1. Defining “culture” and cultural anthropology Howard Culbertson Southern Nazarene University

2. Cultural Anthropology -- an academic discipline

3. Culture is what makes you a stranger when you are away from home

4. Culture: a set of rules or standards that produce behavior that falls within a range of variance a society considers proper and acceptable -- William Haviland

5. Culture is a complex, integrated coping mechanism. Culture consists of 1. Learned concepts and behavior 2. Underlying perspectives (worldview) 3. Resulting products nonmaterial (customs and rituals) material (artifacts)

6. Cultural anthropology is concerned with: ( we’ll now look at 14 categories or items studied by cultural anthropologists)

7. 1. Perspective Holistic (as opposed to atomistic or narrow) Comparative The gamut from relativism to ethnocentrism Get your hands dirty (fieldwork) Etic (from outsider’s vantage point) Emic (from an insider’s vantage point)

8. 2. Material artifacts

9. 3. Communication Symbols, language and media

10. 4. Status, roles, relationships

11. 5. Life cycle (birth, naming, coming of age, anniversaries, death, ancestorhood)

12. 6. Societal groups social classes, economic stratification, ethnicity

13. 7. Marriage and family

14. 8. Child rearing and personality formation

15. 9. Kinship / descent systems

16. 10. Economics distribution of goods and services

17. 11. Legal systems Norms, customs, laws

18. 12. Political organization Leadership / decision making

19. 13. Religion Worldview, beliefs and ritual practices

20. 14. Expressive arts

21. 15. Sociocultural change

22. Defining “culture”