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Defining “culture”
and cultural anthropology
Howard Culbertson
Southern Nazarene University
Cultural Anthropology -- an academic discipline
Culture is
what makes
you a stranger
when you are
away from
home
Culture: a set of rules or
standards that produce behavior
that falls within a range of
variance a society considers
proper and acceptable
-- William Haviland
Culture is a complex, integrated
coping mechanism.
Culture consists of
1. Learned concepts and behavior
2. Underlying perspectives (worldview)
3. Resulting products
• nonmaterial (customs and rituals)
• material (artifacts)
Cultural anthropology is
concerned with:
( we’ll now look at 14 categories or items studied by
cultural anthropologists)
1. Perspective
•
•
•
•
•
•
Holistic (as opposed to atomistic or narrow)
Comparative
The gamut from relativism to ethnocentrism
Get your hands dirty (fieldwork)
Etic (from outsider’s vantage point)
Emic (from an insider’s vantage point)
2. Material artifacts
3. Communication
Symbols, language and media
4. Status, roles,
relationships
5. Life cycle
(birth, naming, coming of age,
anniversaries, death, ancestorhood)
6. Societal groups
social classes, economic stratification, ethnicity
7. Marriage and family
8. Child rearing and
personality formation
9. Kinship / descent
systems
10. Economics
distribution of goods and services
11. Legal systems
Norms, customs, laws
12. Political organization
Leadership / decision making
13. Religion
Worldview, beliefs and ritual practices
14. Expressive arts
15. Sociocultural change
Defining “culture”