Culture and/versus Society
Emic and Etic; American and
British Anthropological
Traditions
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Emic, Etic, Etc.
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Anthropologists tend to differ depending on whether they view human
behaviour and organization as being primary or human language and
meaning as being primary.
Whether socialization and social groups influence individual thinking
or cultural values propel individuals decisions and behaviour.
The first is the more etic approach, associated with British social
anthropology, the second is the more emic approach and is
associated with American cultural anthropology.
Canada: a bit of both. Most anthropologists today examine both
values and behaviour, both meaning and social groups.
The two approaches can be viewed as two sides of the same coin.
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The Concept(s) of Culture
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At least 300 definitions of culture.
One of the most influential comes from Tylor (1871): “Culture is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society.”
Depends upon our ability to symbolize through language; this
differentiates human beings from other species.
 But, example of linguistic ability amongst chimpanzees and
dolphins.
 Yet, human beings have a greater capacity to symbolize than
other species.
 Each language is composed of only a small percentage of
sounds that the human being is capable of making.
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Cultures and Classification
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Franz Boas, father of American cultural anthropology, saw culture as a like a
pair of glasses that gave us the ability to determine the meaning of our social
lives.
Bee larvae are a delicacy for the Mixtec, for the American anthropologist
they produced nausea. The same was true for his Mixtec guests eating
onion soup.
Shows that both groups define food and non-food items. Even though
insects may be nutritious, they are not ‘food’ in American culture.
The ways that cultures classify different categories of food may differ, but the
practise of classifying is universal in human cultures.
Common ways in which cultures classify are in terms of food/non-food,
nature/culture, male/female.
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Society is not simply a model which classificatory thought followed; it was its
own divisions which served as divisions for the system of classification
(Mauss and Durkheim, 1906).
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Levi-Strauss and Binary Thought
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Human classification is universal
But this is due to the inherent property of human
thought.
Human thought occurs through binary oppositions
and analogies, e.g. between night/day; hot/cold;
male/female; nature/culture.
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Issues in the Contemporary Study of
Culture
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Whether cultures are integrated:
 The question of power: enculturation produces a set of values that
depend upon notions of what is normal and what is abnormal. Very
often what is ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’ reflects the norms of ‘elite’ groups
within a society; whether these be defined by gender, ethnicity or
class. What about ‘marginal’ groups? What about ‘sub-cultures’?
For example, the value of individualism in the film Skin Deep.
 The question of boundaries: Especially with recent globalization, the
flows of people across ‘cultures’ have become very visible and
significant. No longer possible to associate a particular culture with
a particular territory.
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Ethnoscapes (Appadurai): refers to the cultural repertoire that people
carry around in their minds as an imagined community.
Increasingly, people are required, like anthropologists to be bi- or multicultural, able to function in two or more cultures and languages.
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Societies and Social Organization
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Focuses on social roles, social groups, and social
networks.
Pays attention not to the transitory groups that form and
dissolve, but on more general and permanent
organizations of individuals.
Often, this organization extends beyond the lives of the
individuals who make up the group.
E.g. of this classroom and the university as an institution.
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Social roles: instructors and students, each having certain
norms and expectations that exist beyond the lives of me
and you.
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Institutions
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Patterns of behaviour and ideology that become
relatively permanent, discrete and autonomous.
Total institutions: prisons, the military, boarding
schools, monasteries, communes, cults,
psychiatric hospitals, etc. Institutions that govern
almost every facet of an individual’s life.
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Structure and Function
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Each society has a structure consisting of roles, groups, institutions.
Each of these structures has a function, e.g. to provide social
cohesion, to resolve conflict, to ensure the reproduction of the
group, to provide nutrition, to provide meaning, etc.
Malinowski: British social anthropologist who stressed the universal
and often basic needs that diverse institutions met.
 E.g. explained magic among Trobriand Islands’ fishermen as
fulfilling the psychological need of alleviating anxiety.
 Radcliffe-Brown: stressed the function of all institutions in
maintaining social cohesion, e.g. joking relationships commonly
found at points of tension in a specific society.
 Cohesion versus Conflict: Marx argued that societies are shaped
as much by conflict between different groups than by cohesion.
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‘Tradition’, ‘Modernity’
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Maine: status to contract.
Tonnies: gemeinschaft/gesellschaft
Durkheim: mechanical solidarity/organic solidarity.
Weber: bureaucratic rationality versus traditional
authority systems.
Yet most anthropologists today find these dichotomies to
be too simplistic and even ethnocentric.
Doing fieldwork alerts us to the complexity of social life,
difficult to categorize in terms of traditionalism and
modernization.
Especially difficult to categorize societies today in a
globalized world.
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