Culture helps individuals and groups in several important ways: 1. Culture distinguishes humans from animals and allows humans to overcome physical disadvantages by providing tools, language, customs, and rules for social behavior. 2. Culture provides solutions for complicated situations and determines behaviors for areas of life like eating, sleeping, and leisure activities. 3. Culture shapes individual personality and prepares people for group life by establishing social norms and limits on individual growth. 4. Culture keeps social relationships intact and provides a shared vision of concepts like family and nation that allow for group cooperation and division of labor.

1. IMPORTANCE AND
FUNCTIONS OF CULTURE

2. FUNCTIONS OF CULTURE:

a. Importance to the individual:
(1) Culture distinguishes man from animal. It
is the culture that makes the human animal a
man. It regulates his conduct and prepares
him for a group life. Without culture he would
have been forced to find his own way which
would have meant a loss of energy.

3. 
(2) Culture provides solution for complicated
situations. Culture provides man a set of
behaviour for difficult situations. In the
absence of culture man would have been
baffled even at the simplest situations.
Culture not only defines but also determines
what we eat and drink, when to sleep, when
to laugh etc.

4. 
(3) Culture provides traditional interpretation
to certain situations. Through culture man
gets traditional interpretations for many
situations according to which he determines
his behaviour. For example, if a cat crosses
his way he postpones the journey.

5. 
(4) Culture shapes personality. No child can
develop human qualities in the absence of
cultural environment. Culture prepares man
for group life. It is culture that provides
opportunities for the development of
personality and sets limits on its growth.

6. B. IMPORTANCE FOR THE GROUP:

(1) Culture keeps social relationship intact.
Culture has importance not only for men but
also for the group. Culture prepares man for
group life. Group life would have been poor,
nasty, and short if there had been no cultural
regulations. Group solidarity rests on the
foundation of culture.

7. 
(2) Culture has given a new vision to the
individual. Secondly, culture has given a new
vision to the co-operation of the individuals.
Culture teaches him to think of himself as a
part of the larger whole. It provides him with
the concepts of family, state, nation etc. and
makes possible the coordination and division
of labor.

8. 
(3)Culture creates new needs. Finally, culture
also creates new needs and drives, for
example, thirst for knowledge and arranges
for their satisfaction. It satisfies the moral and
religious interests of the members of the
group.

9. 1.
2.
3.
4.
Culture helps the individual fulfill his potential
as a human being.
Through the development of culture, man can
overcome his physical disadvantages and
allows himself with fire, clothing, food, and
shelter.
Culture provides rules of proper conduct for
living in a society
Culture also provides the individual his
concept of family, nation, and class.

10. CULTURAL RELATIVISM
 Practices
considered immoral or taboo
to a certain group of people but are
accepted by other groups with a
different cultural orientation.

11. CULTURAL RELATIVISM
According to Rosaldo (2003)
Cultural
relativism is in essence an approach
to the question of the nature and role of values
in culture. If values and shared ideals which
give rise to beliefs
and norms of behavior
around which a people or a group organizes
its collective life, and goals, cultural relativism
declares that these values are relative to the
cultural ambiance out of which they arise.

12. According to Anthropology
Cultural
relativism is a key methodological
concept which is universally accepted within
the discipline. The concept is based on
theoretical considerations which are the key to
the understanding of “ scientific” anthropology
as they are the key to the understanding of
anthropological frame of mind.

13. According to Glazer
Cultural
relativism
is
an
anthropological approach which posits
that all cultures are of equal value and
need to be studied in a neutral point of
view. The basis of cultural relativism is
a scientific view of culture, which also
rejects value judgments on culture.

14. According to Hunt (1998)
The central point in cultural relativism is
that in particular setting certain traits are
right because they work in that setting
while other traits are wrong because
they clash painfully with parts of the
culture.

15. 
Prepared by:
Maria Shuzeth D.
Dela cruz