1. Anticipatory Question:
In 1 minute write down as many examples or culture as you can (do not share!)

2. Please find a partner and compare your lists
Please find a partner and compare your lists. Make a list as a group (that you can turn in)

3. Each partnership should team up with another group
Each partnership should team up with another group. Pick one list and add on to it (to turn in)

4. Circle the things on your list that most interest you (min 2 max 5)

5. The Concept of Culture
What is culture?

6. Culture
A set of learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and ideals that characterize a population.

7. The key is culture is learned

8. Behaviors that are not biological are learned
Beliefs are taught
Attitudes are learned (nature vs. nurture)

9. Ideals are learned and therefore relative

10. Features of Culture
1. Culture is shared (the medium for the transmission of culture is language).

11. 2. Culture is learned

12. 3. Culture is generally adaptive, meaning they enhance reproductive success.

13. 4. Culture is mostly integrated.

14. 5. Culture evolves.

15. Subculture
Shared customs of a subgroup within a society (i.e.. Youth culture, “middle America”, “hip-hop”)

16. Language
What is language?

17. Language
A complex system of spoken, symbolic, communication

18. Language is symbolic, it has meaning.

19. Societies
Culture is shared among people who speak a common language and occupy a particular territory.

20. Early Evolutionism
Early anthropologists believed all societies were moving toward monogamous monotheistic civilizations.

21. Cultural Relativism
Today early evolutionism is viewed as ethnocentric, which hinders the study of culture.

22. Culture Relativism
A societies customs and ideas should be viewed within the context of that society’s problems and opportunities.

23. Judging Culture
Which makes more sense, culture relativism or early evolutionism? Are there absolutes?

24. Judging Culture
Can we judge other cultures?
Based on what?

25. Individual variation

26. What limits culture?

27. Culture constrains culture.
Norms-standards about what is acceptable

28. Ideal vs. Actual culture
Ideal-what the norms say should be.
Actual-what is.

29. Classifying Societies
Anthropologist classify societies based on their method of subsistence, that is getting food/ survival.

30. There are four types of food getting:
Hunting and Gathering
Pastoral
Horticulture
Intensive Agriculture

31. Hunter-gatherers Hunting, gathering, fishing Egalitarian Reciprocity
Small groups
Nomadic

32. Horticulturists
Small scale farming w/ relatively simple tool and techniques
Still some hunting and gathering
Larger groups
Settled

33. Pastoralists Reliance on animals for survival
Use products from the animal to trade with others
Semi-nomadic

34. Intensive Agriculturists
Large scale farming w/ advanced technology
Many members do not have to concentrate on food production = specialists
“Civilized”

35. What is “civilized?” Cities Complex Institutions Division of Labor
Record Keeping
Advanced Technology

36. Marriage Marriage is a socially approved sexual and economic union
Marriage is a cultural universal

37. Nayar “exception”

38. Why is marriage universal?
Gender division of labor
Prolonged infant dependency
Sexual competition
Postpartum Requirements

39. Economic Aspects of Marriage
Bride Price
Bride Service
Exchange of females
Gift Exchange
Dowry

40. Restrictions on marriage
Universal Incest Taboo
Cultural Restrictions- gender, class, caste, etc.

41. Whom should one marry? Arranged marriages Exogamy Endogamy
Cousin marriage (cross-cousin)
Levirate ( man marries brothers widow)
Sororate (women marries deceased sisters husband)

42. How many should one marry?
Monogamy
Polygamy
Polygyny-one man w/ multiple women (most common)
Polandry-one women w/ multiple men (rare)

43. Family
Nuclear or extended family?

44. Personality
The distinctive way an individual thinks, feels, and behaves.

45. Institutions
Primary institutions- sources of early experiences, such as family, subsistence technique, that help form the basic typical personality in a society

46. Institutions
Secondary Institutions- aspects of culture, such as religion, folklore, art and games, that reflect the basic personality type of a society

47. Personality Integration of Culture
The idea that understanding personality (psychology) may help explain connections between primary and secondary institutions.

48. Socialization
The direct and indirect influences that direct a person to conform to norms

49. Qualities
Ascribed- those qualities a society gives to you at birth (e.g., sex, ethnicity, nationality, social class).
Achieved- those qualities you earn (e.g., champion, judge, president).

50. Age Sets
A group of people of similar age and gender who go through life’s stage together.

51. Poro and Sande
Found in West African, Mande speaking cultures (regardless of country)
Illegal in many countries/ part of the political structure in others
Form Zo-religious leadership of a village

52. Poro and Sande Poro-males, marked/reborn
Sande-females, initiated by “female circumcision”
Semi-secret society

53. Mae Enga New Guinea group (30,000 horticulturists)
Bachelor association
At 5 men are taken to live w/ the men
“We marry the people we fight”

54. Attitudes that hinder the study of culture
Ethnocentrism
Glorification or “Noble Savage Myth”

55. Ethnographers
Live with, talk to, and observe the society they are studying. This is called field work or participant observation

56. Ethnography
The product created by field work.

57. Ethnohistorians
Study how a particular group of people have changed over time.

58. Theoretical Orientation
This is the anthropologists point of view

59. Theoretical Orientation
Cultural Ecology
Political Economy
Sociobiology

60. Cultural Ecology
Look at the relationship between environment and culture.

61. Political Economy
Assumes external forces shape the social environment

62. Sociobiology
Applying natural selection and other biological principals to the study of culture.