8 Scholars regularly rediscover the persistent power of ethnicity and regional culture in modern societies without being able to explain it except in material terms. See, for example, Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 (London, 1975), which argues that the survival of “ethnic solidarity” in Britain was caused by a division of labor in which some ethnic groups were kept in inferior positions by a process of “internal colonialism.” The argument of the present work is different—that cultural systems have their own imperatives, and are not mere reflexes of material relationships. This is not to argue against the power of material forces, but for a more balanced conception of the problem in which material structures are seen as part of a cultural whole.
9 Sumner, Folkways, 86.