Lecture 2

The Characteristics of Culture

Chapter Outline

What is culture? How is culture studied? Why do cultures exist?

The Concept of Culture (some definitions)

“one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language” (R. Williams, 1976)

The sum total of knowledge, attitudes and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society. (Linton 1940)

All the historically created designs for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational, and nonrational, which exist at any given time as potential guides for the behavior of man. (Kluckhohn and Kelly 1945)

The mass of learned and transmitted motor reactions, habits,

techniques, ideas, and values - and the behavior they induce. (Kroeber 1948)

The man-made part of the environment. (Herskovits 1955)

“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” (Tylor 1871)

Characteristics Of Culture

Culture is shared. Culture is learned. Culture is based on symbols. Culture is integrated.

Culture Is Shared

Culture cannot exist without society. There are no known human societies

that do not exhibit culture. All is not uniform within a culture; There

is some difference between men’s and women’s roles in any human society.

Culture Is Learned

All culture is learned rather than biologically inherited.

The process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next is called enculturation.

Through enculturation individuals learn the socially appropriate way to satisfy biologically determined needs.

Culture Is Based on Symbols

Culture is transmitted through ideas, emotions, and desires expressed in language.

Through language, humans transmit culture from one generation to another.

Language makes it possible to learn from cumulative, shared experience.

Culture Is Integrated

All aspects of a culture function as an integrated whole.

A change in one part of a culture usually will affect other parts.

A degree of harmony is necessary in any properly functioning culture, but complete harmony is not required.

Ethnic Groups of the Russian Federation

Describing a Culture Without Bias

Anthropologists must:1. Examine people’s notion of the way

their society ought to function.2. Determine how people think they

behave.3. Compare these with how people

actually do behave.

The Barrel Model of Culture

Functions of Culture

Provide for the production and distribution of goods and services necessary for life.

Provide for biological continuity through the reproduction of its members.

Enculturate new members so that they can become functioning adults.

Functions of Culture

Maintain order among members, as well as between them and outsiders.

Motivate members to survive and engage in those activities necessary for survival.

Be able to change to remain adaptive under changed conditions.

Why Cultures Change

Environment they must cope with has changed.

Intrusion of outsiders. Values have changed.

Evaluating a Culture

Cultures can be evaluated according to: Nutritional status Physical and mental health of

population Incidence of violence, crime and

delinquency Demographic structure Stability and tranquility of domestic life

Glossary:

Adaptation - A process by which organisms achieve a beneficial adjustment to an available environment; also the results of that process the characteristics of organisms that fit them to the particular set of conditions of the environment in which they are generally found.

Cultural pluralism - Social and political interaction of people with different ways of living and thinking within the same society.

Culture - The values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world shared by members of a society, that they use to interpret experience and generate behavior, and that are reflected in their behavior.

Enculturation - The process by which a society's culture is passed from one generation to the next and individuals become members of their society.

Ethnocentrism - The belief that the ways of one's own culture are the only proper ones.

Ethnohistory -The study of cultures of the recent past through oral histories; accounts left by explorers, missionaries, and traders; and analysis of such records as land titles, birth and death records, and other archival materials.

Ethnologist - An anthropologist who studies cultures from a comparative or historical point of view, utilizing ethnographic accounts.

Ethnoscientists - Anthropologists who seek to understand the principles behind native idea systems and the ways those principles inform a people about their environment and help them survive.

Gender - The elaborations and meanings assigned by cultures to the biological differentiation of the sexes.

Pluralistic societies - Societies in which there exist a diversity of cultural patterns.

Social structure - The rule-governed relationships of individuals and groups within a society that hold it together.

Society - A group of interdependent people who share a common culture.

Subculture - A distinctive set of standards and behavior patterns by which a group within a larger society operates.

Symbols - Sounds or gestures that stand for meanings among a group of people.

Lecture 2 – QUIZ

1. Every culture teaches its members that there are differences between people based on sex, age, occupation, class, and ethnic group. People learn to predict the behavior of people playing different roles from their own. This means that

a.everyone plays the same role.

b.all cultures identify the same roles.

c.culture is shared even though everyone is not the same.

d.all cultures require that their participants play different roles, even though that means that no one can predict the behavior of others. e.everyone plays the same role throughout their life.

2. Pluralistic societies

a.believe they are racially different.

b.have a diversity of cultural patterns.

c.are very rare in the world today.

d.are a hallmark of the civilized world.

e.none of these choices

3. The process by which culture is transmitted from one generation to the next is

a.enculturation.

b.pluralism.

c.adaptation.

d.cultural relativism.

e.subcultural variation.

4. The __________ of culture is/are what a culture must do to satisfy basic needs of its members.

a.functions

b.motivations

c.enculturations

d.integration

e.relativism

5. Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

a.Only some cultures change.

b.All cultures change at the same rate.

c.All culture change is disastrous.

d.Culture change can bring disastrous results.

e.all of these choices

6. _____________ refers to the position that because cultures are unique, each one can be evaluated only according to its own standards and values.

a.Ethnocentrism

b.Cultural relativism

c.Cultural materialism

d.Adaptation

e.Pluralism

7. _______________ is the notion that one's culture better and more proper than other cultures.

a.Ethnocentrism

b.Cultural relativism

c.Cultural materialism

d.Adaptation

e.Pluralism

8. A ___________ society is one in which two or more ethnic groups or nationalities are politically organized into one territorial state but maintain their cultural differences.

a.ethnocentric

b.diverse

c.pluralistic

d.acculturated

e.superstructure