and political behavior. It is thus not surprising that an examination of the 1992-2000 National Election Studies finds that culture wars operate only rarely. And contrary to the culture wars thesis, such factors as race and religious denomination still make a difference. Thus, more religiously committed black Protestants are still more likely than their less devout counterparts to align themselves with the Democratic Party and with liberal political views (Layman and Green 2006). It would appear, then, that the culture war thesis does not apply to the majority of Americans.

James Davison Hunter has acknowledged that “most Americans occupy a vast middle ground between the polarizing impulses of American culture” and that “public discourse is more polarized than the American public” (1991, 43, 159). But he maintains that the culture war is not a matter of public opinion, about what is in people’s heads or hearts. Rather, it is about the public culture. And in this culture, elites on both sides of the dispute force attitudes or opinions into their molds, thereby eliminating

IO CULTURE WARS AND ENDURING AMERICAN DILEMMAS the middle ground. The two sides are in a struggle “over the meaning of America” (50). Individuals “become subservient to” or “must struggle against the dominating and virtually irresistible categories and logic of the culture war” (1998, 14). The culture war is “not reflected so deeply in public sentiment” (Hunter and Wolfe 2006, 93). But this does not mean that there is a centrist consensus. Rather, “the competing moral visions in public culture” are “a reality sui generis” (Hunter 1996, 246). Any coherent center that may exist is eclipsed by “the grid of rhetorical extremes” that either labels moderates as “wishy-washy” or judges them by the standards of the extremists—so that, for example, a moderate conservative on issues of homosexuality will still be dubbed a homophobe (247). Those who argue against the culture war hypothesis are engaged in “a denial of deep difference” (Hunter and Wolfe 2006, 36).

But to critics such as Alan Wolfe, a “culture war is not autonomous from the people who fight it. It has no reality of its own” (Hunter and Wolfe 2006, 100). There is also no reason to assume that people become “subservient to” the opposing logics of culture war rhetoric (Demerath and Straight 1997, 216). People can and do sustain inconsistency and ambivalence within their beliefs. This is not to deny that the opposing visions themselves have social effects. As A. S. Miller and Hoffmann (1999) have pointed out, people who come to identify with one side may feel increased antagonism toward the opposing side. Evidence suggests, for example, that anti-Fundamentalists harbor negative stereotypes about Christian Fundamentalists (Bolce and De Maio 1999a, 1999b). But people may also adhere selectively to the ideas of each side.

Hunter argues that the culture wars are about the power to define reality, to create and shape meaning. With competing worldviews in contest, the representatives on each side seek to project their “vision of the world as the dominant, if not the only vision of the world, such that it becomes commonsensical to people” (Hunter 2004, 5). If this is the case, a struggle over the soul of America is indeed taking place, despite the absence of polarization in the population.

How, then, can one determine the truth of the assertion of a culture war? How does one study the “public culture” or tap into the “deep differences” within contemporary American culture? Hunter’s initial discussion of the culture wars focused on the advertising and persuasive literature emanating from culture war organizations and spokespersons. Yet scholars have long

Culture Wars and Warring about Culture II recognized that organizations and movements that seek public support tend to state their claims in exaggerated form. To overcome inertia and to motivate financial contributions, they emphasize the dire consequences of doing nothing or allowing the opposition to prevail. The public culture clearly encompasses more than the rhetoric of fund-seeking partisans.

Hunter recognizes that culture war issues filled “the nation’s newspapers, magazines, and intellectual journals” (1991, 176), yet he focused on the sixty-second commercials, full-page advertisements, sound bites on the evening news, op-ed pieces, and direct mail letters that resulted in “much of public discourse” being “reduced to a reciprocal bellicosity” (170). Despite the “extremism and superficiality” of these sources, Hunter argued that they provided “the only objectification of the debate that really exists” (170).

But why should one make this assumption? Since the elites who shape the public culture express themselves in many venues, it seems rather arbitrary to define “public discourse” in such narrow terms. An analysis of the opinions and assumptions presented in large-circulation political magazines offers an excellent opportunity to test the culture war thesis. The journalists, academics, public intellectuals, and political figures whose writing appears in these magazines offer a representative array of the partisan views that constitute the public culture. I have also supplemented the magazine articles with selected works by writers whose names are associated with the culture wars—figures such as William Bennett, Allan Bloom, Dinesh D’Souza, Thomas Frank, Francis Fukuyama, Henry Louis Gates, Roger Kimball, and Michael Walzer.

Hunter has argued that “within the contemporary public discourse, one risks being branded a ‘right-winger’ by even invoking moral criteria. Indeed, the very word ‘morality’ has become a right-wing word” (1991, 323). And “the concept of religion or transcendence is also very often dismissed by secular progressivists as ‘right-wing’” (324). My analysis of the writings of partisans on both the left and the right does not support such hyperbolic images. Rather, the spokespersons for both sides have “drawn on the same symbolic code to . . . advance their competing claims,” as J. C. Alexander and Smith found in their analysis of discourse within earlier American civil debates (1993, 197).

An empirical test of the culture war hypothesis is of some significance to both social scientists and the general public. For the most part, empirical researchers have tended to reject the idea of a culture war based on sur-

I2 CULTURE WARS AND ENDURING AMERICAN DILEMMAS vey data, while those who defend the hypothesis have done so without empirical research into the “deep culture” whose existence they claim. I hope that a systematic study of the public discourse about culture wars will shed light on the topic in a way that goes beyond the persuasive analyses of survey researchers.

There is, of course, an intuitive appeal—a surface plausibility—to the culture war idea, given the differences in the ideas espoused by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Patrick Buchanan, on the one hand, and feminists, gay-marriage advocates, and abortion-rights supporters on the other. Even some social scientists are so wedded to the culture war concept that they behave like the proverbial pessimists who see only the doughnut hole. Thus, they see only divergences within the population where other analysts see convergences. John Kenneth White, for example, argues that a “values divide” exists in American politics, with one side emphasizing “duty and morality” while the other stresses “individual rights and self-fulfillment” (2003, 65). Citing a 2000 Zogby poll that asked whether there are “absolute moral truths that govern our lives,” he reports that among those who classified themselves as “very liberal,” 48 percent agreed and 46 percent disagreed, while among those who saw themselves as “very conservative,” 74 percent agreed and 25 percent disagreed. He concludes that “the values divide between liberals and conservatives . . . has become a chasm” (66). But surely there is room for disagreement about whether this degree of difference constitutes a “chasm” or a culture war.

Why does it matter whether there is or is not a culture war? A society experiencing a culture war would face grave difficulties. It would lack common standards and assumptions, and as a result, the ability to make public policy decisions would be severely compromised. Indeed, a society without such common ground could barely function. It is instructive to recall that after Culture Wars appeared in 1991, Hunter’s next book was titled Before the Shooting Begins (1994). My analysis of American public culture suggests that such images are unwarranted.

Warring over Culture The culture war debates are embedded within a larger contention concerning the nature of culture itself. Unlike the culture wars, however, disputes about the concept of culture are not new. The term culture, used in the anthropological sense to describe how people think and behave, is generally traced to the 1870s. It was popularized in the 1930s and became an essential part of social science. Yet as early as 1952, some sociologists and anthropologists rejected the concept as “so broad as to be useless in scientific discourse” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952, 5). Half a century later, the utility of the concept is questioned not because it is too broad but because it is too precise. Critics argue that culture implies a degree of structure, coherence, and stability that is not found in social reality (Brumann 1999).

The reigning image of culture in the 1950s was that of a set of basic values internalized early in life and shaping one’s very being. By the end of the twentieth century, culture was more likely to be viewed as a “toolkit” (Swidler 1986), a repertoire of skills and styles, “a pastiche of mediated representations” (DiMaggio 1997, 267).

Even in the early 1950s, however, Kroeber and Kluckhohn were cautious about the sway of a unified culture. They noted that whole cultures are composed of varying and overlapping subcultures and that “each individual selects from and to greater or lesser degree systematizes what he experiences of the total culture” (1952, 157). In a complex society such as ours, there is overlap “only upon the broadest of issues” (114). Yet Kroeber and Kluckhohn assumed that values were the key to the unity of cultures. Without reference to values, any account of a culture becomes “a mere laundry list,” they argued (173). By the late twentieth century, the idea that culture shapes behavior through values or ultimate ends was largely rejected, as was the idea of culture as something deeply internalized.

Beginning with Dennis Wrong’s classic 1961 article, “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,” the idea of culture as a deeply internalized “latent” pattern that accounted for most human behavior came under attack. Wrong argued that individuals had more independence from culture than sociologists recognized, if only because of biological characteristics or presocialized unconscious minds.