1. The Concept of Culture

2. Today’s Objectives
Create your own definition of culture and be able to explain it.
What are the key elements of culture?
How do cultures differ (generally)?
How are they the same (universally)?

3. Definition of Culture Brainstorm – What do you consider “culture”?
Physical aspects
Objects
Actions
Mental aspects
Thoughts
Beliefs
Values
Inventions
Rules

4. Scupin’s Definitions
Culture includes tools, weapons, fire, agriculture, animal domestication, metallurgy, writing, the steam engine, glasses, airplanes, computers, penicillin, nuclear power, rock0and0roll, video games, designer jeans, religion, political systems, subsistence patterns, science, sports, and social organizations.
Culture includes all aspects of human activity, from the fine arts to popular entertainment, from everyday behavior to the development of sophisticated technology. It contains the plans, rules, techniques, design, and policies for living.
Culture is a shared way of life that includes values, beliefs, and norms transmitted within a particular society from generation to generation through symbolic learning and language.
Culture is the historical accumulation of symbolic knowledge that is shared by a society.
Culture is based on shared meanings that are beyond the mind of any individual; culture is also within the mind of individuals.

5. Characteristics of Culture
Society/culture distinction
Patterns in relationships versus products of relationships
Alternative idea: sociocultural system

6. How is Culture Passed On?
Culture is learned
Enculturation
Situational learning (trial-and-error)
Social learning (observation)
Symbolic learning
Signs and symbols
symbolization
Symbols and culture
national symbols

7. How is Culture Passed On?
Culture is shared
Public and individual meanings
Schema (plural: schemata)
…but differently shared

8. Components of Culture Material culture Non-material culture
Homo habilis and beyond
Non-material culture
Values (standards of judgment)
Beliefs (more specific than values)
Worldview
Ideology – key to anthropological knowledge
Hegemony

9. Components of Culture Non-material culture (continued)
Norms (rules of right and wrong)
Ethos
Folkways
Mores
Ideal versus Real Culture
Do what I say, not what I do.

10. Cultural Diversity Ethnocentrism Cultural Relativism
Ethics and the ethnologist
Objectivity or moral obligation

11. Cultural Diversity Food Dress Prohibitions Food versus pets
Adaptive significance (Marvin Harris)
Symbolic significance (Mary Douglas)
Dress
Clothing, hair styles
Example: Rastafarians

12. Cultural Diversity Ethnicity
Based on perceived differences in ancestral origins or descent and shared historical and cultural heritage.
Different from race, which used to be thought to be based on physical differences among people.
Race was originally conceived of as the correlation between culture/behavior and superficial physical traits.

13. Cultural Universals
Essential behavioral characteristics of societies, found throughout the world.
Murdock’s list
Includes: athletics, calendar, cooking, dancing, education, ethics, family, funeral rites, housing, hygiene, marriage, music, numerals, personal names, property rights, status differentiation, tool making, trade
Brown’s “Universal People”

14. Human Diversity
Kluckhohn: “Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other human. The major objective of cultural anthropology is the investigate the validity of this statement.”

15. Homework: Look at the cultures of: Think about:
!Kung of the Kalahari Desert, Africa
Your own culture at home
Think about:
How these cultures are both similar and different.
What happens when anthropologists and others intervene in a culture?