Social identity. Social identity involves the cultural practices which serve to distinguish a social group as having a common identity distinct from other social groups. Identity is as much or more a negative process—that is, a process of distinction—as it is a positive process. Therefore, all cultural practices that serve to bestow identity on a social group involve an idea of an "other," a social group or social groups which are used as a negative definition ("we are not like them").

Social memory: As a subset of social identity, social memory serves as a means of defining a cultural group. Social memory not only defines cultural groups positively ("we are who we are because of our history"), it also defines patterns of behavior, ritual, and other social practices. The primary function of social memory is to explain the origin and meaning of cultural practices. Social memory takes many forms: religion, mythology, and history. All cultural practices of social memory, like all cultural practices period, derive their form and meaning from world view.

Everything: All things that are done in a social group: marriage, ritual, religion, literature, science, are cultural practices. They occur because and only because that social group has a certain world view; this means that you can derive a world view from anything within a cultural group .

Strategies of adaptation: Response to change either from within or without is built into world view and cultural practice, that is, all world views and all cultural practices have a resiliency built into them. Response to change also changes world view and cultural practice. As change occurs more rapidly within a culture, these strategies of adaptation come to dominate the world view of that social group.

Richard Hooker