2. RECAP OF LAST CLASS
• What is anthropology?
• Culture
• The subfields of anthropology
• Two dimensions of anthropology
3. WHAT IS CULTURE?
• Edward Tylor: ‘Systems of human behavior
and thought.’
• Culture- Not through biological inheritance
but by growing up in a particular society.
• Enculturation: The process by which a child
learns his or her culture.
4. Culture is Learned
• Human cultural learning depends on the
uniquely developed human capacity to use
symbols.
Symbols: signs that have no necessary or natural
connection to the things they signify or stand for
5. Culture is Learned
• Clifford Geertz: ‘Culture is ideas based on
cultural learning and symbols.’
• Culture- ‘set of control mechanisms’ – plans,
recipes, rules, instructions for governing
behavior
• Culture is transmitted through observation.
• Culture is absorbed unconsciously.
6. • All humans have culture.
• Anthropologists in the 19th century argued on
a doctrine: ‘psychic unity of man’
Acknowledgment that individuals vary in
emotional and intellectual tendencies and
capacities, but still, all human populations have
equivalent capacities for culture.
7. Culture is Symbolic
• Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans
and to cultural learning.
• A symbol is something verbal or non-verbal
within a particular language or culture that
comes to stand for something else.
• No obvious, natural or necessary connection
between the symbol and what it symbolizes.
• Symbols are usually linguistic.
• Non-verbal symbols: flags,logos,religious symbols
8. Culture is Shared
• Shared beliefs, values, memories and
expectations link people who grow up in the
same culture.
• Enculturation unifies people by providing
common experiences.
9. Culture and Nature
• Culture takes natural biological urges and
teaches us how to express them in particular
ways.
• How natural acts are converted into cultural
habits- eating and bathroom examples.
10. Culture is Integrated
• Cultures are integrated, patterned systems.
• If one part of the system (the economy)
changes, other parts (family structure) change
as well.
11. Culture can be both Adaptive and
Maladaptive
• Humans have biological and cultural ways of
coping with environmental stress
• Adaptive behavior that offers short term
benefits to particular individuals may harm
the environment and threaten the group’s
long term survival.
• Overconsumption and pollution.
12. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
• Similarities between humans and apes are
evident in anatomy, brain structure, genetics
and biochemistry.
13. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
Many human traits showed that our
primate ancestors lived in trees.
Human primates have common with some
other animal primates that; 1. they can
modify learned behavior and social
patterns. 2.Tool making and Hunting
14. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
• How we differ from other primates?
Cooperation and sharing are much more
developed among humans
Marriage: Humans have rules of exogamy and
kinship.
Exogamy: Marriage outside one’s group
15. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
• Universality
Same for all cultural groups.
A long period of infant dependency
Year-round sexuality
Complex Brain
Common ways in which humans think, feel and
process information.
Life in groups, family, food sharing
Exogamy and Incest Taboo
16. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
• Generality
Regularities that occur in different times and
places but not in all cultures.
Diffusion
Colonization
Invention
Nuclear Family
17. CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS
• Particularity
Traits or features if culture not generalized or
widespread
Diffusion
Independent Invention
When cultural traits are borrowed, the traits
are modified to fit the culture that adopts
them.
18. Anthropology
• By focusing on and trying to explain
the various and diverse cultures and
alternative customs, anthropology
forces us to reappraise our familiar
ways of thinking.
• Making strange familiar and familiar
strange.
