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Notes: Culture Concept


Definitions:

A way of life that is transmitted through learning.

Many use the definition of Edward Tylor:"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."

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor 1832–1917, English anthropologist. His extensive researches helped to develop interest in anthropological science in England. Tylor became (1883) keeper of the University Museum at Oxford and was professor of anthropology there from 1896 to 1909. His work on the mentality of primitive peoples, and especially on animism, made an important contribution to the study of primitive religion. Tylor's pioneering book, Anthropology (1881, abr. ed. 1960), is still essentially modern in its cultural theories and concepts. His other works include Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871, repr. 1958

As a substantive "Culture" often is used to mean a group of people that share common ways of living, communicating, have common stories, and tools, similar styles in the way they make things, do things, evaluate matters. It also is used to mean all the characteristics that a group of people hold in common - in this usage it is about the common elements, not specifically the people themselves.

Derivation of the word itself - from 'cultus' pp of Latin verb 'colere', which has the sense of cultivating, but also to dwell, to inhabit, to worship in a certain way. May be related to word for cutting - cutting the soil with a plow

Characteristics of Culture

Nature and Nurture Question

  • Learned - rather than genetic, biologically programmed. It is remembered and
  • Shared - not idiosyncratic, belongs to groups
  • Symbolic
  • Integrated - has a coherence, an integrity - parts are related to a whole
  • It is not possible to be human without being cultured - within a world of meanings, expressions, relationships that are particular to a time, place, group.

 

 

Culture includes:

Material Culture and Non-material Culture

Two healers in costume and with their tools, one from North America, one from South America.

 

  • SYMBOLS -we map our experience onto a template of symbols then understand our symbols as our experience - humans don't live in a natural world, but in a world of meanings or meaninfulness that is largely constructed of symbol.
  • LANGUAGE
  • Beliefs, Values, Norms Folkways, Mores, Taboos, Laws, Sanction as well as Tools
  • Customary Practices as well as common values
  • Cultivated Relationships - expectations, obligations, roles, statuses
  • Culture can be adaptive, and (for awhile at least) maladaptive
  • Culture includes the production of lives, the creations, identification and satisfaction of needs.
  • Culture includes the reproduction of lives - not just biological reproduction, but the reproduction of  fully acculturated adults (e.g. car mechanics, CEO's, computer engineers, or shamans, mullahs, big wives etc)

Some Cultural Universals

Bush Families
  • families,
  • customs, tradition, norms and sanctions, common values
  • incest taboos and rules about sex conduct
  • vocalic language and symbolic communication (Sapir/Wharf/Wittgenstein),
  • cooking,
  • care of dependents, sick role, healing practices

Some Cultural Generalities

  • pair bonding,
  • divisions of labor,
  • rites of passage,
  • specialized institutions/roles.

Cultural Particularities -

  • $30,000 wedding, $49.95 divorce.
  • Oxen pulling plows, eat horses/horses pulling plows, eat cattle .
  • Sanitize women before childbirth/purify women after childbirth.
  • Dowry/bridewealth/wedding present.
  • Child labor laws
  • women's work, a man's job.
  • Bow/shake hands/hug/fist knock "The god that is in me salutes the god that is in you" or "Wuzhap'n Bro".

Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativity and Universal Human Rights, Relativist Fallacy

  • Emic/Etic - in analogy to phonetics/phonemics. Custom is meaningless without context.
    It is not possible to understand another Culture scientifically, from outside. Syntax is as important as Semantics.
    • John likes flying airplanes. Well, who cares about airplanes that can't fly.
    • Can't have left without right; no place is up, unless there is a down.
    • A King and a Queen is a pair (in a monarchy). A King and a Queen is not a pair (if your game is poker). If its beds you're into, then they are only sizes.
    • Often we can assume context, background, common values, common senses - we can agree that something is something because we implicitly agree on context, ".. we're both reading off the same page...."
  • Freedom of religion vs measles shots for kids of Christian Scientists.
  • When in Rome, do as the Romans? What does that mean in an era of globalization.
  • Culture wars: the power to define; freedom to speak when no one can hear you; hollywood vs bollywood- and the strategic use of culture .Howard Stern - The Sacred and the Profane. Miami CSI/Halloween/Resurrection of the Dead
  • Cultural Rights - Kwakiutl and Salmon. Paiute and Casinos.
Cockfight in Philippines, Superbowl scene


Cultural change

Diffusion, acculturation, assimilation, independent invention, globalization, accommodation, ethnocide, "cleansing", domination.

Cultural Hegemony - the four day week (methodist minister in papua new guinea), Y2K., media. Pledging to be liege, allegiances. Structured power differences.

"Property"- a social convention, stuff that is valued but also alienable
Intellectual Property - send me a nickel if you every use one of the ideas that you hear from me. Washington "My candle is not less bright because it lit yours." French Rev outlawed all these forms of monopoly over ideas, and royal charters. Tom Paine - let's have temporary patents, trademarks, copyright as an encouragement to create, innovate. An evil that will result in good for the society. resource imperative, destruction of the commons.


Physical Culture - Dress, Architecture, Tools and Technologies, Art, Music and Instruments, scribing and literacy and books and libraries. Archeology

 

Communing/Communication

  • Human language are productive and capable of displacement moreso than the communications of other species
  • Language is a unifying and estranging force social life:
  • Why does this sound so 90's - "Whatever"
  • What decade or group talks this : "Don't go there.", "You go, girl", "NOT", "Been there, done that". "That's nifty", "You look swell." "You are my new best friend." "Heybro, wuzhap'n" "Do your own thing" "Shake your booty", "Where's the Beef". (its embarrassing just to type some of these).
  • Speech is more than a medium of communication. It is medium of solidarity. It is a medium of alienation.
  • Completely aside from the data spoken/data heard, our voices glue us to one another, and to one another's way (culture). Anthropologists have noticed other actions that people have that function this way (solidifying the group, even creating the group). Meaningful gestures, 'body language'; kinesics - symbolically meaningful movement; music, art and architecture; ritual and ceremony. What does a baseball hat mean? We are able to infuse meaning (beyond utility) into anything we say, do or use.
  • BUT - to be cultural, it needs to be shared, and in the sharing is the affirmation of connectedness. (Note Illich article about the important role of grammar and literature in creating nationality)
  • Sub-cultures; counter-culture; high/pop/mass culture
  • Multiculturalism, Plural Societies,
  • Modern, and Post-modern culture
  • Ideal (normative) culture, and Real (practiced)culture
 
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