IN HIS DYNAMIC conception of culture presented in Man and his Works (1948), Melville J. Herskovits has utilized cultural drift and historic accident as the major processes by which change comes about. "Together," he says, "they act to give a culture at a given moment in its history the forms it manifests, and endow it with the sanctions that give these forms meaning and permit them to function in the lives of the people" (1948:581). For Herskovits cultural drift represents the cumulative effect of small variations whose day-by-day effect is scarcely noticeable, but whose continuation results in long range directional changes in both the character and form of social life. He contrasts this slow accumulation with the more dramatic and abrupt changes resulting from cultural innovations or external factors, and notes that no adequate study of culture can neglect either process: