Understanding Culture

1. Understanding Culture The anthropological perspective

2. Chapter Objectives • Understand the defining attributes of culture. In particular, you need to understand what it means that culture is learned, shared, symbolic, all-encompassing, and integrated. • Identify the different levels of culture and why it is important to distinguish between them. 3. Understand the mechanisms of cultural change. 4. Distinguish between culture and race

3. Defining Culture • E.B.Tylor's: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” • Culture is: learned shared ideas patterns of behavior

4. Genealogy of Culture Raymond Williams • Culture - associated with crops • Culture - the ‘process of. . .’ • Culture and civilization once were synonymous Popular Conceptions • culture - elitist • pop culture - low brow http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/lmindex.html

5. Notable Definitions of Culture a. Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871). "Culture... is that Complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." b. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). ”It denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.” c. Marvin Harris, Cultural Materialism (1979) "Culture...refers to the learned repertory of thoughts and actions exhibited by the members of social groups--repertories transmissible independently of genetic heredity from one generation to the next. d. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977) "Are we to understand 'culture' as 'the arts', as 'system of meanings and values', or as a 'whole way of life', and how are these to be related to 'society' and 'the economy'?"

6. Culture is Learned • Cultural learning is unique to humans. • Cultural learning is the accumulation of knowledge about experiences and information not perceived directly by the organism, but transmitted to it through symbols. • Enculturation

7. Culture is Learned • Culture is learned through both direct instruction and observation (both conscious and unconscious). • Anthropologists in the 19th century argued for the “psychic unity of man.” • This doctrine acknowledges that individuals vary in their emotional and intellectual tendencies and capacities. • However, this doctrine asserted that all human populations share the same capacity for culture.

8. Culture is Shared • Culture is located and transmitted in groups. • The social transmission of culture tends to unify people by providing us with a common experience. • The commonalty of experience in turn tends to generate a common understanding of future events.

9. Culture is Ideas Schema Culture as Symbol: • Symbols are signs that have no necessary or natural connection with the things for which they stand. • Breakfast Examples: N. American Bali Maya Image from Varanasi, India

10. Culture is Patterns of Behavior • A culture is a system: changes in one aspect will likely generate changes in other aspects. • Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that are basic in that they provide an organizational logic for the rest of the culture. • Connection between act and ideas Reprimanding in Honduras

11. Culture: Internally consistent & inconsistent • Individual versus group behavior • Ideal versus real practices Examples in anthropological debate: Margaret Mead and Derrick Freeman Robert Redfield and Oscar Lewis Examples in everyday life Religion & … Politics & …

12. Culture: Internally consistent & inconsistent • A culture is a system: changes in one aspect will likely generate changes in other aspects. • Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that are basic in that they provide an organizational logic for the rest of the culture.

13. Culture, Society, Ethnicity • Society: organized group of people. http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/ http://www.marxists.org/ http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm

14. Ethnicity • Ethnic groups are formed around virtually the same features as cultures: common beliefs, values, customs, history, and the like. • Ethnicity entails identification with a given ethnic group, but it also involves the maintenance of a distinction from other groups. • Status refers to any position in a society that can be filled by an individual. • Ascribed status is status into which people enter automatically without choice, usually at birth or through some other universal event in the life cycle. • Achieved status is status that people acquire through their own actions.

15. Levels of Culture • National culture refers to the experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation. Bunzel - Japan • International culture refers to cultural practices that are common to an identifiable group extending beyond the boundaries of one culture. Appadurai - Indian transnationals • Subcultures are identifiable cultural patterns existing within a larger culture.

16. Race A sociocultural construct

17. Culture and Biology Political Ecology Easter Island Egypt Mayas