Download Chapter 2 - Cynthia Clarke

Chapter 2
Culture: Giving Meaning to Human Lives
Culture is Hard to Define
• In 1952 a study was published by two famous anthropologists, A. L. Kroeber & Clyde Kluckhohn
• In this book (Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions) they compiled all the definitions of culture they could
find.
• This book was over 300 pages.
• While they did not offer a new definition they did suggest most would agree with this:
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Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting
the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture
consists of traditional (i.e.; historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems
may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action
(Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952/1963, p. 357 cited in Heider, 2007, p. 33).
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Anthropologists use the term “culture” as a concept that refers to the perspectives and actions that a group of people
consider natural and self-evident. These perspectives and actions are rooted in shared meanings and the ways people act
in social groups.
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Culture is anthropology’s central concept, and most definitions share certain common features.
Types of Culture
• Culture is the single most important human adaptation.
• Culture contains all the products of human society. There Are 2 types:
• Material culture
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All the tangible items produced in a society such as building materials, tools, weapons, and so forth
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This is the type of culture by which archaeologists generate explanations of previous cultures as these tangibles are
artifacts.
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At one time in anthropology it was thought that by collecting the ‘stuff’ of other cultures this was a way to preserve the
culture.
• This view is what I call ‘museum anthropology’.
• It is not that material goods are without value to anthropology, it is that they are usually not sufficient to represent
the richness of a culture.
• Nonmaterial culture
• All the intangible items produced in a society such as laws, values, norms, and language
• Archaeologists use the artifactual data (artifacts) to try to get to this type of culture
• This way of reconstructing cultures is relatively new and not without some controversy.
What is Culture? 1
• Despite hundreds of subtly different definitions of “culture” in the anthropological literature, this situation does not hobble
anthropology. It is a sign of a vigorous discipline.
• English scholar Sir Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917) was a founding figure of cultural anthropology. Tylor defined culture as
“the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities acquired by man
as a member of society” (1871, p. 1).
• Since Tylor’s time, anthropologists have developed many theories of culture (see Table 2.1). Across these theories, we
identify seven basic elements that anthropologists agree are critical to any theory of culture:
• Culture is learned.
• Culture uses symbols.
• Cultures are dynamic, always adapting and changing.
• Culture is integrated with daily experience.
• Culture shapes everybody’s life.
• Culture is shared.
• Understanding culture involves overcoming ethnocentrism.
What is Culture? 2
• Culture is learned (acquired)
• Culture is not innate or genetically passed on to offspring. Recognize the nature/nurture argument?
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Even so, the capacity for culture is likely a biological set of traits.
• The term for biologically transmitted material is genes.
• The term for culturally transmitted material is memes.
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Language, which is so closely linked to culture has a biological contribution.
• So, a specific culture is learned:
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Through the process of enculturation we learn the ideas and behaviors expected in our own cultures.
• Primarily a childhood process, but continues throughout life
• Example: How to be a college student is learned.
Socialization the term used in sociology and the sources of learning are called agents of socialization (such as your
family, school, club leadership).
• Much of this is an unconscious process, but it is carried on in a cultural context.
• What if one were isolated from all others? There are many stories of ‘feral children’ in Western cultures; luckily this
is a rare event.
• Famous examples in Western literature are found in Jungle book (Mowgli) and Tarzan.
• Famous real example is Genie, others have been less well documented.
What is Culture? 3
• Culture is learned (continued)
• We recognize that other species have the capacity for sociality (the ability to form social groups).
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Among these are bees, wolves, other primates.
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It is important to know that sociality is a prerequisite for culture.
• Do these other species that have culture, then?
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A macaque on the coast of Kyushu in Japan learned to wash sweet potatoes in the ocean (and the fad spread!)
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More recent studies with other non-human primates suggest that they have minimal cultural capacities as compared to
humans.
• Here is an interesting film clip that addresses this issue: Ape Genius
• The human infant is the most helpless for the longest period of time.
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There is an extensive period of parental investment
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This is associated with the flexibility of humans for learning.
What is Culture? 4
• Culture uses symbols
• Culture is ideas: cognitive (mental) formulations
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The combination of ideas and behaviors creates schema. Think of schema as bundles of ideas that are inter-related or
think of schema as the patterns of cultural behaviors.
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Ideas include symbols
• A symbol is a signal with an indirect, arbitrary relationship to its referent
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The American flag is a well-known example of a symbol and so is the “golden arches” sign used
by McDonald’s
• Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) proposed that culture is a system of symbols—a symbol being something that
conventionally stands for something else—through which people make sense out of the world.
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Geertz’s interpretive theory of culture is the idea that culture is embodied and transmitted through symbols.
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Geertz looked at the meaning the Balinese (Indonesia) cockfight is among the most influential pieces of work in this
arena of interpretive theory.
• He did not look at the origins of the cock fight and only briefly addresses the functionality of the fights.
• He concentrated on the symbolism of the fight:
• The cock has male characteristics as found in Western cultures.
• He looked at the risk taking behaviors of the cock fight bettors as reflections of their personalities.
• Do not underestimate the power of symbolism. Example: Burning the flag:
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Why is the flag being burned? Soiled or protest?
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Who is doing the burning? An American or non-American?
What is Culture? 5
• Culture is dynamic
• All cultures change all the time.
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Anthropologists today talk less about culture as a totally coherent and static system of meaning
• Early anthropologists saw cultures as static.
• This resulted in the creation of fictional portrayal of a culture for the purpose of describing them before
Western contact (called the ethnographic present).
• Early anthropologists thought of Western contact as both “polluting the indigenous culture” and inevitable.
• There are classic examples of the use of the ethnographic present from the commercial world:
• Nanook of the North (a Hollywood film from 1922)
• The works of Edward Curtis (very famous photographer of American Indians around the turn of the 19 th
century).
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Modern cultural anthropologists see culture as a process through which social meanings are constructed and shared.
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Attention to these cultural processes shows how culture is dynamic.
Even so, over time, a cultural description no longer reflects a group because time has passed.
• There are many excellent ethnographies of culture groups, written in the past, that are not reflective of life today.
• This does not mean these anthropological works are not useful; it means you need to keep the time frame in mind
when you read one of these.
What is Culture? 6
• Culture is integrated with daily experiences
• Cultural patterns are what hold together ideas and acts (behaviors) together.
• One example is to think of the chair as the cultural product of cultural ideas.
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They are of interest in themselves.
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But for anthropologists they are ways to get to the broader cultural schema (who uses, when and so forth).
• Accurate interpretation or representation of other cultures is one of the greatest challenges for anthropology.
• Culture shapes everybody’s life
• A cross-cultural perspective demonstrates the incredible flexibility and plasticity of the human species—human belief and
practices come in all shapes and forms.
• This view helps us understand that culture is constructed.
• Everyone has culture.
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Yet, like accents, we tend to notice cultures more when they differ from those with which we are familiar.
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In the United States, there is a tendency to view minorities, immigrants, and others who differ from white middle-class
norms as “people with culture.”
What is Culture? 7
• Culture is shared
• Humanness is achieved through contact with other humans and so they will need to share similar schema (basic ideas and
ways of behaving)
• Cultural anthropologists focus on the ways that some people are the same (this sameness being the result of shared culture).
• As anthropologists, we have to look at cultural construction.
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Cultural construction refers to the fact people collectively “build” meanings through common experience and
negotiation. A “construction” derives from past collective experiences in a community, as well as lots of people talking
about, thinking about, and acting in response to a common set of goals and problems.
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A term I like to borrow from sociology highlights this idea, the Thomas Theorem: Those things we treat as real become
real in their consequences.
• Cultural understanding involves overcoming ethnocentrism
• Interpreting another culture using their goals, values, and beliefs rather than our own to make sense of what people say and do, is
a central means of overcoming ethnocentrism; and it is a major feature of the anthropological perspective on culture.
• Understanding another culture in its own terms does not mean that anthropologists necessarily accept and defend all the things
people do. (It is not the equivalent of moral or ethical relativism.)
What is Culture? 8
• Cultural understanding involves overcoming ethnocentrism (continued)
• Some anthropologists advocate critical relativism: trying to understand a practice or belief only after one tries to understand it
in its cultural or historical context.
• This is not meant to be a condemnation of the entire culture but one aspect of it (such as male circumcision).
• Also, cultural relativism COULD lean itself to cultural determinism: everything is due to culture and no other factors
contribute.
• Instructor comment: This is a slippery slope issue. Who makes these decisions and for what purpose?
• Defining culture in the textbook
• Culture “consists of the collective processes that make the artificial seem natural.”
• This definition emphasizes that those feelings of naturalness people experience about their beliefs and actions are in fact
artificial, that is, humanly constructed and variable across social groups, and they can change somewhat quickly.
• Presenting culture as a dynamic and emergent process based on social relationships leads anthropologists to study the ways
cultures are created and recreated constantly in people’s lives.
Culture is Dynamic, not Stable
• Societies function most smoothly when cultural processes feel natural and stable. People need cultural stability, and enculturation
occurs every day, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
• Our experience of culture is repeatedly stabilized by symbols, values, norms, and traditions.
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A symbol is something that conventionally, and arbitrarily, stands for something else. Although symbols do change
(sometimes dramatically), they are a particularly stable, and easily remembered, way of preserving a culture’s conventional
meanings.
Values are symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities.
• They tend to conserve a society’s dominant ideas about morality and social issues.
• Thus, values can change when opposing views coexist within a community but more slowly than other aspects of
culture.
Norms are typical patterns of behavior, viewed by participants as the unwritten rules of everyday life.
• They remain stable because people learn them from an early age and because society encourages conformity.
• We’re usually unaware of our own cultural norms until they’re violated, often with memorable results!
Tradition refers to the most enduring and ritualized aspects of a culture, usually assumed to be timeless or, at least, very old.
• The powerful notion that things have “always been a certain way” makes challenging traditions difficult, even if they
justify actions that make no logical sense in modern times.
• Many revered American traditions are no older than the twentieth century.
How is Culture Expressed? 1
• Another reason that dynamic culture feels so stable is that it is expressed and reinforced by social institutions, the organized sets
of social relationships that link individuals to each other in a structured way in a particular society. These institutions include
(among others):
• Patterns of kinship and marriage
• Economic activities
• Religious institutions
• Political forms
• Culture and social institutions
• Associated with British anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, functionalism:
• Proposes that cultural practices and beliefs perform functions for societies, such as explaining how the world works and
organizing people into efficient roles.
• Functionalists emphasize that social institutions function together in an integrated and balanced fashion to keep the whole
society functioning smoothly and to minimize social change.
• For functionalists, culture is closed and autonomous.
How is Culture Expressed? 2
• Culture and social institutions (continued)
• Functional theories address what the trait or institution does. Robert Merton suggested there are two types:
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Explicit function (or manifest function, what people say it does).
• Think of the functions of a university education
• We can all list several functions
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Implicit function (or latent function, what people may not be aware).
• Merton suggested that implicit functions also exist and may even conflict with the explicit functions.
• Think of the idea that students date in college, for instance.
• Critics of functionalism, such as E. E. Evans-Pritchard, who in 1961 famously broke away from the functionalist mode of
analysis that had dominated his research for thirty years, argued that functionalism was too associated with the natural
sciences and viewed culture as too stable and smoothly functioning. (History is full of unstable, poorly functioning societies.)
• Elements of functionalism are still used by modern cultural anthropologists, especially its holistic perspective, a perspective
that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs and
practices—rather than the individual parts.
How is Culture Expressed? 3
• Culture through breakfast cereal and sexuality
• A holistic perspective can identify patterns in seemingly unrelated phenomena like breakfast cereals and sexuality and,
further, what these patterns reveal about American culture.
• Why do so many Americans prefer cereal for breakfast?
• How did this become a cultural norm?
• John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) invented cornflakes in the nineteenth century because he believed that bland, healthy
foods helped prevent “unhealthy” sexual urges, such as masturbation.
• In the nineteenth century, rich, hearty breakfasts (meat, eggs, biscuits, gravy, and butter) were a sign of prosperity, as was the
resulting full-bodied body type.
• When Americans began valuing a healthier diet and a leaner body type, in the early twentieth century, breakfast cereals became a
more desirable option.
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By the 1920s a booming breakfast cereal industry, completely detached from any ideas about sexual deviance, flooded the
market with cereal choices.
• Nearly a century later, cereals remain a breakfast norm.
A holistic analysis of cornflakes illustrates interrelationships between separate domains like beliefs (sexual morality, good health),
social institutions and power (expert knowledge, medical practices), and daily life (changes in labor organization and economic
life, dietary preferences).
It also shows how doing something that feels totally natural (pouring yourself a bowl of cereal in the morning) is really the
product of intertwined cultural processes and meanings.
Can Anyone Own Culture?
• Technically, nobody can own “the collective processes that make the artificial seem natural,” but conflicts arise over claims to the
exclusive right to use symbols that give culture power and meaning.
• This is the phenomenon of cultural appropriation, the unilateral decision of one social group to take control over the symbols,
practices, or objects of another.
• For example, The Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw are a First People, about 4,000 in number, who live British Columbia today.
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They are working to regain their cultural identity through the reintroduction of their language.
• Many of their community activities take place at the U'mista Cultural Centre.
• The Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw (Kwakiuthl) versus the American Museum of Natural History.
• This story illustrates the clash between ethnographic authority and cultural identity.
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Ethnographic authority: The museum wanted to exhibit the materials they had archived as an example of their
stewardship and to honor Franz Boas.
• The Museum wanted to displayed potlatch masks.
• The Museum wanted to portray them as Boas understood their meanings.
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Cultural identity: The Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw wanted to talk to their struggles, resistance, and resilience.
• They see the potlatch as only one of many ceremonies.
• Also, they see Boas’ representations as wrong.
• The Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw (Kwakiuthl) versus the British Museum in London.
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In 2005, the British Museum “loaned” a mask back to the Alert Bay's U'mista Cultural Centre.
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It was a mask not on display at the Museum.
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