What is Culture? World View K-12 Global Education Symposium 2008 The Friday Center for Continuing Education October 22, 2008

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "What is Culture? World View K-12 Global Education Symposium 2008 The Friday Center for Continuing Education October 22, 2008"

Edith Norris
5 years ago
Views:

1 What is Culture? World View K-12 Global Education Symposium 2008 The Friday Center for Continuing Education October 22, 2008 Robert Daniels Department of Anthropology University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2 The Anthropological Conception of Culture What is anthropology all about? Defining Culture Culture in evolutionary perspective Where is culture?

3 The Anthropological Conception of Culture Is it Culture or cultures? How the culture concept saves us from some common errors Limitations of the culture concept

4 NOT JUST HIGH CULTURE

5 NOT JUST POP CULTURE

8 Trobriand Mortuary Dance

10 Gambia Costa Rica Japan Egypt

12 You are both a native expert of your own cultural patterns and an amateur anthropologist, a reflexive analyst of the social world around you

13 The classic definition 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" (Edward B. Tylor 1871)

14 Culture The evolved life-support system of our species learned interpersonal informational symbolic evaluative A code for meaningful behavior An agenda for adaptive action

15 Culture in evolutionary perspective

16 STAGE 1 The development of bipedalism = the emergence of the hominids (the family Hominidae)

17 STAGE 2 The development of culture = the emergence of humans (the genus Homo)

20 CRANIAL CAPACITY NOT TO SCALE MOLARS INCISORS 4 MILLION YEARS B.P. PRESENT

23 Since the beginnings of culture we have remained ONE SPECIES, diverse and interacting. various South Africans

26 Where is Culture?

28 A minor example of cultural differences

33 Ultimately, cultural patterns are abstractions we make (on a certain level of generality) from observations of people s behavior (so, of course, are lots of other generalizations we make)

34 Is this girl s expression an example of: how Turkana people behave? how Turkana girls behave? how teenage girls behave? her personal attitudes?

35 Is it Culture or cultures?

36 THE HUMAN PARADOX Are "we" the same as "them" or are we profoundly different? The answer is "both!" The question is ill-conceived.

37 Kerge bik tugul. Same people all. All people are the same. My daughter Sarah, and my adoptive mother Komosi, in Kapkwen, Kenya, 1971

38 But culture is everywhere specific - one can only become human in some particular fashion

39 speaking Amharic or Arabic or Chinese or Czech or Hindi or Russian or Thai

40 Furthermore, culture is not simply a neutral code.

41 Culture everywhere, in every act, involves the ascription of meaning and the ascription of value.

42 How the culture concept saves us from some common errors

43 ERROR 1: confuse the hardware with the software: They act differently because they look different. That's racism.

46 CORRECTION 1: The Psychic Unity of Mankind

47 ERROR 2: confuse one's own cultural values for universals: They are wrong to act differently. That's ethnocentrism.

48 CORRECTION 2: Cultural Relativity

53 Limitations of the Culture Concept Maintaining the processual view What are the constituent parts? The mercurial nature of meaning The problem of boundedness

54 It is easy to think about THINGS at hand. It is easy to think TYPOLOGICALLY to classify THINGS

55 While classifying things is useful, culture is not a thing, it is a process.

56 Structure is the product of processes the precipitate of action the result of decisions recorded experience and the framework for future possibilities

59 Limitations of the Culture Concept Maintaining the processual view What are the constituent parts? The mercurial nature of meaning The problem of boundedness

61 Limitations of the Culture Concept Maintaining the processual view What are the constituent parts? The mercurial nature of meaning The problem of boundedness

62 Buttons or Zipper? Farmer or Cowboy? Whites or Indians?

64 Limitations of the Culture Concept Maintaining the processual view What are the constituent parts? The mercurial nature of meaning The problem of boundedness

67 THE CLASSIC QUESTION Where is the boundary that encompasses the smallest number of components within which the dynamic behavior under study is generated? -- Jay W. Forrester

72 A phenomenon remains unexplainable as long as the range of observation is not wide enough to include the context in which the phenomenon occurs. -- Watzlawick

Students are also encouraged to approach all readings, discussions, lectures, and audio-visual materials critically.

Students are also encouraged to approach all readings, discussions, lectures, and audio-visual materials critically. ANTH 100 D Introduction To Anthropology Winter 2006 Bellevue Community College Instructor : Manouchehr Shiva, Ph.D. Office Hours: (by appointment) Division Phone: 425-564-2331, 425-564-2334 E-mail: mshiva@bcc.ctc.edu