Topics
I. Defining Features of Culture
The Concept of Culture
Chapter 13
Section I
Defining
g Features
of Culture
Section I: Defining Features of Culture
Introduction
• Some anthropologists include material culture (things like
houses, instruments and tools that are the products of
customary behavior) in their definition.
• Anthropologists are typically concerned with the culture of
societies (a group of people who occupy a particular
territory and speak a common language not generically
understood by neighboring peoples.
• Given these definitions of culture and society, some
countries may have many cultures, and some countries
may share culture.
II. Attitudes that Hinder the Study
of Cultures
III. Cultural Relativism
IV. Describing a Culture
V. Some Assumptions about Culture
Section I: Defining Features of Culture
Introduction
Culture: the set of learned behaviors and
ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values,
and ideals) that are characteristic of a
particular society or other social group
Section I: Defining Features of Culture
Culture is Commonly Shared
• For a thought or action to be considered
cultural, it must be commonly shared by
some population or group of individuals
(e.g. in America, the idea that marriage
should involve only two people).
• Note that even if some behavior is not commonly practiced, it
is cultural if most people think it is appropriate (e.g. the
president’s role is practiced by only one, but most people in
our country agree the position should exist and have shared
expectations of what that role is).
1
Section I: Defining Features of Culture Section I: Defining Features of Culture

Culture is Commonly Shared Culture is Commonly Shared

• There are cultures within a culture, called subcultures. We
commonly share cultural characteristics with segments of our • We must remember that even
population with whom we share similar ethnic, regional origins, when anthropologists refer to
religious affiliations, and occupations. something as cultural, there is
always individual variation
variation,
• We also have commonly shared customs which means that not everyone
of some group that includes different in a society shares a particular
societies (e.g. western culture, the culture cultural characteristic of that
of poverty, international soccer rules). society (in America, it is cultural
for adults to live away from their
parents, but not all do).

Section I: Defining Features of Culture Section I: Defining Features of Culture

Culture is Learned Culture is Learned

• We are increasingly discovering that our closest
biological relatives, the monkeys and apes, learn from
each other. Some learned responses include maternal
care, developing a taste for candy, and using certain
calls to signify different events (vervet monkeys have
a different warning call for an eagle attack and for a
ground-animal attack that the young must learn).
• Most of learned human behavior is done through spoken, symbolic
language.
• All people known to anthropologists have language, a complex
system of spoken, symbolic communication. It is symbolic
because a word or phrase can represent what it stands for, whether
or not that thing is present.

• The proportion of the animal’s life span

occupied by childhood seems to reflect
the degree to which the animal depends
on learned behavior for survival (the
longer the dependency, the more
learning is needed).

Section I: Defining Features of Culture Section I: Defining Features of Culture

Culture is Learned Culture is Learned

The symbolic quality of language is important for

transmission of culture – a parent can tell a child that • To sum up this section, something is cultural if it is a learned
a snake is dangerous and should be avoided, can behavior or idea (belief, attitude, value, ideal) that is generally
describe the snake in detail, and can tell where the shared by the members of a society or other social group.
snake is likely to be found.
found If the child encounters
one, the child can remember the symbolic word for
the animal, the related information, and can therefore avoid danger
(if symbolic language did not exist, the parent would have to wait
for the child to see a snake and show the child, through example,
that the snake should be avoided).

2
 Section II Section II:
Attitudes that Hinder the Study of Cultures

• People commonly feel that their own behaviors and attitudes are the
correct ones and that people who do not share those patterns
are immoral or inferior. A person who judges other cultures
solely in terms of his or her own culture is ethnocentric and
Attitudes that holds an attitude that is called ethnocentrism.

Hinder the Study of • Most North Americans would think that eating dogs or
insects is disgusting, but they do not feel the same way
about eating beef.
Cultures
• People in other cultures consider eating beef to be
disgusting, and might think that it is cruel that we leave
our babies alone for long periods of times in “cages”.

Section II: Section III

Attitudes that Hinder the Study of Cultures

• From an outsider’s perspective, brushing teeth may

be disturbing (see p.217).

• Ethnocentrism hinders are understandingg of the customs

of other peoples and keeps us from understanding our
Cultural Relativism
own customs (we don’t question why we do what we do
or why they do what they do).

• Both ethnocentrism and its opposite, the glorification of other

cultures, hinder effective anthropological study.

Section III: Cultural Relativism Section III: Cultural Relativism

• Early anthropologists tended to think of Western cultures as being

at the highest or most progressive stage of evolution, and non- • Many anthropologists are now comfortable with a strong version of
western cultures were viewed as being at the earlier stages of cultural relativism - the idea that morality differs in every society
evolution. and that all patterns of culture are equally valid. Within this
framework, one should not judge or try to eliminate another
• Franz Boas
Boas, and anthropologists who followed him culture’s
l ’ patterns, even if it
i includes
i l d slavery,
l torture, or sexism.
i
(discussed in next chapter), challenged the attitude
that western cultures were obviously superior to
other cultures.
• The new anthropological philosophy became cultural
relativism, the attitude that a society’s customs and ideas should be
described objectively and understood in context of that society’s
problems and opportunities..

3
 Section III: Cultural Relativism Section IV

• Other anthropologists adhere to a weaker form of cultural relativism

– it asserts that anthropologists should strive for objectivity in
describing a people, and in their attempts to understand the reasons
for cultural behavior they should be wary of superficial or quick
judgment.
j g Tolerance should be the basic mode unless there is a
Describing
strong reason to behave otherwise.
a Culture
• The weak version of cultural relativity does not
keep anthropologists from making judgments or
from trying to change behavior they think is
harmful; however, these judgments should not
preclude accurate descriptions and explanations
in spite of those judgments.
Adam and Eve in the Garden

Section IV: Describing a Culture Section IV: Describing a Culture

Cultural Constraints Cultural Constraints

• Standards or rules about what is acceptable behavior
• Emile Durkheim stressed that culture is something outside of us
are referred to by social scientists as norms. The
exerting a strong coercive power on us. We do not always feel these
importance of a norm can usually be judged by how
constraints of our culture because we generally conform to the
members of a society respond when the norm is
conduct it requires.
violated
• Cultural constraints come in two types, direct and
indirect.
• Direct restraints are more obvious
(if you wore shorts to a wedding,
you would get some slight ridicule-
indirect constraint; if you wore
nothing, you would be arrested-
direct restraint).

Section IV: Describing a Culture Section IV: Describing a Culture

Ideal vs. Actual Cultural Patterns Ideal vs. Actual Cultural Patterns
• Every society has ideas (values and norms) about how people in
particular situations ought to feel and behave. In everyday talk we • Example of ideal vs. actual cultural patterns: we have an ideal
call these ideas ideals. In anthropological terms, we call them that everybody is “equal before the law”. However, we know
ideal cultural patterns. that rich might get less jail time and be sent to nicer prisons.
• The ideal cultural patterns tend to be reinforced through cultural Nevertheless,, the ideal of equality
q y is part
p of our culture and
constraints. However, we know that people do not always behave most of us continue to believe that the law should be applied
according to the ideal cultural patterns (or we would not need equally to all.
direct or indirect restraints).
• Some of our ideal patterns differ from actual behavior because the
ideal is outmoded (based on the way society used to be); other
ideal patterns may have never have been actual patterns and may
represent merely what people would like to see as correct
behavior.

4
Section IV: Describing a Culture Section IV: Describing a Culture

How to Discover Cultural Patterns How to Discover Cultural Patterns

There are two ways in which the anthropologist can determine cultural
• An example of a cultural pattern that most people are unaware of is
patterns.
how far people stand apart when having a conversation or standing in
• The first way is obvious – when dealing with line. Although it is mostly unconscious, there is considerable reason
customs that are highly visible in a society – for to believe that there are rules that govern such behavior. We
example, sending children to school. The experience discomfort when another person stands too close to us
investigator can determine the existence of such (indicating too much intimacy).
practices by direct observation and by
interviewing some knowledgeable people.
• If we wanted to know the cultural rule for how close people should stand
when talking with a casual acquaintance, we could study a sample of
• The second way is more difficult – when dealing with a particular sphere of individuals from a society and determine the modal response, or mode
behavior that encompasses many individual variations, or when the people (mode is a statistical term that refers to the most frequently encountered
studied are unaware of their pattern of behavior, the anthropologist should response in a given series of response).
collect information from a sample of individuals in order to establish what the
cultural pattern is.

Section IV: Describing a Culture Section IV: Describing a Culture

How to Discover Cultural Patterns How to Discover Cultural Patterns

• If we wanted to know the pattern (norm) of American conversations,

we would observe many pairs of people and record their distances.
Some might be 2 ft apart, 2.5 ft, and some 4 ft. If we count the
number of times everyy particular
p distance is observed, these counts
provide a frequency distribution. The distance with the highest
frequency is the modal pattern. Very often the frequency distribution
takes a bell-shape curve (also called normal distribution).

Section IV: Describing a Culture

Section V
How to Discover Cultural Patterns

• It would be difficult to study or question everybody in a particular

culture, so scientists rely on a subset, or sample, that represents the
larger population. To ensure it is representative, we use random
sampling,
p g where all individuals have an equal q chance of being g
Some Assumptions
selected for study.
About Culture

5
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture Is Generally Adaptive
• The customs of a society that enhance survival and
reproductive success are adaptive and are likely to
persist.
• The customs that diminish the chances of survival and reproductive success
are called maladaptive
maladaptive. Maladaptive customs will either be replaced or the
population that uses those customs will become extinct. Either way, the
maladaptive customs are likely to disappear.
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture is Mostly Integrated
• In saying that a culture is integrated, we are saying that the elements
or traits that make up a culture are not just a random assortment of
customs but are mostly adjusted or consistent with one another.
• One reason we believe that culture is integrated is because culture is
generally adaptive (if certain customs are more adaptive in particular
settings, than those “bundles” of traits will generally be found together
under similar conditions).
• Another reason culture is integrated is for psychological reasons: the
ideas of culture (attitudes, values, ideals, and rules) are stored in the
brains of individuals; people tend to modify beliefs or behaviors that
are not cognitively or conceptually consistent with other information.
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture is Always Changing
• Culture change may also be stimulated by changes in the external
environment.
Example: Americans began to care about conserving
energy and finding alternative energies only after oil
li from
supplies f the
th Middle
Middl East
E t were curtailed
t il d in
i the
th 1970s.
1970
Example: Native American culture changed dramatically
after they were forced onto reservations.
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture Is Generally Adaptive
• Therefore, we can assume that if a society has survived long enough
to be described in the ethnographic record, much, if not most, of its
cultural customs are adaptive.
• Although it can be assumed that cultures that have been around long
enough to be described have many more adaptive than maladaptive
traits, that does not mean that all cultural traits are adaptive. They
may be neutral (like what to wear to weddings and funerals).
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture is Always Changing
• When you examine the history of a society, it is obvious that culture
changes over time.
• Some of the shared behaviors, beliefs, and values that were common
at one time are modified or replaced at another time.
• The force for change may come from within a society or from
outside the society.
• From within, the conscious or unconscious pressure for consistency
will produce culture change if enough people adjust old behavior and
old ways of thinking to new ways. It can also occur if people try to
invent better ways of doing things.
Section V: Some Assumptions about Culture
Culture is Always Changing
• If we assume that cultures are more
than random collections of behaviors,
beliefs, and values – that they tend to
be adaptive, integrated, and changing-
then the similarities and differences between them
should be understandable.
• We can expect that similar circumstances within or
outside a culture will give rise to, or favor, similar
cultural responses.
• Although we may assume that cultural variation is
understandable, the task of discovering which
particular circumstances favor which particular
patterns is a large and difficult task.
6
The Concept of Culture
Chapter 13