Culturethe ultimate

paradigm

• Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, how we play, what we learn, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not just architecture and literature.

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

• Berawan funeral rites:

• Stage 1 (a few days) Rites performed immediately after death.

• Stage 2 (upto several years) corpse stored in house• Stage 3 (several days) lavish entertainment of guests in

presence of corpse• Stage 4 Remains placed in mausoleum

• American funeral rites:

Stage 1 Blood is replaced by perfumed formaldehydeStage 2 Soft organs of chest and abdomen are removed via long hollow needle and vacuum pumpStage 3 Corpse is plumped by with injections of waxesStage 4 Hands and face are carefully made up with

cosmeticsStage 5 Corpse is placed in padded coffin, often in clothes ranging in style from business suit to negligee.

Perhaps it is not a universal truth to say that certain behaviours are right or wrong.

• Weak ethnocentrismThe point of view that one’s way of life is to be preferred to all others.

• Strong ethnocentrismThe point of view that one’s own group becomes the centre of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.

Problem with ethnocentrism:

• If we do not use our own point of view to form opinions, what point of view do we use?

Cultural Relativism

• An approach which argues that truth, beauty and morality are not absolute, but are dependent on the culture in which they exist.

• One culture’s notion of truth is valid only relative to that culture. Another culture’s notion of truth might be completely different and yet still be valid relative to that second culture.

How do cultural paradigms spread?

• EnculturationA partly conscious and partly unconscious learning experience whereby the older generation invites, induces and compels the younger generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking and behaving.

• Cultural DiffusionWhen patterns of cultural behaviour or meaning are passed from one society to another.