CULTURE

Distinctively Human Adaptation

Culture

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (E.B. Tylor 1871).

What is this thing called culture, anyway?

Culture

However, a more modern source, the American Heritage English Dictionary, gives a primary definition of culture which is substantially different than earlier primary definitions:

"The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought."

CultureWord of many uses…”high”culture, “low” culture,

agriculture, cultivate, cult…”way of life”

CULTURE/culture

CULTURE -

way of life of human beings - ethnology

culture -

way of life of a specific group of human beings - ethnography

MAINLY learned S-R conditioningSymbolicImprinting (Prägung)

Culture

Initially learning was considered to occur on a tabula rasa or “blank slate.”

Today, the term “palimpsest” seems more accurate.

Culture

We acquire culture as a process of maturation - growing up….the various processes involved in the transmission of culture are called enculturation.

Similar to socialization, but does not start until we are capable of symbolic learning.

Enculturation is a major factor in the development of personality...our identity.

Identification with one’s culture is known as ethnocentrism.

Culture

Ethnocentrism is a major challenge to understand another culture.

Cultural relativism is a method that anthropologists have developed to try to take account of their own ethnocentrism.

Cultural relativism is simply an attempt to understand another culture from the point of view of the people in that culture.

How Cultures Are Studied

Participant ObservationCulture Shock

Comparative Method

Important Dichotomies

Emic/Etic

Inside/Outside

Overt/Covert

Real/Ideal

subculture

How Cultures Are Studied

Culture Change

acculturation

functional prerequisites

culture loss

cultural evolution

cultural diffusion

The Trobriand Islands: Two Aspects of Culture Change

First Aspect: Branislaw Malinowski

Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)

The initial study of the Trobrianders. One of the classic studies in anthropology…describes ethnographic fieldwork and establishes a functionalist approach in ethnology…his analysis

of the “Kula Ring” remains one of the most assigned topics in anthropology. He:

-----compelled anthropology out of the armchair-----advocated modern methods of ethnography such as

participant observation and learning the language

-----societies are integrated wholes; one must study interrelationships

-----stressed need to document the native's perspective (emic)

The Trobriand Islands: Two Aspects of Culture Change

Second Aspect: Annette Weiner Initiating her fieldwork about 50 years after Malinowski, Weiner revised his conclusions, taking into account women’s value in Trobriand economics….A major contribution to the field of cultural anthropology was her in-depth study of the value and circulation of goods among the Trobrianders of Papua, New Guinea. Her publications include Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange (1976).

Culture

Lithic (stone) Tool Technology

Core Tool Technology

Flake Tool Technology

Blade Tool Technology

Culture

Hunting and Gathering (Food Foraging) Societies

All societies without domestication for food.

Domain Endogamy/Exogamy

Dialectal culture

Basic division of labor -

Men hunt

Women gather