THE CONCEPT OF
CULTURE
Sir Edward Burnett
– British anthropologist, 1871
- Culture is a complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals,
custom and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of
society.
Recent definitions tend to distinguish more clearly
between actual behavior on the one hand and the
abstract values and beliefs that people use to
interpret experience and generate behavior.
Culture is not observable behavior, but rather the
values and beliefs that people use to interpret
experience and generate behavior.
Culture is a set of rules or standard that, when
acted upon by the members of a society, produce
behavior that falls within a range of variance the
members consider proper and acceptable.
CHARACTERISTIC OF
CULTURE
Culture is Shared
Culture is a set of ideals, values, and standards of
behavior; it is the common denominator that
makes the actions of individual intelligible to the
group.
Culture and society are two closely related
concepts
Society is a group of people occupying a
specific locality, who are dependent on each
other for survival and who share a common
culture.
The way in which people depend on each other
can be seen in such things as their economic
systems and their family relationship;
moreover, members of a society are held
together by a sense of group identity.
Culture is Learned
All culture is learned rather than biologically
inherited.
One learns one’s culture by growing up with it,
and the process whereby culture is transmitted
from one generation to the next is called
enculturation.
Through enculturation one learns the socially
appropriate way of satisfying one’s biologically
determined needs
Not all learned behavior is cultural.
Culture is based on Symbols
Leslie white assert that all human behavior
originates in the use of symbols.
The most important symbolic aspect of culture
is language – the substitution of words for
objects.
It is through language that humans are able to
transmit culture from one generation to
another.
Culture is Integrated
Integration – The tendency for all aspects of
culture to function as an interrelated whole.
CULTURE AND PROCESS
Humans, like all animals, have been
continually faced with the problem of adopting
to the environment.
Adaptation refers to the process by which
organisms achieve a beneficial adjustment to
an available environment.
The result of the process is the possession of
characteristics that permit organisms to
overcome the hazards, and secure the resources
that they need, in the particular environments
in which they live.
Organisms have generally adapted by
developing advantageous anatomical and
physiological characteristics.
Humans depend more on cultural adaptation.
Through culture the human species has
secured not just its survival but its expansion
as well.
Not everything that humans do the do because
it is adaptive to a particular environment.
People don’t just react to an environment as
givens; rather, they react to it as they perceive it.
Different groups of people may perceive the
same environment in radically different ways.
Function of Culture
A culture cannot survive if it does not
successfully deal with basic problems.
A culture must provide for the production and
distribution of goods services considered necessary for
life.
It must provide for biological continuity through the
reproduction of its members.
It must enculturate new members.
It must maintain order.
It must motivate its members to survive.
Culture and Change
All culture change over a period of time.
Changes take place in response to such events
as environmental crises, intrusion of outsiders,
or modification of behavior and values within
the culture.
Culture, Society, and the Individual
A society is no more than a union of
individuals, all of whom have their own special
needs and interests.
If a society is to survive, it must succeed in
balancing the self – interest of its members
against the demands of the society as a whole.
Evaluation of Culture
Ethnocentrism – any culture that is functioning
adequately regards itself as the best.
Cultural relativism – the idea that a culture
must evaluated according to its own standards,
and those alone.
Thank you ^_^
