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    Anth206 Chap2 Culture

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    mairaxero
    This document provides an overview of key concepts in cultural anthropology that will be covered in Chapter Two, including definitions of culture, acculturation, enculturation, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, race and racism, and emic and etic perspectives. Culture is defined as the learned and shared understandings among a group about how to behave and what everything means. Key aspects of culture are that it is learned, patterned, symbolic, socially transmitted, and provides guidance on behaviors and meanings within a group.

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    Anth206 Chap2 Culture

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    mairaxero
    43 views6 pages
    This document provides an overview of key concepts in cultural anthropology that will be covered in Chapter Two, including definitions of culture, acculturation, enculturation, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, race and racism, and emic and etic perspectives. Culture is defined as the learned and shared understandings among a group about how to behave and what everything means. Key aspects of culture are that it is learned, patterned, symbolic, socially transmitted, and provides guidance on behaviors and meanings within a group.

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    This document provides an overview of key concepts in cultural anthropology that will be covered in Chapter Two, including definitions of culture, acculturation, enculturation, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, race and racism, and emic and etic perspectives. Culture is defined as the learned and shared understandings among a group about how to behave and what everything means. Key aspects of culture are that it is learned, patterned, symbolic, socially transmitted, and provides guidance on behaviors and meanings within a group.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    43 views6 pages

    Anth206 Chap2 Culture

    Uploaded by

    mairaxero
    This document provides an overview of key concepts in cultural anthropology that will be covered in Chapter Two, including definitions of culture, acculturation, enculturation, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, race and racism, and emic and etic perspectives. Culture is defined as the learned and shared understandings among a group about how to behave and what everything means. Key aspects of culture are that it is learned, patterned, symbolic, socially transmitted, and provides guidance on behaviors and meanings within a group.

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    of 6

    Anth 103

    Fall 2007

    Chapter Two: Understanding Culture


    • Culture
    • Acculturation
    • Enculturation
    • Race and Racism
    • Cultural relativism
    • Ethnocentrism
    • Emic [phoneme]
    • Etic [phonetic]

    *****

    Culture
    • British anthropologist Edward Tylor: culture is 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 (1871); assumed culture to
    be a uniquely human trait; differentiated between biologically inherited and
    socially transmitted human traits
    • Language a key element of humankind’s uniqueness; ability to use symbols to
    conduct and convey meaning in the abstract
    • Continuum: at one end, culture as a thing in and of itself: static and, at the other,
    [postmodernists] culture as constructed and interpreted by individuals: fluid and
    dynamic
    • Two processes in cultural change: innovation [new variation on an existing
    cultural pattern that is accepted into the larger society—domestication of plants]
    and diffusion [any or all of the ways a people take up part or all of another
    culture—not automatic, but selective as borrowed elements are integrated into
    existing cultural patterns—use of horse]

    [Bodley]:
    aspects of culture: mental [what people think]; behavioral [what people do]; and
    material [what people produce]; socially transmitted information that shapes
    human action

    features: patterned, symbolic, shared, socially transmitted, ethnocentric,


    conservative, normative, dynamic, historical
    • socially transmitted and shared; symbolic and patterned; conservative [yet it
    changes, it has a history and tells people what is best and proper]; shared:

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    Anth 103
    Fall 2007

    social phenomenon where idiosyncratic behavior is not the norm; learned


    and not biologically inherited [biological sex v. gender roles]; arbitrarily
    assigned, symbolic meanings [human ability to assign arbitrary meaning to
    any object, behavior, or condition makes culture enormously creative and
    helps distinguish culture from animal behavior]

    functions: regulation, maintenance, survival and reproduction, fitness-


    enhancement
    • guarantee human survival and reproduction; unique means by which people
    in a given society [interacting, intermarrying human population sharing a
    common culture] satisfy their human needs, regulate the size of their society
    and the distribution of social power, and manage natural resources; gives
    people power to produce and distribute resources in ways that can make
    entire groups prosper or decline—key to human survival and well-being;
    beyond survival to establishing a sustainable balance between resources and
    consumption while maintaining a satisfying and secure society; adaptation is
    an ongoing process

    The learned and shared ways of behaving typical of a particular human group;
    study culture in general and attempt to discover laws of cultural development that
    apply to the whole of humankind

    ******

    Culture is the learned, shared understandings among a group of people about


    how to behave and what everything means.

    • Learned – not inborn


    • Shared – all group members do this (not unique)
    • Understanding – culture is in people’s minds
    • Group – collectivity – all members of the group share this culture (large or
    small groups)
    • Behave – guides individuals actions within the group – sometimes
    unconscious habits (tone of voice raised at end of question) – sometimes
    rules & knowledge (drive on the right/pass on the left)
    • Means – culture provides guidance on what to do, how to do it, & when –
    also predicts and interprets what others will do and say

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    Anth 103
    Fall 2007

    Society/Culture: group of people organized into social relationships to perform


    certain tasks – usually has own territory, perpetuates itself over generations, and is
    at least partly self-governing – specifies what the social relationships should be,
    how to perform tasks, and why to go to the trouble in the first place

    Subculture: particular mix of shared understandings held by groups within a


    larger society – language, dress, religion, habits of work, food preferences, &
    child-raising practices, etc.

    Ethnic group: group within a society that maintains a subculture based on


    religion, language, common origin, or ancestral traditions – invest effort to
    distinguish itself from others in the wider society – usually share some culture with
    other ethnic groups in order to participate in the political and economic life of the
    society of which they are parts [ethnic flags -- accents, dress, etc]

    Ethnicity: one’s identification with or participation in an ethnic group – may be


    multiple, unclear to oneself, or vary depending on the social situation – complex &
    fluid

    Acculturation:
    • culture change brought about by contact between peoples with different
    cultures; usually refers to the loss of traditional culture when the members of
    domestic-scale cultures adopt elements of commercial-scale cultures
    • consider the “disappearance of the Indian”

    Enculturation:
    • acquiring or learning culture – how children are raised – teach, imitate,
    correct, and so come to share a culture

    Ethnocentrism:
    • Evaluating other cultures from the perspective of one’s own presumably
    superior culture; looking at and judging other people through the narrow
    perspective of one’s own culture

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    Anth 103
    Fall 2007

    Cultural relativity/relativism:
    • Understanding a culture from the point of view of its participants;
    understanding other cultures by their own categories, which are assumed to be
    valid and worthy of respect

    Emic/Etic
    • emic—phonemic [unique sound recognized as significant by speakers of a
    given language]; insider’s view of a particular culture; cultural meanings
    derived from inside a given culture and presumed to be unique to that culture
    • etic—phonetic [records sounds as heard by a nonspeaker of the language who
    does not know which sound distinctions are meaningful]; outsider’s view of a
    culture; point out causes and consequences of particular patterns of which
    people in that culture may not be conscious; cultural meanings as translated for
    cross-cultural comparison

    By taking the outsider’s view of our own society and culture, we can understand it
    more objectively and perhaps use this understanding to make more rational
    changes in our own lives.

    Biology & Culture:


    Race and Racism
    • Anthropology demonstrates that race is not a valid scientific category but
    rather a cultural construct.
    • Clinal variation – skin color, hair color, hair texture, height, eye color, etc.
    • Race is a socio-cultural construct [a conceptual model of reality]
    • Racism – when policies come into being to support the belief that actual or
    alleged differences between racial groups indicate the superiority of one of
    them

    Cultural Anthropology today – not what are the races of humankind, but rather
    what races do people of this or that culture imagine there are? What does the
    group think about human biological diversity & why does it label differences in
    that way?

    [text p. 33-34] – culture is learned, shared, ideas about, & patterns of behavior
    – [internally consistent (basic behaviors) & inconsistent (contradictory themes –

    4
    Anth 103
    Fall 2007

    Thomas Jefferson while espousing freedom owned slaves) – individualism-


    groupism continuum [how groups behave] – approach a culture as systematically
    integrated as a whole yet expect to find real or apparent contradictions

    [Kottak, 1997] -- Cultures are


    • Integrated [one part is related to another part] – holistic system
    • Products of history [outcomes of past practices]
    • (can be) Changed and can cause change [can change rapidly – technology;
    alters and is altered by the biology of the population – small pox/cowpox] --
    interactions of human biology, environment, & culture [forest dwellers,
    metal axes, alter or eliminate their forest]
    • Strengthened by values [shared understandings of what is good & right to
    do and be as well as what is bad & wrong] -- relativistic experience when
    looking at other cultures [without judging by our own standards/can even
    become self-critical about the way we examine our own culture]
    • Powerful determinants of behavior [people are not puppets – culture is
    powerful because much of what we have learned is beneath our awareness
    or has become a comfortable habit or is surrounded by values that make us
    feel bad if we don’t do right or is being done by everybody else so we
    conform to be accepted] -- all of us break rules sometimes in order to do
    something alternative, deviant, unique, or creative
    • Largely composed of and transmitted by symbols [symbol – anything to
    which its users assign meaning – meaning is given by the culture and may be
    quite arbitrary – may have no obvious relationship to its given meaning --
    actions, objects, human languages, verbal or visual – ads: if you buy this,
    you will become something other than you are

    Human culture is unique in complexity and variability [debate: some propose that
    the abilities of other species indicate a continuum in cultural behavior between
    humans & other animals – to claim we humans are unique may not be productive
    or useful – others argue that yes, we are unique even while acknowledging that
    some other species are social (honeybees, wolves, chimpanzees) because these
    shared understandings (complex behaviors, communication, & problem-solving)
    are not learned and expressed symbolically]

    Cultural process:
    Cultures adapt and change – Culture is fluid & negotiable
    • Not just an inventory of understandings shared by one society in one place
    • An adjustment of interacting groups

    5
    Anth 103
    Fall 2007

    Culture is treated as a constructed phenomenon – not necessarily dictated by


    reality – groups construct and create understandings by selecting this & ignoring
    that, & making up another thing

    Culture is expected to be mixed – multicultural in that each of us has learned


    several cultures

    What isn’t culture?


    • Not the same as civilization
    • Not the same as being refined or sophisticated
    • Not the same as society [although we often intermix these terms] – a society,
    by means of the interactions among its members, creates, shares, and
    perpetuates a culture
    • Not the explanation for everything people do – just that there is a cultural
    element to human behavior
    • Not behavior -- although it guides behavior
    • Not just food customs, musical traditions, & colorful costumes – aspects are
    easily noticed, shared, even marketed – much that occurs during an ordinary
    day -- guides choices
    • Not complete agreement or consensus - share culture but could disagree
    about some aspects (how to raise children, the eating of certain foods,
    whether an all-powerful God would permit evil to happen to good people

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