| Abstract | This lecture starts by considering the old problem of how to account for social change theoretically and criticises some of the models used because, either they see the social process in terms used by the actors and so are unable to explain how it is that actors can change those terms, or they see the mechanisms of change as occurring in terms totally alien to the actors and so are unable to explain how these mechanisms can be transformed into meaningful action. The source of this problem is traced to Durkheim's notion that cognition is socially determined. By contrast it is argued that those concepts which are moulded to social structure are not typical of knowledge but only found in ritual discourse, while the concepts using non-ritual discourse are constrained by such factors as the requirements of human action on nature. This means that there are terms available to actors by which the social order can be criticised since not all terms are moulded by it. Finally it is suggested that such notions as social structure only refer to ritualized folk statements about society, statements expressed in ritual discourse precisely with those concepts which are given as demonstrations of the theory of the cultural relativity of cognition. The Durkheimian correlation between society and cognition is merely a correlation of only certain ethical statements and certain aspects of cognition. This type of discourse is present in different types of society in varying amounts according to the degree of instituted hierarchy that these societies manifest. Anthropological theories about the conceptualisation of time are given as an example of the general argument.
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