1
Quizzes added to syllabus
• First Quiz:
First Quiz:
ANTH 161-04: 9/25
ANTH 161-02: 9/29
• Based on textbook reading for the day
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
2
Culture
• What Is Culture?
• Culture and the Individual: Agency and
Practice
• Universality, Generality, and Particularity
• Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• Globalization
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
3
What Is Culture?
• Tylor proposed that culture are systems
of human behavior and thought and
obey natural laws
• Therefore, culture can be studied
scientifically
– Enculturation – process by which a child
learns his or her culture
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
4
Culture Is Learned
• Cultural learning unique to humans
– Accumulation of knowledge about
experiences and information not perceived
directly by the organism, but transmitted to
it through symbols – signs that have no
necessary or natural connection with the
things for which they stand
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
5
Culture Is Learned
• Geertz defines culture as ideas based
on cultural learning and symbols
– Culture learned through both direct
instruction and observation
• Anthropologists in the 19th century
argued for “psychic unity of man”
– Acknowledges individuals vary in
emotional and intellectual tendencies and
capacities but all human populations have
equivalent capacities for culture
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
6
Culture Is Shared
• Culture located and transmitted in
groups
– Social transmission of culture tends to
unify people by providing common
experience
– Commonality of experience tends to
generate common understanding of future
events
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
7
Culture Is Symbolic
• Symbolic thought unique and crucial to
cultural learning
– Verbal and nonverbal symbols
• Usually linguistic, but also nonverbal
• Other primates demonstrated rudimentary
ability to use symbols
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
8
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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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
9
Culture Is All-Encompassing
• Anthropological concept of culture is a
model that includes all aspects of
human group behavior
– Everyone is cultured
– To understand North American culture, one
must consider television, fast-food
restaurants, sports and games
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
10
Culture Is Integrated
• Culture is a system
– Changes in one aspect will likely generate
changes in other aspects
– Core values – sets of ideas, attitudes, and
beliefs that are basic in that they provide
an organizational logic for the rest of the
culture
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
11
Culture Can Be Adaptive and
Maladaptive
• Humans have biological and
cultural ways of coping with
environmental stress
– What’s good for individual isn’t necessarily
good for group
– Determining whether cultural practice is
adaptive or maladaptive frequently requires
viewing results of that practice from several
perspectives
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
12
Culture and the Individual:
Agency and Practice
• People use their culture actively and
creatively, rather than blindly following
its dictates
– Ideal culture – what people say they
should do, not what they say they do
– Real culture – actual behavior as
observed by anthropologist
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
13
Culture and the Individual:
Agency and Practice
• Culture is both public and individual
– Agency – actions that individuals take,
both alone and in groups, in forming and
transforming cultural identities
– Practice Theory – recognizes that
individuals within a society or culture have
diverse motives and intentions and
different degrees of power and influence
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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14
Levels of Culture
• National culture – experiences, beliefs,
learned behavior patterns, and values
shared by citizens of the same nation
• International culture – practices
common to identifiable group extending
beyond boundaries of one culture
– Subcultures – identifiable cultural patterns
existing within a larger culture
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
15
Levels of Culture
• Cultural practices and artifacts are
transmitted through diffusion
– Direct diffusion – members of two or
more previously distinct cultures interact
with each other
– Indirect diffusion – cultural artifacts or
practices are transmitted from one culture
to another through intermediate third (or
more) culture
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
16
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism,
and Human Rights
• Ethnocentrism – Use of values, ideals,
and mores from one’s own culture to
judge behavior of someone from
another culture
• Cultural relativism – asserts cultural
values are arbitrary, and therefore,
values of one culture should not be
used as standards to evaluate behavior
of persons from outside that culture
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
17
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism,
and Human Rights
• Human rights – vested in individuals
and includes the right to speak freely,
to hold religious beliefs without
persecution, and not be murdered,
injured, enslaved, or imprisoned
without charge.
• Cultural rights – vested in groups and
include a group’s ability to preserve its
cultural tradition
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
18
Levels of Culture,
with Examples from Sports and Foods
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19
Universality, Generality, and
Particularity
• Universality
– Universals traits are ones that more or less
distinguish Homo sapiens from other
species
• Biological
• Psychological
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
20
Universality, Generality, and
Particularity
• Generalities
– Regularities that occur in different times
and places but not all cultures
• Diffusion
• Colonization
• Particularities
– Traits or features of culture not generalized
or widespread
• Particularities may be getting rare
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
21
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• Diffusion
– Borrowing of traits between cultures
• Direct – between two adjacent cultures
• Indirect – across one or more intervening
cultures or through some long-distance medium
• Forced – through warfare, colonization, or
some other kind of domination
• Unforced – intermarriage, trade, and the like
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
22
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• Acculturation
– Exchange of features that results when
groups come into continuous firsthand
contact
• May occur in any or all groups engaged in such
contact
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© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
23
Globalization
• 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
– Allows larger economic and political
systems to dominate local people
©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.