Lecture 2 What Is Culture

Slide 1: What is Culture? ANTH45 Summer 2008 Section 101

Slide 2: vs.

Slide 3: In Pursuit of Culture (Goodenough)  How people become anthropologists  Early interest in culture  No previous knowledge about the field  Influence of and relationship with other fields: linguistics, psychology, biology, sociology  Introduction to several themes of the course: language and communication, property systems, marriage rules, etc.

Slide 5: The Concept of Culture  Concept used by all social sciences  Central to ethnology, archaeology, and biological anthropology  Anthropology has done more than any other discipline to refine our understanding of the concept of culture

Slide 6: Defining Culture  Over 160 definitions have been identified  Tylor’s definition (1871)  That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.  Goodenough’s definition  The product of learning in society  As opposed to simply patterns of recurring events  Focus on the content of culture (observed from behavior)  Criteria for: categorizing phenomena; deciding what can be; preferences and values; what to do about things; how to do those things; skills needed to perform

Slide 7: A better definition…  Focuses on what culture is, but also on what it does  Culture is the only thing that separates us from all other animals (not social behavior)

Slide 8: When Do We First See Culture?  Anatomically Modern Peoples and the Upper Paleolithic (100,000 years ago)  Culture  Emerges as a ‘more potent’ force than biology  Symbolic behavior  Art  Decoration  Sculpture  Pendants  Cave painting

Slide 9: When Do We First See Culture?  More Symbolic Behavior  Ritual  Burial

Slide 10: Culture is…  A major adaptive tool for humans  can be direct and can rapidly change  Learned through enculturation  Transmitted  Universal and specific  Shared and integrated  Constantly changing  Based on human ability to create symbols  Exchanged between societies through a process called acculturation

Slide 11: Culture is Adaptive  Humans have adapted by manipulating environments through cultural means.  Humans have come to depend more and more on cultural adaptation.  Because it works and fast!!  Polar bear vs. Inuit  What is adaptive in one context may be seriously maladaptive in another

Slide 12: Culture is Adaptive  Not every aspect of culture is adaptive  Some are neutral  Some are maladaptive  Sex in Papua New Guinean tribe  American energy policy

Slide 13: Culture is Generally Integrated  Integration  The tendency for all aspects of a culture to function as an interrelated whole.  System: a set of connected elements such that if you change one of them, you change the others  Concept of holism in anthropology

Slide 14: Individual Cultures  Core values  Unique to each culture  Constantly changing  Language evolves, customs change, beliefs and behaviors change  Ideal culture vs. real culture  What people say should do and what they say they do vs. what the anthropologist observes  Anthropological use of emic vs. etic perspective

Slide 15: Emic vs. Etic: why cows are sacred in India  Emic idea: cows are sacred because our religion tells us so  Emic behavior: we don’t eat cows  Etic idea: cows are crucial for farm labor. It is maladaptive to eat a cow because it produces more on a farm  Etic behavior: people sometimes eat old cows

Slide 16: Culture is Symbolic  The most fundamental aspect of culture is the capacity to symbolize  Culture is dependent upon symbols  Symbol: something that represents something else with which it is not intrinsically related  Symbols are powerful

Slide 17: Culture is Shared  For a thing, idea, or behavior pattern to qualify as being cultural, it must have a meaning shared by most people in a society  Society: a group of people who have a common homeland, are interdependent, and share a common culture  More to come: how people in States have shared culture and the institutions that help give common sense of identity

Slide 18: Culture is Differentially Shared  Degree with which traits are shared varies between cultures  Sources of variation  Sex and Gender  Age  Class  Religion  Etc.

Slide 19:  Differences exist in different sections of society  Subcultures  Subsets of a wider culture  Share traits with mainstream  But still unique  Subcultures can be threatening to the mainstream

Slide 20: Culture is Learned  Enculturation  The process of acquiring culture  Learning or interacting with one’s cultural environment  Observation, direct learning, experience  Not all learned behavior is cultural  Conditioning by repeated training is not enculturation  “Brain-washing”

Slide 21:  Ward Goodenough:  Because culture is learned, it’s in your head  No two people have the exact same criteria  As long as differences don’t affect the ability to interact with each other, you have a sense of shared culture • … but sometimes they do! • … that’s why we squash them •… who’s we? Mainstream, powerful groups, lobbies, governments…

Slide 22: Culture’s Influence on Biology  Functions  Eating  Sleeping  Work/exercise  Body types and images  Attitudes  Modification

Slide 23: Culture and Change  All cultures change over time for one reason or another  Meeting environmental crises  Responding to intrusions by outsiders  Evolving internal behavior and values  Results may be beneficial or disastrous

Slide 24: Mechanisms of Cultural Change  Internal Changes  Innovations  Ultimate source of all culture change  External changes  Diffusion  Spreading of a cultural element from one culture to another  Responsible for the greatest amount of change in any given society  Because people have never been isolated

Slide 25:  Acculturation: process of adopting foreign cultural elements (beliefs, customs, behaviors)

Slide 26: Cultural Universals  Despite variation in many aspects there are basic similarities  System(s) of production  Marriage and family  Education  Social control  Supernatural beliefs  Communication

Slide 27: As Individuals…  Culture influences our behavior, but…  It does not determine our behavior  Deviance from cultural norms exists in all societies

Slide 28: Short Exercise  Describe American culture to a foreigner: food, religion, education, political system, values  Which aspects of American culture are a result of innovation?  Which resulted from diffusion from another culture?  List 2 American symbols besides the flag: what do they represent?  List and describe 2 American subcultures. How does the mainstream view these subcultures? Are they respected, feared, ignored?