ANTH 1002 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Endogamy, Epigenetics, James George Frazer
estGuest Chapter 2: Culture
I. What is culture?
A. Culture: a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are
created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people
B. Culture is learned and taught
B.1. Enculturation: the process of learning culture
B.2. Some learned formally in school, some from experiences and family upbringing
B.3. Many animals learn behaviors from their immediate group
B.4. Cultural institutions: schools, media, religious institutions regulated by rules,
laws, teachers, religious leaders, police officers, and doctors
C. Culture is shared yet contested
C.1. No individual has their own culture → part of many groups
C.2. Constantly contested and changing
D. Culture is symbolic and material
D.1. Norms: ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations
or toward certain other people; some informal, some formally written
D.1.a) Examples like 1940s-80s Germany, African aparteid, and 1940s
America
D.1.b) Discourages exogamy (marriage outside one’s “group”) and
encourages endogamy (marriage within one’s “group”)
D.2. Values: fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life,
and what is true, right, and beautiful
D.2.a) Not fixed, can be debated and have varying degrees of influence
D.3. Symbols: anything that represents something else
D.3.a) Languages, art, religion, politics, and economics
D.3.b) Symbolic communication is nonverbal, action-based and unconscious
D.4. Mental maps of reality: cultural classifications of what kinds of people and
things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications
D.4.a) Ways to organize data that comes to an individual; shaped through
enculturation
D.4.b) Mental maps classify reality → Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) created
systems of classification for the natural world including the five kingdoms of the
phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species
D.4.c) Dividing into time like days, weeks, and years → cultural constructs
D.4.d) Adapt to time in the global system → time zones
D.4.e) Issues arise when people think cultural notions of difference are
natural → ie, there is no biological basis of race
D.4.f) Assign meaning to what has been classified
II. How has the culture concept developed in anthropology
A. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917): “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense,
is 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”
B. Early evolutionary frameworks
B.1. Tylor, James Frazer (1854-1941) and Henry Morgan (1818-1881) → early
anthropologists, influenced by Darwin
B.2. Created a continuum from most simple to most complex using savage,
barbarian, and civilized and used categories of places to trace human evolution
B.3. Unilateral cultural evolution: the theory proposed by the 19th-century
anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages
from simple to complex
C. American historical particularism
C.1. Franz Boas (1858-1942): rejected unilateral cultural evolution and advocated for
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Document Summary
What is culture? estguest chapter 2: culture, culture: a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group of people, culture is learned and taught. Some learned formally in school, some from experiences and family upbringing. Many animals learn behaviors from their immediate group. Cultural institutions: schools, media, religious institutions regulated by rules, laws, teachers, religious leaders, police officers, and doctors: culture is shared yet contested. No individual has their own culture part of many groups. Constantly contested and changing: culture is symbolic and material. Norms: ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people; some informal, some formally written. Examples like 1940s-80s germany, african aparteid, and 1940s. Values: fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful. Not fixed, can be debated and have varying degrees of influence.
