What's Culture

7/28/2019 What's Culture

1/26

INTRODUCTION

Culture, in anthropology, the patterns of behavior andthinking that people living in social groups learn, create,and share. Culture distinguishes one human group from

others. It also distinguishes humans from other animals. Apeoples culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior,********, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways ofproducing and cooking food, religion, and political andeconomic systems.Culture is the most important concept in anthropology (thestudy of all aspects of human life, past and present).Anthropologists commonly use the term culture to refer to asociety or group in which many or all people live and think inthe same ways. Likewise, any group of people who share acommon cultureand in particular, common rules ofbehavior and a basic form of social organizationconstitutesa society. Thus, the terms culture and societyare somewhatinterchangeable. However, while many animals live insocieties, such as herds of elk or packs of wild dogs, onlyhumans have culture.Culture developed together with the evolution of the humanspecies,Homo sapiens, and is closely related to humanbiology. The ability of people to have culture comes in largepart from their physical features: having big, complexbrains; an upright posture; free hands that can grasp and

manipulate small objects; and a vocal tract that can produceand articulate a wide range of sounds. These distinctivelyhuman physical features began to develop in Africanancestors of humans more than four million years ago. Theearliest physical evidence of culture is crude stone toolsproduced in East Africa over two million years ago.IITHE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE

Culture has several distinguishing characteristics. (1) It isbased onsymbolsabstract ways of referring to and

understanding ideas, objects, feelings, or behaviorsandthe ability to communicate with symbols using ********. (2)Culture is shared. People in the same society share commonbehaviors and ways of thinking through culture. (3) Cultureis learned. While people biologically inherit many physicaltraits and behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited.A person must learn culture from other people in a society.(4) Culture is adaptive. People use culture to flexibly andquickly adjust to changes in the world around them.A

Culture Is Symbolic


2/26

People have culture primarily because they cancommunicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allowpeople to develop complex thoughts and to exchange thosethoughts with others. ******** and other forms of symboliccommunication, such as art, enable people to create,

explain, and record new ideas and information.A symbol has either an indirect connection or no connectionat all with the object, idea, feeling, or behavior to which itrefers. For instance, most people in the United States findsome meaning in the combination of the colors red, white,and blue. But those colors themselves have nothing to dowith, for instance, the land that people call the UnitedStates, the concept of patriotism, or the U.S. nationalanthem, The Star Spangled Banner.To convey new ideas, people constantly invent new symbols,such as for mathematical formulas. In addition, people mayuse one symbol, such as a single word, to represent manydifferent ideas, feelings, or values. Thus, symbols provide aflexible way for people to communicate even very complexthoughts with each other. For example, only throughsymbols can architects, engineers, and construction workerscommunicate the information necessary to construct askyscraper or bridge.People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand,and communicate through symbols, primarily by using********. Research has shown, for example, that infants have

a basic structure of ********a sort of universal grammarbuilt into their minds. Infants are thus predisposed to learnthe ********s spoken by the people around them.******** provides a means to store, process, andcommunicate amounts of information that vastly exceed thecapabilities of nonhuman animals. For instance,chimpanzees, the closest genetic relatives of humans, use afew dozen calls and a variety of gestures to communicate inthe wild. People have taught some chimps to communicateusing American Sign ******** and picture-based ********s,and some have developed vocabularies of a few hundred

words. But an unabridged English dictionary might containmore than half-a-million vocabulary entries. Chimpanzeeshave also not clearly demonstrated the ability to usegrammar, which is crucial for communicating complexthoughts.In addition, the human vocal tract, unlike that ofchimpanzees and other animals, can create and articulate awide enough variety of sounds to create millions of distinctwords. In fact, each human ******** uses only a fraction ofthe sounds humans can make. The human brain also

contains areas dedicated to the production andinterpretation of speech, which other animals lack. Thus,


3/26

humans are predisposed in many ways to use symboliccommunication.BCulture Is Learned

People are not born with culture; they have to learn it. Forinstance, people must learn to speak and understand a******** and to abide by the rules of a society. In manysocieties, all people must learn to produce and prepare foodand to construct shelters. In other societies, people mustlearn a skill to earn money, which they then use to providefor themselves. In all human societies, children learn culturefrom adults. Anthropologists call thisprocess enculturation, or cultural transmission.Enculturation is a long process. Just learning the intricaciesof a human ********, a major part of enculturation, takesmany years. Families commonly protect and enculturatechildren in the households of their birth for 15 years ormore. Only at this point can children leave and establishtheir own households. People also continue to learnthroughout their lifetimes. Thus, most societies respecttheir elders, who have learned for an entire lifetime.Humans are not alone in their ability to learn behaviors, onlyin the amount and complexity of what they can learn. Forexample, members of a group of chimpanzees may learn touse a unique source of food or to fashion some simple tools,

behaviors that might distinguish them from otherchimpanzee groups. But these unique ways of life are minorin comparison to the rich cultures that distinguish differenthuman societies. Lacking speech, chimps are very limited inwhat they can learn, communicate to others, and pass onfrom generation to generation.CCulture Is Shared

People living together in a society share culture. Forexample, almost all people living in the United States share

the English ********, dress in similar styles, eat many of thesame foods, and celebrate many of the same holidays.All the people of a society collectively create and maintainculture. Societies preserve culture for much longer than thelife of any one person. They preserve it in the form ofknowledge, such as scientific discoveries; objects, such asworks of art; and traditions, such as the observance ofholidays.C1Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Self-identity usually depends on culture to such a great


4/26

extent that immersion in a very different culturewithwhich a person does not share common ways of life orbeliefscan cause a feeling of confusion and disorientation.Anthropologists refer to this phenomenon as culture shock.In multicultural societiessocieties such as the United

States into which people come from a diversity of culturesunshared forms of culture can also lead to tension.Members of a society who share culture often also sharesome feelings ofethnocentrism, the notion that onesculture is more sensible than or superior to that of othersocieties. Ethnocentrism contributes to the integrity ofculture because it affirms peoples shared beliefs and valuesin the face of other, often contradictory, beliefs and valuesheld by people of other cultural backgrounds. At its worst,ethnocentrism has led people to commit ethnocide, thedestruction of cultures, and genocide, the destruction ofentire populations. This happened, for example, to Jewsliving in Nazi Germany in the 1940s (see Holocaust; NationalSocialism).Anthropologists, knowing the power of ethnocentrism,advocate cross-cultural understanding through a conceptknown as cultural relativism.Someone observing culturalrelativism tries to respect all cultures equally. Although onlysomeone living within a group that shares culture can fullyunderstand that culture, cultural relativists believe thatoutsiders can learn to respect beliefs and practices that

they do not share.However, most anthropologists believe that culturalrelativism has its limits. In theory, an extreme relativistwould uncritically accept the practices of all cultures, even ifthose practices harm people. For example, anthropologistshave debated over whether they should accept or approveof the practice of female circumcision, performed in manyAfrican societies. Female circumcision involves removingpart or all of a womans labia and clitoris and is usuallyperformed on girls entering adolescence. This practice ispainful, and often harmful, to the women of societies that

perform it, but many of those societies claim that thepractice is important and deeply rooted in their culture.C2Sharing Culture Across Societies

Since no human society exists in complete isolation,different societies also exchange and share culture. In fact,all societies have some interactions with others, both out ofcuriosity and because even highly self-sufficient societiessometimes need assistance from their neighbors. Today, for

instance, many people around the world use similar kinds oftechnology, such as cars, telephones, and televisions.


5/26

Commercial trade and communication technologies, such ascom****r networks, have created a form of global culture.Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult to find culturethat is shared within only a single society.Cultural exchange can provide many benefits for all

societies. Different societies can exchange ideas, people,manufactured goods, and natural resources. Suchexchanges can also have drawbacks, however. Often theintroduction of aspects of another societys culture candisrupt the cohesive life of a people. For example, theintroduction of consumerism into many small societies hasled to what anthropologists refer to ascargo cults. In cargocults, people focus much of their religious energy and timeon trying to magically acquire commercial goods.Cross-cultural exchange often results in whatanthropologists call acculturation, when the members of oneculture adopt features of another. This has happened, forexample, when indigenous peoples in the westernhemisphere adopted the ******** and many of the customs ofSpain, which colonized South and Central America beginningin the 1500s.C3Subcultures

Some groups of people share a distinct set of cultural traitswithin a larger society. Such groups are often referred to as

subcultures. For instance, the members of a subculture mayshare a distinct ******** or dialect (variation based on thedominant ********), unique rituals, and a particular style ofdress. In the United States and Canada, many stronglyintegrated religious groups, such as rural Mennonitecommunities, have the characteristics of subcultures.DCulture Is Adaptive

Culture helps human societies survive in changing naturalenvironments. For example, the end of the last Ice Age,

beginning about 15,000 years ago, posed an enormouschallenge to which humans had to adapt. Before this time,large portions of the northern hemisphere were covered ingreat sheets of ice that contained much of the earthswater. In North America, large game animals that roamedthe vast tundra provided people with food and materials forclothing and simple shelters. When the earth warmed, largeIce Age game animals disappeared, and many land areaswere submerged by rising sea levels from melting ice. Butpeople survived. They developed new technologies and

learned how to subsist on new plant and animal species.Eventually some people settled into villages of permanent,


6/26

durable houses and farms.Cultural adaptation has made humans one of the mostsuccessful species on the planet. Through history, majordevelopments in technology, medicine, and nutrition haveallowed people to reproduce and survive in ever-increasing

numbers. The global population has risen from 8 millionduring the Ice Age to almost 6 billion today(seePopulation: World Population Growth and Distribution).However, the successes of culture can also create problemsin the long run. Over the last 200 years, people have begunto use large quantities of natural resources and energy andto produce a great amount of material and chemical wastes.The global population now consumes some crucial naturalresourcessuch as petroleum, timber, and mineral oresfaster than nature can produce them. Many scientistsbelieve that in the process of burning fuels and producingwastes, people may be altering the global climate inunpredictable and possibly harmful ways (see GlobalWarming). Thus, the adaptive success of the present-dayglobal culture of production and commerce may betemporary.Culture must benefit people, at least in the short term, inorder for it to be passed on to new generations. But it canclearly also harm some people. The number of people livingin severe poverty near the end of the 20th century waslarger than the entire population of the world in ad 1500.

IIICATEGORIES OF CULTURE

Anthropologists have described a number of differentcategories of culture. For example, a simple distinction canbe made between cultural objects, such as types of clothing,and cultural beliefs, such as forms of religion. Many earlyanthropological definitions of culture are essentiallydescriptions of categories of culture or cultural items.British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor gave one of the firstcomplete definitions of culture in his bookPrimitive

Culture (1871). His definition stated that culture includessocially acquired knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals,customs, and habits. In 1930 American anthropologistGeorge P. Murdock went much further, listing 637 majorsubdivisions of culture. Murdock developed an elaboratecoding system, known as the Human Relation Area Files. Heused this system to identify and sort hundreds of distinctivecultural variations that could be used to compare differentcultures.Later anthropologists came up with simpler categorizations

of culture. A common practice is to divide all of culture intothree broad categories: material, social, and ideological. A


7/26

fourth category, the arts, has characteristics of bothmaterial and ideological culture.Material culture includes products of human manufacture,such as technology. Social culture pertains to peoples formsof social organizationhow people interact and organize

themselves in groups.Ideological culture relates to whatpeople think, value, believe, and hold as ideals. Thearts include such activities and areas of interest as music,sculpture, painting, pottery, theater, cooking, writing, andfashion. Anthropologists often study how these categoriesof culture differ across different types of societies that varyin scale (size and complexity).Anthropologists have identified several distinct types ofsocieties by scale. The smallest societies are known asbands. Bands consist of nomadic (not settled) groups offewer than a hundred, mostly related people. A tribe, thenext largest type of society, generally consists of a fewhundred people living in settled villages. A larger form ofsociety, called a chiefdom, binds together two or morevillages or tribes under a leader who is born into theposition of rule. The largest societies, known as civilizations,contain from several thousand to millions of mostlyunrelated people, many of whom live in large cities. Someanthropologists characterize the world today as a singleglobal-scale culture, in which people are linked together byindustrial technology and markets of commercial exchange.

AMaterial Culture

All societies produce and exchange material goods so thatpeople can feed, clothe, shelter, and otherwise provide forthemselves. This system is commonly known as an economy.Anthropologists look at several aspects of peoples materialculture. These aspects include (1) the methods by whichpeople obtain or produce food, known as apattern ofsubsistence; (2) the ways in which people exchange goodsand services; (3) the kinds of technologies and other objects

people make and use; and (4) the effects of peopleseconomy on the natural environment.A1Patterns of Subsistence

People in band societies live as hunter-gatherers (alsoknown asforagers), collecting plants and taking animalsfrom their environment. People living in tribes or chiefdomscommonly practice horticulture (gardening) or pastoralism(animal herding). Many horticultural societies, such as the

Hanuno of the Philippines, practice what is knownas swidden or the slash-and-burn method of gardening. This


8/26

involves cutting down a patch of forest, burning the plantmatter to release nutrients into the soil, and plantinggardens. After about three years, the swidden gardenersmove to another patch of forest, allowing their old gardensto return to forest. Pastoralists, such as the Masai of east

Africa, may also grow food in small gardens to supplementtheir diets of milk, meat, and blood.Many peoples living in larger societies, such the Han ofnorthern China, practice manual (sometimes calledextensive) agriculture and produce surpluses of food andother goods. Some surpluses create wealth, while surplusfoods are commonly stored for use in times of need.Because of this surplus production, some people workin nonsubsistence (not food-producing) activities. Peoplenot involved in food production may work, for example, ascraftspeople, religious practitioners, or politicaladministrators. Manual agriculture also supported earlycivilizations such as Sumer, which existed from about 3000to about 1800 bc in what is now Iraq.Agriculture in nonindustrialized societies relies on systemsof irrigation run from natural waterways, animal-poweredplowing, and natural methods of fertilization, such as theuse of rotted vegetation to add nutrients to soil. Animal-powered plow agriculture and irrigation involve more time,energy, and material inputs than do swidden gardening,pastoralism, or hunting and gathering.

The food production in large, industrial and commerce-based societiessuch as the United States and WesternEuropedepends on expensive machinery, vast supplies offossil fuels to power that machinery, automated irrigationsystems, and great quantities of chemical fertilizers andpesticides. This form of production, known as intensiveagriculture, is more costly than any other, but producesquantities of food vast enough to allow most people to workin nonsubsistence activities.A2Forms of Exchange

People in small societies commonly exchange goods witheach other and with people in other small societies throughsystems of barter, ceremonies, and gifts. For example, thepeople of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea,practice an elaborate form of inter-island exchange knownas the kula. Through the kula, people living on differentislands continually exchange prestige goods, such asbeautiful shell necklaces, as well as food, clothing, weapons,and other items. Such systems of ongoing exchange of

goods, common to all societies, create long-lasting bondsbetween people.


9/26

Contemporary industrial societies have organized marketsfor land, labor, and money, and virtually everything is acommodity. People buy and sell goods and services usingmoney. This form of economy, known as capitalism,disconnects the value of goods and services from the goods

and services themselves and the people who produce orprovide them. Thus, the exchange of goods and services forcurrency is not particularly important for creating socialbonds. In industrialized and commerce-based societies,people also exchange securities (such as the stocks ofcorporations), which have value based on theirrepresentation of ownership, and derivatives, whose value isbased on that of underlying securities.A3Technology and Manufacture

In small societies people usually build shelters and makeclothing out of readily available plant and animal materials.For example, in forest horticultural societies in the Amazonregion of South America, people make houses of woodenbranches covered with layers of palm leaves.Band and tribal peoples also use fairly simple technologiesfor work. People commonly use sticks to dig the ground forplanting or for getting at edible roots. They may use animalhides or plant materials such as tree bark to make clothingand sacs or baskets for carrying items. Hunters take their

prey either with sharpened sticks or with arrowheads ofstone or bone attached to wooden shafts. Some coat the tipsof their arrows with poisons gathered from plants oranimals. Poisoned weapons can quickly disable prey. Peoplewho live by water commonly make boats of wood and animalskins for travel, fishing, and the hunting of sea mammalssuch as seals and whales. Most hunter-gatherers,horticulturists, and pastoralists cook over open fires.In primarily agricultural societies, many of which still existtoday in countries throughout Africa and Asia, the peoplebuild sturdy houses of sun-dried mud brick and thatch,

wooden beams, or quarried stone. These people commonlyproduce beautiful and functional ceramic storage containersand other pottery, finely woven textiles, and tools of forgedmetal. People in agricultural societies also have manymethods of cooking using pots and ovens of mud brick orstone.In large industrial and commerce-based societies, mostpeople live in wood-frame or brick houses and apartmentbuildings with plumbing, supplies of electricity and naturalgas, and telephone service. Much of the material culture in

these societies consists of mass-produced goods createdthrough industrial production. A great deal of food and


10/26

clothing are produced in this way. The variety of commonhousehold technologies includes televisions, stereos,microwave ovens, and com****rs. Many people work in giantskyscrapers built from metal girders and beams, concrete,and high-strength glass. People and goods can travel great

distances by automobile, train, plane, and ship. Othersignificant technologies include artificial satellites,enormously potent and complex weaponry systems, andreactors for producing nuclear energy.A4Effects on the Environment

Hunting and gathering, horticultural, and pastoral ways oflife generally make small demands on the naturalenvironment, because people tend to gather or grow onlyenough food and other materials for their basic needs.These nomadic or seminomadic societies can also moveaway from depleted areas, allowing plants to regrow andanimals to repopulate.Agricultural societies can heavily burden the environment,sometimes endangering their own survival. For example,early Mediterranean civilizations deforested and overgrazedlarge areas of land. These damages to the land promptedsoil erosion, which made food production increasingly costlyover time.Industrial societies put even larger demands on the

environment, and they may someday exhaust importantsupplies of natural resources. The mass production of goodsis often wasteful and polluting. Thus, large societies mustalso put great effort into disposing of their wastes anddeveloping new sources of energy and material resources.BSocial Culture

People in all types of societies organize themselves inrelation to each other for work and other duties, and tostructure their interactions. People commonly organize

themselves according to (1) bonds by kinship and marriage,(2) work duties and economic position, and (3) politicalposition. Important factors in family, work, and politicalrelations include age and gender (behaviors and rolesassociated with men and women).B1Kinship and Family

In smaller societies people organize themselves primarilyaccording to ties of kinship (blood relation) and marriage.

Kin generally give each other preferential treatment overnonkin. People who share ties by blood and marriage


11/26

commonly live together in families.See also Kinship andDescent.Small societies categorize kin in many different ways anddefine appropriate types of behavior between kin, includingwho can marry. In band societies, people know their

relationships to others in their band, which usually includesonly a few families. People do not marry within theirimmediate family, but often take spouses from other bandsto create ties that bond them together in times of need.All people in bands generally respect each other as equals,though children must show increased respect for theirelders. The eldest group members often earn specialrecognition for their knowledge. Men and women in bandsalso commonly regard each other as equals.People living in tribes belong to lineages or clans, which arelarge kin groups that trace their descent to a commonancestor. Clans are somewhat larger than lineages andusually cover more generations. Clans trace their descent toa fictitiousancestor(ancestor whose true identity is notknown), often identified as an animal spirit or clantotem(see Totemism).For instance, many Native American societies (see NativeAmericans of North America: Social and PoliticalOrganization), in both North and South America, live or oncelived in tribes. One Native American group, the Navajo, whohave long lived primarily in what is now Arizona, organized

themselves in the past as matrilineal (descent tracedthrough women) clan-based tribes. Status and propertypassed to people through their mothers line.Kinship and family relations are both important inagricultural societies, as well as for many people inindustrial and commerce-based societies. But for manypeople today living in large societies, kinship and familyrelations have become less important. Many people livealone or in small families and also depend on organizations,workplaces, and government institutions to provide supportavailable in smaller societies from family and kin.

B2Work Life

Anthropologists call the smallest unit of economicproduction in any society a household. A household consistsof a group of people, usually a family, who work collectivelyto support each other and often to raise children.In small, independent band and tribal societies, individualhouseholds produce their own food, clothing, and shelter.Men and women commonly divide work duties; men hunting

and building shelters and women gardening, cooking, andcaring for children. People in small societies often live in


12/26

extended families, in which several generations of kin andrelatives by marriage live in the same household.Sometimes, however, men and women live in separateplaces, especially if they also often work and participate inceremonies apart from members of the opposite ***.

Inchiefdoms and civilizations, households have to produceenough to support themselves and their leaders. Allhouseholds do not always have equal access to neededmaterials, such as tools or draft animals, or land. Thus,some families have higher status than others do. On thewhole, men in these societies have higher status thanwomen and perform fewer menial tasks.In civilizations, many people specialize in offering a varietyof services and producing a variety of goods. Eachoccupation is commonly associated with a different level ofstatus, usually referred to as an economic class. Hindus inIndia, by comparison, live according to the caste system, inwhich a persons status is fixed at birth and closely tied tohis or her occupation.In industrial societies, few households are self-sufficient.For instance, most people could not build their own houses,grow and cook all of their own food, and make all of theirclothes. Most people also depend on technologies that noone could produce alone from raw materials, such as cars,refrigerators, and com****rs.In addition, most households in industrial societies consist

of nuclear families, which contain only parents and theirchildren. Nuclear families lack the support network andproductive capabilities of extended families. Fathers innuclear families commonly work to earn income, whilemothers manage the household and care for childrenoftenin addition to working for income. These gender rolepatterns have changed somewhat since the 1960s to moreequal roles for men and women. People in most modernindustrial and commerce-based societies also identifystrongly with groups of people united by work, such asprofessional organizations and labor unions. These groups

are entirely separate from family and kinship ties.B3Leadership and Political Power

Groups of people living in bands have no formal leadership,and all people have input in making group decisions. Mostdecision-making in tribes occurs within households.Occasionally, most or all members of lineages or clansconvene to make important village decisions, such as aboutdealing with neighboring tribes. Descent groups may also

regulate access to crucial resources, such as favoredhunting areas, and choose where people will live.


13/26


14/26

employment, not family, often determines where peoplelive. People who cannot earn sufficient income may live inpoverty, and many of the poor depend on governmentwelfare for economic support.C

Ideological Culture

In every society, culturally unique ways of thinking aboutthe world unite people in their behavior. Anthropologistsoften refer to the body of ideas that people share asideology. Ideology can be broken down into at least threespecific categories: beliefs, values, and ideals. Peoplesbeliefs give them an understanding of how the world worksand how they should respond to the actions of others andtheir environments. Particular beliefs often tie in closelywith the daily concerns of domestic life, such as making aliving, health and sickness, happiness and sadness,interpersonal relationships, and death. Peoples values tellthem the differences between right and wrong or good andbad. Ideals serve as models for what people hope to achievein life.Many people rely on religion, systems of belief in thesupernatural (things beyond the natural world), to shapetheir values and ideals and to influence their behavior.Beliefs, values, and ideals also come from observations ofthe natural world, a practice anthropologists commonly

refer to as secularism.C1Religion

Religion allows people to know about and communicate withsupernatural beingssuch as animal spirits, gods, andspirits of the dead. Religion often serves to help people copewith the death of relatives and friends, and it figuresprominently in most funeral ceremonies (see Funeral Ritesand Customs).Peoples of many small band and tribal societies believe that

plants and animals, as well as people, can have souls orspirits that can take on different forms to help or harmpeople. Anthropologists refer to this kind of religious beliefas animism. In hunting societies, people commonly believethat forest beings control the supply of game animals andmay punish people for irresponsible behavior by makinganimals outwit the hunt.In many small societies, visionaries and healers known asshamans receive stories from supernatural beings and laterrecite them to others or act them out in dramatic rituals. As

religious specialists, shamans have special access to thisspirit world as well as a rich knowledge of medicinal plants.


15/26

Shamans commonly assign special supernatural roles tospirit animals and beings. For example, shamans in Amazonsocieties may communicate with a spirit keeper of the gameto insure hunting success. They may also be assisted byspirit jaguars.

In larger, agricultural societies, religion has long been ameans of asking for bountiful harvests, a source of powerfor rulers, and an inspiration to go to war. In early civilizedsocieties, religious visionaries became leaders becausepeople believed those leaders could communicate with thesupernatural to control the fate of a civilization. Thisbecame their greatest source of power, and people oftenregarded leaders as actual gods.For example, in the great civilization of the Aztec, whichflourished in what is now Mexico in the 15th and 16thcenturies, rulers claimed privileged association with thepowerful god Huitzilopochtli. They said that this godrequired human blood to ensure that the sun would rise andset each day. Aztec rulers thus inspired great awe byregularly conducting human sacrifices. They alsoconspicuously displayed their vast power as wealth in luxurygoods, such as fine jewels, clothing, and palaces. Rulersobtained their wealth from the great numbers ofcraftspeople, traders, and warriors under their control.C2Secularism

Many societies today interpret the natural world and formbeliefs based on science and logic. Societies in which manypeople do not practice any religion, such as the UnitedStates, may be known as secular societies. However, nosociety is entirely secular.During the period in 17th- and 18th-century Europe knownas the Age of Enlightenment, science and logic became newsources of belief for many people living in civilized societies.Scientific studies of the natural world and rationalphilosophies both led people to believe that they could

explain natural and social phenomena without believing ingods or spirits. Religion remained an influential system ofbelief, however.Both religion and science drove the development ofcapitalism, the economic system of commerce-driven marketexchange. Capitalism itself influences peoples beliefs,values, and ideals in many present-day, large, civilizedsocieties. In these societies, such as in the United States,many people view the world and shape their behavior basedon a belief that they can understand and control their

environment and that work, commerce, and theaccumulation of wealth serve an ultimate good. The


16/26

governments of most large societies today also assert thathuman well-being derives from the growth of economies andthe development of technology.In addition, many people have come to believe in thefundamental nature of human rights and free will. These

beliefs grew out of peoples faith in their ability to controlthe natural worlda faith promoted by science andrationalism. Religious beliefs continue to change to affirm oraccommodate these other dominant beliefs, but sometimesthe two are at odds with each other. For instance, manyreligious people have difficulty reconciling their belief in asupreme spiritual force with the theory of natural evolution,which requires no belief in the supernatural.DArt

Art is a distinctly human production, and many peopleconsider it the ultimate form of culture because it can havethe quality of pure expression, entirely separate from basichuman needs. But some anthropologists actually regardartistic expression as a basic human need, as basic as foodand water. Some art takes the form of material production,and many utilitarian items have artistic qualities. Otherforms of art, such as music or acting, reside in the mind andbody and take expression as performance. The material artsinclude painting, pottery, sculpture, textiles and clothing,

and cookery. Nonmaterial arts include music, dance, dramaand dramatic arts, storytelling, and written narratives.People had begun making art by at least 30,000 years ago,painting stylized animal figures and abstract symbols oncave walls (seePaleolithic Art). For thousands of yearspeople have also adorned their bodies with ornamentation,such as jewelry, pigments, and stylized scars.In most societies people establish their personal and groupidentity through such forms of artistic expression aspatterns of dress and body adornment, ceremonial costumesand dances, or group symbols. For example, many Native

American groups in the Pacific Northwest carve massivewooden totem poles as symbols of their group identity andhistory. The stylized figures carved into totem polesrepresent important clan ancestors and stories of importanthistorical events.Smaller societies also use art as a primary form of storingand reproducing their culture. Ceremonial dances andperformances, for example, commonly tell legends ofcreation, stories about ancestors, or moral tales containinginstructive lessons.

Many people also use art as a vehicle for spiritualexpression or to ask for help from the spiritual world. For


17/26

instance, some archaeologists believe that one of theearliest known sculpturesa voluptuously shaped femalefigure made in Willendorf, Austria, in about 23,000 BC andknown as the Venus of Willendorfmight have been used toinvoke supernatural powers to bring its makers reproductive

fertility.In large societies, governments may hire artisans to produceworks that will support the political structure. For example,in the Inca Empirewhich dominated the Andean region ofPeru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina in the 15th and16th centuriesthe elite hired metalworkers and textilemakers to make exclusive gold and silver jewelry or createspecial clothing and adornments for them. These royal itemsdisplayed insignia that indicated high status. In contrast,non-elites wore coarse, ordinary clothing, reflecting theirlow status.In present-day large societies, many people produce art forcommercial and political purposes in addition to social,personal, and spiritual reasons. A great number of artistsmake a living by working for businesses that use art toadvertise commercial products. Most large societies todayalso have laws that protect the ******* of artworks such asbooks, films, songs, dances, and paintings as intellectualproperty, which people own and can sell.IVHISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

AEarly Development

People have long been aware of cultural differences amongsocieties. Some of the earliest accounts of culture comefrom the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 400sbc. Herodotus traveled through the Persian Empire, whichincluded much of the Middle East and surrounding parts ofAsia and Africa. He wrote at length about the cultural and

racial diversity of these places, much of which he linked todifferences in peoples environments.For almost 2000 years following the time of Herodotus,many people attributed cultural differences to racialinheritance. The biblical account of the Tower of Babel, inwhich God caused people to speak new ********s, alsoprovided an explanation for cultural diversity.At the end of the Middle Ages (5th to 15th century ad),many countries of Western Europe began sending explorersaround the world to find new sources of material goods and

wealth. Prolonged contacts with new cultures during thesetravels sparked Europeans interest in the sources and


18/26

meaning of cultural diversity.The English term culture actually came into use during theMiddle Ages. It derived from the Latin word for cultivation,as in the practice of nurturing domesticated plants ingardens. Thus, the word originally referred to peoples role

in controlling nature.BTheories of Cultural Evolution

By the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, manyEuropean scientists and philosophers had come to believethat culture had gone through progressive stages ofimprovement throughout human existence. The firstanthropologists, including Tylor, also promoted suchtheories ofcultural evolution.Many people of the upper classes in 19th-century VictorianEngland used the term culture in a sense similar to itsoriginal meaning. In the Victorian usage, culture referred tothe controlling of the unrefined behaviors and tastesassociated with the lower classes. Thus, the Victorianterm culture referred to the refined tastes, intellectualtraining, and mannerisms of the upper classes. However,many anthropologists, sociologists, and historians of thatsame period used the term civilization, from the Latin wordfor citizen,as a scientific description of what the upperclasses called culture. Civilization thus also meant the

pinnacle of cultural evolution.C19th Century Scientific Discoveries

New scientific discoveries in the early and middle 19thcentury demonstrated that the world and its people hadexisted much longer than previously had been thought.These new ideas greatly influenced how anthropologiststhought about human biological, social, and culturaldevelopment.The accounts of the Bible had promoted the idea of a divine

creation of the world sometime between 10,000 and 6,000years ago. In contrast, the observations of Scottishgeologist Sir Charles Lyell in the early 1800s led him tosuggest that the earth was much older and had changedgradually over time. Lyells geological theories andarchaeological discoveries of ancient stone tools, also in theearly 1800s, influenced a number of new theories of culture.C1Lubbock

Based on both Lyells work and on theories proposed in theearly 1800s by Danish archaeologists Christian Thomsen and


19/26

J. J. Worsaae, in 1865 British naturalist Sir John Lubbockproposed that human societies had gone through longstages of cultural development, each marked byadvancements in technology. Lubbock thought that theearlier stages were represented in the present by so-called

primitive societies. His stages included the Paleolithic(OldStone Age), the Neolithic(New Stone Age), the Bronze Age,and the Iron Age. Lubbock argued that other forms ofcultural development, such as in morality and spirituality,accompanied each stage of technological development.C2Spencer

Coinciding with the groundbreaking theory of biologicalevolution proposed by British naturalist Charles Darwin inthe 1860s, British social philosopher Herbert Spencer putforward his own theory of biological and cultural evolution.Spencer argued that all worldly phenomena, includinghuman societies, changed over time, advancing towardperfection. He argued that human evolution wascharacterized by a struggle he called the survival of thefittest, in which weaker races and societies musteventually be replaced by stronger, more advanced racesand societies (see Race).Although the racist and ethnocentric theory of culturalevolution promoted by Spencer did not agree with the

theory of Darwin, it became commonly known by themisapplied name of social Darwinism. Social Darwinismhelped European nations justify their domination of peoplesaround the world through colonialismthe taking of newlands to gain natural resources and human labor(see Colonies and Colonialism).C3Morgan

American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan introducedanother theory of cultural evolution in the late 1800s.

Morgan, along with Tylor, was one of the founders ofmodern anthropology. In his work, he attempted to showhow all aspects of culture changed together in the evolutionof societies. Thus, in Morgans view, diverse aspects ofculture, such as the structure of families, forms of marriage,categories of kinship, ownership of property, forms ofgovernment, technology, and systems of food production, allchanged as societies evolved.Morgan called his evolutionary stages ethnical periods andlabeled them Savagery (with three stages: Lower, Middle,

and Upper), Barbarism (also with three stages), andCivilization. Morgan did not necessarily believe in the use of


20/26

his theory to promote racism, ethnocentrism, orexploitation. But like others of his time, he consideredWestern civilization to be the highest form of culture.Morgan believed that race, nationality, ********, and culturewere all related and that Europeans were the most

biologically and culturally advanced people.DUniqueness and Diffusionism

Racist and ethnocentric theories of cultural evolution fell outof favor with most anthropologists in the early 20th century.In the early 1900s in North America, German-born Americananthropologist Franz Boas developed a new theory ofculture known as historical particularism.Historicalparticularism, which emphasized the uniqueness of allcultures, gave new direction to anthropology. Otheranthropologists believed that cultural innovations, such asinventions, had a single origin and passed from society tosociety. This theory was known asdiffusionism.By the beginning of the 20th century, anthropologists haddeveloped research methods for studying the cultures ofindividual small societies. Anthropologists would comparetheir findings with those of other studies to developuniversal theories of culture. This form of study becameknown as ethnology, from the Greek word ethnos, meaningnation or race.

Though he worked as an ethnologist, Boas felt that theculture of any society must be understood as the result of aunique history and not as one of many cultures belonging toa broader evolutionary stage or type of culture. In order tostudy particular cultures as completely as possible, Boasbecame skilled in linguistics, the study of ********s, and inphysical anthropology, the study of human biology andanatomy.Historical particularism became a dominant approach to thestudy of culture in American anthropology, largely throughthe influence of many students of Boas. But a number of

anthropologists in the early 1900s also rejected theparticularist theory of culture in favor of diffusionism. Someattributed virtually every important cultural achievement tothe inventions of a few, especially gifted peoples that,according to diffusionists, then spread to other cultures. Forexample, British anthropologists Grafton Elliot Smith and W.

J. Perry incorrectly suggested, on the basis of inadequateinformation, that farming, pottery making, and metallurgyall originated in ancient Egypt and diffused throughout theworld. In fact, all of these cultural developments occurred

separately at different times in many parts of the world.E


21/26

Functionalism

Also in the early 1900s, French sociologist mileDurkheim developed a theory of culture that would greatlyinfluence anthropology. Durkheim proposed that religious

beliefs functioned to reinforce social solidarity. An interestin the relationship between the function of society andcultureknown as functionalismbecame a major theme inEuropean, and especially British, anthropology.Functionalists viewed culture as a collection of integratedparts that work together to keep a society functioning.British functionalists, such as Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, also became known as socialanthropologists because of their interest in the workings ofsocieties. They wrote detailed ethnographies that describedevery aspect of a peoples culture and social structure. Theyalso focused on important rituals that appeared to preservea peoples social structure, such as initiation ceremoniesthat formally signify childrens entrance into adulthood.Critics of functionalism felt that it provided a circularargument. Explaining culture by demonstrating that itallows a society to function, they said, does not explain themeaning or origins of any particular cultural traditions.FEcology and Economy

Beginning in the 1930s several American anthropologistsdeveloped a renewed interest in the material, or economic,and ecological foundations of cultureinterests that datedback to the writings of Herodotus. These anthropologistsemphasized the importance of discovering how the naturalenvironment, technology, and the ways in which peopleproduced and distributed their necessities, such as food,influence other parts of culture. They proposed that materialculture, and particularly those aspects related to making aliving, determines the shape of culture as a whole.F1

Culture Areas

American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, an early proponentof economic and ecological theories of culture, created amap of Native American groups in North America thatdivided them according to what he calledcultureareas. According to Kroeber, all groups included within thesame culture area shared similar ways of life because theyoccupied the same ecological regions. They therefore reliedon many of the same natural resources, such as sources of

food, and developed similar kinds of technology and socialorganization.


22/26


23/26

human culture as a whole, but White considered technologyto be the single most important cause of culture change. Healso believed, however, that specific cultural patterns couldnot be explained by economic or ecological circumstances.Instead, he thought of culture as somethingsuperorganic, or

above human lifesomething beyond individual humancontrol.F4Cultural Materialism

In the 1960s and 1970s American anthropologist MarvinHarris attempted to show through studies of specificsocieties that many aspects of culture relate directly to apeoples economic conditions. He argued that a culturestechnology shaped its economy, which in turn shaped itsbeliefs and values. The theories of Harris and otheranthropologists that focus on the strictly economic basis ofculture are known as cultural materialism.In one study, Harris gave an economic explanation for theHindu tradition in India of regarding cattle as sacred. Heviewed this tradition as a cultural response to the economicimportance of cattle as draught animals for farming, asscavengers of trash, and as providers of a major source offuel (dried cattle feces).Many anthropologists continue to examine the complexrelationship among environment, economy, and culture.

Some have studied how people modify their environmentsand develop technology to increase the number of peoplethat the environment can support. For example,industrialized societies continue to develop newtechnologies to increase food and energy production. Theyalso promote technologies, such as birth control methods,and ways of thinking, such as the ideal of having smallfamilies, that help to keep populations in check and to avoidrunning out of natural resources.GThe Interpretation of Culture

In the 1950s anthropologists began to distinguish betweentwo ways of interpreting culture: from an emic perspectiveand from an eticperspective. The people native to a societyhave an emic understanding of its culture. Someone whocomes from outside a society, such as an anthropologist,gains an etic understanding of its culture.Traditional ethnographies, written from an etic perspective,describe and analyze each aspect of a societys culture indetail. Many early anthropological books, for example,

discuss each aspect of culture in its own chapter or section.On the other hand, the people within a society can provide


24/26

an emic description of their culture. Such a descriptionrarely resembles an anthropological interpretation.People living within a particular culture do not usuallyanalyze its meaning. They do not think, for instance, aboutwhy they perform one kind of ceremony rather than another,

or why they produce food one way rather than another. Anative of the United States, for example, might say thatAmericans commonly go to the movies on Friday andSaturday nights but not discuss or even understand thesignificance of this behavior.Anthropologists, on the other hand, specialize in comparingand analyzing cultures. For this reason, anthropologistshave traditionally regarded immersion in a foreign cultureas a fundamental part of doing research. Still, they remainoutsiders. But in the 1960s some anthropologists beganattempting to describe and analyze culture from an emicperspective, as an insider experiences it.G1Lvi-Strauss

French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss tried to gain anemic understanding of culture by looking for consistentpatterns in peoples myths, rituals, and habits. He proposedthat powerful systems of logic underlie these culturalpatterns, even though the people of a society are notconsciously aware of the logic. He also felt that the logic

underlying cultural patterns was somehow rooted in thestructure of the human mind. Thus, he referred to his formof cultural analysis as structuralism.Lvi-Straussnoted that myths, rituals, and habits in manycultures emphasize dichotomous (two-sided) contrasts. Forexample, many people have myths that tell of a pasttransformation of people from immortal to mortal beings.The dietary habits of many cultures also emphasize thetransformation of raw food through cooking. And manycultures have rituals of transformation through purification.To Lvi-Strauss, the common theme running through these

different aspects of culture was not accidental but the resultof a fundamental system of logic, common to all people.G2Symbolic Anthropology

Beginning in the late 1960s, another group ofanthropologists began focusing their studies on importantsymbols within particular cultures. This form ofanthropology became known as symbolic,or interpretive,anthropology. Symbolic anthropologists,

such as British anthropologist Victor Turner and Americananthropologist Clifford Geertz, have attempted to describe


25/26

the specific meanings people assign to objects, behaviors,and emotions. Instead of looking for the universal logicunderlying all culture, symbolic anthropologists have triedto discover the specific internal logic that a people use tointerpret their own culture.

HPostmodern Theories of Culture

In the 1980s and 1990s some anthropologists turned to aneven more radical interpretive perspective on culture,known generally as postmodernism. Postmodernismquestions whether an objective understanding of othercultures is at all possible. It developed as a reaction tomodernism, which was the scientific and rational approachto understanding the world found in most ethnographies.Postmodern anthropologists suggest that all peopleconstruct culture through an ongoing process thatresembles the writing, reading, and interpretation of a text.From this view, people continually create and debate witheach other about the meaning of all aspects of culture, suchas words, rituals, and concepts. People in the United States,for instance, have long debated over cultural issues such aswhat constitutes a family, what womens and mens roles insociety should be, and what functions the federalgovernment should perform. Many anthropologists nowstudy and write about these kinds of questions, even in their

own societies.VTHE DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL CULTURE

Rapid changes in technology in the last several decadeshave changed the nature of culture and cultural exchange.People around the world can make economic transactionsand transmit information to each other almostinstantaneously through the use of com****rs and satellitecommunications. Governments and corporations havegained vast amounts of political power through military

might and economic influence. Corporations have alsocreated a form of global culture based on worldwidecommercial markets.Local culture and social structure are now shaped by largeand powerful commercial interests in ways that earlieranthropologists could not have imagined. Earlyanthropologists thought of societies and their cultures asfully independent systems. But today, many nations aremulticultural societies, composed of numerous smallersubcultures. Cultures also cross national boundaries. For

instance, people around the world now know a variety ofEnglish words and have contact with American cultural


26/26

exports such as brand-name clothing and technologicalproducts, films and music, and mass-produced foods.Many anthropologists have become interested in howdominant societies can shape the culture of less powerfulsocieties, a process some researchers call cultural

hegemony. Today, many anthropologists openly opposeefforts by dominant world powers, such as the U.S.government and large corporations, to make unique smallersocieties adopt Western commercial culture.

Contributed By:

John H. Bodley

Documents

What's Culture