Notes on The Culture Concept

Learning Objectives

Compare and contrast ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
Describe the roles that early anthropologists Sir James Frazer and Sir E. B. Tylor played in defining the concept of culture in anthropology.
Identify the differences between armchair anthropology and participant-observer fieldwork and explain how Bronislaw Malinowski contributed to the development of anthropological fieldwork techniques.
Identify the contributions Franz Boas and his students made to the development of new theories about culture.
Assess ethical issues that can arise from anthropological research.

Thoughtful Introduction: Culture in Everyday Life

The coffee shop as a microcosm for studying culture through observation and informal interviews.
Anthropologists often become part of their surroundings to observe day-to-day life; storytelling and conversation can reveal cultural ideas.
The authors meet Bob, a non-anthropologist, who nonetheless articulates understandings about language, cultural identity, and globalization.
Bob’s emphasis on language as a core part of cultural identity; concern about Western consumerism changing cultural values.
This chapter uses Bob’s perspective to frame questions about what culture is and how anthropologists study it.
The authors’ training shapes their understanding of culture, but they acknowledge there is more to culture than a simple definition.

Stories as Reflection on Culture

Stories (fables, tall tales, folktales) convey morals, preserve traditions, and communicate cultural values.
The concept of the Other: people whose customs or beliefs are perceived as different.
Gulliver’s Travels as an example to illustrate the Other and perspective: Gulliver is Other to the Lilliputians, and vice versa.
Key ideas from storytelling:
- Stories can reflect cultural differences, conflicts, and power dynamics.
- Stories can normalize social pressures and shape beliefs about other cultures.
- Early anthropologists relied on armchair methods (second-hand reports) and often exhibited ethnocentrism.
Armchair anthropology defined: gathering data from afar without direct fieldwork; tendency to judge other cultures using one’s own standards.
Ethnocentrism defined: the belief that one’s own culture is superior to others.
Colonial context: eighteenth–twentieth centuries, European powers often labeled other cultures as primitive; this linked to ethnocentric thinking.

The Development of the Culture Concept: Foundational Figures

Sir James Frazer and Sir E. B. Tylor as early founders of modern anthropology.
- Frazer: The Golden Bough (1890) later titled A Study in Magic and Religion; relied on second-hand accounts rather than fieldwork.
- Tylor: Primitive Culture (1871) defined culture as a complex whole; knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, customs, and capabilities acquired by humans as social beings. This definition laid foundational elements used by later scholars.
- Darwin’s influence (Origin of Species, 1859) contributed to the evolutionary framing of culture in the period; some scholars believed cultures evolved through stages (evolutionism).
The off-the-veranda approach and the shift to fieldwork:
- The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) by Malinowski, considered a foundational modern ethnography; it marked a shift from armchair writing to participant-observation.
- Armchair anthropology vs fieldwork: armchair depended on reports from others; fieldwork involved living among the people and learning from their daily lives.
Malinowski and fieldwork:
- Malinowski went beyond observation by living with the Trobriand Islanders; studied food, shelter, kinship, sexuality, economy, and daily life.
- Going native: integrating into a culture by taking leadership roles, marrying, participating in rituals; allowed deep insight but raised ethical concerns and blurred lines between researcher and subject.
- Malinowski’s injunction: grasp the native’s point of view and their life relations to understand their world; later, ethical critiques emerged about going native.

The Development of Theories of Culture: Europe and North America

Europe’s functionalism:
- Focus on how social institutions function to organize society and maintain order.
- Malinowski (functionalism) tied cultural traditions to human needs: food, comfort, safety, knowledge, reproduction, livelihood.
- Radcliffe-Brown emphasized social structure: the family often serves as the central unit shaping social roles across generations.
The American School and cultural relativism:
- Boas redirected American anthropology away from cultural evolutionism toward cultural relativism.
- Boas stressed empirical fieldwork and argued that culture must be understood in its own terms, shaped by environment.
- Boas conducted fieldwork among the Inuit on Baffin Island (Central Eskimo, 1888) to illustrate how culture is shaped by the natural environment and how cultural ideas are learned through enculturation.
- Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective to ethnocentrism in fieldwork.
Students of Boas and the refinement of culture:
- Ruth Benedict: Patterns of Culture (1934) argued that culture provides coherent patterns for thinking and behaving; influenced views on how culture shapes personality traits.
- Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) studied adolescence to argue for the importance of learned cultural roles and environmental shaping of emotions and personality; contributed to the nature versus nurture debate.
- Alfred Louis Kroeber: The Nature of Culture (1952); interested in cultural change and diffusion; highlighted language’s role in transmitting culture; focused on documenting Native American languages.
The American approach and language:
- Emphasis on enculturation and holism: looking at how culture shapes individuals and how broader contexts (history, environment) influence culture.
- Late 20th century symbolic anthropology placed language and symbols at the center of analysis; Clifford Geertz argued that culture is not only inside heads but publicly expressed through symbols and meanings; culture is a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols (The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973).

Key Concepts and Terminology

Culture: the complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, law, morals, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by humans as members of society.
Ethnocentrism: evaluating other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture; often accompanied by claims of superiority.
Cultural relativism: understanding another culture from its own internal logic and standards, rather than from outside judgments.
Armchair anthropology: research method relying on second-hand reports without direct fieldwork; often associated with ethnocentric biases.
Enculturation: the process by which individuals learn their native culture; transmission of norms, values, and behavior.
Going native: becoming so integrated into a host culture that one adopts local leadership roles and practices; ethically complex due to blurred researcher–community boundaries.
Holism: the approach that studies the entire context of a culture, including history, ecology, politics, economy, and language.
Functionalism: a theory focused on how social institutions function to maintain social order and meet needs of society.
Structural-functionalism: emphasis on how social structures (e.g., family, religion) function to maintain the social system.
The Other: a concept describing people whose customs or beliefs are perceived as different; perspective-dependent and relational.
Diffusion: the spread of cultural traits between societies; globalization accelerates diffusion of ideas, technologies, and practices.
Language and culture: language is central to cultural identity and transmission; culture shapes linguistic practices and vice versa.
Theoretical shifts: evolutionism (early unilinear views), cultural relativism, symbolic/interpretive approaches (Geertz).

Ethical Dimensions in Anthropological Research

Post-World War II ethics:
- Nuremberg Trials highlighted abuses in medical and scientific research; led to the Nuremberg Code establishing principles for ethical human research.
- Universities adopted guidelines for ethical treatment of human subjects.
AAA Code of Ethics (American Anthropological Association):
- Do no harm; be open and honest regarding work; obtain informed consent; protect vulnerable populations; make results accessible; preserve records; maintain respectful professional relationships.
Case studies highlighting ethical complexities:
- Bronislaw Malinowski: diaries from fieldwork published posthumously; raised questions about bias, personal feelings, and how personal data should be separated from professional conclusions.
- Yanomami controversy (Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel): alleged unethical experiments and manipulation; investigations by AAA; conclusions contested; debate continues on truth in ethnographic reporting.
- The 2005 AAA reconsideration of conclusions in the Darkness in El Dorado case; controversy over investigation methods.
The ethical aim: to tell truthful, ethically grounded stories that represent the voices of the studied people; acknowledging the influence of theory and perspective on interpretation.

The Modern Turn: Digital Culture and Globalization

Globalization accelerates change in cultural practices and languages; new online cultures and cyber anthropology.
Digital/online cultures raise questions: are cyber communities real cultures or new forms of interaction? Do they merit armchair history or field-like engagement?
The coffee shop scenario returns as a lens for considering how online and offline cultures intersect and influence identity and community.

Final Reflections from the Authors

Bob’s reflections in the coffee shop emphasize culture’s heart: language, social structure, and expressions of values.
Emily: her Inuit experiences shaped her own cultural self and highlighted shared human traits across diverse contexts; fieldwork can reveal both sameness and difference.
Priscilla: her Portuguese-Canadian background and fieldwork in Kenya illustrate how storytelling, language, and cultural identity sustain communities and how meaning of culture varies across groups; enculturation remains central.
The authors suggest that the concept of culture is not a single fixed definition but a mosaic assembled from many voices and experiences.
The final metaphor: defining culture is like completing a puzzle with many pieces; the puzzle is almost complete but not finished.

Discussion Questions

How did armchair anthropology differ from off-the-veranda fieldwork? What can be learned from experiencing culture firsthand that cannot be learned from reading about it?
Why is the concept of culture difficult to define? What elements do you consider essential?
How can we separate the social from the cultural? Is this distinction important?
In the 21st century, with greater cross-cultural contact, what should be priority topics for future studies of culture?

Glossary (selected terms)

Armchair anthropology: an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.
Cultural determinism: the idea that behavioral differences are due to culture rather than biology or genetics.
Cultural evolutionism: the discredited 19th-century theory that societies evolve through stages from simple to advanced.
Cultural relativism: the principle of understanding beliefs and practices from the viewpoint of the culture being studied.
Culture: a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols learned and shared, forming an all-encompassing, integrated whole.
Enculturation: the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture.
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as central and superior.
Functionalism: an approach focusing on how cultural parts work together to support the society as a whole.
Going native: becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through active participation and leadership; involves ethical concerns.
Holism: taking a broad view of historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.
Kinship: blood ties, ancestry, and social relationships forming families.
Participant observation: a method in which the anthropologist observes while taking part in the activities of informants.
Structural-Functionalism: an approach examining how social institutions contribute to social order.
The Other: a term used to describe people whose customs or beliefs are different from one’s own.

About the Authors (contextual notes)

Priscilla Medeiros: medical anthropologist; focus on health, biocultural dimensions of medicine, and public health; fieldwork in Nairobi, Kenya; work with HIV-related health studies.
Emily Cowall: cultural anthropologist; focus on environmental health, linguistic transmission, and cultural study in the Arctic; fieldwork in Canada and the Arctic; life and field experience in diverse environments.
The bibliography includes foundational works by Benedict, Boas, Darwin, Kroeber, Malinowski, Mead, Swift, Tylor, and others, plus discussions of ethics and contemporary debates in anthropology.

Bibliography (selected references mentioned)

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.
Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859.
Kroeber, Alfred. The Nature of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
Malinowski, Bronisław. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1922.
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow, 1928.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. London: Motte, 1726.
Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. London: Cambridge University Press, 1871.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
Additional readings: discussions on the Yanomami controversy (Chagnon and Neel), the Night in El Dorado debate, and related ethics literature.