what is culture? the conceptual question

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What Is Culture?

The Conceptual Question

The anthropologist sees culture as the shared ideas and behaviors of a group of people.These Trobriand Island women are assembling yams they have harvested in preparation for afeast.

Overview 25

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Fishy Culture, Part I

On the outskirts of the small town of Main Brook, in northern Newfoundland, sur-

rounded by spruce forest, is “the Pit,” a gravel pit once excavated to build a road

but subsequently treated as an all-purpose community resource for storing fire-

wood, drying fishnets, picking berries, and gardening. My wife, Susan, and I drive

out to the Pit to watch Aunt Belle, two of her sons, and a granddaughter setting

potatoes in the sandy ground. We’re living in Main Brook to learn about New-

foundland culture, and Aunt Belle has become one of our best informants, or con-

sultants, of cultural information. She is a vigorous, vocal advocate of traditional life

in rural Newfoundland, which she draws her large extended family into sharing

with her. Planting a big vegetable garden with a “crowd” of kin is one way to live

that life (Figure 1.1). “I like for all hands to be as one,” she says, pausing to lean

on her shovel. “All hands . . .” Aunt Belle’s language is shot through with evidence

that her people have been fishermen. The image of the fishing boat and its crew

spills over even into the potato patch. Her sons call me “skipper,” a friendly sign of

respect less distancing than “sir.” They joke that being a teacher, I have a good

“berth.” Berths are locations along the coast for anchoring cod traps, and some

berths catch more cod and thus are more profitable than others. When today’s

gardening is done, Aunt Belle will air out her garden boots and gloves not on her

“stoop,” “stairs,” or “porch,” but on her “bridge,” an allusion to the captain’s

observation deck on a ship. When she and her sons drive their pickup truck south

to shop they “climb aboard our machine and steam up the coast”— “up . . .”

meaning not “north” but upwind into the prevailing sailing winds. Belle’s is a cul-

ture thoroughly colored by nautical and fishing lore. So what do anthropologists

mean by this term “culture”?


OverviewSocial workers, fish biologists, historians, and journalists have all at some timepulled on rubber boots and stood in the mud with Newfoundlanders while theywere planting potatoes or cleaning fish. The anthropologist’s distinction doesn’tcome from observing something that no one else observes. True, they occasion-ally study some uncommon subject, such as fish-grease boxes or toilet stall graf-fiti. And as recently as forty years ago anthropologists often were the first personsto walk into some remote village with the intention of learning the residents’

26 Chapter One What Is Culture?

Figure 1.1 In Newfoundland,Canada, Belle andher neighbors sharea culture that callsfor entire families toclear their gardens inearly June to plantpotatoes with fishand seaweedfertilizers.

undocumented language and observing their unknown rituals. Those days aregone. The anthropologist’s genuine distinction from the other visitors standingaround observing the scene has always been that she or he conceives of what peo-ple are doing and thinking in terms of their culture. Over many years we’ve devel-oped the concept of culture and the questions that we ask ourselves, whetherstanding in muddy gardens or elegant courtyards, about the culture behindwhat’s happening.

This chapter begins with a working definition of culture and goes on to distin-guish the terms “ethnic group,” “society,” “race,” and “subculture” from the term“culture.” Seven widely accepted characteristics of culture are described. As soci-eties become less isolated and cultures less geographically separated, anthropolo-gists have adjusted their concept of culture; so three more recently conceivedcharacteristics of culture are introduced. To help sharpen our idea of what cul-ture is, the chapter concludes with seven statements about what culture is not.

Upon successful completion of this chapter you should be able to:

1. Define culture.

2. Differentiate culture, ethnic group, and subculture, and distinguish cul-ture from civilization, society, and behavior.

3. Explain why “race” is not a scientific concept.

4. Illustrate how cultural anthropologists study concepts of “race.”

5. Describe the impact of globalization on the anthropological concept ofculture.

6. Apply seven characteristics of cultures to describe a culture with whichyou are familiar.

A Definition of Culture 27

A Definition of Culture The questions cultural anthropologists ask about people’s lives derive from theway we define “culture.” I propose this general definition:

Culture is the learned, shared understandings among a group of peopleabout how to behave and what everything means.

Take that sentence apart and examine the terms. “Learned, shared understandings” contrasts with instinctual or inborn behav-

iors, of which humans have relatively few except for the powerful drive of littleones to learn to talk, learn to walk, and acquire a culture. “Learned” means thatyoung Newfoundlanders or recent immigrants to the island, such as a newspouse from the mainland, have probably acquired less of the culture than havethe old Newfoundlanders and those who have lived in Newfoundland all theirlives. Through social interaction Newfoundlanders are always learning from eachother. They teach each other, imitate each other, correct each other, and so cometo share a culture. From infancy on, a Newfoundlander is always learning, thusacquiring culture, a process we call enculturation.

“Learned, shared understandings” means that if Susan and I are going to learnNewfoundland culture, we will have to assemble it from what we find in commonamong Belle, her neighbors, and many other people. If Belle knows or does some-thing unique, then it isn’t in the culture. If her neighbors and kinfolk begin toknow or do that something, too, then by definition it becomes part of the culture.

“Learned, shared understandings” means that culture is in people’s minds. I usethe word “understandings” to include knowledge, such as Newfoundlanders’vocabulary for soil types (“pug,” “mud,” “sand,” and so forth) and also theirdeeper grasp of things, such as a feel for where that thin line is between jokingwith someone and insulting him.

“Learned, shared understandings among a group of people” reinforces the“shared” idea, that culture only exists if a collectivity has it. The group can besmall, such as Belle’s family or a fishing crew, which shares some experiences,knowledge, in-jokes, vocabulary, and so on. Or the group can be large, such as allCanadians, which includes French speakers and Inuktitut (formerly “Eskimo”)speakers, among others; but nevertheless all Canadians share some things byattending school, interacting politically, participating in the same economy, deal-ing with similar northern climates, and watching television.

“Learned, shared understandings among a group of people about how tobehave” says that culture guides our actions, sometimes as rules and knowledgethat you are conscious of (“drive on the right, pass on the left”), and sometimes ashabits you picked up unconsciously by imitating those around you, such as theway the tone of your voice rises at the end of a question. My field assistant inNewfoundland, Viva, learned how to sew from her mother Mabel, with additionalclues from her Aunt Stella next door and from an older cousin up the road. Vivabecame a better seamstress than any of them, and now she teaches other women,informally and in workshops. Thus do actions become shared behavior in agroup.


Figure 1.2 During the twelve daysof Christmas in New-foundland, groups ofrowdy “mummers”(disguised tricksters)visit the housesdemanding a drinkand a dance, playingon their neighbors’fear of strangers.

“Learned, shared understanding among a group of people about how tobehave and what everything means” says that not only does culture provide guid-ance on what to do, how to do it, and when, but culture also predicts and inter-prets what others will do and say. In Newfoundland, for example, Susan and Ifairly quickly grasped that one doesn’t go to the front door of a house—the onethat opens into the living room or “parlour”—unless one is the Mountie or theundertaker. We learned that to be interpreted correctly we were expected to entera house through the kitchen door. Entering through the kitchen door “means”that we are neighbors or kin—that is, familiar, like family. Entering through thefront door “means” death and trouble. After we grasped that, it still took us awhile to learn to stop knocking on the kitchen door and waiting for the womenof the house to admit us. Knocking on a door instead of just walking in and sit-ting down by the stove “means” that you’re a stranger (“you don’t belong to thisplace”), perhaps even a ghost, and thus again, probably trouble. At Christmas,the masked troublemakers, the “mummers,” knock on doors to frighten theinhabitants before entering to drink their booze, insult them, and pinch them(Figure 1.2).

By the end of the first season of fieldwork, in and out of peoples’ houses allday, Susan and I had learned enough Newfoundland culture to behave correctlyin approaching a house and thus be interpreted as friendly and familiar, so wecould get on with the business of talking and observing without alarming people.You can imagine how much longer it took us to grasp the meaning of subtler,more complex events, such as when Aunt Sophie sent pies to the AnglicanChurch Women’s bake sale but didn’t show up herself to make purchases.Sophie’s action may be translated, “I’m going to do my duty as a responsiblecommunity member, not like some people I could mention, but I’m upset aboutthe way some things are being done and if you don’t know what they are, you had

A Definition of Culture 29

better approach me in a concerned and respectful manner and find out!” Obvi-ously, our learning the Newfoundlanders’ culture was going to require somesophisticated interpretations of what everything means.

In the foregoing I have sketched a working definition of culture. Before distin-guishing the term from related concepts, note that anthropologists speak both of“culture” and “a culture.” Used in the first sense, and sometimes capitalized, “cul-ture” or “Culture” refers to something that all humans have by virtue of beingmembers of social groups. We mean the word that way when we say, “Culture dis-tinguishes our species from that of the banana slug.” Used in the second sense, “aculture” refers to the particular shared understandings of a certain social group.We mean the word that way when we say, “The culture changed when the com-munity abandoned wood fires for coal stoves.” Thinking about particular cul-tures associated with certain social groups leads to the concepts of subculturesand ethnic groups.


Fishy Culture, Part II

Belle’s son empties a tub of caplin, a smeltlike fish, onto the newly planted potato

bed, and Belle spreads the little fish around with her shovel. Newfoundland is an

island in the north Atlantic, the farthest eastern province of Canada. Like Belle,

most of the northern peninsula’s residents trace their ancestry back to southeast-

ern Ireland and southwestern England. Their families have been settled in tiny

coastal communities, called “outports,” engaged in fishing and logging since the

early nineteenth century. In 1911, the geographer J. D. Rogers called Newfound-

land’s entire social framework “fishy,” and in many respects it still is, even if Belle’s

sons now spend most of their time logging or building highways. The way of life

in Main Brook, and much of Newfoundland, is “fishy,” a culture shaped by 200

years of coastal settlement to supply European and Caribbean markets with salt

cod, and now to provide fresh snow crab, shrimp, and flounder (Figure 1.3). As a

landlubber, I notice immediately the turns of phrase, the clothing, the detailed

attention to the weather, and the conversation starters by Belle and her crowd that

evoke a life by the sea.

A fishy culture, compared to the farming tradition that underlies most of

North American culture, has strikingly different ideas about ownership, about

risk, and about accumulation of resources. Fishermen’s religion is different, and

they treat the land differently than farmers do. This maritime culture is not just

a legacy celebrated by proud old women like Belle, however; the young in

school have lessons and fieldtrips to perpetuate some of the lore. More impor-

tant, the teachers are often locals who grew up with the legacy and teach it as

much by example as by lessons. One of the teachers is Belle’s daughter-in-law.


Figure 1.3 The shared understandings and behaviors that make up Newfoundland cultureare permeated by centuries of coastal settlement in pursuit of cod and salmon.

This fishy maritime culture has never been static, although to visitors the

communities may seem like museums of old-time ways of doing and talking. In

fact, Newfoundland culture had been undergoing changes for decades before I

stood in Belle’s potato patch. The traditional culture as well as the cultural

changes became my research career for the next twenty years, summarized in a

book and numerous articles that Susan and I wrote for the scholarly and popu-

lar press. How we have thought about that “fishy” culture will often serve as

examples in this book.


Culture, Subculture, and Ethnic GroupMany people in European American nations like the United States, Canada, andEngland use the terms “culture,” “society,” “ethnic group,” and “race,” ofteninterchanging these terms. Cultural anthropologists, on the other hand, haveattempted to distinguish and clarify these terms.

To review, “culture” has been defined here as shared understandings, a guideto behavior and thought that people learn as members of some group. Culture isnot the group, but it is a property of the group. The group could be a Boy Scouttroop, a Newfoundland village, a population of Iraqi shepherds traveling over adry grassland, an entire nation, or perhaps a group of nations. A society is a

Culture, Subculture, and Ethnic Group 31

group of people organized into social relationships to perform certain tasks suchas feeding and defending themselves and raising children. A society usually hasits own territory, perpetuates itself over generations, and is at least partly self-governing. The society’s culture specifies what the social relationships should be,how to perform the tasks, and why to go to the trouble in the first place.

A subculture is that particular mix of shared understandings held by groupswithin a larger society. What distinguishes the subculture from other subculturesin the society might be language, dress, religion, habits of work, food preferences,and child-raising practices, to mention just a few topics. Mexican farm workers inMichigan and Francophones (French speakers) in Canada participate in suchsubcultures. While maintaining some cultural distinctions from those aroundthem, the farm workers and Francophones are also sharing some features of thewider culture. Other subcultures derive from common residence, work, or avoca-tion. Silicon Valley computer programmers and Civil War reenactors participatein subcultures. A hundred years ago, “campus culture” was a fairly distinctivesubculture of the United States, in which a relatively small number of students,mostly wealthy and mostly male, participated wholeheartedly for a few years,then remembered fondly and a little sheepishly for the rest of their lives (Moffatt1989).

An ethnic group is a group within a society that maintains a subculture basedon religion, language, common origin, or ancestral traditions. The ethnic groupinvests effort to distinguish itself from others in the wider society. KualaLumpur, Malaysia, for example, is a multiethnic city in Southeast Asia. Residingthere are Christians and Jews from Europe, Hindus from India, MoslemMalaysians, Buddhist Chinese from South China, and many smaller ethnicgroups whose members immigrated to Kuala Lumpur from the rural areas andstill practice the languages, religions, and historical traditions of their home area.As for Newfoundlanders like Belle and her family, now that their once-independent country has become a Canadian province, they are closely tied intothe rest of the nation, but they are still somewhat culturally distinct in theirdialect and ancestral traditions; so they too may be considered an ethnic group.

Ethnic groups usually share some culture with the other ethnic groups inorder to participate in the political and economic life of the society of which theyare parts. Newfoundlanders, for example, vote in Canadian national electionsand watch the same television programs as other Canadians do. Ethnic groupmembers are also aware of their group identity and distinctiveness, and they usu-ally invest effort to foster such awareness in themselves and their fellow citizens.Newfoundlanders are definitely aware of their distinctiveness, as you’ll see in thisbook. To distinguish themselves from other groups, ethnic group members mayintentionally display some cultural differences, which we call ethnic flags (Barth1998). An ethnic flag might be as obvious as the chador, or “head scarf,” withwhich Muslim Malaysian women cover their heads in public, or as subtle as thelittle figurine of the god of commerce mounted next to the cash register in a Chi-nese Malaysian shop. For Newfoundlanders, one ethnic flag is their Anglo-Irishaccent; another is their use of archaic and maritime words.

Ethnic groups are easy to label (“Mennonite” or “Japanese Peruvian”) butharder to specify culturally. There is always the question of what is the essential


core and where is the boundary. Is it a defining characteristic of Mennonites thatthey drive black cars with no chrome? What distinguishes the Japanese Peruvians,since few of them speak Japanese? For individuals, ethnicity, meaning one’s iden-tification with or participation in an ethnic group, can be even more challengingto define. One’s ethnicity may be multiple, or unclear to oneself, or vary depend-ing upon the social situation. As cultural anthropologists have grappled with thiscomplexity and fluidity, they have revised their concept of “culture,” as this chap-ter later describes.

Culture and RaceAnthropologists consider the concept of race to be unscientific, yet they studyrace all the time. How can that be? Defining “race” is difficult, because differentcultures and scholars give it different meanings. In practice, most Americanstreat ethnic group and race as the same thing, but for anthropologists, race refersto biological differences between populations, while “culture” and “ethnicgroup” refer to learned behavioral differences between groups (American Anthro-pological Association 1997).

In the nineteenth century anthropologists tried to sort and classify the world’sraces by biological criteria, but we now know that it can’t be done. In addition,nothing has been accomplished by trying to explain differences in history, behav-ior, and abilities of human populations in racial terms, because the differencesare better explained by who has the “guns, germs, and steel,” as one scholar putsit (Diamond 1997). Our professional association’s “Statement on Race” pointsout that race doesn’t explain anything (American Anthropological Association1998). It concludes that “any attempt to establish lines of division among biolog-ical populations [is] both arbitrary and subjective.”

Some ethnic groups’ members may indeed appear physically different fromothers in the society. Among the Chinese in the Philippines, with whom I livedfor a couple of years, were individuals who looked different from the Filipinomajority, which stands to reason because the Chinese and Filipinos were geo-graphically separate populations until the sixteenth century. But the Amish inwestern Pennsylvania are not physically different from their non-Amish neigh-bors, many of whom are, like the Amish, also descended from German immi-grants. Even ethnic groups that are usually physically distinguished from othergroups include individuals who are physically different from each other. Thereverse is also true: individuals who are physically similar may be members of dif-ferent ethnic groups. In other words, the biological differences within any namedgroup (“Mexicans in Texas,” “Japanese Americans,” “whites,” for example) are asgreat as the differences between groups (American Anthropological Association1998).

To deny the reality of race in humans is not to deny the reality of biologicaldifference. Obviously, biological variation in our species is enormous, encom-passing important and fascinating heritable characteristics such as blood chem-istry, body build, skin color, hair form, and physiology (the functioning of cellsand organs). However, these traits vary independently of each other; all mixes are

Race as a Cultural Construct 33

possible, and many combinations exist today. The traits don’t stick togetherthrough time in a cluster as something called a “race.” The branch of anthropol-ogy called biological anthropology takes as one of its tasks the study of humanphysical variety. That study shows that humans constitute just one species—onewith much genetic variety, to be sure; but because its members are mobile andinterbreeding, clear subdivisions are obliterated.

Race as a Cultural ConstructEven though there is no scientific basis for classifying people into races, societiesnever let the facts bother them. They develop ideas about the differences betweenpeople; so “race” may be called a cultural construct, meaning a conceptual modelof reality shared by a group. A construct may be thoroughly tested, as has been thenavigational knowledge about currents and weather possessed by Polynesian out-rigger captains (Gladwin 1970). On the other hand, a cultural construct may bejust one of many possible but flawed models of reality, as have been most cultures’systems of racial categories. In creating these cultural constructs, cultures act asHumpty Dumpty does in Through the Looking Glass when he declares to Alice,“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”A scheme of human races is not a fact, it’s an “ideology of inequality” (AmericanAnthropological Association 1998). For example, the North American concept ofrace and racial distinctions derives from the ideology of inequality developed dur-ing the European worldwide expansion that began in the sixteenth century.Explorers groped for reasons to justify conquest in other continents. Decidingthat those continents were home to peoples of inferior races who needed help tosave their souls and develop a proper work ethic was a convenient justification. Inthe United States, slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Laws, and the displacement ofNative Americans during Western settlement were made more acceptable by defin-ing other peoples as races and then claiming inheritable shortcomings in thoseraces. This is the essence of racism, the belief that actual or alleged differencesbetween racial groups indicate the superiority of one of them (Doob 1999, 7).

Some of the nineteenth-century pioneers of cultural anthropology shared thiscultural construct, this widespread ideology of differences, and they tried to placerace on a scientific footing. It wasn’t until the early twentieth century thatanthropologists, particularly Americans led by Franz Boas, the first anthropolo-gist to hold a university position, demonstrated the flaws in racial research. Boasforcefully argued that race and culture should be treated as separate phenomena,and that the behavior that most of his countrymen were attributing to race wasin fact cultural (Boas 1948).

The question that arises for the cultural anthropologist today is not, therefore,what are the races of humankind, but what races do people of this or that cultureimagine there are? What does the group think about human biological diversity,and why does it label differences in that way? Exercise 4 investigates the culturalconstructs of English-speaking Americans concerning the races. Besides sharingan understanding of the names for races, most Americans have thought that chil-dren inherit a certain race from their parents and then remain that race for life.


Figure 1.4In the United States(top), no matter howdifferent these broth-ers look from eachother, they will all belabeled as the samerace: a person islabeled the same as hisor her parents andretains that label forlife. In Brazil (bottom),these boys will belabeled differentlybased upon theirappearance, regardlessof their parents’appearance; and iftheir appearancechanges, their racelabel changes.

To classify the race of a child of parents of two races, the cultural rule (often cod-ified into law) in the United States has been hypodescent, meaning the child isthe same race as the parent of the race of lowest status. Meanwhile, Brazilians,another multiethnic population with much physical variety, define more races ofpeople and permit them to change race during their lifetimes.

Each Brazilian’s tipo, or race, is based on appearances, not on her or his parents(Figure 1.4). My professor collected forty terms for tipo used by residents of justone village (Kottak 2004, 122). A morena, for example, is a female with dark,straight hair, dark eyes, brown skin, and thin nose and lips. A sarara is a femalewith light hair, skin, and eyes, a wide nose, and thick lips. A morena and a sararacould be sisters, with the same mother and father. Brazilians also permit peopleto change racial labels when their lives change. If they acquire a different socialstatus or cultural lifestyle or become tanned, they will be labeled as a different tipo(Fish 1995). My professor’s Brazilian research assistant referred to himself, vari-ously, as escuro (“dark”), preto (“black”), or moreno escuro (“dark brunet”) (Kottak2004, 123). Can you see how social mobility could differ between societiesdepending upon whether they believed the “races” were fixed or variable?

Distinguishing the terms culture, a culture, subculture, society, race, and eth-nic group allows us to speak somewhat more precisely about human groups and

The Characteristics of Culture 35

Table 1.1 Timeline for the Concept of Culture

Contemporary Events Year The Concept of Culture

1796––––

1843–––––

1871––––

1925–––

1958–––

1995––––

2004

Napoleon’s army conquers Italy.

First telegraph lines are strung acrossthe United States.

First Wild West show is staged inNiagara Falls, New York.

The “Monkey Trial” in Dayton,Tennessee, convicts John ThomasScopes for teaching evolution.

Russia launches the first orbitingsatellite, Sputnik.

“Ethnic cleansing” leads to mas-sacres in Kosovo, of formerYugoslavia.

Centenary celebration of theOlympic Games is held in Athens,Greece.

German philosopher Immanuel Kantuses the term “Kulture,” meaning“civilization.”

German ethnographer GustavKlemm is first to use “Cultur” in ananthropological sense.

E. B. Tylor is the first English speakerto use “Culture” in an anthropologi-cal sense.

“Culture” in an anthropologicalsense first appears in English andAmerican dictionaries.

Influenced by cybernetics andphysics, Leslie White describes “Cul-ture” as a system of energy capturemeasurable in kilojoules per capita.

American Anthropological Associa-tion President Annette Weiner sug-gests that “Culture” may havebecome obsolete in the contempo-rary globalizing world.

Interdisciplinary “Culture Studies”programs and courses are offered atmany U.S. colleges and universities.

their shared understandings. Next I’ll continue to sharpen the concept of cultureand distinguish it from related concepts.

The Characteristics of CultureThe concept of culture as anthropologists use it to mean shared understandingsand patterns of behavior is only a little more than 160 years old, beginning asEuropean folklorists such as Gustav Klemm developed a way to understand peas-ants’ traditions and beliefs (Table 1.1). Since then, thousands of anthropologists


have been writing and teaching about culture in that general sense. A few timesthey have even declared “culture” dead, but it recovers and even proliferates. Thecurrent growth of interdisciplinary “culture studies” programs at universitiesindicates the robustness of the culture concept. Culture studies combine literaryand art criticism, communications, history, and anthropology around a human-istic and political definition of culture.

Working from many theoretical positions on a wide variety of human topics,anthropologists have proposed and employed many variations on that definitionof culture. Such a variety of definitions may alarm you, as it does some profes-sionals, believing so much variety to be a sign of an immature science. But everydiscipline organizes itself around a few big concepts which, fortunately, escapeprecise definition and thus retain some power to generate creative work. Anthro-pology’s “culture” has been compared to the grand concepts in other fields, suchas “energy,” “evolution,” and “society” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1963, orig. 1953,375). I would add to this list “the market,” “personality,” “power,” and “art.” It’snot difficult to identify the discipline associated with each of these big andimprecise concepts.

Even though there are many definitions, there is widespread consensus in text-books about the principal characteristics of culture (Kottak 1997b, 18). A con-sensus of what culture is contributes to a consensus of what questions to askabout it. So here are seven characteristics of culture, each linked to chapters inthis book:

1. Cultures are integrated.

2. Cultures are products of history.

3. Cultures can be changed, and they can cause change.

4. Cultures are strengthened by values.

5. Cultures are powerful determinants of behavior.

6. Cultures are largely composed of and transmitted by symbols.

7. Human culture is unique in complexity and variability.

Cultures Are IntegratedCultures are integrated, though imperfectly. Integration means, for example, thatone part of Newfoundland’s culture is related to another part. The traditionalexpectation that a young married couple should build a house next door to thehusband’s father and brothers is related to the work organization of a cod-fishingcrew of brothers. Not only do the men launch a boat together at 4:00 a.m., butthe wives and children help split and dry the catch when the boat returns thatafternoon. All this work is easier to organize if the workers are also neighbors.Cultural integration is imperfect, however, because cultures include inconsisten-cies. Newfoundland men can survive hard nights out in the bush in winter, butmany are afraid of the dark in their own houses. The holistic question of Chapter3 examines culture as an integrated system, or set of mutually influential rela-tionships among the parts.


Cultures Are Products of HistoryOur lives today have been shaped by the outcomes of past practices. Belle’s gar-dening and her language are “fishy” because her people have been going to sea fortwo centuries or more. American culture would be different today if German hadbeen adopted as an official second language. In the 1850s, Congress consideredadopting German, but decided against it. Sixty years later, the attitude towardGerman culture in the United States had deteriorated. Propaganda against theGermans during World War I was so intense that German words became taboo.Sauerkraut was called “liberty cabbage.” The comparative question of Chapter 4reveals that most cultures have always been interconnected to, and thus influ-enced by, others. The temporal question of Chapter 5 focuses on history and cul-ture change. If cultures are contingent, meaning highly dependent upon theparticular events of their history, then it is difficult for anthropologists to con-struct general laws about how they function (“if this happens, that will happen”)because there will be so many exceptions. The naturalistic question of Chapter 2and the reflexive question of Chapter 9 both consider the question of whether ornot anthropology is a science.

Cultures Can Be Changed, and They Can Cause ChangeCultures can change rapidly. For example, in the 1970s many Newfoundlanderswho had only recently acquired electricity swiftly accepted television into theirhomes. The change that television generated in visiting customs was equallyswift. It became acceptable to stay home and watch “the soaps” instead of goingnext door to play card games. The social-structural question in Chapter 7explores the relationship of society and culture that these house-visiting customsreveal. A culture also alters and is altered by the biology of the population thatparticipates in it. As an example of culture affecting human biology, in prehis-toric European societies, when milking cows became a regular part of the culture,smallpox also became established, because the bacterium that produces cowpoxevolved to flourish in the nearby human host and became more virulent. Finally,a culture changes and is changed by the group’s biophysical environment, aswhen forest dwellers acquire metal axes and can more easily alter or eliminatetheir forest. The interactions of human biology, environment, and culture areexplored in the bio-cultural question in Chapter 6.

Cultures Are Strengthened by ValuesCultures are strengthened by values, or shared understandings of what is goodand right to do and to be, as well as what is bad and wrong. The values adheringto many of our common understandings compel us to do the right thing, cultur-ally speaking. The presence of values helps to explain why people follow their cul-ture so often, even if they know they don’t have to. In rural Newfoundland, mostpeople are practicing Christians, and they observe the Sabbath by not engaging inany “work,” even if they don’t attend church that day. The value attached to thebiblical injunction to treat the seventh day as a day of rest has been strong


enough that anyone who absolutely needed to do some chores would do themout of sight.

Susan and I considered it a nuisance that Main Brook’s few shops were closedon Sunday and that everyone stopped doing their ordinary work, which is what Iwas there to observe. Over time, however, we began to see the Sabbath from theNewfoundlanders’ perspective. One day while I was watching Dan help hismother Belle to dig potatoes, I asked him whether they would be back the nextday, Sunday, to finish the job. Dan replied, “No, boy, we don’t work on the Sab-bath. If you want to work on the Sabbath then you didn’t work hard enough theother six days.” I thought his retort was amusing at the time, but writing it in mynotes later, I realized that Dan was linking the value of observing the Sabbathwith the value of hard work. Newfoundlanders impressed us as very hard work-ers, putting in long hours, often both on the job and around their house and gar-den. To call someone a hard worker is high praise. But as it is written inEcclesiastes, there is a time for work and a time for not working.

Viewing other people’s ways as relative to their historical and cultural situa-tion is what is meant by the relativistic question in Chapter 10. When anthropol-ogists look at other cultures from the relativistic perspective, meaning withoutjudging it by our own standards, we begin to examine our own culture afresh,and even to become self-critical about the way we examine culture, which is thepoint of the reflexive question in Chapter 9.

Cultures Are Powerful Determinants of BehaviorCultures are powerful determinants of behavior, but people are not puppets. Cul-ture is powerful because much of what we have learned is beneath our awareness,or has become a comfortable habit, or is surrounded by values that make us feelbad if we don’t do right, or is being done by everybody else so we conform in orderto be accepted. But sometimes we step out between the bars of our cage and dosomething alternative, deviant, unique, or creative. All of us break some of therules sometimes. None of us even knows all of the rules, as Exercise 4 in Chapter 2demonstrates. In Newfoundland I was impressed by how powerful were the forcesfor conformity in a small coastal village of 500 souls. Yet each person had alsocarved out an individuality, including quirky behaviors and ideas. So cultures canbe employed selectively, argued over, analyzed, and changed by their practition-ers. That’s one of the reasons we ask the dialogic question in Chapter 11.

Cultures Are Largely Composed of and Transmitted by SymbolsBundling our shared understandings in symbols is what gives culture such powerto cumulate, to be transferred between people, and to endure across generations.A symbol is anything to which its users assign meaning. The meaning is given bythe culture and may be quite arbitrary. The action or object may have no obviousrelationship to its given meaning. Actions can be symbolic, as when Mother wag-gles her index finger at you. Objects can be symbolic, such as a red octagon repre-senting the STOP sign. The eight-pointed icon used on the first page of eachchapter in this book is an old symbol still being stitched into Amish and plains


Lakota quilts as the “lone star” or “morning star,” rising in the east and repre-senting Christian hope. We may treat it here as hope for the enlightenment orinsight about human culture.

Human languages are symbolic. The funny little figures covering this page orthe squeaks and grunts I utter when I lecture are symbolic, transmitting meaningto readers and listeners who have learned English. Some symbols are freightedwith deep layers of significance, such as a wedding ring, and others have simplemeanings, such as the word “asparagus.”

An individual is largely enculturated through symbolic communication, evenwhen practical experience accompanies it. For example, a Newfoundlander teach-ing her friend to hook a rug relies on demonstration but also on a good deal of talk.The talk greatly extends the cultural transmission or lesson about how to hook thisrug. It will probably include reference to the past (“this is how my mother used todo this”), to the hypothetical (“another way this stitch could be done,” or “be surenot to . . .”), and to the relationship between instructor and student (“just becauseI’m teaching you this doesn’t mean I think I’m better than you are”).

Verbal or visual, most of human behavior is symbolic, in that it carries mean-ing assigned to it by the participants. If the ads in my New Yorker magazine are tobe believed, even the fragrance of a cologne can carry a fairly precise meaning.Discovering meaning is the purpose of the interpretive question in Chapter 8.

Human Culture Is Unique in Complexity and VariabilityScholars disagree about human uniqueness. But arguing about uniqueness isgood intellectual exercise, so here is a taste of the debate. Some anthropologistspropose that the abilities of other species indicate a continuum in cultural behav-ior between humans and other animals, such as the great apes (Savage-Rumbaugh1992). To claim that we are unique, those anthropologists warn, may not be partic-ularly useful and may in practice justify bad treatment of other animals. No, we’reunique, say others (e.g., Barrett 1991, 55–76; Perry 2003, 58–60). They acknowl-edge that other social species—wolves, honeybees, and chimpanzees—share com-plex behaviors, communicate abundantly, and solve problems creatively; but theypoint out that those shared understandings are not learned and expressed symbol-ically, as human culture is, which greatly expands our possibilities. We alone, theysay, can discuss the past, plan the future, and imagine alternate worlds. Some lin-guists add that human thought, being syntactical—meaning it is structured intosentences—is also unique to humans (Bickerton 1996; Chomsky 1988). But apescan be taught grammar, others retort; consider Kanzy, the pygmy chimpanzee whoconstructed sentences in a symbolic language on a computer keyboard (Greenfieldand Savage-Rumbaugh 1990). But apes don’t do that kind of communicationexcept in captivity with human trainers, comes the reply, and a lot of teaching isnecessary. No human has to be taught symbolic language. “In fact, you can’t pre-vent the child from learning it” (Chomsky 1994).

The debate over uniqueness has led to many interesting discoveries about lan-guage, learning, apes, and animals’ abilities. Whichever side of the debate onetakes, however, one will still be impressed by the great gulf between humans and


other species in the complexity and variability of human culture and the variabil-ity of cultures within our species (Geertz 1973b). As for the complexity of humanculture, Exhibit A might be the Australian aborigines’ kinship and marriagerules, the workings of which can render a graduate student insensate. For anexample, see “Gidjingali Marriage Arrangements” (Hiatt 1968).

As for human cultural variability, anthropologists find great differencesamong cultures in such matters as their political or religious systems. The speedwith which a culture can change is also an indicator of its variability. Becauseshared understandings can be altered and the new forms transmitted from per-son to person within a lifetime, a group can change culturally almost overnight.Cultures’ ability to change swiftly has resulted in many varieties of human soci-eties, not only over time but at any one time. For example, in just a few centuriesbetween 1600 to 1900, the culture of Great Britain generated variations of itselfamong its colonists in South Africa, Australia, Newfoundland, the Falklands, andthe United States. These colonies adapted Mother England’s culture to the land,climate, and societies encountered in their new place, resulting in differencesamong them in language, farming methods, religion, and which side of the roadto drive on, to name a few.

Meanwhile, thousands of other human societies, on those and other conti-nents, whose heritage owed nothing to Great Britain, were adapting, adopting,and inventing their way to distinctiveness. Thus we find Jivaro, Samoan, Zuni,Chinese, and Icelandic cultures exhibiting greater behavioral differences amongthem than we find between different species of seagull or gazelle. Anthropologyarose as a discipline to discover, catalogue, and explain all this human variety; sothe comparative question of Chapter 4 has long been central to our inquiry.

As Cultures Change, “Culture” ChangesNow our culture-made and culture-making human species has reached thetwenty-first century. The people of the world are drawn into an increasingly denseweb of communication, trade, and travel. This change process, referred to asglobalization, is not new, but just the latest phase in 500 years of Europeanexpansion. With few exceptions, the current trend is still largely driven by and forthe interests of societies derived from those of the early expansionists, namely,those in North America and Europe. This long-term globalization trend has had apronounced effect upon cultures and on anthropology’s idea of what “culture” is.

One effect has been that the idea of “a culture” as equivalent to a single,bounded society in one physical place may have become obsolete. Until the1960s, the cultures that anthropologists studied were commonly presented intextbooks as discrete ways of life associated with geographically separate soci-eties, such as the Hopi or the Samoans. On a map you could point to a fewislands in the South Pacific, just east of New Guinea, and say “Trobriand Islandculture is here,” or to a spot in the Amazon and say, “Yanomamo culture is here.”With few exceptions, the old days of distinct, geographically bounded, slow-changing societies and cultures are gone. Samoans are in Los Angeles, and

As Cultures Change, “Culture” Changes 41

Figure 1.5 The prominent role of ethnicity in current national and international affairsdemands a sophisticated and flexible notion of culture. These Kurds distinguish themselvesfrom other Iraqis in language, history, dress, and religion, and insist upon political represen-tation in the newly forming government.

Trobriand Islanders watch Hollywood movies. Many of my friends from New-foundland have moved to the petroleum fields of Northern Alberta or above thearctic circle, on the tundra in Nunavut, historically the territory of those wecalled the “Copper Eskimo.”

Nevertheless, “culture” is still at the center of human events. The powerfuland sometimes alarming role of ethnicity in current events is evidence of that(Figure 1.5). So anthropologists, the students of cultures, still have a subject mat-ter. But anthropology will need to adjust to what is happening to cultures. Someof the language that anthropologists have used to talk of culture will be aban-doned, and new language will be adopted. These days we think of cultures asbeing more fluid, constructed, and mixed than we used to. Let’s look at each ofthese characteristics.

Culture Is Seen as Fluid and NegotiableA culture is not just a tidy inventory of understandings shared by one society inone place. Because people are relocating themselves and passing around manyobjects and ideas, cultures flow between multiple groups. Two interacting groupsmay adjust their cultures to each other in a kind of unspoken bargaining process.Cultures may be situational, with different elements practiced or displayeddepending upon where the practitioners are and who is nearby. When Newfound-landers migrated in large numbers to Ontario in the 1960s to work in the facto-ries, they emphasized their cultural tradition of hard work and sense of humor


and downplayed their religious and speech traits that Ontarians consideredunsophisticated or old-fashioned.

Although one’s culture includes much of what one ought to do and think,nevertheless participants can respond to these instructions in various ways, byemphasizing some aspects and downplaying others, or by giving new meaningsto some traditional parts. In North America, for example, Christopher Columbusand his arrival in the New World are still commemorated by a bank holiday, butnow we view the man and his achievement critically as being in the vanguard ofconquest as much as we celebrate them as symbols of our cherished values ofvalor, ambition, and curiosity.

Culture is Treated as a Constructed PhenomenonThe shared understandings in a group are not necessarily dictated by reality; thiswas the point of my earlier description of Americans’ notion of race as a culturalconstruct. Groups construct or create their understandings by selecting this,ignoring that, and making up another thing. Although there are plenty of realitychecks, a culture’s ideas sometimes have a life of their own, and they define realityfor its practitioners. For example, in North America, in the seventeenth centurythe early European colonists’ conception of a pasture as good and a wilderness asbad was such a cultural construct. For practical and religious reasons, wildernesswas nothing but trouble for those pioneers. By the nineteenth century, someAmericans and Canadians reversed that view, deciding that wilderness was whatmade their nations great (Nash 1973). The North American wilderness hadn’tchanged substantially in three centuries (except to grow smaller), but NorthAmericans’ culture substantially changed its conception of wilderness. By thenineteenth century Americans thought of their landscape and their society as theantithesis of a class-bound Europe packed into a domesticated landscape. Theidea of an America that is free and powerful like wild nature is a construct thatremains central to our culture.

Culture Is Expected to Be MixedIndividuals participate in a combination of subcultures (such as the understand-ings that you share with your sports team), regional cultures (such as Cajun orPennsylvania Dutch), national (such as “American”), and even international cul-tures (sharing English, nuclear physics, air travel, the euro, soft drinks, trafficsigns, and other traits). “We are all multicultural,” writes anthropologist JohnCaughey (2002, 174). He means that each of us has learned several cultures, whichoverlap and even compete or contradict one another in our lives (Figure 1.6).

The idea of someone being multicultural was made clear to me one summerwhen I was analyzing interviews conducted with families in San Francisco’s Chi-natown. The father, the mother, and one teenage child in each of these familieswere interviewed. My task was to see how these families were becoming accultur-ated. Acculturation is the culture change in one population that has come intocontact with another, usually larger and dominant, population. Which families,and which family members, were changing the most, and what traits were chang-

What Isn’t Culture? 43

Figure 1.6 Filipinos, colonized by the United States from 1898 to 1942, are widely literatein English. From it they have developed their own English slang. This tiny shop’s name illus-trates the distinctive way that Filipinos compose English slogans.

ing among these first-generation Chinatown immigrants? I developed a codingsystem to rate the interviewees’ participation and identification with Chinese orAmerican culture. I expected a simple replacement process, in which a familymember became more “American” over time and less “Chinese,” in language,recreational activities, values, self-identification, and the ethnicity of coworkers.

The data refused to conform to my replacement model. How much and howfast an immigrant acculturated to American ways varied markedly from family tofamily, and even within families. Family members in school or multiethnic work-places picked up American ways first, as I expected, but they didn’t always aban-don Chinese ways in the process. So my analysis indicated that some intervieweeswere at once more Chinese and American than were others. This struck me asnonsensical at first, but I recalled from my language studies that some bilingualspeakers are more articulate in both languages than some monolingual speakersare in either language. So I came to accept that some of these immigrants wererichly bicultural. They played mah jong and they played tennis.

What Isn’t Culture?To help sharpen your image of what culture is, consider some of what culture isnot, at least when anthropologists use the term.

1. Culture is not the same as civilization, although in the early nineteenth century thepolitical philosophers, in their attempts to write histories of mankind, equated


the two. Then, the word “culture” carried the notion of improvement or refine-ment, particularly by careful breeding. Improvement in livestock was an exampleof this meaning of “culture” and was indeed one of eighteenth-century science’smost momentous accomplishments. By extension, scholars of the time thoughtthat humans too could be cultured and become civilized if they were properlyeducated. Today, anthropologists claim that every human group has culture.Civilization now refers to a complex society supported by intensive food produc-tion and organized around large urban centers providing administrative, com-mercial, artistic, and religious leadership. Civilization represents only one formof society among several, all of which operate with common shared understand-ings, or culture.

2. Culture is not the same as being refined or sophisticated, as when we think of someonewho appreciates the art forms of European urban civilization such as opera andoil paintings. While it may be true that “you ain’t got no culcha,” you do havewhat anthropologists call culture.

3. Culture is not the same as society, although we often use those two terms inter-changeably in loose talk. We might say, “Pathan culture is invading Besseri cul-ture in Pakistan,” but what we mean is that groups of people who share a set ofunderstandings that includes self-identification as Pathan are moving into theterritory occupied by a population who share identity as Besseri. The true rela-tionship between society and culture is that a society, by means of the interac-tions among its members, creates, shares, and perpetuates a culture.

4. Culture is not the explanation for everything people do. “His culture made him do it”could be an interesting legal defense, but anthropologists know that people canact with, around, or against their culture (Figure 1.7). Also, things happen thataren’t part of the plan. That Newfoundlanders used to play soccer with a sealbladder on the harbor ice can be viewed as cultural, but which team happened towin, or which player broke through the ice and got wet, isn’t cultural.

Anthropology doesn’t claim that culture offers a complete explanation ofhuman behavior, just that “there is a cultural element in most human behaviorand that certain things in behavior make the most sense when seen through cul-ture” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1963, 369). In this way culture joins the othergrand concepts such as the market, personality, a lust for power, and lust itself, inbeing a valuable but partial explanation for what people do.

5. Culture is not behavior, although it guides behavior by informing us actors whatto do and why to do it. Culture is shared understandings, which can’t be seenthemselves. Anthropologists construct an ethnography, a description of a cul-ture, by observing what people do, listening to what they say, and examining theobjects that they make. From the patterns we observe, we then infer the commonunderstandings that generated them—that is, the culture. Chapter 2 will discussfurther how ethnographies are created, and Exercise 3 in that chapter provides anopportunity to practice constructing your own ethnography.

I can check my recognition of a cultural pattern by predicting to myself whatothers will do or say the next time, and then watching to see if they do it. Then to

What Isn’t Culture? 45

Figure 1.7 Newfoundland culture provides guidelines for who should fish together, howthey should cast their net, and how they’ll divide the income. On the other hand, culturecannot explain why they didn’t catch many fish today, or why the second mate got seasick.

test my understanding I try to act, say, or make something according to what I’velearned, to see how it is received. If people smile and pat me on the back, then I’vesuccessfully tested my cultural discovery. If strong men faint and the elders turntheir dogs on me, then it’s clear that I need to revise my conclusions.

6. Culture is not just food customs, musical traditions, and colorful costumes. These aspectsof a culture are easily noticed, shared, even marketed. At diversity festivals orinternational fairs, food, music, and costume are celebrated. These are some ofthe ethnic flags defined earlier: attractive and distinctive but only small parts ofthe whole. Culture also includes much that occurs during one’s ordinary day.

Beyond distinctive food recipes, for example, culture also influences elemen-tary food routines such as how you hold your fork and knife, or that you eat withsome other utensil altogether, or with your fingers, and which hand may be usedto eat, and when you may eat, and with whom. Beyond songs and dances, culturealso suggests ordinary physical actions such as how you are to move and holdyour body the rest of the day when you’re not dancing, and which sounds you areallowed or expected to make when you’re not singing. Beyond the distinctive cos-tume you might wear at a festival, culture also guides your basic clothing choicessuch as what you wear to bed, which parts of your body may be uncovered in pub-lic, what distinctions male and female garb will have, and when a garment oughtto be laundered.

7. Culture is not complete agreement or consensus. You and I may share quite a bit ofculture, but we could disagree strongly about many things, such as the moralityof eating veal, the best way to raise children, and whether an all-powerful God


would permit evil to happen to good people. What culture actually does is definethe debates and provide a language for our disagreement.

Each culture has its issues of contention, some of which may not even occur topeople of another culture. The issue of abortion, for example, is currently anintense legal, religious, moral, and political argument in the United States, aboutwhich reasonable, moral people will disagree. Calculating the number of angelsthat can dance on the head of a pin is not an issue for us now, although it oncewas very important in European scholastic circles. In the abortion debate, ourculture defines the positions we take. We argue, for example, about how muchauthority a woman has over her own body. But doesn’t the state also have aresponsibility to protect its future citizens? We also argue about the personhoodof a fertilized egg. Is it a human at conception—or not until the second trimester?In U.S. society we do not argue about whether or not abortion is acceptable if thefetus is female rather than male. In other societies, there is cultural agreementthat this is a hot debate item. It has been argued and legislated recently in India(Fukuyama 2002).

In sum, each society is an “organization of diversity” (Wallace 2003); each soci-ety’s culture includes shared understandings of what to disagree about (Varenne1984). Ideas and practices vary in their “cultural standing”: some are highly con-troversial, others disputable, many are common opinion, and others are com-pletely taken for granted (Strauss 2004).

SummaryCulture is defined here as “the learned, shared understandings among a group ofpeople about how to behave and what everything means.” After 200 years of use,the modern term “culture” has been defined in many ways, but there is a surpris-ingly consistent core of ideas within these definitions. Seven characteristics ofculture are widely agreed upon: that cultures are integrated, the outcomes of his-tory, and both the causes and results of events outside of culture. Also, anthro-pologists agree that cultures are powerful determinants of human behavior, arestrengthened by values, and depend upon symbolic communication. Lastly, cul-ture makes human behavior highly complex and variable.

To further clarify the anthropological definition of culture, we examine sevencommon misconceptions about that definition. Culture is not the same as civi-lization, nor does it refer to refinement or sophistication. Culture is not the sameas society, although the two make each other possible. Culture cannot explaineverything that people think or do. It does not refer to the observed behavioritself, although it guides behavior. Culture is not limited to observable ethnicflags such as food, music, and costume. Finally, culture does not imply completeagreement or consensus among its practitioners.

Cultural isolation is rare today, and culture change accelerates, fueled by whatmany people call the globalization process. Globalization has consequences bothfor cultures and for cultural anthropology. Culture, including cultural differ-ence, will probably remain a dominant force in human affairs in the twenty-first

Summary 47

century. At the same time, cultural anthropologists have adjusted the cultureconcept to emphasize three additional characteristics that acknowledge the prac-titioners’ mobility and motivations: culture is now seen as fluid and negotiable,as a constructed phenomenon, and as mixed for individuals as well as groups.


Fishy Culture, Part III

We’re back from the gardens, sitting in Belle’s kitchen over a cup of tea. Belle’s

best friend Flo drops in to join us. I’m quizzing Belle about some of her cousins

in town. She remarks in passing,

“’Is hant ’ad ’ee.”

Flo replies, “Yis, girl,” and takes a sip of tea.

I glance at Susan, but she shakes her head and raises her eyebrows.

“’ee what?” I try.

Patiently, as if we were two of her younger grandchildren, Belle explains.

I’ve just cracked my shin, so to speak, on a cultural difference between Belle

and me. We both think we speak English. But English has spread widely around

the world, diversifying in pronunciation, idiomatic expression, and meanings of

words. The journal World English is devoted to exploring this diversification.

English speakers from Scotland, the Philippines, and Kenya would be hard

pressed to understand one another without some time together to work things

out. It took a couple of fieldtrips to Newfoundland before Susan and I no longer

needed to repeat everything we said to Belle and her sons, or to ask them to

repeat for us.

“’Is hant ‘ad ‘ee” is English, but steeped in Newfoundland culture. To recog-

nize Belle’s remark, put the h’s on where they were taken off, and take them off

where they were put on. The result is “his aunt had he.” What that means,

Belle explained, is that her cousin was born out of wedlock and raised by his

mother’s sister, who was married and had other children. Therefore his biologi-

cal mother became his “aunt” and his aunt became his “mother.” In witty New-

foundland shorthand, we have a statement that is true both ways: his aunt was

his mother. It all makes perfect sense—after a while.

So, anywhere there are humans there is culture, being practiced, con-

structed, manipulated, evaded, mixed—and, too often, misunderstood. Most of

the time, most people are not aware of culture any more than the fish is aware

of the water. But by the time you finish learning about the anthropological

questions that make up the following chapters, you will be aware of culture and


also prepared to use the questions to think about what you see. Next we

answer the question How do anthropologists learn about culture?


EXERCISES

t Exercise 1: The Embarrassing IncidentIf culture includes shared understandings for how to behave, then anthropolo-gists can learn a good deal from observing what embarrasses the culture’s partic-ipants, and from inferring which understandings about how to behave werebroken. In this exercise you will collect a pair of biographical anecdotes fromyour classmates and analyze them for the cultural rules lying behind them.

Break into groups of three, and collect a story from two of you. Each infor-mant gives a short description of an embarrassing incident in which the infor-mant was present, although not necessarily as the “perpetrator.” All of you takenotes on the form on page 49, which is a semistructured interview protocol—afancy name for a common anthropological research tool. Such an interview pro-tocol guides the questioning and organizes the answers but doesn’t constraintheir wording.

The informant provides the answers to the first four questions, but yourgroup should develop an answer to the fifth question: What was the cultural rulethat appears to have been broken? The cultural rule may be expressed as a dic-tum, such as You may begin eating only after Mother has raised her fork.

Compare the two incidents you’ve collected. What do they have in common?For example, is the same rule broken in both? Did the audience respond to thetransgression with similar remarks or actions?

Take a poll of what rules were broken in all the incidents in the class. Does thegender, age, or ethnic affiliation of the participants influence what causesembarrassment?

Exercise 2: The American FamilyThis class shares some culture. Need proof? Remove a blank page from your note-book and orient it in landscape mode (long side is horizontal). Across the topwrite “The American Family.” Now draw a picture on that page illustrating thattitle.

You hesitate, you chuckle, and you say, “I can’t draw.” That’s not the point Iintend to make, but notice how widespread this reaction is. Most adults say, “Ican’t draw,” although most drew enthusiastically when they were children. I’veasked you to do something that is not a comfortable habit for adults and defi-nitely odd for an anthropology class, so everyone is nervous.

Exercise 2: The American Family 49

Semistructured Interview Protocol: Embarrassing Incidents

Incident 1 Incident 2

1. Describe the scene: who, where,when, what was happening:

2. Identify the embarrassing event:

3. Describe the responsesof the “audience”:

4. Describe the responsesof the “perpetrator”:

5. Explain the cultural rule that was broken:

Just draw, for at least five minutes. When everyone is finished, the pictures canbe taped on the wall (in small classes) or circulated within groups (in largeclasses).

This exercise is not a test of your artistic ability, an exercise in embarrassment,or a technique for diagnosing your neuroses. This is “auto-ethnography”—youare interviewing yourselves as informants of American culture, using a techniquecalled “personal documentation.”

To analyze these drawings for what they reveal about U.S. culture, identify thepatterns of shared understandings among their images. On one level, of course,

each drawing is unique, like your fingerprint or your personality. Compared topeople in other nations, many Americans like to be “different,” to express theirindividuality. But at the same time, there are a surprising number of commonelements in these drawings, aren’t there?

1. What are the shared elements?

2. How widely are they shared? This is a measure of shared understandings,or how much culture the class shares.

3. Sort the drawings into a few piles that differ on some basic pattern. Howmany patterns are represented?

4. How would you label each of those patterns?

5. Do the patterns reflect any of the cultural and ethnic diversity of the stu-dents in the class?

6. What proportion of all the drawings does each pattern represent?

7. As for the most common pattern: how did we come to share those partic-ular elements? Beyond replying, “It’s in our culture,” you need to suggesthow this pattern got into our culture during our society’s history. Forguidance, consult The Family in America: Searching for Social Harmony in theIndustrial Age (Carlson 2003).

8. How did you learn this pattern that you drew?

9. You are surely aware of all the patterns represented here, so what did you“mean to say” when you chose the pattern you drew?

Exercise 3: Being MulticulturalAs I quoted earlier in this chapter, “Most students, like other contemporaryhumans, are multicultural. They operate with a diverse and often contradictoryset of cultural traditions” (Caughey 2002, 174). You have a diverse set of tradi-tions because of the variety of ethnic, religious, social class, or other communitiesthat you have belonged to. Those traditions may not fit well with each other, soyou have to manage or “juggle” them. Furthermore, you have a relationship witheach of these acquired traditions. You may be an advocate of the tradition, as Iam of my longtime membership in the Adirondack Mountain Club. You may be aresister, as a lapsed Catholic might be. You may be in a negotiated/critical rela-tionship with the culture, accepting it but holding it at arm’s length, picking andchoosing from its repertoire of practices and ideas, as some people do with theirfamily traditions.

One’s identity is made up substantially of the way one combines these variouscultures and subcultures to answer the question, Who am I? Today studentstackle this question when they create personal web pages. In this exercise you willanalyze the mix of cultures by which a person represents himself or herself on apersonal web page.


BackgroundIf you haven’t looked at students’ personal web pages, begin this exercise bybrowsing among a few at your institution. If you haven’t created your own webpage, sketch out what you would want yours to look like and to say.

AnalysisAnalyze the “who am I?” aspects of two other students’ personal web pages as wellas your own.

The page’s author uses verbal and graphic means to announce (or hint at)characteristics such as the following, all of which suggest how the author is linkedto communities with cultures. Those communities may be face-to-face (such asone’s residence group), multisited (one’s far-flung family), imagined (one’s co-religionists in America), or virtual (one’s discussion group on the Internet).

1. age

2. gender

3. sexual preference

4. hometown

5. current living conditions

6. work

7. racial or ethnic affiliations

8. language

9. political and other opinions

10. recreational pursuits

11. participation in organizations, clubs

12. likes and dislikes

13. religious or spiritual background and interests

14. academic focus

15. future plans

16. marital/romantic status

17. other persons or animals central in their lives

18. possessions central in their lives

19. lifestyle (vegetarian, night-owl, etc.)

20. links to other websites

Notice how the personal web pages describe their authors by linking them to aspecific, perhaps a unique, mix of communities, each with its own set of sharedpractices and ideas, lifestyles and symbols, ethnic flags, value orientations, ritu-als, and jargon.

Exercise 3: Being Multicultural 51


Such self-presentations may be incorrect or incomplete, but they are fairlyaccurate because feedback from our peer groups who see these pages holds us toa certain standard of honesty and contributes to our self-knowledge. (“You . . . agranola? No you’re not.”) The self-presentations in web pages often emphasize theauthor’s distinctiveness, even uniqueness, but that emphasis on distinctivenessparadoxically reveals our shared American cultural values of individualism, self-expression, and self-realization: we’re all alike in our efforts to be unalike.

Answer these analytical and comparative questions about the multiculturalcharacter of three personal web pages, including your own page (or proposedpage).

• What connections to lifestyles, cultures, or subcultures can be inferredfrom the students’ self-descriptions?

• How do the other two students’ mixes of cultures compare to those thatcan be inferred from your web page (or proposed page)?

• Do you think the degree of multiculturalism evidenced in the three webpages is a recent phenomenon—that is, that young men and women inAmerica in 1906 would not have been as multicultural?

• In the personal pages, are there clues to any perceived or potential contra-diction among the various communities the student participates in? Per-haps her religion and her science major are potentially in disagreementabout Creation and evolution. Are there clues to how the student man-ages this contradiction?

• In your web page (or proposed page), what is your relationship (advo-cate, resister, or negotiated/critical) to each of the cultures that can beinferred from your self-description?

The product of this exercise is your personal web page or proposed web page, apage from each of the other two web pages, and answers to these questions.

Exercise 4: Race ClassificationThis exercise investigates notions of race in American culture, relying on readersof this book and the U.S. government as informants.

1. On a card or a slip of paper labeled “Humankind,” list the races of theworld today. Put an asterisk (*) beside the term or terms that bestdescribes your race. (You may describe yourself as multiracial or declarethat none of these terms applies.) The lists will be collected, counted, anddiscussed in class.

2. On another card or slip of paper labeled “U. S.,” list the races in theUnited States today. For each of those groups, estimate its percentage ofthe U. S. population (currently about 300 million total). These slips willbe collected, analyzed, and discussed in class.

3. Your instructor will provide you with the questions about race and ethnicidentification asked on the current U. S. Census standard form. Answer

Recommended Reading 53

these questions on a slip of paper or card labeled “Census.” These willalso be collected, analyzed, and discussed in class.

Recommended Reading1. Alland’s and Shanklin’s volumes state anthropology’s view of race in useful and

thoughtful ways. Race is a collection of case studies of American notions of race con-cerning blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Asian Americans, and others.

Alland, Alexander. 2004. Race in Mind: Race, IQ, and Other Racisms. New York: BergPublishers.

Gregory, Steven, and Roger Sanjek, eds. 1994. Race. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-versity Press.

Shanklin, Eugenia. 1994. Anthropology and Race: The Explanation of Differences. Belmont,CA: Wadsworth.

2. De Waal criticizes humans’ “anthropocentrism,” or claim to human superiority overother primates such as apes and monkeys. On the other hand, Kemp and Smith sug-gest that language abilities lie along a continuum from bee to human being, withapes and monkeys in the middle.

De Waal, Frans. 2001. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist.New York: Basic Books.

Kemp, William, and Roy Smith. 1998. “Signals, Signs, and Words: From AnimalCommunication to Language.” In Language: Readings in Language and Culture, 6th ed.,eds. Virginia Clark, Paul Eschholz, and Alfred Rosa, 658–80. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s.

3. A favorable treatment of the culture concept in anthropology in today’s world,including an historical summary of what the concept has meant in its two centuriesof use.

Kuper, Adam. 2000. Culture: The Anthropologist’s Account. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

4. Globalization hasn’t eliminated the need to think in terms of culture. Edited byanthropologists at the World Bank, this book brings together case studies by writersof international renown—including but not limited to cultural anthropologists—todemonstrate that culture is still central to economic development in many countries.Text, videos, and discussion of the book are at www.cultureandpublicaction.org.

Rao, Viyayendra, and Michael Walton, eds. 2004. Culture and Public Action. Palo Alto,CA: Stanford University Press.

what is culture? the conceptual question

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