ANTH1008 Lecture 2: Concepts, Perspectives, and Attitudes
ANTH1008 Lecture Two: Concepts, Perspectives, and Attitudes
• The term 'culture' is derived from the Latin root cultus for cultivated. It is related to
'cult', 'agriculture', and other usages such as bacteria culture. The common thread among
all the usages involves raising something or growing into a particular form.
• Culture is "sets of learned behaviour and ideas that human beings acquire as members
of society. Humans use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live."
(Lavenda and Shultz 2015: 230). It's "those ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, and
the material products if those ways, which are shared among the group of people not on
the basis of innate or physical traits but rather the basis of common experience and
mutual learning (Eller 2009:26). It's "the learned, shared understandings among a group
of people about how to behave and what everything means." (Omohundro 2008:27)
• When it comes to human culture it refers to how people are raised and formed to
become the kinds of individuals who can take place in that society (Eller 2009:25)
• Before anthropology, the term 'culture' was as elitist or exclusivist term (still is on
occasion). It meant something was of 'high culture', e.g. Opera, symphony, the works of
Shakespeare, imported wines, proper table manners, appreciation of the fine arts, etc. It
meant to have refined or sophisticated taste (Eller 2009:24). Culture is "the best which
has been thought or said in the world" (Arnold 1869).
• Anthropologists see culture as all encompassing, and it includes the trivial and popular
culture. "As a cultural manifestation, a rock star may be as interesting as a symphony
conductor, a comic book as significant as an award-winning book." (Kottak 2011:29).
"Culture encompasses the everyday and the esoteric, the mundane and the elevated, the
ridiculous and the sublime. Neither high nor low, culture is all-pervasive" (Rosaldo
1989:26).
• Culture is universal. Every human group has culture, and are all equally cultural
• However, culture is difficult to define accurately, there is no single official definition.
"Are you still having a hard time putting your finger on just what culture is? Are you
getting that uncomfortable feeling that culture may be messy and unwieldy?
Congratulations! You have arrived." (Lassiter 2006:50)
• There are several characteristics of culture that are generally agreed upon:
-learned: culture is taught directly, e.g. When parents teach their children to say thank
you. Culture is also transmitted through observation, consciously (e.g. Seeing someone
getting scolded for misbehaving), and unconsciously (e.g. The appropriate distance to
leave between people when talking to them). The process is called enculturation (or
socialisation), in which culture is leaned and transmitted across the generations (Kottak
2011: 27), and is happening all the time
-shared: culture is not an attribute of individuals per se but of individuals as members
of groups (Kottak 2011:28). Since culture is learnt it obviously can't be a trait or
possession of one individual (Eller 2009:28). To say that culture is shared does not
mean that it is shared equally by all members. To some extent culture caries from
person to person, yet despite this variation some cultural understandings allow members
to communicate, and to interact with one another.
-integrated: cultures are not haphazard collections of customs and beliefs, but are
integrated, pattern system, if one part of the system changes then others do too. A set of
cores values integrated each culture and helps distinguishes it from others. The core
values being key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture (Kottak 2011:32)
-symbolic: Clifford Geertz (1973:5) saw "man" as "an animal suspended in webs of
significance he himself has spun", and understood culture to be these webs. The
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
analysis of culture is not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive
one in search of meaning (Geertz 1973:5).
• Symbols are something verbal or nonverbal that stands for something else (Kottak
2011:27), anything to which the users assign meaning (Omohundro 2008:38). Some
symbols have deep layers of significance and others have simpler meanings. An
individual is largely enculturated through symbolic communication whether verbal or
nonverbal, human languages are even symbolic. Most of human behaviour is symbolic
in that it carries meaning assigned to it by the participants (Omohundro 2008:39). A
symbol is a meaning is arbitrary, not immediate, natural, or necessary. The meaning that
is attached to a symbol depends on the society and even the point in history.
• There is a disagreement about what we should include under the culture umbrella
-material culture— is this culture or the product of culture?
-behaviour—culture was originally used to refer to a people’s way of life, therefore
culture is patterned behaviour (but other animals have patterned behaviours also e.g.
Bees and ants)
-ideas— anthropologists shifted their focus from patterns of behaviour to patterns for
behaviour. Culture became a mental phenomenon (culture as ideational system)
• Some anthropologists take an ideational view of culture: "culture is in people's minds",
"culture is not behaviour, although it guides behaviour" (Omohundro (2008 27, 44)
• Other anthropologists include behaviour in their definitions of culture. "Culture: sets of
learned behaviour and ideas that humans acquire as members and society" (Lavenda
and Schultz 2015). Others also include the products of human activity or material
culture; culture is ideas, behaviour and the products of behaviour (Eller 2009:25).
Including behaviour and material culture means that culture is readily observable.
• It is our biology that gives us the capacity to be cultural (e.g. To think symbolically, use
language, use tools etc.) Culture takes our natural urges and teaches us how to express
them in particular ways. Even our bodies are shaped by culture (e.g. Obesity), and we
get sick in cultural ways (i.e. Culture bound syndromes)
• Generations of anthropologists have theorised about the relationship between the
individual and the system (i.e. Culture/society/social structure etc.) The system always
consists of individuals, and individuals are always constrained in some way by the
system (Kottal 2011:37)
• Culture is both a capacity and a constraint
• "The English language is not a particularly good medium in which to discuss such
dialect relations, reflecting as it does an implicit, straightforward cause-and-effect mode
of structure; expressing one thing as a cause and predicting another to it as an effect; an
example of an indigenous psychological constraint" (Lock 1981:19-20)
• As a capacity:
Culture is "the general potential of human individuals to share certain not genetically
inherited routines of thinking, feeling, and acting with other individuals with whom
they are social contact" (Brumann 1999:S6). It is our capacity for patterned behaviour,
emotion and thought. It is our capacity for the creation of meaning from and through
experience.
• As a constraint:
culture is an orientation, or disposition, which results from the accumulation of
experience in social settings. This orientation in effect serves a limiting, or selective
function: it acts as a constraint on experience as we are guided in certain directions.
Cultures are powerful determinants of behaviour, especially because most of what we
have learnt is beneath our awareness, or has become a comfortable habit, or is
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
