THE BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE

THE BASIC  CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE:

If you ask 100 anthropologists to define culture, you’ll get 100 different definitions. However, most of these definitions would emphasize roughly the same things: that culture is shared, transmitted through learning and helps shape behavior and beliefs. Culture is of concern to all four subfields and while our earliest ancestors relied more on biological adaptation, culture now shapes humanity to a much larger extent.

·       One of the earliest definitions of culture was put forth by Tylor in 1871: “Culture, or civilization, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

·       Another, more modern, definition of culture is, “a society’s shared and socially transmitted ideas, values and perceptions, which are used to make sense of experience and generate behavior and are reflected in that behavior.”

·       Culture is universal among all human groups and even exists among some primates.

·       All cultures have to provide for the physical, emotional, and social needs of their members, enculturate new members, resolve conflicts and promote survival for their members.

·       Society must balance the needs of the whole with the needs of the individual. If individual needs are continually suppressed, social systems can become unstable and individual stress can become too much to handle. Every culture has its own methods of balancing the needs of society in relation to individual needs.

·       Subcultures are groups with distinct patterns of learned and shared behavior (ethnicities, races, genders, age categories) within a larger culture. Despite these distinctive traits, members of subcultures still share commonalities with the larger society. Subcultures exist in most state level systems because those systems are pluralistic, they encompass more than one ethnic group or culture.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE

Culture has five basic characteristics: It is learned, shared, based on symbols, integrated, and dynamic. All cultures share these basic features.

·       Culture is learned. It is not biological; we do not inherit it. Much of learning culture is unconscious. We learn culture from families, peers, institutions, and media. The process of learning culture is known as enculturation. While all humans have basic biological needs such as food, sleep, and sex, the way we fulfill those needs varies cross-culturally.

·       Culture is shared. Because we share culture with other members of our group, we are able to act in socially appropriate ways as well as predict how others will act. Despite the shared nature of culture, that doesn’t mean that culture is homogenous (the same). The multiple cultural worlds that exist in any society are discussed in detail below.

·       Culture is based on symbols. A symbol is something that stands for something else. Symbols vary cross-culturally and are arbitrary. They only have meaning when people in a culture agree on their use. Language, money and art are all symbols. Language is the most important symbolic component of culture.

·       Culture is integrated. This is known as holism, or the various parts of a culture being interconnected. All aspects of a culture are related to one another and to truly understand a culture, one must learn about all of its parts, not only a few.

·       Culture is dynamic. This simply means that cultures interact and change. Because most cultures are in contact with other cultures, they exchange ideas and symbols. All cultures change, otherwise, they would have problems adapting to changing environments. And because cultures are integrated, if one component in the system changes, it is likely that the entire system must adjust.

HOW DOES CULTURE CHANGE

All Cultures are inherently predisposed to change and, at the same time, to resist change.  There are dynamic processes operating that encourage the acceptance of new ideas and things while there are others that encourage changeless stability.  It is likely that social and psychological chaos would result if there were not the conservative forces resisting change.

There are three general sources of influence or pressure that are responsible for both change and resistance to it:

1.            forces at work within a society

2.            contact between societies

3.            changes in the natural environment

Within a society, processes leading to change include invention and culture loss.  Inventions may be either technological or ideological.  The latter includes such things as the invention of algebra and calculus or the creation of a representative parliament as a replacement for rule by royal decree.  Technological inventions include new tools, energy sources, and transportation methods as well as more frivolous and ephemeral things such as style of dress and bodily adornment.

Culture loss is an inevitable result of old cultural patterns being replaced by new ones.  For instance, not many Americans today know how to care for a horse.  A century ago, this was common knowledge, except in a few large urban centers.  Since then, vehicles with internal combustion engines have replaced horses as our primary means of transportation and horse care knowledge lost its importance.  As a result, children are rarely taught these skills.  Instead, they are trained in the use of the new technologies of automobiles, televisions, stereos, cellular phones, computers, and iPods.

Within a society, processes that result in the resistance to change include habit and the integration of culture traits.  Older people, in particular, are often reticent to replace their comfortable, long familiar cultural patterns.  Habitual behavior provides emotional security in a threatening world of change.  Religion also often provides strong moral justification and support for maintaining traditional ways.  In the early 21st century, this is especially true of nations mostly guided by Islamic Law, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

The fact that cultural institutions are integrated and often interdependent is a major source of resistance to change.  For instance, in the second half of the 20th century, rapidly changing roles of North American and European women were resisted by many men because it inevitably resulted in changes in their roles as well.  Male and female roles do not exist independent of each other.  This sort of integration of cultural traits inevitably slows down and modifies cultural changes.  Needless to say, it is a source of frustration for both those who want to change and those who do not.

The processes leading to change that occur as a result of contact between societies are:

1.            diffusion   click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced

2.            acculturation   click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced

3.            transculturation   click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced

Diffusion is the movement of things and ideas from one culture to another.  When diffusion occurs, the form of a trait may move from one society to another but not its original cultural meaning.  For instance, when McDonald's first brought their American style hamburgers to Moscow and Beijing, they were accepted as luxury foods for special occasions because they were relatively expensive and exotic.  In America, of course, they have a very different meaning--they are ordinary every day fast food items.

Acculturation is what happens to an entire culture when alien traits diffuse in on a large scale and substantially replace traditional cultural patterns.  After several centuries of relentless pressure from European Americans to adopt their ways, Native American cultures have been largely acculturated.  As a result, the vast majority of American Indians now speak English instead of their ancestral language, wear European style clothes, go to school to learn about the world from a European perspective, and see themselves as being a part of the broader American society.  As Native American societies continue to acculturate, most are experiencing a corresponding loss of their traditional cultures despite efforts of preservationists in their communities.

While acculturation is what happens to an entire culture when alien traits overwhelm it, transculturation is what happens to an individual when he or she moves to another society and adopts its culture.  Immigrants who successfully learn the language and accept as their own the cultural patterns of their adopted country have transculturated.  In contrast, people who live as socially isolated expatriates in a foreign land for years without desiring or expecting to become assimilated  click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced participants in the host culture are not transculturating.

There is one last process leading to change that occurs as an invention within a society as a result of an idea that diffuses from another.  This is stimulus diffusion  click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced--a genuine invention that is sparked by an idea from another culture.   An example of this occurred about 1821 when a Cherokee click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced Indian named Sequoyah  click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced saw English writing which stimulated him to create a unique writing system for his own people.  Part of his syllable based system is illustrated below.  Note that some letters are similar to English while others are not.  To see the entire Cherokee syllabary, click here.

It is also likely that ancient Egyptians around 3050 B.C. invented their hieroglyphic writing system after learning about the cuneiform writing system invented by Sumerians in what is today Southern Iraq.

There are processes operating in the contact between cultures as well that result in resistance to change.  These are due to "us versus them" competitive feelings and perceptions.  Ethnocentrism  click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced also leads people to reject alien ideas and things as being unnatural and even immoral.  These ingroup-outgroup dynamics commonly result in resistance to acculturation and assimilation.

Summation

In order to better grasp the relationship between all of the different mechanisms of change operating within and between societies, it is useful to see them again in summary.

We now understand that this holistic approach to understanding culture change must also include consideration of changes in the environment in which a society exists.  For instance, environmental degradation of fresh water supplies, arable land, and energy sources historically have resulted in the creation of new inventions, migrations, and even war to acquire essential resources.

CULTURE AND ADAPTATION

Biological adaptation in humans is important but humans have increasingly come to rely upon cultural adaptation. However, not all adaptation is good, and not all cultural practices are adaptive. Some features of a culture may be maladaptive, such as fast food, pollution, nuclear waste and climate change. However, because culture is adaptive and dynamic, once we recognize problems, culture can adapt again, in a more positive way, to find solutions.

ETHNOCENTRISM AND THE EVALUATION OF CULTURE

The diversity of cultural practices and adaptations to the problems of human existence often lead some to question which practices are the best. Ethnocentrism is when one views their own culture as the best and only proper way to behave and adapt.

·       Since most humans believe their culture is the best and only way to live, there are small amounts of ethnocentrism everywhere in the world.

·       Small doses help to create a sense of cultural pride and to build strong, cohesive groups.

·       But taken to extremes, and certainly when it includes an unwillingness to be tolerant, it can be destructive. Ethnocentrism is at the heart of colonization and genocide.

·       Cultural anthropologists have, however, pushed for cultural relativism, the principle that all cultures must be understood in terms of their own values and beliefs, not by the standards of another. Under this principle, no culture is better than any other and cultures can only be judged on whether they are meeting the needs of their own people.

---

jUsT sHaRiNg

---