Anthropology Appreciating Human Diversity Fifteenth Edition Conrad Phillip

Anthropology Appreciating Human Diversity Fifteenth Edition Conrad Phillip Kottak University of Michigan Mc. Graw-Hill © 2013 Mc. Graw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

C H A P T E R CULTURE 2 -2

CULTURE • • What Is Culture? Culture’s Evolutionary Basis Universality, Generality, and Particularity Culture and the Individual: Agency and Practice • Mechanisms of Cultural Change • Globalization 2 -3

WHAT IS CULTURE? • What is culture and why do we study it? • What is the relation between culture and the individual? • How does culture change—especially with globalization? 2 -4

WHAT IS CULTURE? • Tylor: cultures—systems of human behavior and thought—obey natural laws, so they can be studied scientifically • Includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society • Enculturation: the process by which a child learns his or her culture 2 -5

Culture is Learned • CULTURE IS LEARNED, SYMBOLIC, AND SHARED, ALL-ENCOMPASSING AND INTEGRATED • Cultural learning is unique to humans. • It is the knowledge transmitted through symbols. On the basis of cultural learning, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. 2 -6

CULTURE IS LEARNED • Human cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols • Symbols: signs that have no necessary or natural connection with the things for which they stand • Cultural learning includes knowledge transmitted through symbols. Through this, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. 2 -7

Symbols – Peace Sign 2 -8

Symbols – American Flag 2 -9

Symbols – Confederate Flag 2 -10

Symbols – Cross and Crucifix 2 -11

CULTURE IS LEARNED • Clifford Geertz: culture is ideas based on cultural learning and symbols • Set of control mechanisms for instructions for behavior • Culture is learned through direct instruction and observation • Cultural knowledge is gained consciously and unconsciously • Anthropologists in the 19 th century argued for a “psychic unity of man” • Individuals vary in emotional and intellectual tendencies and capacities • All human population have the same capacity for culture 2 -12

CULTURE IS SYMBOLIC • Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to cultural learning; ability to use symbols is basis of culture • Verbal and nonverbal symbols • Association between symbols and symbolized is arbitrary and conventional • Chimpanzees and gorillas have rudimentary cultural abilities • No animal has elaborated cultural abilities to extent of Homo sapiens 2 -13

CULTURE IS SHARED • Culture is located in and transmitted through groups • Shared beliefs, values, memories, and expectations link people who grow up in the same culture • Enculturation unifies people by providing common experiences • Children learn values and beliefs transmitted over generations • Culture changes but certain fundamental beliefs, values, worldviews, and child-rearing practices remain 2 -14

Culture is Shared 2 -15

CULTURE AND NATURE • Cultural habits, perceptions, and inventions mold human nature • Culture takes natural biological urges and teaches us to express them in particular ways • Teaches what, when and how to eat; teaches bathroom habits • Our culture—and cultural changes—affect the ways in which we perceive nature, human nature, and “the natural” world 2 -16

CULTURE IS ALL-ENCOMPASSING • Anthropology: culture includes features sometimes regarded as trivial or unworthy of serious study; all aspects of human social life • To understand North American culture, one must consider television, fast-food restaurants, sports, and games 2 -17

CULTURE IS INTEGRATED • Cultures are integrated, patterned systems • If one part changes, other parts change • Core values: key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and distinguish it from others • America – work ethic, individualism, materialism, technology, equality 2 -18

CULTURE IS INSTRUMENTAL, ADAPTIVE, AND MALADAPTIVE • Humans have biological (sweating and shivering) and cultural ways (technology and tools) of coping with environmental stress • Culture is also an instrument to fulfill our needs (biological, psychological, and emotional) • Maladaptive • What’s good for an individual isn’t necessarily good for the group’s survival • Many modern cultural patterns may be maladaptive in the long run 2 -19

Oil Spill 2 -20

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CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS • Similarities between humans and apes evident in anatomy, brain structure, genetics, and biochemistry • Most closely related to chimps and gorillas • Hominid: member of hominid family; any fossil or living human, chimp, or gorilla • Hominins: hominids excluding the African apes; all human species that ever existed 2 -23

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS • Many human traits reflect that our primate ancestors lived in trees • Grasping ability and manual dexterity • Five fingered hands with opposable thumbs • • Depth and color vision Learning ability based on a large brain Substantial parental investment in offspring Tendencies toward sociality and cooperation 2 -24

WHAT WE SHARE WITH OTHER PRIMATES • Substantial gap between primate society and fully developed human culture • Still, primates share similarities with humans: • • Learning - Ability to learn and change behavior Tools Aim and throw objects Habitual hunters 2 -25

HOW WE DIFFER FROM OTHER PRIMATES • Cooperation and sharing are much more developed among humans • Human females lack a visible estrus cycle and ovulation is concealed • Humans mate throughout the year • Human pair bonds for mating are more exclusive and durable than those of chimps • Humans have exogamy and kinship systems • Exogamy creates ties with the spouses’ different groups; allies in two kin groups rather than one • Humans maintain lifelong ties with sons and daughters 2 -26

UNIVERSALITY, GENERALITY, AND PARTICULARITY • Universal: exists in every culture • Generality: exists in some but not all societies • Particularity: distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration UNIVERSALITY GENERALITY AND PARTICULARITY 2 -27

UNIVERSALS AND GENERALITIES • Universality • Universal traits are the ones that more or less distinguish Homo sapiens from other species: • Biological: a long period of infant dependency, year -round sexuality, and a complex brain • Social: life in groups and families, marriage, birth, death, spiritual beliefs • Psychological: common ways in which humans think, feel, and process information 2 -28

UNIVERSALS AND GENERALITIES • Generalities – occur in certain times and places, but not in all cultures • Nuclear family • Agriculture • Formal education • Santa Claus Cultural generalities may arise through: • Inheritance • Diffusion (borrowing) • Colonization (domination) • Invention 2 -29

PARTICULARITY: PATTERNS OF CULTURE • Particularity – unique to single place, culture, or society • Cultural particularities are increasingly rare: • Diffusion • Independent invention • When cultural traits are borrowed, traits modified to fit the adopting culture - Cultures display a lot of variation and diversity (life cycle events such as birth, puberty, marriage, parenthood, and death are observed and celebrated differently; occasion is same but observance is different) 2 -30

CULTURE AND THE INDIVIDUAL: AGENCY AND PRACTICE • Generations of anthropologists theorized about the “system” (culture, society, social relations, and social structure) and “individual”: • Cultural rules provide guidance, but people don’t always follow the rules • Culture is contested • Culture is public/collective and individual (how one thinks, feels, and acts); individuals internalize meanings of public/cultural messages and then (alone and in groups) people influence culture by turning their private (often divergent) understandings into public expression 2 -31

Culture and the Individual 2 -32

Agency • Agency: Day-to-day actions make and remake culture (process of action, practice, and resistance) • Agency: the actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities • Practice theory: individuals within society have diverse motives; how individuals, through their actions, influence, create, and transform the world. 2 -33

LEVELS OF CULTURE • National culture: cultural features shared by citizens of the same nation • International culture: cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries • Subcultures: identifiable cultural patterns existing within a larger culture 2 -34

Table 2. 1: Levels of Culture, with Examples from Sports and Foods 2 -35

ETHNOCENTRISM, CULTURAL RELATIVISM, AND HUMAN RIGHTS • Ethnocentrism: tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and to use one’s own standards and values in judging outsiders • Cultural relativism: methodological position; to know another culture requires full understanding of its members’ beliefs and motivations • What are they thinking? • What motivates them? 2 -36

ETHNOCENTRISM, CULTURAL RELATIVISM, AND HUMAN RIGHTS • • Human rights: rights based on justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions • rights vested in the individual • Inalienable: nations cannot terminate them • Free speech, religion without persecution, right to not be murdered, injured, enslaved, or imprisoned without charge Cultural rights: rights vested in religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies • Preserve its cultural traditions • Raise children in the ways of its ancestors • Speak their language • Not to be deprived of economic base Being objective, sensitive, and cross-cultural does not mean anthropologists have to ignore justice and morality. They do not have to approve of customs like infanticide, to recognize their existence and determine their causes and motivations. 2 -37

MECHANISMS OF CULTURAL CHANGE • Diffusion: borrowing of traits between cultures • Direct • Forced • Indirect 2 -38

MECHANISMS OF CULTURAL CHANGE • • Acculturation: exchange of features that results when groups come into consistent first-hand contact; parts of the culture change but each group remains distinct • Mexicans celebrating Mexican Revolution and Cinco de Mayo and the Fourth of July Independent invention: process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems • Canoes to travel • Domesticating animals • Agriculture Cultural generalities are partly explained by the independent invention of similar responses to comparable cultural and environmental circumstances (independent invention of agriculture – led to many social, political, and legal changes, including notions of property and distinctions in wealth, class, and power) 2 -39

GLOBALIZATION • Globalization: series of processes that work to make modern nations and people increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent • Economic and political forces • International commerce and finance, travel and tourism, transnational migration, and media • Information technologies/long-distance communication • Internet: influential in spread of information, emergence of transnational culture of consumption, and ease of long distance communication • Local people must increasingly cope with forces generated by progressively larger systems • Tourism (world’s number one industry) threatens autonomy, identity, and livelihood of many indigenous people 2 -40

Misanthropology 2 -41