Anthropology 150

This week we start a new part of the course. Up until now we have been concerned with

the evolution of the human species, both physically and culturally. As we’ve taken pains to point

out, those two types of evolution have gone together. The genus Homo is cultural, from Homo

habilis up to modern times. That’s nearly 2.5 million years of being cultural. While we define

culture in contrast to biologically based, or instinctual behavior, the evolution of the capacity to

be cultural was an important aspect of the survival and reproduction of our genus. The increasing

capacity to be cultural was a product of natural selection.

As I pointed out when we discussed the Late Pleistocene, the paradox of the last 30000

years is that while biological diversity is probably at an all-time low in the genus homo, cultural

diversity is tremendous. Cultural diversity really began to flourish in the Upper Paleolithic with

the radiation of modern homo sapiens throughout the world. Cultural differences developed as

groups of people adapted to new environments, both physical and social. That diversity was

further heightened as some cultures went down the path of intensification involved in food

production and sedentism, resulting the development of urban societies with pronounced social

inequality, economic specialization, and state-level political institutions.

After that point we really can’t look at human societies and cultures collectively: There’s

no single story to tell. So in this section of the course we’re going to examine cultural diversity,

the various ways of being human in the world today and in the recent past. I told you at the

beginning of the course that one thing that distinguishes anthropology from other human sciences

is use of the comparative method. We’re going to examine in a comparative framework various

aspects of cultural and social life around the world. We’re going to examine various aspects of

culture around the world: things like language, mode of subsistence, economic organization,

political organization, religion, and art. All of these things are cultural products.

Before we begin that study, however, we need to discuss in greater depth what culture is.

We’ve done that in a cursory fashion in the first part of the course, but now we need to flesh out

the definition.

Summary of what we have said about culture to date.

1. The brief definition of culture is: culture is that which is learned shared and

transmitted.

Learned: contrasts with behaviors that are instinctual or biologically based. So far we’ve

talked about several cultural products: tools, modes of subsistence, language. But culture also

produces things like economic systems, and political systems. Contrary to what you hear on wall

Street, Capitalism is not natural. It is a cultural product, developed in western europe under

certain historical circumstances. Other economic systems develop in other types of societies,

reflecting both modes of social organization and the cultural norms of a given group. We’re

going to look various types of economic organizations in a few weeks.

Shared: Culture by definition is about groups of people. Culture is linked to groups.

The things that you learn as an individual aren’t necessarily cultural unless you share that

knowledge with others.

Culture and society

Culture is linked to the concept of society. Society is a group of people who interact

together on a consistent basis; culture is a system of ideas and behavior that bind them together

There are different scales of social interaction: this classroom, the campus, the city of Los

Angeles, the world. There are also different types of cultural systems operating at each of those

levels, and those cultural systems may or may not map onto the social networks.

When anthropology focused on the study of small societies, non-industrial societies with

some degree of isolation from the rest of the world, the relation between culture and society was

easy to define. Quite often the two words were used interchangeably, so that Boas could talk

about the Kwakiutl culture and mean both the group of people and the ways of life that

characterized them. If you remember when I talked about the early history of anthropology, I

discussed the culture area concept developed by Ratzel and then by Boas, in which culture was

taken to be a characteristic way of life shared by people living in a given region of the world.

That approach to culture doesn’t work, though, in a more complex society like Los

Angeles. Here we have many different people, and different groups

As anthropologists have become interested in studying more complex societies, the

distinction between culture and society is much more important to emphasize.

A society can have different networks, different groups within it. Each of these can have

their own culture, which we would call a sub-culture.

Examples of sub-cultures within modern LA would be things such as: Latino culture,

Armenian culture, gay culture, military culture. Any group that shares ideas about what to

believe, how to act, how to look can be said to have a culture that is distinct from other groups. .

One of these cultures may be dominant. In the United State today, Anglo-american

culture is in many senses the dominant culture. English is the dominant language; the Christian

calendar structures when we work, our political system is based on English and western

European philosophical traditions, and many of our laws are derived from English common law.

Each of the sub-cultures we can identify articulates with the larger, dominant culture. If

they did not articulate, they could not function together. The dominant culture provides a means

of integration and coordination.

So culture always is about groups, but the nature of those groups and the larger society in

which they operate is very complex these days as you may have noticed if you’ve ordered falafel

and hummus from the Chicanos running the food truck out on Reseda Boulevard or the nice

Chinese couple running the Mexican restaurant.

Culture is transmitted.

Cultural knowledge is passed from generation to generation through the process we call

enculturation. Enculturation is the education of the young into a cultural system: the

reproduction of culture. Young humans are programmed to learn. But as they are raised in

different cultures, they learn different things.

Still, any human child can learn any culture. Take an Inuit infant from arctic Canada to

Guatemala and she can learn Spanish and learn to make tortillas. You can take an Arunta child

from Australia to Chicago, and teach her to speak English with an flattened vowels, invest in the

stock market, and to love the Cubs even though they can’t win a pennant.

The reproduction of culture results in traditions. Cultural patterns endure and they are a

large part of what give social groups a collective identity.

The Mama Theory of Culture

When I was young, my mother would take the family to Alabama every summer, to visit

her family. Being raised on the edge of Napa Valley and the wine country, Alabama struck me as

a very strange place. I was accustomed to rare beef, lightly steamed vegetables, and Tiramisu for

desserts. But every Sunday after church we would sit down to a “dinner” (the midday meal in the

south, as opposed to “supper” which is the evening meal). The meal would include fried chicken

and well-done brisket, which weren’t so bad. But my aunts would take beautifully fresh green

beans from the garden and boil them with a piece of pork fat until they were an overcooked

glutinous mass of green sludge. When I asked my mother why they did such a thing, she would

just say “that the way their mamas taught them.” After the meal, I’d go out with my cousins,

who were fine specimens of young Southern manhood. They liked to shoot birds with BB guns

and pull the wings off of butterflies. When I asked my mother why my cousins liked to torture

other living creature, she would again reply “that’s the way their mamas taught them.” I soon

learned that was my mother’s answer to any question about why the South was different.

But that is what culture is: it is “the way your mama taught you.” But it’s not just your

mama, its hundreds or even thousands of mamas teaching their kids the same things.

Going Beyond the basic Definition of Culture

Culture as an Integrated whole:

E.B. Tylor’s definition (1871): Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge,

belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society.

Tylor points out that Culture is Integrated.

In the next few weeks we are going to examine various aspects of culture: the processes

of enculturation, language, economics, subsistence, religion. You should bear in mind that each

of these topics is worthy of a semester long course in and of itself. Of necessity, we will move

fast and somewhat superficially.

However, it is important to remember that culture is an integrated whole. Economics,

social organization, subsistence, politics, religion, all fit together to form a totality. No aspect of

a culture can be understood in isolation.

Examples: Economics: In most pre-capitalist societies, economics doesn’t include the

exchange of money. Economics is synonymous with social relations. Goods and services are

exchanged as part of commitments that are social.

Examples: Bride price and bride wealth.

Potlatch: symbolic destruction of goods in fulfillment of social relationships

Cargo: payments in support of saints in order to achieve social standing.

Maya: Politics and religion in the classic.

A Final Word

In order to study culture in a comparative framework, you must avoid ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism:

Ethnocentrism: the belief that your own culture is superior.

Relativism: the suspension of judgement and the attempt to understand another culture in

its own terms.

Relativism doesn’t mean that you abandon your own cultural beliefs or that you have to

like everything another culture does.

You don’t have to like human sacrifice

You don’t have to like genital mutilation.

But you should be willing to suspend your judgment in order to understand how human

sacrifice fit into the world view of the Aztec, why they viewed it as necessary and not horrible.

If I was able to understand why southerners overcook their vegetables and pull the wings off

dragonflies, you should be able to understand the Aztec.