Basic of Cultural Anthropology/ social science

a presentation on what culture is and why do we need to study culture.

1. P A R T : O N E Culture: Definition and Characteristics

2. Summary of what Culture is How is culture studied and Why does it exist ?

3. Culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world It lies behind and is reflected by people’s behavior . Cultures are shared by members of a society . They distinguish different group of people from other and produce behavior that is intelligible to other members of that society . Cultures are learned, rather than inherited biologically, and they are learned largely through the medium of language .

4. Why do we need to study culture? Anthropology students have to study many cultures, each with its own distinctive system of politics, economics, and religion . Different societies have one thing in common, for societies to work, some degree of predictable behavior is required from each individual in the society . Culture sets the limits of behavior and guides it along predictable parts.

5. Then, how are Cultures studied? Anthropologists learn about a culture by experiencing it and talking about it with those who live by its rules . Through careful observation and discussion with informants who are particularly knowledgeable in the ways of their culture, the anthropologist abstracts a set of rules to explain how people behave in a particular society.

6. Culture and its definition Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define . ‘ ’Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature .’’ - Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics .

7. Arnoldian Exemplified in Matthew Arnolds ’ Culture and Anarchy (1867 ) Culture referred to special intellectual or artistic endeavors or products, what today we might call “high culture ” . Only a portion – typically a small one – of any social group “has ” culture .

8. Tylorean Pioneered by Edward Tylor in Primitive Culture (1870) Quality possessed by all people in all social groups, who nevertheless could be arrayed on a development continuum from “savagery” through “barbarism” to “civilization”. (In contrast to Arnold’s view, all folks “have” culture, which they acquire by virtue of membership in society ) . Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

9. Boan Developed in the work of Franz Boas and his students Emphasized the uniqueness of the many and varied cultures of different peoples or societies . One should never differentiate high from low culture, and one ought not differentially valorize cultures as savage or civilized.

10.  Conclusion to the definition There are multitude of different understandings . Compound matters, the difficulties are not merely conceptual or semantic .

11. Disagreement in the understanding of culture

12. « Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other, as conditional elements of future action . » - Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1952: 181; cited by Adler 1997: 14

13. « Culture consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodements and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves . » - T.Schwartz 1992; cited by Avruch 1998: 17

14. « Culture ... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society . » - Tyler (British anthropologist) 1870: 1; cited by Avruch 1998: 6

15. « [ Culture] is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another . » - Hofstede 1994: 5

16. « ... the set of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated from one generation to the next . » - Matsumoto 1996: 16

17. « Culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour .» - Spencer-Oatey 2008: 3

18. P A R T : T W O THE STUDY OF CULTURE

19. CULTURAL FIELD STUDY Culture is a set of rules or standards. Culture cannot be directly observed. Only actualy behaviors are observable.

20. Similarities between Cultural Field Study with Linguistics   You abstract a set of rules from what is heard and seen to explain the subject .

21. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURAL FIELD STUDY According to Polish-born Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, people everywhere share a common in their biological and physical needs, so the ultimate function of culture is to meet these needs.

22. A culture must provide for biological needs, such as foods or reproduction .

23. A culture must provide for instrumental needs, such as law and education .

24.  A culture must provide for integrative needs, such as art or religion .

25. CRITICAL THINKING Question : W hy must a culture provide integrative needs, such as art or religion ? Answer : Because when science and technology are inadequate to explain certain natural phenomena - such as eclipses - people develop a belief system to explain such phenomena to restore a sense of security. (Insert video )

26. However, there are still some obstacles in doing field study. Example : The Garbage Project The Garbage Project was a controlled study of household wastes to test the validity of the interview-survey technique, it proved that ideas about human behavior based on conventional interview-survey technique alone can be in serious error. In the Garbage Project discussion, the way people think they should behave, the way they think they do behave, and the way they actually behave may be three distinctly different versions .

27. IN CONCLUsION! Through analyzing the way cultures fulfill these needs for its members, anthropologists can deduce the culture traits . After a field study conducted by Malinowski of the Trobriand Islanders on exogamy, he himself concluded that breaches do occur, but it maybe less frequent that what is gossiped. Had he relied solely on what the natives told him, his description of their culture would have been inaccurate.

28. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!