Culture and Applying
Anthropology
Unit 1
CULTURE
Outline of Culture Topics
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What is Culture?
Culture’s Evolutionary Basis
Universality, Generality, and Particularity
Culture and the Individual: Agency and
Practice
• Mechanism of Cultural Change
• Globalization
What is Culture?
• An easy, quick
definition: systems of
human behavior and
thought
– It obeys natural laws so
can be studied
scientifically
• Culture is acquired
based on the society
you grew up in
• Enculturation
• Culture is:
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Learned
Symbolic
Shared
Nature
All Encompassing
Integrated
Can be Adaptive and
Maladaptive
Culture is Learned
• Children absorb cultural
traditions
– Humans use symbols to learn
• Programs of culture are
absorbed through
enculturation
– Conscious and unconscious
learning and interaction
– Observation
• All humans have culture
• Psychic unity of man
– Individuals differ in emotional
and intellectual capabilities and
tendencies, all human
populations have equivalent
capacities for culture
Culture is Symbolic
• Symbol: something verbal
or nonverbal, within a
particular language or
culture, that comes to stand
for something else
• No obvious connection
between symbol and what it
symbolizes
• Symbols are usually
linguistic
• Nonverbal symbols:
– Flags
– Arches
– Holy Water
Culture is Shared
• Culture is an attribute of
individuals as members of
groups
• Culture is shared beliefs
• Certain fundamental
beliefs, values,
worldviews, and childrearing practices endure
• We feel more
comfortable with people
who are socially,
economically, and
culturally similar to us
Culture and Nature
• Take biological urges and
teaches us to express them
in particular ways
– You have to eat, but culture
teaches you when, where,
and how
• Culture affects the ways we
perceive nature, human
nature, and “the natural”:
– Prevent and cure disease
– Cloning
– Natural
• Natural disasters challenge us
Culture is All-Encompassing
• Culture is not just refinement,
taste, sophistication,
education, and appreciation of
the fine arts
• Cultural forces affect people
every day in their lives
• North American culture:
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TV
Fast food restaurants
Sports
Games
• Rock star just as important as
symphony conductor as
cultural manifestation
Culture is Integrated
• Cultures are integrated,
patterned systems
– One part changes, other
parts change as well
• Integrated by sets of
values, ideas, symbols,
and judgments
• Train individual members
to share certain
personality traits
– Core values: key, basic, or
central values that
integrate a culture
Culture Can Be Adaptive and
Maladaptive
• We adapt biologically and
culturally
• Cultural adaptive kits –
contain customary activities
and tools
• What’s good for the
individual may not be good
for the whole group
• Maladaptive – threatening
the group’s continued
existence
• Cars let us go places quicker
– Chemical emissions increase
air pollution which can
contribute to global warming
STOP! – Review Time
• What are the elements of culture?
• How is culture learned?
• Are we born with our culture?
Culture’s Evolutionary Basis
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Capacity for culture extends back 2.6
million years to early toolmakers
Many human traits reflect our
ancestors lived in trees
Opposable thumbs
– We can pick things up and use tools
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Eyes placed forward and look directly
ahead
– Color and depth perception
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Identify food sources, mutual grooming
Manual dexterity and depth
perception
– Pick up small objects and study them
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Ration or brain size to body exceeds
other mammals
– Brains outer layer is relative larger
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One offspring that needs lot of care
Humans are social animals
Universality, Generality, and
Particularity
• Certain biological,
psychological, social, and
cultural features are
universal (found in every
culture)
• Other are generalities
(common to several but
not all human groups)
• Others are particularities
(unique to certain cultural
traditions)
Universality
• Most are biologically that
distinguish us from other
species
– Long period of infant
dependency
– Year-round sexuality
– Complex brain that enables use
of symbols, languages, and
tools
• Social universals
– Life in groups
– Some kind of family
– Culture organizes on social life
• Depends on social interactions
for expression and continuation
– Incest taboo
– Exogamy (marriage outside
one’s group)
Generality
• Societies can share same
beliefs and customs
because of borrowing
• Domination (colonial rule)
when customs and
procedures are imposed on
one culture can also cause
generality
• Independent innovation of
same cultural trait
– Farming
• Examples:
– Nuclear family
• Parents and children
Particularity
• Trait of a culture that is not
widespread
• Cultural borrowing – traits once
limited are more widespread
• Useful traits that don’t clash with
current culture get borrowed
• Examples:
– Food dishes
• Particularities are becoming rarer
in some ways but also becoming
more obvious
• Borrowed cultural traits are
modified
• Marriage, parenthood, death,
puberty, birth all celebrated
differently
Culture and the Individual: Agency and
Practice
• Culture provides rules
for actions but
individuals don’t always
follow them blindly
• Culture is contested
• Ideal culture – what
people say they should
do and they say they do
• Real culture – actual
behavior
Culture and the Individual: Agency and
Practice
• Culture is public and
individual
• Culture is being
continually created and
reworked in the present
– We have agency to form
and change cultural
identity
Levels of Culture
• National culture – cultural
features shared by
citizens of the same
nation
• International culture –
cultural traditions that
extend beyond national
boundaries
• Subculture – different
cultural traditions
associated with
subgroups in the same
nation
Levels of Culture
• Cultural traits can spread
through borrowing or
diffusion from one group
to another
• Borrowing, colonialism,
migration, and
multinational
organizations, many
cultural traits are known
internationally
– Roman Catholic Church
– World Cup
Levels of Culture
Level of
Culture
Sports
Example
Food
Example
International
Soccer,
basketball
Pizza
National
Monstertruck rallies
Apple pie
Subculture
Bocce
Big Joe Pork
Barbeque (S.
Carolina
• Subcultures occur
within a larger nations
• US and Canada have
subcultures based on
region, ethnicity,
language, class, and
religion
– Northerners and
Southerners in the US
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism,
and Human Rights
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Ethnocentrism – tendency to view
one’s own culture as superior and to
use one’s own standards and values
in judging outsiders
– What is alien to us, may be normal
elsewhere
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Cultural relativism – idea that to
know another culture requires full
understanding of its members beliefs
and motivations
– What motivates the culture?
– Then, what, if anything should be done
about certain activities
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Human rights – rights based on
justice and morality beyond and
superior to particular countries,
cultures, and religions
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism,
and Human Rights
• Cultural rights – rights
vested in religious and
ethnic minorities and
indigenous societies
– A group’s ability to raise its
children in the ways of its
forbearers, continues its
language, etc
– IRP (Intellectual property
rights – an indigenous group’s
collective knowledge and
applications) as an attempt to
conserve each society’s
cultural base
• Group decides who may know
and use their knowledge and
applications
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• How and why do cultures
change?
• Diffusion
– Borrowing of traits
between cultures
• Direct: when two nations
trade, intermarry, or wage
war on each other
• Indirect: when items from
group A to group C via
group B without A and C
having any contact
– Most diffusion today
through mass media and
the internet
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• Acculturation
– Exchange of cultural
features that results when
groups have continuous
firsthand contact
– Cultures of either group or
both may be changed
– Parts of culture change but
each group remains distinct
• Blend foods, music, dance,
clothing, tools, technology,
or languages
• Pidgin – mixed languages the
develops to ease
communication between
members of societies
Mechanisms of Cultural Change
• Independent invention
– Process by which humans
innovate, creatively finding
solutions to problems
– People in different
societies change in
different societies in
similar ways with similar
problems
• Agriculture
• Creates economic
revolutions that have social
and cultural repercussions
Globalization
• Globalization –
accelerating
interdependence of
nations in the world
system today
• International commerce,
travel and tourism,
transnational migration,
various high-tech
information flows
• The world is much smaller
than it used to be
APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY
Applied/Practical Anthropology
• Use anthropology to
solve contemporary
problems
• Many work for
international
development agencies
– World Bank, EPA, etc