Lecture 3 (
these notes have not been edited and material in italic bold was added later and not actually covered in class
for lack of time)
Links
An excellent overview of the various ways the word "culture" has been used in different contexts: http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-index.html . A graduate student overview of various anthropological theories is to be found at http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/anthros.htm
CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Basic purpose of socio-cultural
anthropology: to account for the existence of and variability in cultural and
social forms.
ethnology -- older world literally meaning "
the study of peoples." Sometimes still used.
ethnography -- used
when referring to the description of another culture, eg,
my ethnography of the Tausug.
Culture is the key concept in
anthropology, but one must understand that it is a sensitizing concept rather
than a very clear "thing" which can be identified by unambiguous
benchmarks, like, say, the element oxygen in chemistry. That is, the concept
has a core or central meaning which most anthropologists could agree upon, but
the meaning begins to get a little vague at the edges.
First point the get clear:
Anthropologists do not use the term culture in the way it is sometime used in
popular usage: as "high culture" (going to good music, appreciating fine
wine, listening to opera. Holding your fork a particular way, speaking
"correct" English", etc. ) Culture lies
as much in such simple mechanical tasks as how one peels a vegetable (do you
peel outward or pull inward?)
Most
definitions of "culture" in the history of American anthropology can
be sorted into two kinds. Some definitions are behavioral in emphasis (for
example, "behavior patterns that are learned and passed on from generation
to generation"), and others are symbolic in emphasis (for example,
"the beliefs and doctrines that make it possible for members of a group to
make sense of and rationalize the life they lead"). Of course
. cultural community is the beneficiary of both
behavioral and symbolic inheritances, .
Culture: many different definitions.
Tylor's (1870 or so) perhaps the most famous:
"that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom,
and other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society".
Robert Redfield’s definition in
1941: "culture" as "shared understandings made manifest in act
and artifact." Herkovits simple definition:
"the man made part of the environment." (note: do not try
to memorize the names, just get the idea)
Tylor's definition does zero in that culture is
acquired by man "as a member of society". Now the distinction between
culture and society has perhaps caused more useless handringing
among undergrads than really necessary.
One of the problems here is
whether one thinks "reality" is basically a question of fixed
"things" in the world, or whether it is basically a question of
process and change. I myself am a philosophic heir to American
pragmatism, which basically takes reality as a question of process and views
entities as nothing more nor less than temporary results of ongoing processes.
But this philosophy is beyond the scope of this course.
|
|
Process (constant change) |
Thing ( result of process) |
|
People |
Society (as interaction, and the fact that as social animals we are constantly having to adjust our conduct to take account of the conduct of others) |
A Society (as a network of people who are more likely to interact with certain others) |
|
Mental Product |
Culture (as capacity to create symbolic and material worlds – as distinguished from mere "Instinct") |
A Culture ( a more or less integrated and shared material and symbolic world) |
Society (as a process) refers to the process of adjusting one's conduct to gear into the
conduct of others. That is, like all primates humans are intensely social
creatures, in which there is a constant process going on in which we are always
every so subtly and unconsciously, sometimes more consciously, adjusting our
conduct so that it can effectively gear into or in some sense mesh with the
conduct of others. (Note also that each human being is also in the process of
adjusting his conduct not only to other others who are present but more
importantly to those non present humans who are imagined to be present -- we
are interacting with others in a sense even when we are alone). Note also that
the processing of meshing our conduct to meet the conduct of others also
includes conflict which is just as social as harmony.
A Society as a discrete thing
rather than a process is simply some group or network of individuals who are
more likely to be constantly adjust their conduct to each other than to persons
outside the society. A society, therefore, always presupposes some network of
communication, which can be a small as the obvious communication which exists
in a face-to face group, to as broad as a society as large and anonymous as a
computer bulletin board. In fact, modern society is chiefly characterized by
the vast range of communication networks which exist outside of the face to
face group. The most important global change in the nature of society in the
last two hundred years has been the advances in the non-face to face means of
communication. Although we sometime forget that writing
itself was probably the first real new medium of communication, and was as
revolutionary in its day (maybe more so) than the internet is today.
Now this definition of a society
is very broad indeed. Some anthropologists give the word a more narrow
definition (which is not inconsistent with the one above), defining a society
as a group with in some substantial sense can fulfill all of the fundamental
functional imperatives of human existence throughout the life cycle, that is
one could live ones entire life in the society and the society provides for all
the needs which would be necessary for the fully range of the human life cycle.
Kroeber [a prominent American anthropologist through
the late 50's] referred to monasteries, cowboys, etc. as "part
societies" precisely because one could not live an entire life in them.
Another usage is implied in the
distinction between the German words gemeinshaft
(community - small face to face group of people interacting with the totality
of their social selves) and gesellshaft
("society" as a voluntary large association).
So the term"society"
has a number of different, though not inconsistent, meanings.
Culture as a process refers to the
human capacity to create various products of the mind (the knowledge, belief,
art, morals, custom, and other capabilities" referred to in Tylor's definition). Now the term material culture is used to refer to actual objects (tools,
buildings, art objects etc) but it is clear that objects have no intrinsic
meaning apart from that which people give them so it is still really the mental
fact which is important, not the thing itself.
A Culture refers to some set of
products of the mind which are associated together, usually with some
particular society or group of people who participate in the culture. When the
anthropologist uses the term culture in this sense, you must be alert to the
social context in which the term is being used.
the culture of
the culture of the
English speaking peoples
American culture
the culture of the
the culture of
The culture of Bostonians of Italian
background
The culture of the North End
The culture of North End high
school students
the culture of the boys who hang around the corner of Hannover Streets.
etc.
Each of the "levels"
identifies a culture associated with a particular society. The emphasis is
usually on the uniqueness, that which sets the culture off from other
societies. Thus, when we talk of the culture of Boston, we can mean either l)
everything cultural found among Bostonians, in which case it would include a
lot of cultural stuff we share with other Americans (and Europeans, and humans
everywhere), or 2) that which is unique about the culture of Boston, in which
can it would exclude everything that we share with the rest of the country.
Point here: be aware of this
ambiguity. It is a trap for the unwary.
Variability in Culture
The idea of culture also does not
imply passive acceptance of received practice and doctrine or that human beings
are robots or putty or blank slates. Culture always allows for some degree of
variability. One of the most interesting differences between cultures is the
amount of variability which is normally allowed in any given type of activity.
To take a trivial example: disposal of the dead. In our culture there is some
variability allowed: burial vs cremation. In others
(such as the Tausug) there is only one highly prescribed method.
In spite of importance of knowing the
"native's rationale" for any kind of conduct, this is certainly, not
the end all of anthropological research. As Karl Marx once said: if everything
were actually as it appeared to be, then there would be no need for science at
all! Important here to distinguish between:
manifest function: the purpose of an institution or
practice as understood by the people themselves. Eg
the manifest function of Aztec human sacrifice was the need to please the Gods
and their desire of human victims in order to insure that the world would not
be destroyed, as it was potentially subject to every 52 years according to the
Aztec calendar.
latent function: the unanticipated effects of an
institution or practice, which are not necessarily known to those who practice
it (although every culture has its share of thoughtful people who might take an
objective view of their own culture). Thus " The
family that prays together stays together" -- The unanticipated effect of
family religious rituals is to increase social solidarity. Or (possibly) the
unanticipated effect of Aztec human sacrifice was to increase the supply of
meat (the victims were eaten) at least for certain politically important
classes under circumstances in which meat was in chronic short supply -- but
this is very controversial theory and may not be correct.
Very often when ask natives why they do
something, they will just shrug shoulders and say something like" it is
the way of the ancestors" or "it is our custom" etc. Ask Eskimo
why he gives a dead seal a drink and you are likely to get such an explanation.
Or ask Tausug why he places a shell over door, and you get the explanation "adat "
(custom).
Great deal of culture is adhered to just
because people have always done things in a certain way. This is complicated by
the fact that people often will give you concocted reasons -- "secondary
rationalizations"-- for their conduct.
Example:
In American Jewish HHs children may ask why they are
not supposed to eat pork or shellfish. In Orthodox HHs
they may be given a "This is just the way we have always done it"
sort of explanation, but in more liberal HHs there
may be a complicated pseudo historic explanation involving supposed notions of
hygiene : "pork and shellfish, if not prepared correctly can be sources of
disease". This may make superficial sense, except that if one wants to
explain the prohibitions in the Book of Leviticus, one must explain the whole
system of prohibitions and not just one or two. Thus why is dog prohibited, or
monkey, or certain kinds of locusts but not others, etc? No medical reason
here.
Point
here: there is much in any culture which is covert, and which lies outside the
conscious awareness of people, and the anthropologist
must seek explanations which go beyond the natives understanding
Interpretation
of symbolism
One
of the great contributions of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim
at the turn of the century was to emphasize how various kinds of complex
symbolic actions in society (rituals in particular) have a covert meaning which
can only be understood -- not by asking people what things means (because most
of the time they may not know) but by analyzing the patterning of these things
in the total social context:
Example:
take a simpler symbol like flowers in American culture -- clearly an arbitrary
cultural symbol (American Indians rarely used flowers symbolically at all).
Cannot just ask people "what is the meaning of flowers" - just a
silly question. But must look at the total patterning of the ritual uses of
flowers and infer the meaning from the use in ritual context: flowers are used
at life-crisis rites -- births, christenings, marriages, birthdays, anniversaries,
illnesses, and death. The meaning seems to be wrapped up with flowers as
symbols of these transitions. (But not all transitions: not appropriate at
sentencing of a criminal, for example).
Notice that flower symbolism is not just a
set of rote rules that people just sort of memorize. Rather than learning a
bunch of specific rules we pick up a sense of the logic of flower giving as it
is practiced in our culture and on the basis of this we can generate new kinds
of flower giving conduct depending on the circumstances.
Further point about society. There is a paradox here: " man is a social animal but is never completely
socialized". What I has in mind here is underscored by comparing man to
the social insects in which it would seem that the individual is always
completely and totally integrated into the structure of the group
. In human (and primate) societies the individual is always to some
degree at odds with the group and there is a constant and complex interplay
between the two. Also in insect societies sexuality usually occurs outside the
group, while in primate societies sexuality is always a part of the structure
of the group. The idea that the "purpose" of sex is basically for
reproduction is, from the point of view of primates, pretty simplistic. Sex serves
all sorts of functions in primate (and mammalian) societies.
Eg: Bonobos (pygmy
chimps) use sex as a means of defusing social tension.
Now
starting with basic definition of society as the process of adjusting ones conduct
to meet or mesh with the conduct of others, it is important at this point to
recognize that there are two very fundamental ways of doing this:
2.
We can interact with others as unique human beings, that is, the process of
interaction depends on qualities of personality which are specific to the
individuals involved and not necessarily shared with others. We can call this interpersonal role.
These
two types of interaction are always present to some degree in combination in
any human encounter, but the importance of each clearly varies with the
situation.
In
a relationship between lovers of close friends the unique qualities of the
persons are usually paramount, and conventional role is usually minor.
In
a highly ritualized situation conventional role is paramount, and the unique
qualities of the individuals may make no difference at all. In the inauguration
of the President of the
In
general interaction between persons in most cultural defined situations
proceeds in terms of conventional defined roles, that is sets of expectations
as to mutual behavior. In interaction between unique persons, interaction is
primarily structured in terms of sentiments and emotions.
Returning to the definitions of culture and
society: what is the relation between the two? Obviously one cannot have
culture without society or vice versa.
To the extent that people participate in a
common network of communication (that is, society) to that extent they are more
likely to build up shared understanding and expectations and culturally defined
meanings. At the same time, of course, to the extent that people initially
share common understandings it is easier to construct a society. So there is a
very close mutual effect.
I find it useful to think of role primarily
in relation to the expectations that other people have with respect to the
duties an individual has who occupies a particular position in any specific
situation. Status , on the other hand, refers to the
rights which an individual has to demand of others by virtue of the fact that
he occupies a certain position.
Thus, there is a complementary between
status and role with respect to the rights and duties associated with a
particular position. My status as a teacher consists of those things which I
can legitimately demand of you because I occupy this position (a certain amount
of deference and respect, expectations that you will show up for class on time,
etc). But you as students also have a status vis a vis me (that is, the
right to demand that I show up for class, give an intelligible lecture, behave
toward you in a fair and equitable manner, etc.). Thus my status is your role,
and your status is my role. There is a complementarity
of rights and duties here.
All rights in any society always imply
corresponding duties, and the imposition of a duty always carries with it some
connotations of corresponding rights. Admittedly, this is a legalistic
perspective on the concepts of the status and role, but it seems to me to be
useful.
Role
and Audiences -
roles and status must be played out to audiences (even if the individual is his
own audience)
The question is, to what extent
do we, inasmuch as we all play many roles and wear many different
"hats" do we play out all these different roles to the same audience,
or on the other hand play them out to different audiences which are kept
segregated from each other.
This is the basis for a very important
polar distinction in social anthropology: multiplex roles vs
uniplex roles.
multiplex roles -- we wear different hats at different
times, but the audience we play them out to are often the same people. The
headman of a Tausug community is a political leader in certain roles, a
military leader in others, a religious leader in some roles, a rich man and economic
mobilizer in others, and a kinsman in others. The audience that he plays these various roles out to, however, are
substantially the same people. Multiplex roles are very characteristic of small
scale face to face societies, and in rural America, small towns, etc) The
family itself in our culture is a classic multiplex role situation, with each
family member wearing different "hats" at different times to the same
people.
uniplex roles --- great audience
segregation. We play out our different roles to different audiences.
Teacher-student
relation in American society is classic example of uniplex
role. One clearly defined role, with one audience carefully segregated from the
others. For all any of you know I could be a practicing poet in
Implications of all this:
1.
In uniplex system conflicts can be
"settled" by avoidance or severing the relationship. Pick up your
marbles and leave. (Americans are very prone to this). In multiplex systems
severing the relationship is much more difficult. Tausug who has a fight with
his neighbor may find it difficult to break the relationship if the neighbor
also happens to be a kinsman as well.
2.
In contemporary society in uniplex settings there is
a very great need for stereotypes in order to structure interaction with
relative strangers. We are all constantly called upon to interact, both
superficially and fairly intensely with people who we do not know in any total
social capacity or as unique human beings. It is a bit like picking up
hitchhikers -- you must make your decision in a split second based on
admittedly very inadequate information. Much contemporary life is like this,
particularly in urban settings.
The Concept of Culture
In American anthropology the concept
of culture has figured more prominently than the concept of society, which has
sometimes been seen as more the province of sociology. This distinction and
division of academic labor, as it were, is a bit of a red herring. There is a
great deal of cross fertilization between the fields, although anthropology
clearly has much stronger roots in the humanities (music, art history,
literature, philosophy) and biology than sociology does.
There are fundamentally four
characteristics of culture which it is convenient to identify, and we will deal
with each in turn. Your text identifies four characteristics
Culture is 1) learned
2) shared
3)based on symbols
4) integrated
Culture Is Symbolic
There are of course primary
symbols in any cultural tradition – the cross to a Christian
Classification Systems and
Symbolism
Ethnographic Semantics: One very
common technique for getting at the natives point of view is just to ask a
series of questions designed to elicit the meanings of key words in the native
language ( a key word is a term which is very ripe with cultural and symbolic
significance).
Example: Say you were an ethnographer from
outer space and you wanted to find out about the way certain items are
classified in a Burger King. If you asked a series of questions you might come
up with the following classification of the larger category of
"sandwiches":
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hamburger |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hamburger |
|
Whopper |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cheeseburger |
|
Hamburger |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(Regular) hamburger |
|
Double hamburger |
|
|
|
Point here: meaning of key
concepts always understood in a structure of contrast. The word "hamburger"
does not have just one meaning – it has many meanings depending on what it
contrasts with. One of the most difficult things to understand in another
culture is not what key ideas mean in a positive sense, but rather what they
implicitly contrast with. Now hamburgers are relatively easy, but religious key
concepts may be very complex indeed. But try doing this kind of analysis of the
Christian Holy Trinity.
Take concept of "freedom" in
American culture. Its meaning is a least partially a question of what we
contrast it with. Freedom is usually contrasted with "constraint",
and is the absence of constraint. The Russian idea of freedom (if I am right in
reading Tolstoi and Chekov)
is not the absence of constraint, but the practical opportunity of individual
self fulfillment. These are subtle, but very important, differences.
Each of these characteristics,
however, presents a number of very special problems:
In the remaining time we will only
have time to deal with the first.
CULTURE IS Integrated
The notion that culture is not
just a random assortment of traits – a laundry list of items..
Things do seem
to fall together and it is notjust randomness.
Functional integration -
idea that cultural items serve certain functions in the culture as a
whole culture and are often ands are often causually
related. “The family that prays together
stays together” -
the various aspects of prayers etc
contributed to the maintenance of the social order.
Logico-Meaningful integration. The
culture items seem to make a pattern is an almost aesthetic sense. Most ethnographers
try to give the reader a sense of how the culture falls together meaningfully
as a coherent
way of life. I could list all the traits in Tausug
culture and leave it at that as merely a kind of “laundry list” When ethnographers have tried to do that their
writings are usually just plain boring. The more interesting problem: What is a
like to be a Tausug? What is the style
of Tausug culture?
CULTURE IS LEARNED
Culture is basically learned
conduct, and it is certainly a truism among anthropologists that culture is
learned and not inborn or genetically based, although the capacity for culture
certainly has a biological basis.
Fashionable some
years ago (in the 30s and 40s) to speculate on what a "natural man"
would be like. That is,
if you could strip off the cultural learning and overlays which all socialized
humans have, like peeling off the skin of an onion, what would you find at the
center of it all?
Now of course the problem here is
that all this is really very speculative, because you cannot ever find such a
creature. Most of the examples of so called "wolf children" have been
unsubstantiated. We do have a few well documented cased of severely deprived
children --- kids who have been chained to the attic bedpost from birth until
say 12 or so, that sort of thing. Many of these kids turned out to be severely
retarded at birth or suffering from birth defects, but even those who were in
all other respects "normal" at birth cannot really be termed
"natural" in any sense of the word.
Tsar Nicholas I is said to have
devised an experiment in which children were raised apart from human society
(apart of attending to their basic needs) to see what would happen. What
happened is that they all died, in spite of being well fed and otherwise cared
for. Most orphans who came to l9th century orphanages as infants also died
before the age of two.
What these kids are not basic or
natural men, but sort of a pathetic ape which is missing some of its marbles, an incomplete primate as it were. The reason is that man has
had culture for so long, that the capacity for it is part of our biological
heritage. A "natural man" is a will of the wisp -- culture is part of
our "nature" if you will.
One very important part of the
evolution of man has been the extraordinary growth in the importance of
learning and learned behavior. Humans come into the world with far fewer
specific instincts than any other animal. Almost everything we need to survive
and prosper will have to be learned from other human beings who are living at
the time we are born, and with whom we will eventually come to share this
cumulative heritage of learning.
Bear in mind here however that
learned shared cumulative behavior is not totally unique to man. Other mammals,
and particularly the higher primates (chimps, gorillas, baboons, etc) actually
it turns out (due to an enormous growth in field studies of primates in the
last 30 years) have some considerable capacity to innovate new behaviors, learn
these behaviors from others, and share them within the social group in ways
which partially distinguish one primate troop from another. Thus, chimps have
been observed "inventing" techniques like using rocks to break open
fruit, washing food in a particular river, etc and these things then are learned
by other members of the troop and become a kind of "local custom" as
it were.
But the main difference between
this kind of thing and human culture is that the chimps are not nearly as
totally dependent on this kind of learned shared behavior as humans are.
Play -- one extremely important
fact about man which is closely related to the importance of learning is the
extraordinary development and necessity of play in human life. Humans (both
adults and children) play more than any other animal, and we particularly play
at those things which have been important to us in our evolutionary history.
One example --- throwing things. All children in all
societies play very intensely at throwing objects. This is very easy to learn
(we are anatomically very well adapted for throwing objects) Human children in
all cultures throw things (whether it is a spear or a baseball does not matter
much) and become terribly good at it. Now actually, chimps and gorillas have
the anatomic capacity to throw almost as well as we do (if you compare trunk,
torso, and arms of chimp and man you will see very close similarities), but
they do not normally play at throwing things, so they never get very good at
it. .
So
humans play more in childhood than any other animal, and, of equal importance,
play behavior in humans goes on in various forms throughout life (which seldom
happens in non-domesticated mammals). Humans play at everything and play is
actually a very important component of learning, and adapting to new
situations.
Adult
humans also play a lot more than adult chimps and gorillas.
The nature-nurture controversy. The question of how much
human behavior is "inborn" and how much is the result of social
learning is one of those interminable questions about which debate seems to go
on and on. .
First
of all we should recognize that the question whether there is an instinctual
"human nature" is almost always when popularly discussed a question
which has a political kicker. If you want to convince people of the importance
of not changing things and adhering to the status quo, one of the easiest ways
is to maintain that the status quo is somehow rooted in human nature (men are
by nature dominant, therefore women must keep their place, whites are smarter
by nature than blacks, therefore blacks should be happy with what they have,
war is part of human nature, therefore there isn't much we can do about it ---
the list goes on and on.)
If
on the other hand you want to change things, then it makes sense to stress the
malleability of man and the importance of learning. Revolutionary societies, at
least in recent times have tended to emphasize the plasticity of man. [Stalin
practically destroyed Soviet biology by treating classical genetics as
subversive)
Actually,
of course, the idea of a fixed human nature is not always conservative. The
American revolution was at least in part based on the
idea of a certain fixed vision of human nature.
Main
point here: the term "nature" is one of the most loaded terms in the
English language. Whenever you hear it, bells should go off in your head --
"whose ox is being gored here?"
Actually,
the concept of nature as a cultural category is Western European thought is
extremely complicated. Thus we believe that nature is something to be overcome
in relation to non-human and material entities --- "we triumph over
nature", but nature is also conceptualized as something to be lived in
harmony with. We believe that it is natural for mothers to love their children,
but nobody would suggest that this is something which should be overcome, like
we harnessed the
Instinct -- does the concept of
instinct have no place at all in the study of man? Are we really just a tabula rasa (a blank slate) upon
which culture just writes its varied messages? I know of no anthropologist who
believes anything so drastic.
Actually the modern trend is to do
away with the concept of instinct as a set of fixed and immutable behavioral
characteristics at least in relation to man. The emerging position is that all
behavior is learned (with the exception of some simple reflexes and such like),
but there is some variation in the ease of learning, that is, some things are
easier for humans to learn than others.
Some examples:
1.
Being afraid of the dark, throwing behavior – easily
learned
2.
language itself very easy to learn
3. reciprocity
and the sentiment of gift giving and most sentiments and emotions generally –
easily learned.
4.
learning to be bored, learning not to run away in the
face of danger (Tausug) -- these are rather difficult to learn.
aside: one main function of mass public
education is to teach kids to be bored – and to learn to accept petty
infringements on their selves for purposes of order (raise hand to go to bathroom,
etc.). Teaching kids to put up with boredom and not make a fuss is difficult –
some kids never learn it (they often end up either in jail or the more creative
innovators in our culture!)
Main point: some things more
easily learned, some things more difficult to learn
and there are developmental patterns which must be taken into account.
Question: granted that every
society asks its members to learn some things which are difficult to learn and
a lot of things which are relatively easy to learn, do some culture make
greater demands on their members to learn more difficult to learn material?
That is, are some cultures just more difficult to learn, period.
Is American culture as a whole more difficult to grow up into than Tausug
culture, or Eskimo culture, or vice versa? Most anthropologists I suspect
probably intuitively believe that there are overall differences between
cultures in this respect, but the problem is that it is very difficult to prove
or disprove these theories in any satisfactory way.