12_The_Dynamics_of_Culture_and_Human_Evolution.pptx

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1. Unit IV, Lesson 1 The Dynamics of Culture and Human Evolution

2. Learning Objectives At the end of this lesson, the students are expected to: ♦ Explain the development of one’s self and others as a product of socialization and enculturation ♦ Demonstrate curiosity and explore how individuals acquire selves and identities ♦ Explore the role of embodiment in self-constitution ♦ Explain the process of acquiring social roles ♦ Identify the context, content, processes, and consequences of enculturation and socialization

3. DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF CULTURE Evolutionary concept of culture The earliest theory about culture is evolutionism. Evolutionism is the notion that there exists one dominant line of evolution or stages for the development of culture . In other words, all societies pass through the same specified stages .

4. FUNCTIONALIST ANALYSIS OF CULTURE Functionalism defines culture as a whole that provides an overarching system of meanings to what people do . Functionalism focuses on the social roles that cultural items play within the social system as a whole. Marvin Harris’ (1974) study of sacred cows of India, while falling into cultural materialist paradigm, provides a good example of functionalist analysis. For Harris, the reverence for the cows among Indians has more to do with economic adaptation than religious doctrine .

5. In Philippine context, it is interesting to note that the cultural meaning of “ aswang ”, a vampire-like witch ghoul in Filipino folklore, notorious among rural people, can be analyzed from a functionalist point of view. In this view, strong women are seen as aswang . Filipina Folklorist Herminia Menez suggests the influence of the Spaniards was of such magnitude that previously respected female babaylans (shamans) were inverted into the aswang .

6. STRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF CULTURE In the twentieth century, the study of culture was dominated by structuralist paradigm . Structuralists like Claude Levi-Strauss (1908– 2009 ) emphasized the synchronic character of culture (the similarities of cultures across time and space).

7. FEMINIST VIEW OF CULTURE The feminist analysis of culture is a recent development in the study of culture. This has to do with the rise of professional women in anthropology and other social sciences . The entry of women in anthropology meant the radical questioning of the male-bias in the study of culture . Whereas traditional study of culture equated women with traditional gender roles , feminists challenged this male-bias.

8. MARXIST ANALYSIS OF CULTURE Whereas feminists emphasize the role of male-bias in the study of culture, classic Marxist analysis emphasizes the role of economic class and economic life of society. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (p. 2). Marx’s (1977, originally published 1859) famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy argued:

9. Culture, once it is established, is also active in shaping the development of the economic system of society. The Marxist analysis of culture is very powerful in explaining the differences in life styles among various classes especially between the working class families and middle classes.

10. POSTMODERN AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORIES OF CULTURE The postmodern view of culture challenges the notion that there is a single definition of culture. Postmodern analyses of culture show that culture is like a narrative or story. It can have multiple meanings and it can exist independently of the people who created them. Culture like a story can have a life of its own. They therefore challenge the idea that culture is the same for everyone. They espouse cultural relativism and reject any search for cultural universals.

11. Cultural relativism is simply the belief that all cultures as equally complex. There is no such thing as superior or inferior culture . They also challenge the idea that there is such thing as “master narrative” that underlines all cultural forms as structuralists believed. Rather, cultures are equally complex and they should be interpreted based on their own logic and form .

12. THE BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF HUMAN BEINGS The Englishman Francis Bacon, the pioneer in the use of scientific method, advocated the use of induction to arrive at the truth in his True Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature, published in 1620. In induction, a scientist begins with concrete cases, then, proceeds to build up a hypothesis to explain a phenomenon . In the field of anatomy, Vesalius pioneered the careful study of human anatomy in 1543.

13. Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms buried in the earth’s surface. The scientists who study the past by excavating the remains buried underneath the earth’s surface are called archaeologists.

14. If human species evolve, so does their culture. The concept of cultural evolution—the idea that culture evolves and that useful parallels can be drawn between biological and cultural change—has had a long and often controversial history in the social sciences. Cultural development closely followed the physical evolution of human beings . Material culture —or the tools humans use—is but a small portion of this cultural complex. The use of tools facilitated the adaptation of early hominids to the environment . The early hominids used stones, woods, and bones to make their own tools. Through the development of the brain and language, human beings begun to produce an elaborate system of communication .

15. THE ELEMENTS OF CULTURE Belief system Culture like society, has several elements. One of these elements is the belief system . In general, belief means, “[o] bjective reality can be assumed as being represented within a person by certain beliefs or expectations which to one degree or another are accepted as true , and other beliefs or expectations accepted as false ” ( Rokeach , 1954:195).

16. Norms guiding ordinary usages and conventions of everyday life are known as folkways . Among traditional Filipino families, for example, the children and young people are expected to show respect to elders through the use of polite terms such as “ po ” and “ opo ”. Mores are much stronger norms than are folkways. They serve as rules that maintain order within a community or society.

17. CULTURAL VALUES Values are not directly observable — “conceptions of the desirable, used in moral discourse, with a particular relevance to behavior” (van Deth and Scarbrough , 1995:52). Values are hierarchically ordered system both within the individual and society. This ordering may be called as “value system” or “value orientation” (Albert, 1968:288). Value , for Rokeach (1968) is “ a type of belief, centrally located within one’s belief system, about how one ought to and ought not to behave , or about some end-state of existence worth or not worth attaining ” (p. 124).

18. ATTITUDES Attitudes, as elements of expressive aspect of culture, according to W. J. McGuire (1985), “are defined at least implicitly as responses that locate objects of thought on dimensions of judgment ” (p. 239). This judgment is arrived at through three general classes of information generated within the individual, namely, the cognitive information , affective or emotional information, and information concerning past behaviors or intentions .

19. The Characteristics of Culture Culture is learned . Culture is not a matter of race. It is learned, not carried in our genes . Cultural practices are transmitted by society through enculturation . Mental structures or schemas are created in the individual as a result of the process of enculturation. People who share a culture have recurring common experiences , which lead them to develop similar mental schema. These schemas are then used by people to make sense of their world and in dealing with other people. In sociology this is called socialization.

20. Culture is shared. No one is born with a fully developed culture apparatus in her head . While individual differences among members of a society vary, nevertheless, they share a large number of beliefs and practices. Culture is dynamic and changing. Culture is diverse and plural.

21. DIVERSITY OF CULTURES Traditionally, many anthropologists believed that culture is a seamless whole that is well-integrated with the rest of social system and structures. Hence many students of culture believed that within a given society there is little room for cultural diversity. The culture in a given society is also diverse. There is no single culture but plural cultures . In the sixties, the term “subculture” became prominent among scholars of culture.

22. QUESTIONS: How does culture and society shape human behavior? Having learned the concepts associated with culture and society, how do you explain the current “addiction” of Filipinos to K-POP and Korean telenovelas? Why do you think young Filipinos enjoy them more than other telenovelas? In our Philippine culture, why do the LGBTQ still receives rejection from most our society?