Chapter 3 The Concept of Culture

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Chapter 3 The Concept of Culture
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Todays Objectives

• Create your own definition of culture and be able
  to explain it.
• What are the key elements of culture?
• How do cultures differ (generally)?
• How are they the same (universally)?

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Definition of Culture

• Brainstorm What do you consider culture?
• Physical aspects
• Objects
• Actions
• Mental aspects
• Thoughts
• Beliefs
• Values
• Inventions
• Rules

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Scupins Definitions

• Culture includes tools, weapons, fire,
  agriculture, animal domestication, metallurgy,
  writing, the steam engine, glasses, airplanes,
  computers, penicillin, nuclear power,
  rock0and0roll, video games, designer jeans,
  religion, political systems, subsistence
  patterns, science, sports, and social
  organizations.
• Culture includes all aspects of human activity,
  from the fine arts to popular entertainment, from
  everyday behavior to the development of
  sophisticated technology. It contains the plans,
  rules, techniques, design, and policies for
  living.
• Culture is a shared way of life that includes
  values, beliefs, and norms transmitted within a
  particular society from generation to generation
  through symbolic learning and language.
• Culture is the historical accumulation of
  symbolic knowledge that is shared by a society.
• Culture is based on shared meanings that are
  beyond the mind of any individual culture is
  also within the mind of individuals.

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Characteristics of Culture

• Society/culture distinction
• Patterns in relationships versus products of
  relationships
• Alternative idea sociocultural system

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How is Culture Passed On?

• Culture is learned
• Enculturation
• Situational learning (trial-and-error)
• Social learning (observation)
• Symbolic learning
• Signs and symbols
• symbolization
• Symbols and culture
• national symbols

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How is Culture Passed On?

• Culture is shared
• Public and individual meanings
• Schema (plural schemata)
• but differently shared

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Components of Culture

• Material culture
• Homo habilis and beyond
• Non-material culture
• Values (standards of judgment)
• Beliefs (more specific than values)
• Worldview
• Ideology key to anthropological knowledge
• Hegemony

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Components of Culture

• Non-material culture (continued)
• Norms (rules of right and wrong)
• Ethos
• Folkways
• Mores
• Ideal versus Real Culture
• Do what I say, not what I do.

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Cultural Diversity

• Ethnocentrism
• Cultural Relativism
• Ethics and the ethnologist
• Objectivity or moral obligation?
• More in Chapter 17

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Cultural Diversity

• Food
• Prohibitions
• Food versus pets
• Adaptive significance (Marvin Harris)
• Symbolic significance (Mary Douglas)
• Dress
• Clothing, hair styles
• Example Rastafarians

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Cultural Diversity

• Ethnicity
• Based on perceived differences in ancestral
  origins or descent and shared historical and
  cultural heritage.
• Different from race, which used to be thought to
  be based on physical differences among people.
• Race was originally conceived of as the
  correlation between culture/behavior and
  superficial physical traits.

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Cultural Universals

• Essential behavioral characteristics of
  societies, found throughout the world.
• Murdocks list (Table 3.1, p. 57)
• Includes athletics, calendar, cooking, dancing,
  education, ethics, family, funeral rites,
  housing, hygiene, marriage, music, numerals,
  personal names, property rights, status
  differentiation, tool making, trade
• Browns Universal People

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Human Diversity

• Kluckhohn Every human is like all other
  humans, some other humans, and no other human.
  The major objective of cultural anthropology is
  the investigate the validity of this statement.

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Movie

• The Nature of Culture (25 mins)
• Looks at the cultures of
• !Kung of the Kalahari Desert, Africa
• Txukarrame of the Amazon, South America
• Boran of Kenya, Africa
• Think about
• How these cultures are both similar and
  different.
• What happens when anthropologists and others
  intervene in a culture?