Chapter 2 - Culture

Chapter 2 - Culture What is culture? - According to anthropologists, it is peoples entire way of life - Culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts and institutions that are created, learned and shared by a group of people - Culture includes shared norms, symbols, mental map of reality & material objects as well as structure power which includes media, education, religion, & politics that our understanding of the world is shaped, reinforced, and challenged by - It shapes our idea of what is normal & natural - It is taught and learned - Process of learning is called uncultration How do we Learn Culture? - Process of learning culture is informal and even unconscious as we absorb culture from family, friends, and media - All human beings are equally learning culture, but it would be the culture they are exposed to.. Not limited to humans - Chimpanzees were observed teaching their young ones to create tools that they can insert into an ant hill to get ants - Not comparable to humans capacity of learning culture - Humans have cultural institutions that enculture members, like schools - It is shared, negotiated, & changed all the time - Norms, symbols, values, & mental maps of reality are 4 elements that anthropologists will consider when they study a culture - Norms – ideas or rules about how people should behave in different situations or toward certain people - We learn norms both consciously and unconsciously - Culture may encourage endogamy (marriage inside one's group) or exogamy (outside one's group) - Values are fundamental beliefs about what is important, true, or beautiful, and what makes a good life - Symbols are anything that signifies something else - Can be spoken sounds or gestures - Not universal - Enculturation process of learning a culture - Happens in a group; if it is not shared, it is not culture - Cultural institutions serve as structures for promoting enculturation and at the same time serve as a place where people challenge, debate, & change culture - Mental map of reality is a cultural classification of what kinds of people and things exist, & the assignment of meaning to those classifications - Organize the world into categories that help us sort our experience so we don't have all the details all the time, we could not handle all that info Edward Burnett (1832-1917) - English anthropologist wrote Primitive Culture in 1871 - He understood culture as a complex system of ideas and behaviors learned overtime & passed down from generation to generation and shared by members of a particular group Charles Darwin - His theory of biological evolution influenced anthropologists - More developed people, the more advanced the culture. This is not what we believe anymore. How culture develops - Franz Boas says culture developed in specific ways because of unique histories - Historical Particularism - Bronislaw Malinowski - A polish anthropologist who taught in England - His theory, Structural Functionalism, said that each element in society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in balance How are culture & power related? - Originally, anthropologists focused on culture as a system of ideas - More recently they considered the interconnections between culture & power - Eric Wolf (1923-1999) encouraged other anthropologists to see power as an aspect of all human relationships - Parents & child - Employer & employee - Power reflects stratification which is uneven distribution of resources and privilege among participants - Some people are the center of culture (for example, black people used to be ignored, etc.) - Hegemony is the ability of a group to create agreement within a population without the use of force of the use of threat - Human agency is the potential power of individuals and groups to fight cultural norms, values, symbols, institutions and structures of power Change of Law vs Change of Culture - Changing a law can happen overnight - Culture cannot be changed that quickly - Example: interracial marriage laws but people still marry same race Biology vs. Culture - We have biological needs (ex. Eat, sleep, etc) - How you eat, what you eat, etc. is determined by culture - Culture even influences the shape & function of our bodies - Human genetic codes are 99.9% identical, so we should see similar behavioral responses driven by biology - However we see a vast variety across cultures Nurture vs Nature - People believe that intelligence has nothing to do with gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality - Sometimes we hear that inequality in society is natural based on biology - We don’t know much about genes, but we do know ways in which cultural patterns shape human behavior Culture is created & not in our DNA We are born with the ability to learn culture we are exposed to, like language Culture of 20th Century - Capitalism has grown over centuries - It is deeply tied to culture of consumerism, spend money wastefully - Banks, credit card companies, corporations, & gov encourage/support spending money - Consumerism is a way of life everywhere, especially in developed countries - Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day etc. push for buying in a wasteful way - Consumerism influenced language too - Let’s have lunch → let's get to know each other - Can I buy you a drink? → I find you attractive - Globalization & Culture - Cultures have never been completely isolated - Globalization is transforming cultures - Globalization makes it faster & to a large extend - Has three effects - Homogenization - CocaCola, McDonalds, CNN - Two way transference of culture through migration - Movement of people across national borders, immigration, and war cause immigration - Immigrants & tourists have influence on the host country as well - Now salad bowl rather than melting pot - Increased cosmopolitanism - Cosmopolitanism is a broad term - We see more of it due to globalization & search of jobs