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The Elements of Culture:. By Rodeline Belizaire Adapted from McDougal Little Power Presentations . Faces of the World http://youtu.be/z6RLHKRs9D8. What is Culture?.
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The Elements of Culture: By Rodeline Belizaire Adapted from McDougal Little Power Presentations
What is Culture? Culture is the system of beliefs, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior and are shared by a group of people. It includes customs, language, and material artifacts that are shared and passed down from generation to generation.
Key Characteristics of Culture Language: • Enables people within a culture to communicate, reflects all aspects of culture. • Helps establish cultural identity and unity. • Can also divide people and cause conflict. Religion: Belief in supernatural power • Monotheistic – belief in one god. • Polytheistic – belief in may gods. • Animistic, or traditional - belief in divine forces of nature.
Culture Change and Exchange Happens in three ways • Innovation - creating something new with existing resources. • Diffusion – the spreading of ideas, inventions, patterns of behavior. • Acculturation—society changes because it accepts innovation
Creative Cultural Expressions All cultures express themselves creatively through: The performing arts - music, dance, theater, film. Architecture - painting, sculpture, textiles are forms of visual arts. Oral and written literature - such as poems, folk tales, stories.
Despite the different in cultures found in our class, what are some things that we all have in common? • What elements of American Culture unite us? what element divide us? • Explain how specific elements of your culture has shaped the way you see yourself and the world around you?
“100% American” “100% American” what images, thoughts, or feeling come to mind when you read, see, or hear this phrase?
“100% American” Vocabulary • Gauls – historic name used for the people of modern day France, Luxembourg, and Belgium by the ancient Romans • Asiatic steppes – Eurasian temperate grassland • India – Subcontinent – South Asia • Near East – ancient –Middle East • Asia Minor – Middle East • Antilles – the Caribbean • Persia - Modern day Iran • Semites – Jewish sect • Hebrew - Jew • Indo-European • Deity – a god • Abyssinian – east African ( Ethiopian) • Guttenberg Printing Press – invented by the German, Johannes Guttenberg.