The Paradoxes of Culture

Theories of Cultural Change ANTH 2301 The Paradoxes of Culture As European immigrants arrived on America's western frontier, they had to reimagine the aspects of their culture that were recognisable to them in starkly different social and environmental contexts. They were accustomed to living in log or plank-style homes, but now they were on large plains with little trees. Digging a dwelling with turf walls and a roof into a slope of land was a frequent way to get around this environmental restriction. Despite the fact that these houses were fully functioning, many Euro-American settlers thought they were unkempt and outdated. Once their farming endeavours gained success, they frequently embarked on the costly task of importing wood from wooded regions to construct the type of home they were accustomed to from their childhood, either in the European or American east coasts. Cultural anthropologist Jim Ferguson noted during his study in Lesotho in the 1980s that wealthy individuals frequently built rectangular buildings with cement floors and galvanised steel roofs in place of traditional circular, thatched residences constructed of mud and stone. The rectangular structures heated up like ovens in the scorching sun and created a lot of noise in the rain, while the circular buildings were built of local materials, functionally tailored to the local climate, and cool on hot days and warm on chilly nights. The materials cost a lot and were imported. Ferguson made a suggestion to a guy who was about to replace his round house with a rectangle one built of steel and cement that the building materials and techniques used locally would be better than those imported. He inquired, "What kind of house does your father have, there in America?" while giving me a serious look in the eye. Is it circular? No, I admitted; it was square. Is the roof made of grass? No, it didn't. "Is the floor made of cow dung?" No. "How many rooms does your father's house have?" was asked after that. "I think it's about ten," I said. He simply stated, "That is the direction we would like to move in," after stopping to let it sink in. Ferguson (2006), p. 18 The concept of home is a fluid concept that is influenced by social status, environmental adaptability, utility, and ideological discussion for both Euro-American settlers and Lesotho locals. These instances highlight some of the conflicts that lie at the core of the idea of culture. Anthropologists used to define culture as a relatively stable, widely accepted set of characteristics shared by the inhabitants of a certain region. But as the 20th century went on, anthropologists came to see that this concept of culture was inaccurate and lacking. American anthropologist Franz Boas made the case that cultural components are extremely mobile and spread via cross-cultural interactions such as commerce and migration around the beginning of the 20th century. Cultural anthropologists have been emphasising the contentious features of culture— people's disagreements and arguments about the prevalent practices and values of their societies—since the 1960s. The unevenness of culture within a society, or the disparate ways in which members of various social categories and subgroups engage in their shared culture in different ways and from diverse viewpoints, is largely responsible for this disagreement. There is something enduring and universal about culture, a set of shared characteristics that sets apart each society's whole way of life, in spite of these forces of change and conflict. Cultures tend to retain some characteristics despite changing due to innovation and interaction. During the 1980s, a number of academics believed that rising levels of international commerce, migration, and technology were uniting the world's different nations into a single, homogenous monoculture. We may observe that the reverse has occurred in the 2020s. There has been a rebirth of cultural identities and deliberate attempts to preserve, restore, and create new kinds of cultural heritage in various regions of the world. The concept of culture is so full of paradoxes that some anthropologists have proposed doing away with it entirely and replacing it with a different idea to unite the four disciplines in their quest for understanding humans. Perhaps it isn't even feasible to have such a comprehensive comprehension of humans. Alternatively, maybe the most insightful features of the idea of culture are its paradoxes. Perhaps anthropology's greatest contribution to our knowledge of humans is found in those inconsistencies. The latter strategy is used in this textbook. A people's whole way of life, influenced by a variety of opposing factors, is their culture. These factors make up the four main cultural paradoxes.