1. Characteristics of Culture
Part III

2. Culture and Adaptation
Adaptation is the gradual process by which organisms adjust to the conditions of the locality in which they live.
Advantages: Because humans adapt through learned behavior, they can change their approach to solving problems more quickly and easily.
Disadvantages: Misinformation, leading to cultural practices that hinder rather than aid survival, may creep into human behavior

3. Functions of Culture Bronislaw Malinowski
Specific cultural institutions function to support the structure of society or serve the needs of individuals in society.
Malinowski is also the first anthropologist to have studied long term within the society he was studying.
A culture cannot endure if it does not deal effectively with basic challenges.

4. Bali: Brahman Cremation

5. Culture and Change Changes take place in response to:
Population growth
Technological innovation
Environmental crisis
Intrusion of outsiders
Modifications of behavior and values within the culture
Changes are often signified by apparel.

6. Culture, Society, and the Individual
Culture, society, and the individual are intimately interdependent. No culture equals no society and no individual, at least none of the kind with which we are acquainted.
Individuals must learn postpone certain immediate personal satisfactions while also not being suppressed too far.

7. Evaluation of Culture
Ethnocentrism: the belief that the ways of one’s own culture are the only proper one.
Anthropologists attempt to be aware of tendencies toward ethnocentrism, to consciously eliminate ethnocentrism in their work, and encourage study a society for the individuals and culture itself, most often this is done through long term participant observation.

8. Cultural Relativism
The idea that one must suspend judgment of other people’s practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms.
Observers who view the actions of other people simply in terms of the degree to which they correspond to the observers’ notions of right and wrong systematically distort the cultures they observe.

9. Important Dates Quiz # 1: Ch. 1 & 2 on Friday Oct. 3rd
Writing day Oct. 9th
Brief outline of where you are doing your ethnographic experiences due Oct. 10th
Meet with me to discuss research paper topics by Oct. 10th