text: Cultural and socio-cultural integration Margaret Archer (2004) in a revised edition of her classic work Culture and Agency, argues that the grand idea of a unified, integrated culture system, as advocated by early Anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski and later by Mary Douglas, is a myth. Archer reads this same myth through Pitirim Sorokin's influence and then Talcott Parsons' approach to cultural systems (2004:3). The myth of a unified, integrated cultural system was also advanced by Western Marxists such as by Antonio Gramsci through the theory of cultural hegemony through a dominant culture. Basic to these mistaken conceptions was the idea of culture as a community of meanings, which function independently in motivating social behavior. This combined two independent factors, community and meanings which can be investigated quasi-independently (2004:4)
  Archer, a proponent of critical realism, suggests that cultural factors can be objectively studied for the degree of compatibility (and that various aspects of cultural systems may be found to contradict each other in meaning and use). And, social or community factors in socialization may be studied in the context of the transmission of cultural factors by studying the social uniformity (or lack thereof) in the transmitted culture. Cultural systems are used (and inform society) both through idea systems and the structuring of social systems. To quote Archer in this regard: