What is Culture Defining culture o Many different conceptions o Idealist behaviorist and holistic definitions o According to the textbook culture is a society s shared and socially transmitted ideas values and perceptions which are used to make sense of experience and generate behavior o SYMBOL LEARNED BASE BEHAVIOR Culture is Universal o Culture does not equal civilization o All people do have culture o What about other animals Characteristics of Culture o Learned o Shared o Symbol based o Integrated o Dynamic Culture is learned o Culture isn t innate its acquired Process of enculturation begins at birth or possibly even before o Different types of learning individual social and symbolic Culture is Shared o Shared cultural traditions allow people to coexist o Culture is shared at different levels national local etc o Cultural knowledge is shared but not uniformly participated in e g countercultures Culture is Symbol Based o Symbol is something verbal or nonverbal that comes to stand for something else o The relationship of a symbol to what it represents is arbitrary o Symbols can be linguistic or material o Because there are not literal symbols are subject to interpretation Culture is Integrated o Different aspects of culture must be integrated for things to function properly o Cultural features can not be studied in isolation o Change in one component of culture may have consequences for many other parts Culture is Dynamic o All cultures change o Change is often unanticipated and unintentional o Globalization World system that links societies and culture in economic and political relations Cultural Variation o Capacity for culture is universal but its expression varies tremendously o Job of anthropologists to describe understand this variation 2
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