Distributional instability and the units of culture

The analytical approach is familiar, powerful, and compelling, but not all scientific understanding builds upon discrete elemental units and their com binatorics. The question this essay addresses is whether the analytical app roach is appropriate for the study of human culture. Does culture have clea rly identifiable, distributionally stable parts sufficient to justify the p articulate mode of understanding? Is culture comprised of elemental units, or is it merely convenient to think of it this way? The essay suggests that the quest for natural units of culture is a doomed undertaking. There will be no periodic chart for culture grounded in stable, essential properties, whether at the level of culture traits and complexes or at the cognitive l evel of ideas and schemata. On the other hand, various methods of data elic itation can produce replicable and superficially discrete results, which gi ves some hope for the possibility of a methodological particularism. (Units of culture, cultural boundaries, traits, methodological particularism).