Download Cultural Anthropology: Chapter 4

CULTURE
ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 13
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: CHAPTER 4
PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: NOT PRESENT
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
1.
Understand the defining attributes of culture. In particular, you need to understand what
it means that culture is learned, shared, symbolic, all-encompassing, and integrated.
2.
Identify the different levels of culture and why it is important to distinguish between
them.
3.
Distinguish between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and how both relate to human
rights.
4.
Know the differences between cultural universalities, generalities, and particularities.
You should be able to provide examples of each.
5.
Understand the mechanisms of cultural change.
6.
Know what globalization is, the forces behind it, and its effects of local communities.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction
A. 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.
B. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one’s own cultural beliefs as superior and to apply
one’s own values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures.
C. Enculturation is the process by which a child learns his or her culture.
II. What Is Culture?
A. Culture Is Learned
1. Cultural learning is unique to humans.
2. Cultural learning is the accumulation of knowledge about experiences and
information not perceived directly by the organism, but transmitted to it through
symbols.
a. Symbols are signs that have no necessary or natural connection with the things for
which they stand.
b. Geertz defines culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols.
3. Culture is learned through both direct instruction and observation (both conscious and
unconscious).
4. Anthropologists in the 19th century argued for the “psychic unity of man.”
a. This doctrine acknowledges that individuals vary in their emotional and
intellectual tendencies and capacities.
b. However, this doctrine asserted that all human populations share the same capacity
for culture.
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B. Culture Is Shared
1. Culture is located and transmitted in groups.
2. The social transmission of culture tends to unify people by providing us with a
common experience.
3. The commonalty of experience in turn tends to generate a common understanding of
future events.
C. Interesting Issues: Touching, Affection, Love, and Sex
1. Even such things as apparently “natural” as emotions and sex can be culturally
constructed.
2. Americans do not clearly differentiate among physical expressions of affection as
opposed to sex, while Brazilians do.
3. Consequently, unspoken dynamics of interactions from representatives of these to
cultures might lead to one constructing the other as either “cold” or overbearing.
4. Kottak treats the clearer Brazilian distinction between affection and sex as more
realistic.
D. Culture Is Symbolic
1. 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).
2. 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).
3. Other primates have demonstrated rudimentary ability to use symbols, but only
humans have elaborated cultural abilities – to learn, to communicate, to store, to
process, and to use symbols.
E. Culture and Nature
1. Humans interact with cultural constructions of nature, rather than directly with nature
itself.
2. Culture converts natural urges and acts into cultural customs.
F. Culture Is All-Encompassing
1. The anthropological concept of culture is a model that includes all aspects of human
group behavior.
2. Everyone is cultured, not just wealthy people with an elite education.
G. Culture Is Integrated
1. A culture is a system: changes in one aspect will likely generate changes in other
aspects.
2. Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that are basic in that they provide
an organizational logic for the rest of the culture.
H. People Use Culture Creatively
1. Humans have the ability to avoid, manipulate, subvert, and change the “rules” and
patterns of their own cultures.
2. “Ideal culture” refers to normative descriptions of a culture given by its natives.
3. “Real culture” refers to “actual behavior as observed by an anthropologist.”
4. Culture is both public and individual because individuals internalize the meanings of
public (cultural) messages.
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I. Culture Is Adaptive and Maladaptive
1. Culture is an adaptive strategy employed by hominids.
2. Because cultural behavior is motivated by cultural factors, and not by environmental
constraints, cultural behavior can be maladaptive.
3. 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).
J. Levels of Culture
1. National culture refers to the experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and
values shared by citizens of the same nation.
2. International culture refers to cultural practices that are common to an identifiable
group extending beyond the boundaries of one culture.
3. Subcultures are identifiable cultural patterns existing within a larger culture.
4. Cultural practices and artifacts are transmitted through diffusion.
a. Direct diffusion occurs when members of two or more previously distinct cultures
interact with each other.
b. Indirect diffusion occurs when cultural artifacts or practices are transmitted from
one culture to another through an intermediate third (or more) culture.
K. Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism, and Human Rights
1. Ethnocentrism is the use of values, ideals, and mores from one’s own culture to judge
the behavior of someone from another culture.
a. Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal.
b. Ethnocentrism contributes to social solidarity.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Cultural rights are vested in groups and include a group’s ability to preserve its
cultural tradition.
5. Kottak argues that cultural relativism does not preclude an anthropologist from
respecting “international standards of justice and morality.”
III. Universality, Particularity, and Generality
A. Introduction
1. Cultural universals are features that are found in every culture.
2. Cultural generalities include features that are common to several, but not all, human
groups.
3. Cultural particularities are features that are unique to certain cultural traditions.
B. Universality
1. Cultural universals are those traits that distinguish Homo sapiens from other species.
2. 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.
3. Some psychological universals include the common ways in which humans think,
feel, and process information.
4. Some social universals include incest taboos, life in groups, families (of some kind),
and food sharing.
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C. Generality
1. Certain practices, beliefs, and the like may be held commonly by more than one
culture, but not be universal; these are called “generalities.”
2. Diffusion and independent invention are two main sources of cultural generalities.
3. The nuclear family is a cultural generality since it is present in most, but not all,
societies.
D. Particularity
1. Cultural practices that are unique to any one culture are “cultural particulars.”
2. That these particulars may be of fundamental importance to the population is
indicative of the need to study the sources of cultural diversity.
IV. Beyond the Classroom: Folklore Reveals the Ethos of Heating Plant Workers
A. Mark Dennis investigated the social and cultural manifestations of folklore among the
workers of the University of Calgary’s heating and cooling plant.
B. He found that the folklore functioned to create and maintain social cohesion among the
plant workers in addition to helping alleviate job-related stress.
V. Mechanisms of Cultural Change
A. Diffusion
1. Diffusion--defined as the spread of culture traits through borrowing from one culture
to another--has been a source of culture change throughout human history.
2. Diffusion can be direct (between to adjacent cultures) or indirect (across one or more
intervening cultures or through some long-distance medium).
3. Diffusion can be forced (through warfare, colonization, or some other kind of
domination) or unforced (e.g., intermarriage, trade, and the like).
B. Acculturation
1. Acculturation is the exchange of features that results when groups come into
continuous firsthand contact.
2. Acculturation may occur in any or all groups engaged in such contact.
3. 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.
C. Independent Invention
1. Independent invention is defined as the creative innovation of new solutions to old
and new problems.
2. Cultural generalities are partly explained by the independent invention of similar
responses to similar cultural and environmental circumstances.
3. The independent invention of agriculture in both the Middle East and Mexico is cited
as an example.
D. Cultural Convergence or Convergent Cultural Evolution
1. Cultural convergence is the development of similar traits, institutions, and behavior
patterns by separate groups as a result of adaptation to similar environments.
2. Julian Steward pointed to instances of cultural convergence to support the hypothesis
that cultural change is governed by scientific laws.
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VI. Globalization
A. Globalization encompasses a series of processes that work to make modern nations and
people increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent.
B. Economic and political forces take advantage of modern systems of communication and
transportation to promote globalization.
C. Globalization allows for the domination of local peoples by larger (these may be based
regionally, nationally, and worldwide) economic and political systems.
LECTURE TOPICS
1.
Discuss the history of how people defined culture. Be sure to set the definitions in the
context within which they were produced.
2.
Emphasize the distinction between the biological basis for culture and particular human
cultures. Note the nonheritability of cultures (what languages do second generation
immigrants speak, for example). Discuss the debate focusing on the claims of
sociobiology.
3.
Discuss the deep tenacity of values, illustrating it by citing cases in which people have
gone to great sacrifices to maintain the value systems of their cultures.
4.
Describe the process of enculturation to any common subculture with which you are
familiar, such as the academic professional subculture.
5.
American undergraduate students, like any natives who have little experience of other
cultures, usually do not recognize their values as culturally relative. Pick common
American values, such as freedom, autonomy, individuality, cleanliness, innocence, and
fairness, and show how they are not shared by other cultures. To emphasize the point,
pick values common to undergraduate subculture and show how limited they are.
SUGGESTED FILMS
Paradise Lost: Traditional Cultures at Risk
53 minutes
This film compares the life of two traditional cultures whose existence is threatened by the
spread of Western society. It presents the Nenetsi nomads of the Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, and
the Caribou Indian tribe of Canada. The Nenetsi are depicted as faring better both economically
and socially than the Caribou Indian tribe who see the infiltration of Western conveniences as the
cause for the deterioration of their traditional culture. From Films for the Humanities and
Sciences.
Series: Our Developing World: Regional Political Geography
This series investigates global civics in a range of developing nations from all over the world.
Some of the themes discussed in the series include human rights; minority rights; health;
economic and environmental challenges and advances. 10-part series, each runs about 30
minutes. Titles in the series: Central America: Costa Rica; Central America: Cuba; South
America: Brazil; South America: Paraguay; Africa: Tunisia, Libya, Egypt; Africa: Sierra Leone,
Ghana, Kenya; Africa: Tanzania, Mozambique, Lesotho; Asia: Mongolia, China, Nepal; Asia:
Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam; South Pacific-Oceania: The Philippines, Kiribati. From Films for the
Humanities and Sciences.
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Series: Global Issues in Our Developing World
This series presents case studies that address problems and issues common to various developing
countries around the world. Each film compares a common theme in three different developing
countries. 4-part series, 30-33 minutes each. Titles in the series: Ecology and the Environment:
Galapagos, Mauritania, Madagascar; Economic Development: Colombia, Bolivia, India; Human
Rights: Haiti, Turkey, Oman; Drugs and Health: Peru, Uganda, Turkey. From Films for the
Humanities and Sciences.
Cry of the Yurok
1991 58 minutes
This film presents the Yuroks, California’s largest Native American tribe, from their arrival in
California to their struggles with whites in the 19th century to their modern existence. From
Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Our Identity, Our Land
1994 60 minutes
This film depicts the struggle of the Kanaka Maoli, an indigenous community on Big Island of
Hawaii, and their attempts to keep the area sacred. From Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
USING THE ATLAS
Using the Chapter 13 map, Ancient Invented Languages: Pidgins, Jargons, and Creoles,
discuss how language, as component of culture, fits the Kottak’s definition of culture found in
the section entitled “What is Culture” in the textbook. Also, you can talk about the mechanisms
of cultural change using the distribution of invented languages around the world. You can also
use this map to foreshadow Chapter 15 Language, as well as Part IV The Changing World. For
example, you can discuss the roles that colonialism, imperialism, and the modern world system
have played in the creation of invented languages.
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