Culture

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 Culture & Society

z Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted

customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior.
z Culture includes the ideas, values, customs, and
artifacts of groups of people.
z Culture: that complex whole which includes,
knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any
other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society. (Tylor's definition)
z Sociologically, culture does not refer to fine arts or
intellectual taste.

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 Defining Culture

z An abstract and elusive concept

z Many different definitions: not one right one
z Culture as present everywhere, in every
human action

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 Introduction

z Kottak uses Tylor's definition of

culture:that complex whole which
includes, knowledge, belief, arts, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member
of society.
z Enculturation is the process by which a
child learns his or her culture.

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 Culture is Learned

z Cultural learning is unique to humans.

z Cultural learning is the accumulation of
knowledge about experiences and information not
perceived directly by the organism, but
transmitted to it through symbols.
Symbols are signs that have no necessary or natural
connection with the things for which they stand.
Geertz defines culture as ideas based on cultural
learning and symbols.

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 Culture is Learned

z Culture is learned through both direct

instruction and through observation (both
conscious and unconscious).
z Anthropologists in the 19th century
argued for the psychic unity of man.
This doctrine acknowledges that individuals vary in
their emotional and intellectual tendencies and
capacities.
However, this doctrine asserted that all human
populations share the same capacity for culture.
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 Culture is Shared

z Culture is located and transmitted in

groups.
z The social transmission of culture tends
to unify people by providing us with a
common experience.
z The commonalty of experience in turn
tends to generate a common
understanding of future events.

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 Culture is Symbolic
z The human ability to use symbols is the basis of culture
(a symbol is something verbal or nonverbal within a
particular language or culture that comes to stand for
something else).
z While human symbol use is overwhelmingly linguistic, a
symbol is anything that is used to represent any other
thing, when the relationship between the two is
arbitrary (e.g. a flag).
z Other primates have demonstrated rudimentary ability
to use symbols, but only humans have elaborated
cultural abilitiesto learn, to communicate, to store, to
process, and to use symbols.

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 Culture and Nature

z Humans interact with cultural

constructions of nature, rather than
directly with nature itself.
z Culture converts natural urges and acts
into cultural customs.

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 Culture is All-Encompassing

z The anthropological concept of culture is

a model that includes all aspects of
human group behavior.
z Everyone is cultured, not just wealthy
people with an elite education.

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 Culture is Integrated

z A culture is a system: changes in one

aspect will likely generate changes in
other aspects.
z Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes,
and beliefs which are basic in that they
provide an organizational logic for the rest
of the culture.

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 People Use Culture Creatively

z Humans have the ability to avoid, manipulate,

subvert, and change the rules and patterns of their
own cultures.
z Ideal culture refers to normative descriptions of a
culture given by its natives.
z Real culture refers to actual behavior as observed
by an anthropologist.
z Culture is both public and individual because
individuals internalize the meanings of public
(cultural) messages.

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 Culture is Adaptive and
Maladaptive

z Culture is an adaptive strategy employed by

hominids.
z Because cultural behavior is motivated by cultural
factors, and not by environmental constraints,
cultural behavior can be maladaptive.
z Determining whether a cultural practice is adaptive
or maladaptive frequently requires viewing the
results of that practice from several perspectives
(from the point of view of a different culture, species,
or time frame, for example).

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 Levels of Culture

z National culture refers to the experiences, beliefs,

learned behavior patterns, and values shared by
citizens of the same nation.
z International culture refers to cultural practices
which are common to an identifiable group extending
beyond the boundaries of one culture.
z Subcultures are identifiable cultural patterns existing
within a larger culture.

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 . Levels of Culture

z Cultural practices and artifacts are transmitted

through diffusion.
Direct diffusion occurs when members of two or more
previously distinct cultures interact with each other.
Indirect diffusion occurs when cultural artifacts or
practices are transmitted from one culture to another
through an intermediate third (or more) culture.

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 Levels of Culture
Levels of culture, with examples from sports and food.

Level of Culture Sports Examples Food Examples

International Basketball Pizza

National Monster-Truck Gudeg

Rallies

Subculture Benthik Bolumprit

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 Ethnocentrism & Cultural
Relativism

z Ethnocentrism is the use of values, ideals, and

mores from ones own culture to judge the behavior
of someone from another culture.
Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal.
Ethnocentrism contributes to social solidarity.
z Cultural Relativism asserts that cultural values are
arbitrary, and therefore the values of one culture
should not be used as standards to evaluate the
behavior of persons from outside that culture.

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 Human Rights

z The idea of universal, unalienable, individual human

rights challenges cultural relativism by invoking a
moral and ethical code that is superior to any
country, culture, or religion.
z Cultural rights are vested in groups and include a
groups ability to preserve its cultural tradition.
z Kottak argues that cultural relativism does not
preclude an anthropologist from respecting
international standards of justice and morality.

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 Culture: Universal and Particular

z Cultural universals are features that are

found in every culture.
z Cultural generalities include features that
are common to several, but not all human
groups.
z Cultural particularities are features that
are unique to certain cultural traditions.

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 Universality

z Cultural universals are those traits that distinguish

Homo sapiens from other species.
z Some biological universals include: a long period of
infant dependency, year-round sexuality, and a
complex brain that enables us to use symbols,
languages, and tools.
z Some psychological universals include the common
ways in which humans think, feel, and process
information.
z Some social universals include: incest taboos, life in
groups, families (of some kind), and food sharing.
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 Generality

z Certain practices, beliefs, and the like may

be held commonly by more than one
culture, but not be universal; these are
called generalities.
z Diffusion and independent invention are
two main sources of cultural generalities.
z The nuclear family is a cultural generality
since it is present in most, but not all
societies.
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 Particularity

z Cultural practices that are unique to any

one culture are cultural particulars.
z That these particulars may be of
fundamental importance to the population
is indicative of the need to study the
sources of cultural diversity.

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 Difusi

z Diffusiondefined as the spread of culture traits

through borrowing from one culture to anotherhas
been a source of culture change throughout human
history.
z Diffusion can be direct (between to adjacent cultures)
or indirect (across one or more intervening cultures
or through some long distance medium).
z Diffusion can be forced (through warfare,
colonization, or some other kind of domination) or
unforced (e.g., intermarriage, trade, and the like).

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 Akulturasi

z Acculturation is the exchange of features that results

when groups come into continuous, firsthand
contact.
z Acculturation may occur in any or all groups
engaged in such contact.
z A pidgin is an example of acculturation, because it is
a language form that develops by borrowing
language elements from two linguistically different
populations in order to facilitate communication
between the two.

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 Independent Invention

z Independent invention is defined as the creative

innovation of new solutions to old and new
problems.
z Cultural generalities are partly explained by the
independent invention of similar responses to similar
cultural and environmental circumstances.
z The independent invention of agriculture in both the
Middle East and Mexico is cited as an example.

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 Convergent Cultural Evolution

z Cultural convergence is the development

of similar traits, institutions, and behavior
patterns by separate groups as a result of
adaptation to similar environments.
z Julian Steward pointed to instances of
cultural convergence to support the
hypothesis that cultural change is
governed by scientific laws.

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 Globalisasi

z Globalization encompasses a series of processes that

work to make modern nations and people increasingly
interlinked and mutually dependent.
z Economic and political forces take advantage of modern
systems of communication and transportation to promote
globalization.
z Globalization allows for the domination of local peoples by
larger economic and political systems (these may be based
regionally, nationally, and worldwide).
z Recognizing the breadth and nature of changes wrought
through globalization carries the concomitant need to
recognize practices of resistance, accommodation, and
survival that occur in response to same.
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 Globalisasi

These men in a coffee

shop in Cairo, Egypt are
using a laptop computer
and smoking traditional
hookahs (pipes).

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