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Using These Slides
These PowerPoint slides have been designed for use by students and instructors using the
Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity textbook by Conrad Kottak. These files
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more complete outline in order to accomplish the goals above. Both audiences should feel
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review, lecture, or handout for their needs.
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Student’s Online Learning Center—this free web-based student supplement features many of
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C
h
a
p
t
e
r
Culture
This chapter introduces students to the
anthropological definition and use of the
concept of culture. It focuses on all of the
aspects of culture and concludes with a
discussion of culture change.
11
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Introduction
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.”
 Enculturation is the process by which a child learns his
or her culture.

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Culture is Learned
Cultural learning is unique to humans.
 Cultural learning is the accumulation of knowledge
about experiences and information not perceived
directly by the organism, but transmitted to it through
symbols.



Symbols are signs that have no necessary or natural
connection with the things for which they stand.
Geertz defines culture as ideas based on cultural learning and
symbols.
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Culture is Learned
Culture is learned through both direct instruction and
through observation (both conscious and unconscious).
 Anthropologists in the 19th century argued for the
“psychic unity of man.”



This doctrine acknowledges that individuals vary in their
emotional and intellectual tendencies and capacities.
However, this doctrine asserted that all human populations
share the same capacity for culture.
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Culture is Shared
Culture is located and transmitted in groups.
 The social transmission of culture tends to unify people
by providing us with a common experience.
 The commonalty of experience in turn tends to generate
a common understanding of future events.

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Culture is Symbolic
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).
 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).
 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.

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Culture and Nature
Humans interact with cultural constructions of nature,
rather than directly with nature itself.
 Culture converts natural urges and acts into cultural
customs.

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Culture is All-Encompassing
The anthropological concept of culture is a model that
includes all aspects of human group behavior.
 Everyone is cultured, not just wealthy people with an
elite education.

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Culture is Integrated
A culture is a system: changes in one aspect will likely
generate changes in other aspects.
 Core values are sets of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs which
are basic in that they provide an organizational logic for
the rest of the culture.

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People Use Culture Creatively
Humans have the ability to avoid, manipulate, subvert,
and change the “rules” and patterns of their own
cultures.
 “Ideal culture” refers to normative descriptions of a
culture given by its natives.
 “Real culture” refers to “actual behavior as observed by
an anthropologist.”
 Culture is both public and individual because
individuals internalize the meanings of public (cultural)
messages.

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Culture is Adaptive and Maladaptive
Culture is an adaptive strategy employed by hominids.
 Because cultural behavior is motivated by cultural
factors, and not by environmental constraints, cultural
behavior can be maladaptive.
 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).

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Levels of Culture




National culture refers to the experiences, beliefs, learned behavior
patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.
International culture refers to cultural practices which are common
to an identifiable group extending beyond the boundaries of one
culture.
Subcultures are identifiable cultural patterns existing within a
larger culture.
Cultural practices and artifacts are transmitted through diffusion.
 Direct diffusion occurs when members of two or more previously
distinct cultures interact with each other.
 Indirect diffusion occurs when cultural artifacts or practices are
transmitted from one culture to another through an intermediate third
(or more) culture.
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Levels of Culture
Levels of culture, with examples from sports and food.
McGraw-Hill
Level of Culture
Sports Examples
Food Examples
International
Basketball
Pizza
National
Monster-Truck
Rallies
Apple Pie
Subculture
Bocci
Big Joe Pork
Barbeque (South
Carolina)
© 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Levels of Culture
This Roman
Catholic prayer
vigil in Seoul,
Korea helps to
illustrate the
international level
of culture.
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The McGraw-Hill
Inc. All rights
Credit: KimCompanies,
Newton/Woodfin
Campreserved.
&Assoc.
Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

Ethnocentrism is the use of values, ideals, and mores
from one’s own culture to judge the behavior of someone
from another culture.



Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal.
Ethnocentrism contributes to social solidarity.
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.
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Human Rights
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.
 Cultural rights are vested in groups and include a
group’s ability to preserve its cultural tradition.
 Kottak argues that cultural relativism does not preclude
an anthropologist from respecting “international
standards of justice and morality.”

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Human Rights
This is an example
of the study of
ethnomedicine in
Papua New Guinea.
The notion of
Indigenous
Intellectual
Property Rights has
emerged to help
preserve each
societies cultural
base, which may
have commercial
value.
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by Credit:
The McGraw-Hill
Companies,
Inc. All Gamma
rights reserved.
Photo
Ripoll/Association
Kutubu/
Liaison
Culture: Universal and Particular
Cultural universals are features that are found in every
culture.
 Cultural generalities include features that are common
to several, but not all human groups.
 Cultural particularities are features that are unique to
certain cultural traditions.

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Universality
Cultural universals are those traits that distinguish
Homo sapiens from other species.
 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.
 Some psychological universals include the common ways
in which humans think, feel, and process information.
 Some social universals include: incest taboos, life in
groups, families (of some kind), and food sharing.

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Generality
Certain practices, beliefs, and the like may be held
commonly by more than one culture, but not be
universal; these are called “generalities.”
 Diffusion and independent invention are two main
sources of cultural generalities.
 The nuclear family is a cultural generality since it is
present in most, but not all societies.

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Particularity
Cultural practices that are unique to any one culture are
“cultural particulars.”
 That these particulars may be of fundamental
importance to the population is indicative of the need to
study the sources of cultural diversity.

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Diffusion
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.
 Diffusion can be direct (between to adjacent cultures) or
indirect (across one or more intervening cultures or
through some long distance medium).
 Diffusion can be forced (through warfare, colonization,
or some other kind of domination) or unforced (e.g.,
intermarriage, trade, and the like).

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Acculturation
Acculturation is the exchange of features that results
when groups come into continuous, firsthand contact.
 Acculturation may occur in any or all groups engaged in
such contact.
 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.

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Independent Invention
Independent invention is defined as the creative
innovation of new solutions to old and new problems.
 Cultural generalities are partly explained by the
independent invention of similar responses to similar
cultural and environmental circumstances.
 The independent invention of agriculture in both the
Middle East and Mexico is cited as an example.

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Convergent Cultural Evolution
Cultural convergence is the development of similar
traits, institutions, and behavior patterns by separate
groups as a result of adaptation to similar environments.
 Julian Steward pointed to instances of cultural
convergence to support the hypothesis that cultural
change is governed by scientific laws.

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Globalization




Globalization encompasses a series of processes that work to make
modern nations and people increasingly interlinked and mutually
dependent.
Economic and political forces take advantage of modern systems of
communication and transportation to promote globalization.
Globalization allows for the domination of local peoples by larger
economic and political systems (these may be based regionally,
nationally, and worldwide).
Recognizing the breadth and nature of changes wrought through
globalization carries the concomitant need to recognize practices of
resistance, accommodation, and survival that occur in response to
same.
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Globalization
These men in a coffee
shop in Cairo, Egypt are
using a laptop computer
and smoking traditional
hookahs (pipes).
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Inc.Credit:
All rights
reserved.
Photo
Barry
Iverson