Anth 103

Fall 2007

Chapter Two: Understanding Culture

• Culture
• Acculturation
• Enculturation
• Race and Racism
• Cultural relativism
• Ethnocentrism
• Emic [phoneme]
• Etic [phonetic]

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Culture
• British anthropologist Edward Tylor: culture is that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of society (1871); assumed culture to
be a uniquely human trait; differentiated between biologically inherited and
socially transmitted human traits
• Language a key element of humankind’s uniqueness; ability to use symbols to
conduct and convey meaning in the abstract
• Continuum: at one end, culture as a thing in and of itself: static and, at the other,
[postmodernists] culture as constructed and interpreted by individuals: fluid and
dynamic
• Two processes in cultural change: innovation [new variation on an existing
cultural pattern that is accepted into the larger society—domestication of plants]
and diffusion [any or all of the ways a people take up part or all of another
culture—not automatic, but selective as borrowed elements are integrated into
existing cultural patterns—use of horse]

[Bodley]:
aspects of culture: mental [what people think]; behavioral [what people do]; and
material [what people produce]; socially transmitted information that shapes
human action

features: patterned, symbolic, shared, socially transmitted, ethnocentric,

conservative, normative, dynamic, historical
• socially transmitted and shared; symbolic and patterned; conservative [yet it
changes, it has a history and tells people what is best and proper]; shared:

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social phenomenon where idiosyncratic behavior is not the norm; learned

and not biologically inherited [biological sex v. gender roles]; arbitrarily
assigned, symbolic meanings [human ability to assign arbitrary meaning to
any object, behavior, or condition makes culture enormously creative and
helps distinguish culture from animal behavior]

functions: regulation, maintenance, survival and reproduction, fitness-

enhancement
• guarantee human survival and reproduction; unique means by which people
in a given society [interacting, intermarrying human population sharing a
common culture] satisfy their human needs, regulate the size of their society
and the distribution of social power, and manage natural resources; gives
people power to produce and distribute resources in ways that can make
entire groups prosper or decline—key to human survival and well-being;
beyond survival to establishing a sustainable balance between resources and
consumption while maintaining a satisfying and secure society; adaptation is
an ongoing process

The learned and shared ways of behaving typical of a particular human group;
study culture in general and attempt to discover laws of cultural development that
apply to the whole of humankind

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Culture is the learned, shared understandings among a group of people about

how to behave and what everything means.

• Learned – not inborn

• Shared – all group members do this (not unique)
• Understanding – culture is in people’s minds
• Group – collectivity – all members of the group share this culture (large or
small groups)
• Behave – guides individuals actions within the group – sometimes
unconscious habits (tone of voice raised at end of question) – sometimes
rules & knowledge (drive on the right/pass on the left)
• Means – culture provides guidance on what to do, how to do it, & when –
also predicts and interprets what others will do and say

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Society/Culture: group of people organized into social relationships to perform

certain tasks – usually has own territory, perpetuates itself over generations, and is
at least partly self-governing – specifies what the social relationships should be,
how to perform tasks, and why to go to the trouble in the first place

Subculture: particular mix of shared understandings held by groups within a

larger society – language, dress, religion, habits of work, food preferences, &
child-raising practices, etc.

Ethnic group: group within a society that maintains a subculture based on

religion, language, common origin, or ancestral traditions – invest effort to
distinguish itself from others in the wider society – usually share some culture with
other ethnic groups in order to participate in the political and economic life of the
society of which they are parts [ethnic flags -- accents, dress, etc]

Ethnicity: one’s identification with or participation in an ethnic group – may be

multiple, unclear to oneself, or vary depending on the social situation – complex &
fluid

Acculturation:
• culture change brought about by contact between peoples with different
cultures; usually refers to the loss of traditional culture when the members of
domestic-scale cultures adopt elements of commercial-scale cultures
• consider the “disappearance of the Indian”

Enculturation:
• acquiring or learning culture – how children are raised – teach, imitate,
correct, and so come to share a culture

Ethnocentrism:
• Evaluating other cultures from the perspective of one’s own presumably
superior culture; looking at and judging other people through the narrow
perspective of one’s own culture

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Cultural relativity/relativism:
• Understanding a culture from the point of view of its participants;
understanding other cultures by their own categories, which are assumed to be
valid and worthy of respect

Emic/Etic
• emic—phonemic [unique sound recognized as significant by speakers of a
given language]; insider’s view of a particular culture; cultural meanings
derived from inside a given culture and presumed to be unique to that culture
• etic—phonetic [records sounds as heard by a nonspeaker of the language who
does not know which sound distinctions are meaningful]; outsider’s view of a
culture; point out causes and consequences of particular patterns of which
people in that culture may not be conscious; cultural meanings as translated for
cross-cultural comparison

By taking the outsider’s view of our own society and culture, we can understand it
more objectively and perhaps use this understanding to make more rational
changes in our own lives.

Biology & Culture:

Race and Racism
• Anthropology demonstrates that race is not a valid scientific category but
rather a cultural construct.
• Clinal variation – skin color, hair color, hair texture, height, eye color, etc.
• Race is a socio-cultural construct [a conceptual model of reality]
• Racism – when policies come into being to support the belief that actual or
alleged differences between racial groups indicate the superiority of one of
them

Cultural Anthropology today – not what are the races of humankind, but rather
what races do people of this or that culture imagine there are? What does the
group think about human biological diversity & why does it label differences in
that way?

[text p. 33-34] – culture is learned, shared, ideas about, & patterns of behavior
– [internally consistent (basic behaviors) & inconsistent (contradictory themes –

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Thomas Jefferson while espousing freedom owned slaves) – individualism-

groupism continuum [how groups behave] – approach a culture as systematically
integrated as a whole yet expect to find real or apparent contradictions

[Kottak, 1997] -- Cultures are

• Integrated [one part is related to another part] – holistic system
• Products of history [outcomes of past practices]
• (can be) Changed and can cause change [can change rapidly – technology;
alters and is altered by the biology of the population – small pox/cowpox] --
interactions of human biology, environment, & culture [forest dwellers,
metal axes, alter or eliminate their forest]
• Strengthened by values [shared understandings of what is good & right to
do and be as well as what is bad & wrong] -- relativistic experience when
looking at other cultures [without judging by our own standards/can even
become self-critical about the way we examine our own culture]
• Powerful determinants of behavior [people are not puppets – culture 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
feel bad if we don’t do right or is being done by everybody else so we
conform to be accepted] -- all of us break rules sometimes in order to do
something alternative, deviant, unique, or creative
• Largely composed of and transmitted by symbols [symbol – anything to
which its users assign meaning – meaning is given by the culture and may be
quite arbitrary – may have no obvious relationship to its given meaning --
actions, objects, human languages, verbal or visual – ads: if you buy this,
you will become something other than you are

Human culture is unique in complexity and variability [debate: some propose that
the abilities of other species indicate a continuum in cultural behavior between
humans & other animals – to claim we humans are unique may not be productive
or useful – others argue that yes, we are unique even while acknowledging that
some other species are social (honeybees, wolves, chimpanzees) because these
shared understandings (complex behaviors, communication, & problem-solving)
are not learned and expressed symbolically]

Cultural process:
Cultures adapt and change – Culture is fluid & negotiable
• Not just an inventory of understandings shared by one society in one place
• An adjustment of interacting groups

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Culture is treated as a constructed phenomenon – not necessarily dictated by

reality – groups construct and create understandings by selecting this & ignoring
that, & making up another thing

Culture is expected to be mixed – multicultural in that each of us has learned

several cultures

What isn’t culture?

• Not the same as civilization
• Not the same as being refined or sophisticated
• Not the same as society [although we often intermix these terms] – a society,
by means of the interactions among its members, creates, shares, and
perpetuates a culture
• Not the explanation for everything people do – just that there is a cultural
element to human behavior
• Not behavior -- although it guides behavior
• Not just food customs, musical traditions, & colorful costumes – aspects are
easily noticed, shared, even marketed – much that occurs during an ordinary
day -- guides choices
• Not complete agreement or consensus - share culture but could disagree
about some aspects (how to raise children, the eating of certain foods,
whether an all-powerful God would permit evil to happen to good people