ion and reeducation; it needs to reconstitute its value system by turning toward humanistic values, and to rethink it ways of thought and behavior in light of its new orientation.
A consideration of the way a number of theorists have approached this issue helps show why social disintegration is taking place and how to achieve social integration, including a reassessment of the value of morality, religion, the economy, political institutions, the family, and the community and how these values and institutions can be revitalized by a return to the proper respect for and incorporation of history and tradition into our present culture.
The different ways of looking at culture are methodological differences, each of which may be applied to the same culture. "Culture" looked at as an intrinsic and universal aspect of all social life would then reveal differences in each society based on variations in core values, institutions, and behaviors. Viewing culture as distinct and explicit practice reflects each culture as essentially distinct, manifested in different explicit institutions, values, and behaviors. In the nineteenth century, Alexis De Tocqueville's analysis of American society took a view of culture as intrinsic and universal, and the American system was seen as embodying certain variations of the universal culture. The approach of Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (hereinafter referred to only as Bellah) might seem to be a continuation of de Tocqueville, but it actually sees culture as fragmented practice and looks to the specific artifacts and practices of culture for evidence of what American culture is. Bellah seeks certain core values in the different practices, but these values are themselves derived from a notion of American culture rather than from a notion of a universalized culture. In the first view, culture becomes a problem when it strays too far from the core values that define "culture," while in...