M01 Pt. 1

Meaninglessness

The word “culture” has been denatured to the point of…

Cultura

Culture is derived from this Latinword meaning cultivation of the soil and cultivation of the soul

Culture

Culture is a network of shared knowledge that is produced, distributed and reproduced among a collection of interconnected individuals

Complex, Dynamic, Fluid

Culture is ___, ____, and ____ (Culture as shared meaning systems)

Lens

Culture provides a common frame of reference to make sense of reality. In this way, culture becomes a ______ (Culture as shared meaning systems)

Passive

Every individual acquires a part of culture. But no single individual controls culture. At the same time, people are not ______ recipients of culture (Culture as shared meaning systems)

Produce; Maintain; Reproduce

Culture emerges in social life and gives meaning to social life. Consciously or unconsciously, people collaborate to ______, ______, and ______ culture (Culture as shared meaning systems)

Herbert Spencer

Person who proposed a theory of cultural evolution in the 19th century

Lewis Henry

Person who posited that all aspects of culture changed as societies evolved

Franz Boas

Person who revolutionized the study of culture by emphasizing the uniqueness of all cultures in the early 20th century

Emile Durkheim

Person who advanced a functional perspective in culture by emphasizing culture's adaptive value and analyzed how its elements kept society functioning

1960s

During this time, students of culture shifted from universal logic that underlies the development of human cultures and towards ethnographic analysis of the way a human group assigns meanings to objects, behaviors, and emotions

Theories of Cultural Evolution
Ecological Theories
Functional Theories
Ethnographic Theories

Four Major Intellectual Traditions in the Study of Culture

Material Culture
Social Culture
Subjective Culture

Categories of Culture

Material Culture

Develops from a human group's adaptive response to the natural environment, the economy, and technology

Material Culture

Consists of all material artifacts produced by human beings including strategies of food production, the economic system, and technology

Material Culture

Methods by which people exchange and share goods, services, or technology

Subsistence Strategy

Aspect of material culture which are societies' means of getting food

Agriculture; Foraging; Horticulture; Pastoralism

Examples of Subsistence Strategies

Agriculture

Major strategy of food production in most modern societies, including industrial and commerce-based countries

Foraging

Food production strategy that involves collecting plants and hunting wild animals from the forests

Horticulture

Food strategy that involves working in small plots of land without draft animals, plows, or irrigation and rather use simple tools to raise domesticated plants in a garden and tend to small domesticated animals

Horticulture

This food strategy involves shifting cultivation through the slash-and-burn method

Pastoralism

Food strategy that rely on animal husbandry wherein animals are taken care of to produce various products and are seldom killed

Family

What is the primary group in a pastoralist society?

Social culture

Culture developed to maintain basic social functions in a human group and consists of all social institutions and shared rules of social conduct

Kinship terms

Part of social culture that involves language used to identify relationships between individuals

Power distance

Part of social culture which are the shared rules that regulate the interactions between the high status and low status groups in the society

Subjective culture

Culture as a system of meanings that consists of shared beliefs, values, and ideas which give rise to a unique way of thinking about the world

Religion and Secularism

Part of subjective culture that involves traditional religious believes and secular believes

Individualism-Collectivism

A cultural dimension, part of social culture that contrasts societies that prioritize personal independence against interdependence

Individualism

Belief that the self is a self-contained independent entity

Collectivism

Belief that the self is interdependent with some ingroup

Culture

Network of shared knowledge that is produced, distributed and reproduced among a collection of interconnected individuals

Cross-cultural or Etic approach

Cultural approach that is dervied from phonetics, which refers to the use of reestablished categories or concepts for organizing and interpreting cultural data

Occidental biases

What has the etic approach been criticized for?

Emic approach

Cultural approach derived from phonemics which refers to the use of categories or concepts recognized within the culture being studied to interpret and organize data

Promoting intellectual provincialism and extreme cultural relativism

What has the emic approach been criticized for?

Global approach

Cultural approach that seeks to describe differences and similarities between national cultures in terms of a few pan-cultural dimensions; offering a telescopic view of world cultures

Focal Approach

Applies local constructs, or constructs indigenous to the culture being studied, to describe a culture; this complements the global approach well

Focal Approach

This offers a deep analysis of how ideas and practices in culture are transformed in response to social change

The telescopic lens of this approach uses to look at culture is not crafted for the purpose of revealing the fine texture of a culture

What is the major limitation of the global approach?

They are both descriptive approach to cultures and therefore do not explain cultures

What are the limitations of both the focal and global approach