The Nature of Culture Chapter 2 Cultural Anthropology

Concept of Culture  The idea of culture was first introduced near the end of the 19th century “That complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, custom and any other capabilities, and habits acquired by man as a member of society” Burnett-Taylor – 1871  Culture is shared ideals, values and beliefs that people use to interpret experience and generate behaviour and that are reflected by that behaviour

Characteristics of Culture Culture is shared  Shared ideals, values and beliefs and standards of behaviour The common denominator that makes actions intelligible to others and allows people to predict behaviour in situations and react accordingly

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is shared (cont)  Culture Shock: happens when one moves to a different culture and cannot predict and respond accordingly This results in confusion and insecurity E.g.: anthropologists in the field, or newcomers to Canada (women’s role in Canadian society)

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is shared (cont)  Culture is different from society Society is a group of people who live in the same geographical region, speak the same language and are, to an extent, interdependent  Society can have more than one cultural group  E.g.: First Nations in Canada

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is shared (cont)  Social structure holds society together Dependency on economic and family systems and common identity  Despite culture being shared, it is not uniform E.g.: Roles of men and women differ  Gender roles are a culture’s interpretation of biological differences

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is shared (cont)  A subculture is a group of people within a larger society who have distinctive standards and patterns of behaviour E.g.: Hutterites  Despite distraction they share Canadian values  Some subcultures operate outside mainstream E.g.: punk

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is shared (cont)  Canada is a pluralistic society Contains several distinct cultures and subcultures (ethnic subcultures)  Canada is a cultural mosaic of these ethnic subcultures as most societies today

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is learned  Culture is not biologically inherited but learned “social heredity” as stated by Ralph Linton The process by which people learn their culture through the transmission between generations is called enculturation

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is learned (cont)  Through enculturation we learn socially acceptable ways to satisfy our biological needs E.g.: An animal eats, drinks or sleeps whenever the need arises whereas humans do most of this at certain culturally prescribed times and feel hungry as those times near.

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is learned (cont)  Enculturation also teaches us how to “fit in” and be accepted by other members of our cultural group Enculturation forces include school, family, peers, religion and the media  Enculturation process in never complete as old patterns of behaviour are changed to need the needs of a changing society

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is based on Symbols  Aspects of culture is based on symbols E.g.: Language, art, money, religion  Language is the most important symbolic aspect of culture Through language, humans are able to transmit culture from one generation to another  Language makes it possible to learn from cumulative shared experiences

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is integrated  The tendency for all of aspects of a culture to function as an interrelated whole is called integration

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is integrated (cont) E.g.: Kapauku Papuans, mountain people of New Guinea studied by Leopold Pospisil in 1955  Economy relies on plant cultivation, along with pig breeding, hunting and fishing  Men achieve political power through business of pig breeding and pig breeding relies on sweet potatoes grown in garden plots  Women are responsible for gardening activities and caring for pigs  So to raise many pigs a man must have many women in the household and this is accomplished through polygyny

Characteristics of Culture (cont) Culture is integrated (cont)  But for each wife a man has to pay a bride price and wives have to be compensated for their care of pigs  So it takes pigs to get wives which are need to raise pigs  So it is the trait of entrepreneurship that produces leaders in the Kapauku  Kapauku emphasize patrilineality and this is stressed by the wives living in the husbands’ villages and not the other way around

Characteristics of Culture (cont)  Another factor conducive to polygyny is a surplus of women  This is reflected in one of their rules of warfare, which is prevalent among the Kapauku: men get killed but women to not  This provides for the imbalance of sexes that provides favourable conditions for polygyny  Kapauku emphasize patrilineality and this is stressed by the wives living in the husbands’ villages and not the other way around

Characteristics of Culture (cont)  Both endemic warfare and patrilineality promote male dominance and thus it is not surprising that positions of power in Kapauku society is held by men  This type of male dominance arises under the particular circumstances of the Kapauku and the relationship between men and women would be different if the circumstances would have been different  A change in one part of a culture usually will affect other parts but given the various experiences in the enculturation process some potential for change exists in the culture