ISS 210 1st Edition Lecture 15 Outline of Last Lecture I II III IV V VI VII Sanctions Social Relations as Potential Reciprocity Levi Strauss on Exchange Time of Obligation Types of Reciprocity Balanced Reciprocity Outline of Current Lecture I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV Apollonian Pueblo Indians Dionysian Plains Indians Mississippian Agriculturalists High Plains Culture Cheyenne Comanche Courtship Cultural Convergence Sun Dance and Buffalo Hunt 1845 Cultural Interference Cultural Persistence Rebus Principle Kanji Cultural Crystallization Morimento Belief Ritual and Conformity Signs and Symbols Current Lecture I Apollonian Pueblo Indians Marked distrust of individualism and high levels of self control Agriculture required irrigation requires cooperation and communal organization Took these traits as cultural givens and never tried to understand why they developed as they did II Dionysian Plains Indians Self related emotionally expressive and individualist Warfare led to a military complex preparing young males for battle and honor by counting coup III Mississippian Agriculturalists Crops include corn beans squash pumpkins gourds and tobacco Provided a dependable food supply and allowed densely populated settlements requiring more complex forms of social organization based on class IV High Plains Culture Patterns didn t develop ex nihilo but adapted pre existing organization to new environment Leadership reflected origins Formal grow and Cheyenne Informal Comanche Interpersonal In group hostility repressed within tribe murder punished Cheyenne In group hostility expressed within tribe murder led to revenge Comanche V Cheyenne Comanche Courtship Tendency to conserve and defend establishment cultural practice An act is not proper because it is adaptive but because it is customary and natural Some prior cultural traits survived which while not specifically adapted to the life on the plains were not maladaptive either The comanch viewed sex casually A young man only had to remain in the tent with his betrothed to be discovered and invited to breakfast by her father VI Cultural Convergence Cheyenne were Algonquin Indians who had lived in agricultural settlements until they moved onto the Great Plains and adopted common plains culture based on the horse and buffalo VII Sun Dance and Buffalo Hunt 1845 Individual action was essential to group survival Benedict saw this as extravagance and display VIII Cultural Interference We internalized cultural rules viscerally Yoruba etiquette concerning a public display of affection violation privacy his and theirs Public display of affection in Dubai Cultural Interference Habits and behaviors that are in grained and performed without thinking Ethnocentrism is a high valuation placed on ones own culture and disparagement of other peoples culture IX Cultural Persistence Cultural practices persist due to habit and the dead weight of custom rather than any inherent advantage Language interference habits of our first language Systems are integrated being the first makes change more difficult as new technologies emerge Integration a custom or process is firmly embedded in a cultural matrix that it cannot be removed without adversely affecting other institutions Rested interests who benefits from a change X Rebus Principle Uses the existing symbols such as pictograms purely for their sounds regardless of their meaning to represent new words XI Kanji Cultural loss since young people could not read the old script 1006 characters by 6th grade Aesthetics poetry verse calligraphy intimately bound Inconvenience of change over for those who ve mastered it Nationalism script tied to people s identity vs a foreign script XII Cultural Crystallization When a cultural need emerges the fluid period and a new behavior arises to meet it the new behavior even if less than perfect is very hard to displace because a whole complex of behaviors may arise around it The first Spanish colonists came from the south of Spain most immigrants came from the north but they came later after the institutional arrangements were in place Once established practices are difficult to dislodge XIII Morimento Gan s 1962 study of a West End Italian American neighborhood found a Mediterranean love of life on a city street and a rejection of a well intended trip for West End children to the shore of Cape Cod XIV Belief Ritual and Conformity People may adhere to social customs and not having thought about them offer secondary rationalizations when asked why do you do this Men s shirt buttons and women s People may express themselves symbolically without being aware of the meaning of the symbols The meaning of actions and things exist socially and like words in language mean what the audience not the speaker intends Symbols are ambiguous they can mean different things to different people Belief or conformity XV Signs and Symbols Refine the definition A symbol is something whose meaning is bestowed it upon it by those who use it A sign is a representation of a tangible object Signs name things A word is a reference for a physical object or actions A symbol is a physical object or an action that represents an intangible or metaphysical referent idea Symbols are bipolar one end grounded in the physical the other in the realm of idea We physically encounter symbols ritually and through them experience the idea or belief behind them