“Why, he's the poorest, clumsiest excuse of all the creatures that inhabit this earth.

He has got to be coddled and

housed and swathed and bandaged and upholstered to be able to live at all. He is a rickety sort of a thing, anyway
you take him, a regular British Museum of infirmities and inferiorities. He is always undergoing repair...He has just
that one stupendous superiority — his imagination, his intellect.”
- Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens, on humanity

SECTION 3

Culture
Latin – “cultura” - “to cultivate”
Shared, integrated, and symbolic pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior
Includes the tangible and intangible
Our primary means for adapting to the environment and satisfying biological needs
Promotes norms and values
Flexible and learned through enculturation
Both adaptive and maladaptive

Ethnocentrism
Greek – “ethnos” – “group”; “kentrikos” – “of the center”
The belief that one’s own beliefs and practices are normal and natural

Cultural Relativism
Latin – “relativus” – “compared to each other”
Understanding another’s beliefs and practices within their own cultural context

World View
The beliefs and ideas concerning existence and reality
These views often change…

Culture Change
Mechanisms of Culture Change:
1. Innovation – Development of novel solutions to problems
Both technological inventions and conceptual inventions
2. Diffusion – Borrowing, trading, imitating/adopting, forceful transfer of traits between cultures
Can lead to assimilation, syncretism, or extinction
3. Extinction – The loss of a culture
4. Globalization – The increased intensification of interactions and increased movement of human culture
5. Deviance – Divergence from cultural norms

Cultural Anthropological Theory

Cultural Evolutionism
Attempted to draw a parallel between biological change and cultural change
Unilineal, “low” to “high” progression
Cultures don’t simply change; they improve and become more civilized, moral, and ordered

W.H.R. Rivers (1864-1922) & Diffusionism

Independent invention followed by borrowing, trading, and imitating of ideas and technologies
Kulturkreise
Assumed some cultures were creative while others were not
Could not account for similarities between independent cultures

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) & Functionalism

Synchronic (ahistorical) approach
The function of cultural institutions is to satisfy biological needs
Subsistence satisfies metabolism
Kinship satisfies reproduction
Shelter satisfies bodily comfort
 Protection satisfies safety
Activity satisfies movement
Training satisfies growth
Hygiene satisfies health

Franz Boas (1858-1942) & Historical Particularism

Each culture, and its history, is unique, yet comprised of elements diffused from other cultures
Social life is guided by habit and tradition, not rationality or utility
Relativistic and cautious of generalizations
Emphasis on original fieldwork and salvage anthropology

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) & Culture and Personality

Each culture had a distinct personality type, wherein the most important values are shared by individual and culture alike
Relativistic “culture writ large”
Considered too strict a generalization

Julian Steward (1902-1972) & Cultural Ecology

Neo-evolutionism, but not linear
Culture is shaped by, and continually adapting to, the environment
The greater the technological development, the lesser the influential impact of the environment
Scientific, empirical, capable of providing causal explanations and laws

Cultural Anthropology
The study of extant societies and cultures
Human behavior that is learned rather than genetically transmitted
Cultural variations and universals
Emic Description – culture-bound description
Etic Description – outsider’s description

Participant Observation
Cultural data gathering technique (Fieldwork)
Involves:
Gaining trust
Living with the culture
Learning the language
Enlisting the aid of an informant
Collect data supporting theoretical perspective
Dealing with culture shock
Document the details of daily life:
Language
Maps/Censuses/Space and Place
Politics
Technology
Economics
Subsistence
Family/Kinship/Descent/Marriage
Individual life histories
Groups/Status/Stratification
Religion/Magic/Shamanism
Beliefs/Values
Myths/Legends/Folklore
Ceremonies/Rituals/Important events
Art
Diseases/Treatments

Ethnography
Greek – “ethnos” – “group”; “graphy” – “writing” or “field of study”
Formal description of a culture
Subsistence
Cultural infrastructure established for capturing and utilizing resources
Work within the limits of our environments and our technologies

Limiting Factors
Biome; Native Biota; Carrying Capacity; Photoperiod; Soil Conditions; Elevation; Terrain; Wind Patterns; Precipitation; Water
Availability; Temperature; Seasonal Climatic Variations

Foraging – Old High German – “fuotar” – “food”

Reliance on wild food resources
Hunting, gathering edible and medicinal plants, fishing

Pastoralism – Latin – “pastor” – “herdsman”

The herding of domesticated animals

Horticulture – Latin – “hortus” – “garden”; “cultura” – “to cultivate”

Subsistence agriculture
Cycled gardens, no permanently cultivated fields

Agriculture – Latin – “ager” – “field”; “cultura” – “to cultivate”

The creation of artificial ecosystems, with domesticated biota supplanting native biota

Economics
Greek – “okionomia” – “household management”
The study of the allocation, production, distribution, and consumption of resources
Allocation – Rules that govern the access to, regulation, and control of natural resources
Production – The process whereby extracted natural resources are modified to become consumable goods
Distribution – The process whereby consumable goods reach the consumer (reciprocity, redistribution, market exchange)

Linguistic Anthropology
Latin – “lingua” – “language” or “tongue”
The study of human language, both past and present
Descriptive linguistics – describe and preserve
Historical linguistics – language evolution
Sociolinguistics – social and cultural contexts

Language
A system of arbitrary symbols (words, sounds, and gestures) used to encode, communicate, and transmit culture
generationally
An integral part of the human condition; one of the first forms of behavior we learn
Origins of language are unknown

Dialects
Greek – “dialektos” – “conversation”
Regional or class variations of a language that are mutually intelligible; (Languages are mutually unintelligible)
Differences in pronunciation, accent, vocabulary, grammar, spelling

Language Structure
Rules and principles governing what sounds/gestural elements are to be used and how those sounds/gestural elements are
to be combined to convey meaning

Phones (Greek – “sound”) – Finite number of sounds/gestures produced in a language; they carry no meaning
Phonemes (Greek – “a sound uttered”) – The smallest unit of sound/gesture that can make a difference in meaning
Morphemes (Greek – “shape”) – The smallest units of sound/gesture that carry meaning on their own
Grammar (Greek – “art of letters”) – Rules for combining words into meaningful utterances
Lexicon (Greek – “to say”) – All the words for names, ideas, and events
Kinesics (Greek – “kinein” – “to move”) – The study of body movements and language
Paralanguage (Greek – “para” – “beside”, “near”) – Set of noises, tones of voice, and gestures that convey meaning about
the speaker
Human Languages are:
Open – Infinite number of meanings can be expressed
Stimulus free (Displacement) – We don’t need to experience something to talk about it
Flexible – Capable of invention

Language Family
A group of related languages that all derive from a common protolanguage
More than 250 language families

Applied Anthropology
The use of all fields of anthropology to address contemporary problems
Latin – “applicare” – “to add” or “attach”
Advocacy versus research, publication, or teaching

Public health, medicine, nutrition, genetic counseling, epidemiology, forensics, cultural resource management, business,
market research, land tenure and use, government agencies, non-government agencies (NGOs), language and cultural
interpreters

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what
must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the
people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters
above everything.”
- Master K’ung (Confucious)