ANTH101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Barbara Myerhoff, Franz Boas, Unilineality
5 Sep 2016
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Defining culture: that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Tylor, 1871: culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a group of people. c. Culture is symbolic and material: norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality. Mental maps represent a person"s attempt to distill the complex world around them into more simplistic, recognizable, understandable categories. They reflect the knowledge, values, norm and symbolism to which we have be encultured. Two dominant ways in which we misuse our mental maps in cross cultural interactions: essentialism and the process of essentializing. An reductionist process in which we categorize individuals and groups by relative fixed sets of cultural and/or biological traits. Stereotypes: positive and negative: ethnocentrism, racism, sexism.
