SOC 111Introduction to Anthropology

ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

RECAP OF LAST CLASS

• What is anthropology?• Culture • The subfields of anthropology• Two dimensions of anthropology

WHAT IS CULTURE?

• Edward Tylor: ‘Systems of human behavior and thought.’

• Culture- Not through biological inheritance but by growing up in a particular society.

• Enculturation: The process by which a child learns his or her culture.

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 to the things they signify or stand for

Culture is Learned

• Clifford Geertz: ‘Culture is ideas based on cultural learning and symbols.’

• Culture- ‘set of control mechanisms’ – plans, recipes, rules, instructions for governing behavior

• Culture is transmitted through observation.• Culture is absorbed unconsciously.

• All humans have culture.

• Anthropologists in the 19th century argued on a doctrine: ‘psychic unity of man’

Acknowledgment that individuals vary in emotional and intellectual tendencies and

capacities, but still, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture.

Culture is Symbolic

• Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans and to cultural learning.

• A symbol is something verbal or non-verbal within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for something else.

• No obvious, natural or necessary connection between the symbol and what it symbolizes.

• Symbols are usually linguistic.• Non-verbal symbols: flags,logos,religious symbols

Culture is Shared

• Shared beliefs, values, memories and expectations link people who grow up in the same culture.

• Enculturation unifies people by providing common experiences.

Culture and Nature

• Culture takes natural biological urges and teaches us how to express them in particular ways.

• How natural acts are converted into cultural habits- eating and bathroom examples.

Culture is Integrated

• Cultures are integrated, patterned systems.• If one part of the system (the economy)

changes, other parts (family structure) change as well.

Culture can be both Adaptive and Maladaptive

• Humans have biological and cultural ways of coping with environmental stress

• Adaptive behavior that offers short term benefits to particular individuals may harm the environment and threaten the group’s

long term survival.• Overconsumption and pollution.

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

• Similarities between humans and apes are evident in anatomy, brain structure, genetics and biochemistry.

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

Many human traits showed that our primate ancestors lived in trees.

Human primates have common with some other animal primates that; 1. they can modify learned behavior and social patterns. 2.Tool making and Hunting

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

• How we differ from other primates? Cooperation and sharing are much more

developed among humansMarriage: Humans have rules of exogamy and

kinship.Exogamy: Marriage outside one’s group

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

• Universality Same for all cultural groups.A long period of infant dependency Year-round sexualityComplex BrainCommon ways in which humans think, feel and

process information.Life in groups, family, food sharingExogamy and Incest Taboo

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

• GeneralityRegularities that occur in different times and

places but not in all cultures.DiffusionColonizationInventionNuclear Family

CULTURE’S EVOLUTIONARY BASIS

• ParticularityTraits or features if culture not generalized or

widespreadDiffusionIndependent InventionWhen cultural traits are borrowed, the traits

are modified to fit the culture that adopts them.

Anthropology

• By focusing on and trying to explain the various and diverse cultures and alternative customs, anthropology forces us to reappraise our familiar ways of thinking.• Making strange familiar and familiar

strange.