CULTUREI T S C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE Cultur

e

Learned

Shared

Based on

Symbols

Integrated

Dynamic

CULTURE IS LEARNED

CULTURE IS LEARNED•Humanity’s “social heredity” (Ralph Linton)•Humans are enculturated to do most of their eating and drinking at certain culturally prescribed times and feel hungry as those times approach

CULTURE IS LEARNEDThrough enculturation every person learns the socially appropriate way of satisfying the basic biologically determined needs:

food sleep shelter Companion-ship safety sexual

activity.

CULTURE IS

SHARED

CULTURE IS SHARED•culture is the common denominator that makes the actions of individuals intelligible to other members of their society•no two people share the exact same version of their culture.

CULTURE IS LEARNED

• may be defined as an organized group or groups of interdependent people who generally share a common territory, language, and culture and who act together for collective survival and well-being.

Society

CULTURE IS SHARED

Cultural VariationThe role assigned to women and men

Age, the status of adulthood often has less to do with age than with passage through certain prescribed

rituals.between subgroups in societies (pluralistic society)

CULTURE IS SHARED• behavior viewed as deviant in one society may not be in another.

– In many American Indian societies, for example, a few exceptional individuals were permitted to assume for life the role normally associated with people of the opposite sex.

– In effect, four different gender identities were available: masculine men, feminine men, feminine women, and masculine women.

C U LT U R E I S B A S E D O N

S Y M B O L S

CULTURE IS BASED ON SYMBOLS

• signs, sounds, gestures, and other things that are arbitrarily linked to something else and represent it in a meaningful way.• The most important symbolic aspect of culture is language—using words to represent objects and ideas.

CULTURE IS BASED ON SYMBOLS

Symbols enter into every aspect of

culture, from social life and

religion to politics and economics.

CULTURE IS

INTEGRATED

CULTURE IS INTEGRATED

Cultural

System

social structure,

infrastructure, and

superstructure.

CULTURE IS INTEGRATED•Social structure

–concerns the rule-governed relationships that hold members of a society together, with all their rights and obligations

–establishes group cohesion and enables people to consistently satisfy their basic needs, including food and shelter for themselves and their dependents, by means of work.

CULTURE IS INTEGRATED• infrastructure.

–subsistence practices involve tapping into available resources to satisfy a society’s basic needs

• superstructure.–collective body of ideas, beliefs, and values by which a

group of people makes sense of the world— its shape, challenges, and opportunities—and their place in it

CULTURAL SYSTEM

CULTURE IS INTEGRATED• Example:

– Kapauku Papuans, a mountain people of western New Guinea as studied by Leopold Pospisil

– Men achieve political power and positions of legal authority through In pig breeding.

– Essential gardening activities is women’s work alone. – Multiple wives (polygyny) are not only permitted, they are highly desired. – For each wife, however, a man must pay a bride price, and this can be

expensive. Furthermore, wives have to be compensated for their care of pigs. Put simply, it takes pigs, by which wealth is measured, to get wives, without whom pigs cannot be raised in the first place.

CULTURE IS DYNAMIC

CULTURE IS DYNAMIC• Cultures are dynamic systems that respond to motions and actions within and around them.•When one element within the system shifts or changes, the entire system strives to adjust, just as it does when an outside force applies pressure.

ACTIVITY: GROUP DISCUSSION

• If you grew up in your parents’ generation—without computers, e-mail, internet, MP3 players, and cell phones—how would your daily life differ from the one you lead today?

ENDTHANK YOU!