COMPARATIVE CULTUREWHAT IS CULTURE?307 Najd

WHAT IS CULTURE?Culture, in anthropology, is the

patterns of behaviour and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create, and share.

Culture distinguishes one human group from another. It also distinguishes humans from animals.

WHAT IS CULTURE?

A people’s culture includes their beliefs, rules of behaviour, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems.

Culture is Symbolic

People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts and to exchange those thoughts with others.

Culture is Symbolic

People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language.

Culture is Symbolic Research has shown, for example, that infants have a basic structure of language—a sort of Universal Grammar—built into their minds. Infants, who later become adults, are predisposed to learn the languages spoken by the people around them.

Culture is Symbolic

0-10/11 months: Pre Verbal Stage

Cooing 3-5 months Vowel-like soundsBabbling 6-10 months Repetitive CV patterns

All infants produce the same sounds at this stage. After this they start to produce recognizable words – words that are acquired by living in a particular society

Culture is Symbolic Thus, language is considered as one

of the most important distinguishing characteristics that differentiate one culture from another.

Take, for example, human and animal languages. When comparing them, we find that human language vastly exceeds the capabilities of animals. For instance:

(1) Vocabulary: Chimpanzees,

the closest genetic relatives of humans, use a few dozen calls and a variety of gestures to communicate in the wild. People have taught some chimps to communicate using American Sign Language, and some have developed vocabularies of a few hundred words. But any animal's lexicon will never come close to that of any typical human.

(2) Grammar: Chimpanzees have also not clearly demonstrated the ability to use grammar, which is crucial for communicating complex thoughts.

(3) Production of sounds: In addition, the human vocal tract, unlike that of chimpanzees and other animals, can create and articulate a wide enough variety of sounds to create millions of distinct words. In fact, each human language uses only a fraction of the sounds humans can make.

(4) Interpretation of language: The human brain also contains highly advanced areas dedicated to the production and interpretation of speech, which other animals lack.

Culture is Learned People are not born with culture; they

have to learn it by being a member of their society.

For instance, people must learn to speak and understand a language and to abide by the rules of a society. In many societies, all people must learn to produce and prepare food and to construct shelters. In other societies, people must learn a skill to earn money, which they then use to provide for themselves.

Culture is Learned

In all human societies, children learn culture from adults. Anthropologists call this process enculturation, or cultural transmission.

Culture is Learned

Enculturation is a long process. Just learning the intricacies of a human language, a major part of enculturation, takes many years. Families commonly protect and enculturate children in the households of their birth for 15 years or more.

Culture is Learned

Only at this point can children leave and establish their own households. People also continue to learn throughout their lifetimes.

Culture is Shared People living together in a society

share culture. For example, almost all people living in the United States share the English language, dress in similar styles, eat many of the same foods, and celebrate many of the same holidays.

Culture is Shared

All the people of a society collectively create and maintain culture. Societies preserve culture for much longer than the life of any one person.

Culture is Shared

They preserve it in the form of: (a) knowledge, such as scientific discoveries; (b) objects, such as works of art; and (c) traditions, such as the observance of holidays.

Culture is Shared Self-identity usually depends on culture to such a great extent that immersion in a very different culture—with which a person does not share common ways of life or beliefs—can cause a feeling of confusion and disorientation.

Culture is Shared Anthropologists refer to this phenomenon as culture shock.

Culture is Shared

Just as you will bring with you overseas clothes and other personal items, you will also carry invisible "cultural baggage" when you travel.

Culture is Shared

Cultural baggage contains the values that are important to you and the patterns of behavior that are customary in your culture.

Ethnocentrism

Members of a society who share culture often also share some feelings of ethnocentrism, the notion that one’s culture is more sensible than or superior to that of other societies.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism contributes to the reality of culture because it affirms people’s shared beliefs and values in the face of other, often contradictory, beliefs and values held by people of other cultural backgrounds.

Cultural RelativismAnthropologists, knowing the

power of ethnocentrism, advocate cross-cultural understanding through a concept known as cultural relativism.

Cultural RelativismSomeone observing cultural

relativism tries to respect all cultures equally. Although only someone living within a group that shares culture can fully understand that culture, cultural relativists believe that outsiders can learn to respect beliefs and practices that they do not share.

Interaction Between CulturesSince no human society exists in

compete isolation, different societies also exchange and share culture. In fact, all societies have some interactions with others, both out of (a) curiosity and because (b) even highly self-sufficient societies sometimes need assistance from their neighbors.

Interaction Between CulturesToday, for instance,

many people: (a) share similar kinds of technology, such as cars, telephones, and televisions (b) share commercial trade and communication technologies, such as computer networks, have created a form of global culture (c) exchange ideas (d) exchange people.

DiffusionCross-cultural exchange often results

from: 1. Diffusion Diffusion is used to describe the spread of cultural items — such as ideas, styles, religions, technologies, languages etc. — between individuals, whether within a single culture or from one culture to another. For example, corn, sweet potatoes, and tobacco all originated in America, but people in many places now use them.

Types of Diffusion(A) Direct diffusion was

very common in ancient times, when small groups, or bands, of humans lived in adjoining settlements, resulting in trade. An example of direct diffusion is between the United States (that got hockey from Canada) and Canada (that got baseball from America.

Types of Diffusion

B) Indirect diffusion is very common in today's world because of the mass media and the invention of the Internet. It happens when traits are passed from one culture through a middleman to another culture, without the first and final cultures ever being in direct contact. An example could be the presence of Mexican food in Canada, since they have a huge country in between them.

Acculturation Acculturation is a process which

mostly results from conquest whereby both cultures borrow from each other. For example, the Romans conquered Greece in the 100's B.C. During the centuries that followed, the Romans adopted many features of Greek culture, including Greek art, literature, and religion. The Greeks, in turn, were influenced by Roman architecture.

Acculturation

For example, many cultures adopted dog sleds, fur parkas, and snowshoes from the Eskimos. In turn, Eskimos adopted motorboats, rifles, and snowmobiles from other cultures.

Assimilation

Assimilation Involves borrowing that is more one-sided. Assimilation takes place when immigrants or other newcomers adopt the culture of the society in which they have settled. For example, Westerners who have lived for some time in Saudi Arabia.

SubcultureSome groups of people share a

distinct set of cultural traits within a larger society. Such groups are often referred to as subcultures. For instance, the members of a subculture may share a distinct language or dialect (variation based on the dominant language), unique rituals, and a particular style of dress.

SubcultureIn the United

States and Canada, many strongly integrated religious groups, such as rural Amish communities, have the characteristics of subcultures.

Culture is Adaptive Culture helps human societies

survive in changing natural environments. For example, the end of the last Ice Age, beginning about 15,000 years ago, posed an enormous challenge to which humans had to adapt. Before this time, large portions of the northern hemisphere were covered in great sheets of ice that contained much of the earth’s water.

Culture is Adaptive In North America, large game animals that

roamed the vast lands provided people with food and materials for clothing and simple shelters. When the earth warmed, large Ice Age game animals disappeared, and many land areas were submerged by rising sea levels from melting ice. But people survived. They developed new technologies and learned how to survive on new plant and animal species. Eventually some people settled into villages of permanent, durable houses and farms.

Culture is Adaptive Through history, major

developments in (a) technology, (b) medicine, and (c) nutrition have allowed people to reproduce, adapt, and survive in ever-increasing numbers. The global population has risen from 8 million during the Ice Age to almost 6 billion today.

Cultural LagEvery culture changes

continually. The rate of change may be slow or rapid. Social scientists believe that many social problems come about because some parts of a culture change more slowly than others. The term cultural lag refers to this tendency of certain parts of a culture to fall behind other related parts

Cultural Lag

For example, the development of power-driven machinery during the 1700's and 1800's led to the establishment of factories. The working conditions in the early factories were bad. Not until the 1900's did social changes catch up with the technological changes that had built the factories. These social changes included safety regulations, a shorter workday, and the abolition of child labor.

Cultural Lag

In other societies and at other times, however, changes in ideas have come before changes in the material culture. For example, physicians had the knowledge to perform some operations for thousands of years. But little surgery was possible until the discovery of antiseptics and painkillers in the 1800's.

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE

Anthropologists have described a number of different categories of culture: Material culture includes products of human manufacture, such as technology.

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE

Social culture pertains to people’s forms of social organization-how people interact and organize themselves.

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE

Ideological culture relates to what people think, value, believe, and hold as ideals.

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE

The arts include such activities and areas of interest as music, sculpture, painting, pottery, theater, cooking, writing, and fashion. Example:_________

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE Anthropologists often

study how these categories of culture differ across different types of societies that vary in scale (size and complexity). Anthropologists have identified several distinct types of societies by scale such as bands (e.g., circus bands and gypsy bands),

CATEGORIES OF CULTURE tribes (e.g., Al-

Qahtani), civilizations (e.g., Western civilization), and some anthropologists characterize the world today as a single global-scale culture, in which people are linked together by industrial technology and markets of commercial exchange.