The Anthropological Concept of Culture

Today, January 21, 2005

Culture as shared and learned behavior

Culture and the symbolic means of communications

Functions of cultureStudying culture

People learn culture. Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather like a template (i.e. it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and consciousness within a human society (1) from generation to generation (2).

Template: something that establishes or serves as a pattern

CULTURE IS SHARED

South America

North America

But sharing is a problem that can be resolved by specific and diverse models

1. The total way of life of a people2. The social legacy the individual acquires from his group3. A way of thinking, feeling, and believing 4. An abstraction from behavior5. A theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way

in which a group of people in fact behave7. A storehouse of pooled learning [pool:to combine (as

resources) in a common fund or effort] 8. A set of standardized orientations to recurrent problems9. Learned behavior [recurrent: returning or happening

time after time]10. A mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior11. A set of techniques for adjusting both to the external

environment and to other men12. A precipitate of history [a product, result, or outcome ofhistory]13. A behavioral map, sieve, or matrix

Clyde Kluckhohn's Mirror for Man

CULTURE

culture

The values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world [learned behavior] shared by members of a society [1 accepted by any social group[, that they use to interpret experience and generate behavior [2 accumulated; changeable], and that are reflected in their behavior [3 habit, pattern, template].

: shared – interact, communicate, convey: interpret - ideas, actions, material culture; from generation to generation, : a style of life [learned behavior] and its results [behavior and material experience]

The Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989

On the 9th of November, 1989, the Border separating Western from Eastern Germany was effectively opened.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall, which will always be used as a symbol for the end of the Cold War, made the "West" available in the middle of the "East“…

Symbols:signs, emblems, and other things that represent something else in a meaningful way.

Culture Shock

The overwhelming experience of living in a culture (or subculture) very different from your own is sometimes known as "culture shock." Travelers, immigrants, and anthropologists often have difficulties trying to adjust to a new culture. Common reactions are confusion, disgust, homesickness, irritability, boredom, or withdrawal.

Questions:

Have you ever experienced any cross-cultural bloopers? How were your usual values and assumptions challenged? How

did you feel? How did you finally make the adjustment?

1.       Which of the following statements about society and culture is INCORRECT?

 

a.       Culture can exist without a society.

b.       A society can exist without culture.

c.       Ants and bees have societies but no culture.

d.       A culture is shared by the members of a society.

e.       Although members of a society may share a culture, their behavior is not uniform.

Quiz

Quiz

1.       Every culture teaches its members that there are differences between people based on sex, age, occupation, class, and ethnic group. People learn to predict the behavior of people playing different roles from their own. This means that a.       culture is shared even though everyone is not the same.b.       everyone plays the same role.c.       all cultures identify the same roles.d.       all cultures require that their participants play different roles, even though that means that no one can predict the behavior of others.e.       everyone plays the same role throughout their life.

societyA group of interdependent people who share a common culture.

Compare: society is any group of people (or, less commonly, plants or animals) living together in a group and constituting a single related, interdependent community.

A distinctive set of standards and behavior patterns by which a group within a larger society operates.

Pattern - a reliable sample of traits, acts, tendencies, or other observable characteristics of a person, group, or institution <behavior pattern> <spending pattern>

subculture

People who collectively and publicly identify themselves as a distinct group based on various cultural features such as shared ancestry and common origin, language, customs, and traditional beliefs.

ethnic group

This term, rooted in the Greek word ethnikos (“nation”) and related to ethnos (“custom”) is the expression of the set of cultural ideas held by an ethnic group.

ethnicity

pluralistic societiesSocieties in which there exist a diversity of cultural patterns.

Barbara Morris Change Agents in the Schoolsvalue changers (change agents)In "values clarification" classes students are taught that there are no more absolutes in our "evolutionary," pluralistic world.

For example, our children our taught that while we may not think it is right to kill grandmothers "by cultural consensus" (at least not yet), it may be fine for some cultures which have practiced it as a way of life for centuries. That is the type of reasoning used.

enculturationThe process by which a society’s culture is passed from one generation to the next and individuals become members of their society.

infrastructure

The economic foundation of a society, including its subsistence practices, and the tools and other material equipment used to make a living.

social structureThe rule-governed relationships of individuals and groups within a society that hold it together.

superstructureA society’s shared sense of identity and worldview. The collective body of ideas, beliefs, and values by which a group of people makes sense of the world—its shape, challenges, and opportunities—and their place in it. This includes religion and national ideology.

Human relations area files (HRAF)An ever-growing catalogue of cross-indexed ethnographic data, filed by geographic location and cultural characteristics. Housed at Yale University, HRAF is also electronically available on the Internet.

ethnohistoryThe study of cultures of the recent past through oral histories; accounts left by explorers, missionaries, and traders; and through analysis of such records as land titles, birth and death records, and other archival materials.

ethnocentrismThe belief that the ways of one’s own culture are the only proper ones.

cultural relativismThe thesis that one must suspend judgment on other peoples’ practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms.