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Culture: Definition, Knowledge, and Behavior

This chapter explores the concept of culture, including its definition, acquisition of cultural knowledge, and the influence of culture on human behavior. It also discusses the interplay between biology and cultural differences.

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Culture: Definition, Knowledge, and Behavior

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  1. Chapter 2 Culture

  2. Chapter Outline • Introducing Culture • Defining Culture • Cultural Knowledge • Culture and Human Life • Cultural Knowledge and Individual Behavior • Biology and Cultural Differences

  3. Culture is… • Learned from others while growing up in a society or group. • Widely shared by members of the group.

  4. Culture is… • Responsible for differences in thinking and behaving between societies and groups. • Essential for completing psychological and social development of individuals.

  5. Cultural Knowledge • Attitudes, beliefs, ideas, conceptions, rules, standards, perceptions and other information stored in people’s heads.

  6. Patterns of Behavior • What people do most of the time when they are in similar situations.

  7. Culture • Shared, socially learned knowledge and patterns of behavior • Cultural Integration - The various parts of culture are mutually interdependent.

  8.  Culture Is Shared… • People are capable of communicating and interacting without explaining their behavior. • People share a common cultural identity.

  9.  Cultural Identity • The cultural tradition a group of people recognize as their own. • The shared customs and beliefs that define how a group sees itself as distinctive.

  10. Society • A territorially defined population most of whose members speak the same language and share a sense of common identity relative to other societies.

  11. Culture Is Socially Learned… • Individuals acquire it from others in the process of growing up in a group. • Culture is not transmitted to new generations genetically. • Culture is learned by observation, imitation, communication and inference.

  12.   Enculturation/Socialization • The process by which infants and children learn the culture of those around them.  

  13. Culture Is Knowledge… • Members of a culture know how to behave in ways that are meaningful and acceptable to others. • Knowledge allows people to survive and reproduce themselves and transmit their culture.

  14. Culture Is Patterns of Behavior… • Individuals have a role in a group. • The group has expectations about what people with that role should do. • Expectations include rights and duties of the role.

  15.   Role • A social position in a group with its associated and reciprocal rights and duties.

  16. Components of Cultural Knowledge • Norms • Values • Symbols • Classifications of reality • Worldviews

  17.  Norms • Agreement that people should adhere to standards of behavior. • People judge behavior according to how closely it adheres to these standards. • People who fail to follow the standards face negative reaction from the group.

  18.  Norms and Values • Norms are hared ideas (or rules) about how people people ought to act in given situations or about how people should act toward other people. • Vales are people’s beliefs about the way of life that is desirable for themselves and their society.

  19. Symbol • An objects or behavior that stands for, represents or calls to mind something else.

  20. Classifications of Reality • Ways in which the members of a culture divide up the natural and social world into named categories.

  21. Worldview • The way a people interpret reality and events, including how they see themselves as relating to the world around them.

  22. Culture and Human Life • Culture provides the skills to adapt to surroundings. • Culture is the basis for human social life. • Culture affects our view of reality.

  23. Cultural Knowledge and Individual Behavior • Affects the choices people make about how to act in situations. • Limits and influences behavior. • Cultural determinism is the belief that culture largely determines or dictates behavior.

  24. Biological Determinism • The notion that cultural differences have a biological basis. • Groups of people differ in how they think, feel, and act because of their biological makeup.

  25. Cultural Universals • Elements that exist in all known human societies: • Tools • Shelter • Education • Religion

  26. Biology and Cultural Differences • Individuals of any physical type are equally capable of learning any culture. • Cultural diversity is found on all continents and regions of the world. • Different cultural systems succeed one another within the same biological population and the same society.

  27. Quick Quiz

  28. 1. Cultures vary in their: • biological/physical characteristics • ways of thinking and behaving • Instincts • trial-and-error learning

  29. Answer: b • Cultures vary in their ways ofthinking and behaving.

  30. 2. Culture: • depends on how much education you have • depends on one’s speech habits • is socially transmitted • is invented by very smart people

  31. Answer: c • Culture is socially transmitted.

  32. 3. The aspects of culture that anthropologists are most interested in are: • genetic differences • rewarded behaviors • immoral behaviors • patterns of behavior

  33. Answer: d • The aspects of culture that anthropologists are most interested in are patterns of behavior.

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