Chapter 6
Social Identity, Personality,
and Gender
Chapter Preview
What Is Enculturation?
• How Does Enculturation Influence
Personality?
• Are Different Personalities Characteristic of
Different Cultures?
•
Thursday December 5, 2013
OBJ: SWBAT determine where we get our
culture from, and what a naming ceremony is
by reflecting on their own names.
• Drill: How do we learn our culture?
• Homework: Take Name Quiz home.
•
What Is Enculturation?
Enculturation is the process by which culture
is passed from one generation to the next
and through which individuals become
members of their society.
• Enculturation begins soon after birth with the
development of self-awareness.
•
How Does Enculturation
Influence Personality?
Each individual begins with certain broad
potentials and limitations that are genetically
inherited.
• In some cultures, particular childrearing
practices seem to promote the development
of compliant personalities.
• In others different practices seem to promote
more independent, self-reliant personalities.
•
Are Different Personalities
Characteristic of Different
Cultures?
•
•
•
Every culture emphasizes certain personality traits as
good and others as bad.
The concept of modal personality recognizes that any
human society has a range of individual personalities,
but some will be more typical than others.
Since modal personalities may differ from one culture
to another and since cultures may differ in the range
of variation they will accept, it is clear that abnormal
personality is a relative concept.
The Jungle Book and Cub
Scouts
•
•
In 1916 the international
Boy Scout movement
expanded to include
younger boys in a “cub
scout” program inspired
by Rudyard Kipling’s
The Jungle Book
(1894).
Kipling wrote the story
about a young boy in
India named Mowgli
being raised by a wolf
as one of her own cubs.
Question
•
Enculturation is the process of transmitting
A. society from one generation to the
next.
B. society norms from one adult to
another.
C. culture from one child to another.
D. culture from one generation to the
next.
E. personality from parent to child.
Answer: D
•
Enculturation is the process of transmitting
culture from one generation to the next.
Question
•
The agents of enculturation
A. are persons involved in transmitting culture to
the next generation.
B. are at first the members of the family into
which the child is born.
C. vary, depending on the structure of the family
into which a child is born.
D. include peer groups and school teachers.
E. all of these choices
Answer: E
•
The agents of enculturation are persons involved
in transmitting culture to the next generation, are
at first the members of the family into which the
child is born, vary, depending on the structure of
the family into which a child is born and include
peer groups and school teachers.
The Self and the Behavioral
Environment
Culture is created and learned rather than
biologically inherited.
• All societies must ensure that culture is
transmitted from one generation to the next.
• Enculturation begins soon after birth.
•
Self Awareness
The ability to:
– Identify oneself as an object.
– React to oneself.
– Appraise or evaluate oneself.
• Attaching positive value to the self ensures
individuals act to their own advantage.
•
Requirements for Selfawareness
Object orientation
– Aware of the world of objects other than
self.
• Spatial orientation
– The ability to get from one object, or place,
to another.
•
Requirements for Selfawareness
Temporal orientation
– Able to connect past actions with those in
the present and future.
• Normative orientation
– Understanding of cultural values, ideals,
and standards.
•
Visual Counterpoint
•
Self-awareness is not restricted to humans. This
chimpanzee knows that the individual in the mirror is
himself and not some other chimp, just as the girl
recognizes herself.
Naming Ceremony
•
A special event or ritual to mark the naming of
a child.
Where did your Name Come
From?
Fill out the Name Questionnaire
• If you feel comfortable when we are done we
will share these.
•
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
The Yaruba people are a tribe that live in
Nigeria.
• Yoruba people do not pick names for their
children before they are born. The child's
name is selected on the basis of a significant
event or circumstance at the time of their birth
• For example a Yoruba child born in America
might receive Olatubokun as a name.
Olatubokun means "It is time for my honor to
come back home."
•
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
•
After a baby is born a naming ceremony
performed. In the naming ceremony many
symbols are used.
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
•
that a piece of
money is held up
and if the child
reaches out and
grabs the money the
child will have
wealth.
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
•
child is given a very
small piece to eat of
meat. The piece of
meat represents
nature's bounty.
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
•
Water is dabbed on
the child's face, this
represents the
cleansing forces of
life. Oil representing
calm in periods of
travail is dabbed on
the face. The child is
given a taste of salt
and sugar, these are
used to improve
taste and therefore
bring pleasantness
to life..
Yaruba Naming Ceremony
•
The child is given a
taste of cola nut, this
represents longevity
because a cola nut
does not fall from
the tree until it is
fully ripe. Ginger
represents good
health and the child
is gives a piece to
taste. After the
ceremony, there is a
party and a feast.
•
Identify similarities
or differences
between how they
were named and
their naming
celebration and how
a Yoruba child is
named and a
Yoruba naming
celebration.
Friday December 6, 2013
Objective: SWBAT compare naming
ceremonies from different tribes by watching
a video and using their notes.
• Drill: Why are names an important part of any
culture?
• HW: None
•
Answer
•
It is a big stage in enculturation and self
awareness.
Naming Ceremony
During the movie take notes on the
preparation of the naming ceremony,
• How are jobs distributed?
• What types of symbols are they collecting?
What do they mean.
• Compare this to the naming ceremonies we
discussed yesterday.
•
First Laugh Ceremony
•
•
Navajo babies begin to learn
the importance of community
at a special First Laugh
Ceremony (Chi Dlo Dil).
The person who prompted
an infant’s first laugh
teaches the little child about
the joy of generosity by
helping the baby give
symbolic gifts of sweets and
rock salt to each guest.
Behavior Environment
•
•
Dark and foreboding to
outsiders, the Ituri forest
in the tropical heart of
Africa is viewed with
affection by the Mbuti
foragers who live there.
In their eyes, it is like a
benevolent parent,
providing them with all
they ask for:
sustenance, protection,
and security.
Personality
Refers to the distinctive ways a person thinks,
feels, and behaves.
• Most anthropologists believe adult personality
is shaped by early childhood experiences.
• The economy helps structure the way
children are raised and this influences their
adult personalities.
•
Two Patterns of Child Rearing
Dependence training - promotes compliance
in and favors keeping individuals within the
group.
• Independence training - emphasizes
individual independence, self-reliance, and
personal achievement.
•
Ju/’hoansi Society
•
In traditional Ju/’hoansi
society, fathers as well
as mothers show great
indulgence to children,
who do not fear or
respect men more than
women.
Modal Personality
The modal personality of a group is defined
as the body of character traits that occur with
the highest frequency in a culturally bounded
population.
• Modal personality is a statistical concept.
• It opens up for investigation the questions of
how societies organize diversity and how
diversity relates to culture change.
•
National Character Studies
Focused on the modal characteristics of
modern countries.
• Many anthropologists believe national
character theories are based on unscientific
and overgeneralized data.
•
Monday December 16, 2013
Obj: SWBAT understand how geography has
determined how cultures have become
industrialized.
• Drill:
•
Core Values
•
The collectively shared
core values of Chinese
culture promote
integration of the
individual into a larger
group, as we see in this
gathering of Hong Kong
residents doing Tai Chi
together.
Cohabitation
Intersexuals
•
People born with reproductive organs,
genitalia, and/or sex chromosomes that are
not exclusively male or female.
Transgenders
•
People who cross-over
or occupy a culturally
accepted intermediate
position in the binary
male—female gender
construction.
Sadhus
•
•
Shaivite sadhu of the
Aghori sub-sect drinks
from human skull bowl,
a daily reminder of
human mortality.
To become a sadhu,
one must transform his
personal identity, leave
his place in the social
order, and surrender all
attachments to normal
human pleasures.
Question
•
The standards that define normal behavior for any
culture
A. are determined by that culture itself.
B. result from a combination of cultural mores
and neurological hardwiring.
C. are a function of child rearing practices and
religion.
D. are similar from culture-to-culture, and are
thus fairly standard across the spectrum.
E. are easily codifiable.
Answer: A
•
The standards that define normal behavior for
any culture are determined by that culture
itself.
Ethnic Psychoses
•
Mental disorders specific to particular ethnic
groups.
Ethnic Psychoses And Other
Culture-bound Syndromes
Disorder
Amok
Anorexia
nervosa
Culture
Description
Malaya (also
Sudden outbursts of aggression
in Java, Africa,
in which the afflicted person
and Tierra del
may kill or injure others.
Fuego)
Disorder in which a
Western
preoccupation with thinness
countries
produces a refusal to eat.
Ethnic Psychoses And Other
Culture-bound Syndromes
Disorder
Culture
Description
Latah
Malay
Fear reaction in middle-aged
women of low intelligence who
are subservient.
Koro
Southeast
Asia
Fear reaction in which the person
fears his penis will withdraw into
his abdomen and he will die.
Ethnic Psychoses And Other
Culture-bound Syndromes
Disorder
Culture
Description
Windigo
Algonquian
Indians of
Canada and
northern
U.S.
A hunter becomes
convinced that he is
bewitched.
Japan
Victims believe they are
possessed by foxes and
change facial expressions
to resemble foxes.
Kitsunetsuki
Ethnic Psychoses And Other
Culture-bound Syndromes
Disorder
Pibloktoq
and other
Arctic
hysterias
Culture
Description
Circumpolar
Victim may tear clothes off,
peoples from
jump in water or fire, roll in
Lapland eastward
snow, try to walk on the
across Siberia,
ceiling, throw things, thrash
northern Alaska,
about, and “speak in
and Canada to
tongues.”
Greenland
Question
•
Ethnic psychoses are
A. biological mental disorders which are
classified in clinical studies of mental health
disorders.
B. are mental disorders specific to particular
ethnic groups.
C. used to define differences between sane and
insane behaviors consistently.
D. invalid as classification systems.
E. often revealed on daytime televisions shows.
Answer: B
•
Ethnic psychoses are mental disorders
specific to particular ethnic groups.