About Culture
Culture
Key Concept in Cultural
Anthropology
Defining Culture
• Everything humans perceive, know, think, value and feel is learned through participating in a cultural system
• Human potential can only be realized within the structure of human culture and through growing up in close contact with other humans
Scope of Culture
• Things that strike as “natural” or “normal” or “common sense” or “human nature” or
“instinctive” are often cultural
• Mother/infant bond “human nature”?
• In Northeastern Brazil where poverty is predominant, mothers give minimum care to infants.
Wildboy of Aveyon
• Found and brought into human contact
• Learned some speech
• Could not adjust adequately to human society after being isolated from it for so long Contemporary Anthropologists
• Do not agree on a definition of culture
• Some definitions stress the materialist side of culture and others stress the idealist side of culture
• Anthropology is a social science, humanities and science
• Anthropologists do agree on characteristics of culture
Characteristics All Cultures Share
• Made up of learned behaviors
• Learning culture is continuous process
• Cultures are learned through the process of enculturation
• They all involve the use of language and symbols—things that stand for something else Characteristics of Culture
• Elements of culture have some logical relationship to one another
• In some ways, members of a culture share values and norms
• The way people learn to interact with one another is cultural
• Types and expression of emotions is cultural Cultures are Adaptive
• Cultures contain information about how to survive in the world
• UDEL Student Culture Has Ways to
Survive and Handle Stress
• Cultures also contain information about what is maladaptive
• UDEL Drinking to excess
Culture Change
• Cultural Change may result from internal dynamics or by outside forces
• The speed in which cultures
Key Concept in Cultural
Anthropology
Defining Culture
• Everything humans perceive, know, think, value and feel is learned through participating in a cultural system
• Human potential can only be realized within the structure of human culture and through growing up in close contact with other humans
Scope of Culture
• Things that strike as “natural” or “normal” or “common sense” or “human nature” or
“instinctive” are often cultural
• Mother/infant bond “human nature”?
• In Northeastern Brazil where poverty is predominant, mothers give minimum care to infants.
Wildboy of Aveyon
• Found and brought into human contact
• Learned some speech
• Could not adjust adequately to human society after being isolated from it for so long Contemporary Anthropologists
• Do not agree on a definition of culture
• Some definitions stress the materialist side of culture and others stress the idealist side of culture
• Anthropology is a social science, humanities and science
• Anthropologists do agree on characteristics of culture
Characteristics All Cultures Share
• Made up of learned behaviors
• Learning culture is continuous process
• Cultures are learned through the process of enculturation
• They all involve the use of language and symbols—things that stand for something else Characteristics of Culture
• Elements of culture have some logical relationship to one another
• In some ways, members of a culture share values and norms
• The way people learn to interact with one another is cultural
• Types and expression of emotions is cultural Cultures are Adaptive
• Cultures contain information about how to survive in the world
• UDEL Student Culture Has Ways to
Survive and Handle Stress
• Cultures also contain information about what is maladaptive
• UDEL Drinking to excess
Culture Change
• Cultural Change may result from internal dynamics or by outside forces
• The speed in which cultures