Defensive Structuring and Environmental Stress

This essay explores a kind of adaptation, referred to as defensive structuring, that recurs with great regularity among groups that perceive themselves as exposed to environmental stress of long duration with which they cannot cope directly and aggressively. Adaptive elements include: authoritarian control over members, exercised by a small specially knowledgeable elite; a high rate o endogamy; cultivation of cultural identity symbols; and early socialization for impulse control. A defensive adaptation emerges from specifiable kinds both of prior structural characteristics and environmental changes in interaction. Examples are provided from cases examined in some depth. The response syndrome is discussed in relation to social and revitalization movements and closed corporate communities.