1. Culture and Culture Change
Chapter 2
Culture and Culture Change
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. What kinds of things come to mind when you think about Culture?
Defining Culture
What kinds of things come to mind when you think about Culture?
What is Culture?
A set of learned behaviors and ideas that are characteristic of a particular society or social group

3. non-material Culture material culture
Include products such as tools, houses, clothes, or anything that humans use in the experience of their daily lives
material culture
Includes beliefs, values, norms, attitudes and ideas
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

4. Culture is Commonly Learned Shared and transmitted
By what mechanism?
– what do you guys think could determine how culture is transferred and shared?
The size of a group within which cultural traits are shared can vary from a particular society or a segment of that society to a group that transcends national boundaries.
Culture Is Learned
Language, what else?
Humans have a unique way of transmitting their culture through the use of spoken, symbolic language. (snake example)
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

5. Where does culture come from?
Defining Culture
Where does culture come from?
While customs are not genetically inherited, cultural adaptation may be somewhat similar to biological adaptation.
One of the disagreements is whether the concept of culture should refer just to the rules and ideas behind behavior (Culture is in your brain), or whether culture should also include the behaviors and products of behaviors (outside).
Emile Durkheim stressed that culture is something outside us, exerting a strong coercive power on us.
Norms are standards or rules concerning what is acceptable behavior.

6. Studying and Learning about Culture
If you met a tourist who is having a hard time understanding some aspects of American Culture, what would you do?

7. Studying and Learning about Culture
Ethnocentrism
Judging another culture solely in terms of one’s own culture
So what is problematic about Ethnocentrism?
Attitudes That Hinder the Study of Cultures

8. Cultural Relativism
The anthropological attitude that a society’s customs and ideas should be described objectively and understood in the context of that society’s problems and opportunities
What if people practice slavery, torture, Violence against women, or genocide?
What are some the issues that the book reports as problematic with cultural Relativism?
- slavery, violence against women, torture…

9. Culture is Patterned
Culture is integrated
The elements or traits that make up that culture are not just a random assortment of customs but are mostly adjusted to or consistent (patterned) with one another.
read the nacirema,
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

10. Describing a Culture Ideal Versus Actual Cultural Patterns.
Ideal cultural patterns refer to a society’s ideas (values and norms) about how people should feel and behave in certain situations
These are not always in tune….. Can you think of some examples of this conflict in our own culture?

11. Culture is Patterned
Maladaptive Customs are those that diminish the chances of survival and reproduction
Where would you place China’s one baby policy?
What about the Tapirape?
Adaptive Customs enhance survival and reproductive success.
Magic and religion
Hunting and gathering

12. How and Why Cultures Change
If culture is generally adaptive to its environment, then culture change should also be generally adaptive.
Discovery and Invention
Diffusion
Acculturation
Gun powder, printing press, paper…. etc
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

13. How and Why Cultures Change
Diffusion is a process by which cultural elements are borrowed from another society and incorporated into the culture of the recipient group.
Direct Contact
Intermediate Contact
Stimulus Diffusion

14. How and Why Cultures Change
Acculturation refers to the changes that occur when different cultural groups come into intensive contact.
Typically, a situation in which one of the societies in contact is much more powerful than the other.
Colonialism!
Conquest!

15. Ethnogenesis: The Emergence of New Cultures
Ethnogenesis is a process whereby new cultures are created usually in the aftermath of violent events such as depopulation, relocation, enslavement, and genocide.
San Bacilio de Palenke….

16. Globalization: Problems and Opportunities
Globalization is the spread of cultural features around the world.
The diffusion of a cultural trait does not mean that it is incorporated in exactly the same way.
Is the process of globalization is minimizing cultural diversity.
However, in the last 30 years or so, it has become increasingly apparent that many people are affirming their ethnic identities.
Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.