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CHAPTER 2: Characteristics of Culture
ANTHROPOLOGY 3
Concept of Culture- Modern concept by Edward Tylor in 1871. Culture goes deeper
than observable behavior. It is a society’s shared and socially transmitted ideas,
values, and perceptions that are used to make sense of experience and generate
behavior and are reflected in that behavior.
Characteristics of Culture- Through comparative study of many human cultures past
and present, anthropologists gain an understanding of the basic characteristics
evident in all of them: every culture is socially learned, shared, based on symbols,
integrated, and dynamic.
Learned- all culture is learned. Not biologically inherited. One learns
one’s culture by growing up with it. Culture is passed on from one generation to the
next is called “enculturation.” The needs are not learned and the learned ways in
which they are satisfied- each culture determines in its own way how these needs
will be met. Socially appropriate ways of satisfying the basic biological determined
needs of all humans- food, sleep, shelter, companionship, self-defense, sexual
gratification are all needs, but how they are satisfied is by ritual, proscribe times,
etc…
Culture is Shared- As a shared set of ideas, values, perceptions, and
standards of behaviors, culture is the common denominator that makes the actions
of the individuals intelligible to other members of society. Makes it easier to predict
how others are most likely to behave in given circumstances. And it tells them how
to reach accordingly. Society may be defined as an organized group or groups of
interdependent people who generally share a common territory, language, and
culture and who act together for collective survival and wellbeing. People can be
seen in such features as their economic, communication, and defense systems. They
are bounded together by a general sense of common identity. Because culture and
society are such closely related concepts, anthropologists study both. No culture
without a society. There are no known human societies that do not exhibit culture.
Every society gives cultural meanings to biological sexual differences. As a result,
tremendous variation from one society to another. Anthropologists use the term
gender to refer to cultural elaborations and meanings assigned to the biological
differentiation between sexes. So, one’s sex is biologically determined, but one’s
gender is socially constructed within the context of one’s particular culture. All
cultures exhibit some gender role differentiation related to biological differences
between the sexes. Variation to age as well. Children are not expected to behave like
adults. Culture derives meaning out of timetable of human life cycle. There are
subgroups within societies that share an overarching culture. For example, social
classes, ethnic groups who function on its own distinctive standards of behavior
while still sharing some common standards of behavior of the broader society.
Amish communities are an ethnic group- shared ancestry and common origin,
language, customs, and traditional beliefs. In sum the Amish share the same
ethnicity. Greek word ethnikos (nation), and related to ethnos (custom), is the
expression for the set of cultural ideas held by an ethnic group.
Pluralism is where issues of multi-ethnic or pluralistic society in which two or more
ethnic groups or nationalities are politically organized into one territorial state but
maintained their cultural differences. Pluralistic societies could not have existed
before the first politically centralized states arose a mere 5,000 years ago. Rise of a
state, political unification of two or more independent societies, each with their own
cultures, creating a more complex order that transcends one culture and one society
linkage.
Symbols- much of human behavior involves signs, sounds, emblems, and other
things that are linked to something else and represents them in a meaningful way.
Often requires specific meanings when people agree on usage in their
communication. Most important symbolic aspect of culture is language. Using words
to represent objects and ideas. Through language culture is transmitted from one
generation to another. Language makes it possible to learn from cumulative shared
experience.
Culture is integrated- what people do for a living, the tools they use, the ways they
work together, how they transform their environments and construct their
dwellings, eat, drink, worship, belief systems, how they deal with death all have to
be reasonable integrated in order to function properly. Anthropologists rarely focus
on one cultural feature in isolation. Look at systems made up of distinctive parts
that function together as an organized whole. Broadly speaking, a society’s cultural
features fall within three categories: Social structure, infrastructure, and super
structure.
Social structure- rule-governed relationships with all rights
and obligations that hole members of a society together.
Households, families, associations, and power relations,
including politics, are all part of social structure. Establishes
group cohesion and enables people to consistently satisfy their
basic needs.
Infrastructure- Practice that looks at available resources to
satisfy as society’s basic needs.
Superstructure- this economic foundation coupled with shared
sense of identity and worldview. This collective body of ideas,
beliefs and values by which members of a society makes sense
of the world-its shape, challenges and opportunities and is
known as ideology or superstructure. Including religion, and
national ideology, comprises a society’s overarching ideas
about themselves and everything else around them. It gives
meaning and direction to their lives.
Culture is dynamic, responds to motions and actions within and around them.
When one element within the system shifts or changes, the entire system strives to
adjust, similar to external force that’s applied. Culture must be flexible. Some are
more or less dynamic. If too rigid or static, fails to provide its members with the
means required for long term survival under changing conditions, it is not likely to
endure. Other hand, cultures that are too fluid and open to change may lose their
distinctive character.
Function of Culture- Bronislaw Malinowski that people everywhere share certain
biological and psychological needs and that the ultimate functions of all cultural
institutions is to fulfill these needs. A culture cannot endure if it does not deal
effectively with basic production and distribution of goods and services considered
necessary for life. The culture must also provide a social structure for reproduction
and mutual support. It must also offer ways to pass on knowledge and enculturate
new members so they can contribute to their community as well-functioning adults.
Culture must support all aspects of life and meet the psychological and emotional
needs of its members. Culture to function properly, its various parts must be
consistent with one another. But consistency is not the same as harmony.
Culture and Adaption. Challenges to their environment. The gradual process by
which organisms adjust to the conditions of the locality. In which they live.
Culture, Society and the Individual.
Ethnocentrism and evaluation of cultures. Cultural Relativism- the ideal that one
must suspend judgment of other people’s practices in order to understand them in
their own cultural terms.