Culture

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Chapter 2

• Culture

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Chapter Outline

• Introducing Culture
• Defining Culture
• Cultural Knowledge
• Culture and Human Life
• Cultural Knowledge and Individual Behavior
• Biology and Cultural Differences

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Culture is

• Learned from others while growing up in a society
  or group.
• Widely shared by members of the group.

4
Culture is

• Responsible for differences in thinking and
  behaving between societies and groups.
• Essential for completing psychological and social
  development of individuals.

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Cultural Knowledge

• Attitudes, beliefs, ideas, conceptions, rules,
  standards, perceptions and other information
  stored in peoples heads.

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Patterns of Behavior

• What people do most of the time when they are in
  similar situations.

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Culture

• Shared, socially learned knowledge and patterns
  of behavior
• Cultural Integration - The various parts of
  culture are mutually interdependent.

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 Culture Is Shared

• People are capable of communicating and
  interacting without explaining their behavior.
• People share a common cultural identity.

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 Cultural Identity

• The cultural tradition a group of people
  recognize as their own.
• The shared customs and beliefs that define how a
  group sees itself as distinctive.

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Society

• A territorially defined population most of whose
  members speak the same language and share a sense
  of common identity relative to other societies.

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Culture Is Socially Learned

• Individuals acquire it from others in the process
  of growing up in a group.
• Culture is not transmitted to new generations
  genetically.
• Culture is learned by observation, imitation,
  communication and inference.

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  Enculturation/Socialization

• The process by which infants and children learn
  the culture of those around them.  

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Culture Is Knowledge

• Members of a culture know how to behave in ways
  that are meaningful and acceptable to others.
• Knowledge allows people to survive and reproduce
  themselves and transmit their culture.

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Culture Is Patterns of Behavior

• Individuals have a role in a group.
• The group has expectations about what people with
  that role should do.
• Expectations include rights and duties of the
  role.

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  Role

• A social position in a group with its associated
  and reciprocal rights and duties.

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Components of Cultural Knowledge

• Norms
• Values
• Symbols
• Classifications of reality
• Worldviews

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 Norms

• Agreement that people should adhere to standards
  of behavior.
• People judge behavior according to how closely it
  adheres to these standards.
• People who fail to follow the standards face
  negative reaction from the group.

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 Norms and Values

• Norms are hared ideas (or rules) about how people
  people ought to act in given situations or about
  how people should act toward other people.
• Vales are peoples beliefs about the way of life
  that is desirable for themselves and their
  society.

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Symbol

• An objects or behavior that stands for,
  represents or calls to mind something else.

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Classifications of Reality

• Ways in which the members of a culture divide up
  the natural and social world into named
  categories.

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Worldview

• The way a people interpret reality and events,
  including how they see themselves as relating to
  the world around them.

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Culture and Human Life

• Culture provides the skills to adapt to
  surroundings.
• Culture is the basis for human social life.
• Culture affects our view of reality.

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Cultural Knowledge and Individual Behavior

• Affects the choices people make about how to act
  in situations.
• Limits and influences behavior.
• Cultural determinism is the belief that culture
  largely determines or dictates behavior.

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Biological Determinism

• The notion that cultural differences have a
  biological basis.
• Groups of people differ in how they think, feel,
  and act because of their biological makeup.

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Cultural Universals

• Elements that exist in all known human societies
• Tools
• Shelter
• Education
• Religion

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Biology and Cultural Differences

• Individuals of any physical type are equally
  capable of learning any culture.
• Cultural diversity is found on all continents and
  regions of the world.
• Different cultural systems succeed one another
  within the same biological population and the
  same society.

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Quick Quiz
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1. Cultures vary in their

1. biological/physical characteristics
2. ways of thinking and behaving
3. Instincts
4. trial-and-error learning

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Answer b

• Cultures vary in their ways of thinking and
  behaving.

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2. Culture

1. depends on how much education you have
2. depends on ones speech habits
3. is socially transmitted
4. is invented by very smart people

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Answer c

• Culture is socially transmitted.

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3. The aspects of culture that anthropologists
are most interested in are

1. genetic differences
2. rewarded behaviors
3. immoral behaviors
4. patterns of behavior

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Answer d

• The aspects of culture that anthropologists are
  most interested in are patterns of behavior.