1. Chapter 2 The Concept of Culture

2. Chapter Outline Culture Defined Culture Changes Cultural Universals
Culture: Adaptive and Maladaptive
Cultures Are Generally Integrated
“Primitive” Cultures
Culture and the Individual

3. Culture Defined
Everything that people have, think, and do as members of a society:
everything that people have - material possessions.
everything that people think - ideas, values, and attitudes.
everything that people do - behavior patterns.

4. Symbols
The ability to symbolize is the most fundamental aspect of culture.
Symbols help people identify, sort,and classify things, ideas, and behaviors.
When people symbolize using language, they can express experiences that took place earlier or suggest events that may happen.

5. Culture Is Shared
For a thing, idea, or behavior pattern to be cultural, it must have a meaning shared by most people in a society.
When people share a common culture, they can predict how others will behave.
When we step outside our culture, where meanings are not shared with other people, misunderstandings can occur.

6. Culture Is Learned We acquire culture by growing up in it:
A male child born in Kansas will probably watch TV, attend schools, learn to drive a car, and marry one wife at a time.
A male child born among the Jie of Uganda will grow up playing with cows, learn from peers and elders, be initiated into adulthood with a ceremony that includes being anointed with undigested stomach contents of an ox and grow up to have 3 or 4 wives at one time.

7. Culture Is Taken for Granted
Culture is deeply embedded in our psyche.
How we act and what we think are often habitual.
This can lead to the conclusion that how we live out our lives is no different from how people from other cultures live out their lives.

8. Cultural Change: Two Processes
Internal changes (innovations) - can be spread to other cultures and most likely occur in societies with the greatest number of cultural elements.
External changes (cultural diffusion) - the spreading of a cultural element from one culture to another. Responsible for the greatest amount of change in any society.

9. Cultural Universals Economic system Systems of marriage and family
Educational system
Social control system
System of supernatural belief
Systems of communication