A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Culture Counts A Concise Introduction to

Cultural Anthropology

Serena Nanda

Richard L. Warms

© 2015. Cengage Learning.

All rights reserved.

Chapter 2

Culture Counts



Chapter Outline

• Culture Is Made Up Of Learned Behaviors

• Culture Is The Way Humans Use

Symbols To Organize And Give Meaning

To The World

• Culture Is An Integrated System — Or Is

It?



Chapter Outline

• Culture Is A Shared System Of Norms And Values — Or Is It?

• Culture Is The Way Human Beings Adapt To The World

• Culture Is Constantly Changing

• Culture Counts

• Bringing It Back Home: Is There an American Culture?



Characteristics of Culture

1. Cultures are made up of learned behaviors.

2. All cultures involve the use of language and

symbols.

3. Cultures are patterned and integrated.

4. Cultures are shared by members of a group.

5. Cultures are in some way adaptive.

6. Cultures are subject to change.



Culture is Learned

• All animals learn behavior; humans have more learned behavior

than any other animal

• Almost every aspect of our lives is layered with learning (e.g.,

eating)

• We learn continuously and throughout life, but it is concentrated in

our childhoods to our teens and early 20s (lengthy period of human

immaturity)

• It allows time for an enormous amount of learning.

• It demands that human cultures provide stable environments to

protect its young.

• Leaves few specific human behaviors directly under genetic

control



Enculturation

• We learn through enculturation

• the process of learning to be a member

of a specific cultural group.

• Patterns attitudes, motivations, values,

perceptions, and beliefs.

• Provides direct and indirect instruction

and experiential learning.



Child Rearing and the Inuit

• The shaded area on the map to the

right shows the location of the

Inuit.

• The Inuit, a hunting people of the

Arctic, teach their children to deal

with a dangerous world in which

making wrong decisions might

mean death.

• Must maintain constant state of

alertness and experimental way of

living



Inuit

• Central is being taught to solve problems quickly and spontaneously

• Taught to constantly test and extend their physical skills

• Learn through observing elders

• Learn through play and experience (games prepare kids for harsh environment both

physically and mentally)

• Discouraged from asking questions

• When confronted with problem, they are expected to observe closely, to reason, and

to find solutions independently

• Must learn to be cooperative and emotionally restrained; closely knit and often

isolated camp life; they prize reason, judgment, and emotional control (thought to

grow naturally as children grow)

• Scolding is seen as futile (produces hostility and rebellion); children will learn when

they are ready



Culture and Personality

Theory

• A theoretical approach that holds that cultures could

best be understood by examining the patterns of child

rearing and considering their effect on adult lives and

social institutions (popular from 1920s to 1950s)

• Focuses on child rearing as the way to best study

enculturation; still an important topic in anthropology

• Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)

• Argued that it was cultural factors rather than

biological forces that caused adolescents to

experience emotional and psychological stress.



Culture is the way humans use symbols to

organize and give meaning to their world

• Culture uses methods of organizing and classifying

• Culture is the creation of shared mental models applied

to perceptions and experiences in order to:

• Organize

• Classify

• understand

• Primarily expressed through language, a symbolic

system

• Different cultures have different models for

understanding and speaking about the world



Cognitive Anthropology and

Ethnoscience

• Cognitive Anthropology focuses on the

relationship between mind and science

• Ethnoscience:

• A theoretical approach within cognitive

anthropology that focuses on the ways in

which members of a culture use language to

classify their world

• holds that anthropology should be the study

of cultural systems of classification



Ethnobotany and Ethnomedicine

• Ethnobotany

• Focuses on relationship between humans and plants

in different cultures

• Ethnomedicine

• Examines the ways in which different cultures

understand health and sickness as well as the ways

they attempt to cure the disease

In all of previous examples, discovering how people

classify and organize their world is a critical element



Symbols

• Something that stands for something else;

• Enables us to store information and

condense meaning

• Single symbol can stand for many ideas

and emotions (religious symbols, flags)



Symbolic Anthropology

• Symbolic anthropologists try to

understand a culture by discovering and

analyzing the symbols that are most

important to its members.

• These often reflect the deep concerns of

the culture’s members in ways that may

be difficult to articulate.



Interpretive Anthropology

• Focuses on using humanistic methods, such as those found in the

analysis of literature, to analyze culture and discover the meaning

of culture to its participants

• Reflects the stories people tell themselves about themselves

• Culture is an “ensemble of texts ... which the anthropologist strains

to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong.”

(Clifford Geertz)

• Find cultural texts in public events, celebrations, and rituals (e.g.,

American football versus checkers)

Both symbolic and interpretive anthropology seek to uncover and

interpret deep emotional and psychological structure of societies.



Culture is an integrated system

• Organic analogy – culture and societies can be

compared to living organisms

• Strengths

• Allows us to understand society as

composed of different elements (like kinship,

religion, and subsistence).

• Implies that anthropologists should describe

these elements/roles and the ways that

changes in one affects the others• .




Ways that changes in one affects the others:

• a. Subsistence and Social Structure are related to each other

• b. Foragers (egalitarian - belief in the equality of all people,

especially in political, economic, or social life) live in small groups

and requires little direction or coordination; loosely defined social

groups with changing membership

• c. Farming/subsistence based economy requires more

coordination than foraging; likely have a society with more rigid

structure and more stable membership

• d. If foragers moved to farming, we would expect it to develop

more defined social structures.




• Weaknesses

• Implies that properly functioning societies should be stable and

conflict-free.

• In socially stratified societies, different groups have different

interests, which create conflict.

• Capitalist society – workers versus owners

• In non-industrial societies have conflicting commitments to their

families, other social groups, their religion….Even in societies

that lack social groups beyond the family, the interests of men,

women, young, and old may differ.



Functionalism

• Theoretical position that focuses on

finding general laws that identify different

elements of society, show how they relate

to each other, and demonstrate their role

in maintaining social order



Ecological Functionalism

• Theoretical approach that focuses on

relationship between environment and society

• Holds that the ways in which cultural institutions

work can best be understood by examining their

effects on the environment

• Marvin Harris and his study of sacred cow in

India



Culture is a shared system of norms

and values

• Norm - An ideal cultural pattern that influences behavior

in a particular society

• shared rules of behavior that reflect and enforce

culture; the way things ought to be done (shaking

hands versus bowing)

• May be contradictory

• People don’t necessarily do what they say they

should do

• May be manipulated

• For personal or group ends



Culture is a shared system of

norms and values

• Value - A culturally defined idea of what is true,

right, and beautiful

• Values may be contradictory and are not

universal.

• Values may be manipulated.

• Even in small societies, norms are not always

followed and values are not universal (e.g.,

Pukapuka fishermen often do not agree on the

kind of fish)



Dominant Culture

• Dominant cultures retain power because of the

control of formal institutions (e.g., legal system,

public school system, media); not referring to

superior and inferior; referring to idea that

dominant cultures have:

• Greater wealth and power

• More able to impose its understanding of the

world on subcultures than the reverse

• Contains many subcultures



Subculture

• A group within a society that shares

norms and values that are significantly

different from those of a larger, dominant

culture within the same society

• share through various mechanisms:

religion, cultural tales, rules, norms,

values…etc.



Renegotiation of Values and

Norms

• Values and norms are constantly being re-negotiated.

• There is ongoing conflict and subjugation as well as consensus

• People contest subjugation and protect their subcultures through

political, economic, and military means

• Stereotypes are used for subcultural groups.

• Which norms and values are promoted and rejected is important

because cultural ideas influence and are influenced by:

• Wealth

• Power

• Status

• Values and norms influence laws and social policies

• Notions held by those in power is critical



Historical Particularism

• Focused on culture as a shared set of norms

and values

• Interested in presenting objective descriptions

of cultures within their historical and

environmental context

• emphasis on norms and values was designed

to show that, although other cultures may be

different, they were also coherent, rational, and

beautiful.



Postmodernism

• Culture is a context in which norms and

values are contested and negotiated.

• Focuses on issues of power and voice

• Sees culture and society as battlegrounds

of fights for power and the right to

determine norms and values

• Does NOT assume that there is a cultural

core of shared beliefs and values© 2015. Cengage Learning.


Culture is the way human beings

adapt to the world

• Culture is Adaptive – a biological and

cultural process by which an individual or

population becomes better suited to

survive and reproduce in its environment

• Humans use culture to adapt to our world

(more than biology)



Advantages

• ADVANTAGES - Cultural adaptation has advantages

over biological adaptation.

• Allows humans to change their approaches quickly in

order to solve problems.

• Human plasticity (ability to change behavior) allows us

to thrive under different and changing social and

economic conditions (no instinct to hunt or consume

particular food, build particular of structure, social

structure…)

• Humans’ main biological adaptation to the world:

learning culture© 2015. Cengage Learning.


Disadvantages

• DISADVANTAGES - Cultural adaptation has disadvantages in

regard to biological adaptation.

• Misinformation can affect human behavior – can lead to cultural

practices that hinder rather than aid survival (e.g., unrestrained

logging, mining, commercial fishing – encouraging destruction of

the environment, may lead to short-term success but long-term

disaster)

• b) Not all human practices and choices are adaptive over the

long term, although humans may still choose to do them.

• c) Some practices are clearly not adaptive, even in the short run

(e.g., ethnic cleansing and genocide may benefit leaders but these

practices are not adaptive)



Cultural Ecology

• Focused on the adaptive aspect of culture

• Focuses on the study of people’s behavior as it

relates to their well-being or the relationship of

cultural practices to ecosystems.

• They investigate the ways cultures adapt to

specific environments

• Looks at the ways in which cultures have

changed in response to new physical and social

conditions.



Culture is constantly changing

• All cultures change over time because of many reasons:

• a) Conflicts from internal elements

• b) Contact with outsiders

• c) Population growth

• d) Disease

• e) Climate change

• f) Natural disaster

• Cultures change at variable rates of speed (small

increments or revolutionary bursts)

• Historically, culture change has been a slow process;

pace has been increasing rapidly for the past century.




• Change results from Innovation and

Diffusion• Innovation: A new variation on an existing cultural

pattern that is subsequently accepted by others

members of society

• Primary innovations:

• New practices

• New tools

• New principles

• Are often chance discoveries and accidents (penicillin)




• Diffusion: The spread of cultural elements

(like practices, objects, or beliefs) from

one culture to another through cultural

contact (e.g., trade, travel, warfare)

(Missions were a primary way to spread

Christianity to Indians)

• Can be direct or indirect




• Change is a very complex process.

• New ideas must be accepted (e.g., penicillin)

• People may not understand it

• People may not like it. Change rarely provides equal

benefits to everyone (e.g., 1940s-1960s Green

Revolution in Latin America and Asia – new techniques

improved crop yields which benefitted large land owners

but not laborers).

• It may be promoted or resisted by powerful interests.




• It may be accompanied by conflict.(e.g., those colonized

or captured are often forced to assume new cultural

practices and abandon old traditions)

• Changes may come from within or from outside a

culture.

• Cultural change can result from:

• Invasions by a foreign culture

• Revolution

• Epidemic diseases



Quick Quiz



1. Cultural characteristics include all of

the following except:

a) learned behaviors.

b) smooth integration between parts.

c) symbols and classification systems.

d) maladaptive information.



Answer: b

• A culture may contain maladaptive

behaviors, but not all parts of a culture

must work together smoothly.



2. Anthropologists with training in cultural ecology might carry out which of the following research projects?

a) Investigating social networks of single mothers and child rearing practices

b) Eliciting the categories of foods that make up a ceremonial meal

c) Measuring rice yield in rural Japanese villages

d) Surveying cross-culturally the relationship between marriage and religion



Answer: c

• Anthropologists with training in cultural

ecology might carry out a research

project measuring rice yield in rural

Japanese villages.



3. Which of the following anthropological research projects would be considered a good example of an interpretive/symbolic approach?

a) An exploration of cricket as a commentary on British culture

b) The ecological function of Hindu beliefs regarding not eating beef

c) The social structure of middle-class Brazilian households

d) Classification of medicinal plants by Samoan elders



Answer: a

• An exploration of cricket as a

commentary on British culture would

be considered a good example of an

interpretive/symbolic approach.



4. When cultural innovations move from one society to another, it is called:

a) juxtaposition.

b) enculturation.

c) acculturation.

d) diffusion.



Answer: d

• When cultural innovations move from one

society to another, it is called diffusion.



A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

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