American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Human societies, large and small, in the past and in the present, were shaped by worldviews that not only gave shelter, but also led the individual and collective mind into captivity. Efforts to secure sustenance, to maintain bonds between peoples, to shape religious, technical, and artistic practice, such strivings have all been ‘in-formed,’ that is, have been shaped by worldviews that underlie systems of thought claiming intrinsic validity and normative meaning and show the imprint of mostly hidden structures. THE MEANING OF WORLDVIEW STRUCTURE How may a worldview structure be understood? One must grasp what it is not. It is less than a worldview, although it shapes the arrangement of its contents. It is less than religion, although it forms its core, its rituals, theologies, and codes. It is less than ideology, understood as an ordered system of thought taken as normative and based on claimed self-evidence; although a worldview structure represents simultaneously its internal force and its distillation. A worldview structure is less than philosophy, understood as an interpretative system of what is, of how humans understand, and of what humans ought to do and what not; yet it hides behind the numerous interpretative systems, often formed in the solitude of a self, but within thought styles dominant at a given time and place. How do worldview structures differ from religions, philosophies, and ideologies? They are less a content than a form, less a visible entity than a hidden system, less a positive claim than a template employed as a matter of course.