Toward a cultural theory of duties

This article puts forward a number of propositions as a step toward a cultu ral theory of duties. The concept of 'duty' is set up in contrast to that o f 'rights', in that while the former is owed to others, the latter are dema nded of others. We believe that the psychology of duty has been neglected. Duties are associated with important continuities in social life, and to el aborate this point we introduce the concert of carriers, symbolic devices o n which people hang cultural elements they want to maintain. Duties, we pro pose, have their origins in certain perennial social psychological features of social lifo, predating the origins of writing and formal law and govern ment. Thus unformalized (normative) duties pre-date black-letter law duties , the latter tending to be installed as the formal expression of the former . The same conduct, in the sense of publicly observable actions, can often be described either as the implementation of a right, or as the fulfillment of a duty, depending on the cultural context. Where the line is drawn betw een normative and black-letter duties also varies across cultures. We argue that at any time, normative duties are closer to societal ideals than are black-letter duties. Finally, we propose that after achieving equal rights in black-letter law, minorities should shift their focus to the correlative duties that arise from their change in moral status. At the same time this entails that the majority fulfills its duty to implement the minorities' r ights.