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Chapter Summary
Anthropologists argue that culture is a distinguishing feature of humanity. Human culture is learned, shared, patterned, adaptive, and symbolic. It is a fluid concept, always in flux, and thus changes gradually over time. Our biological evolution aligns with cultural influences, making our species essentially biocultural.
Many anthropologists have long thought holistically about human culture. Holism argues that objects and environments interpenetrate and even define each other. Thus, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Human beings and human societies are open systems that cannot be reduced to the parts that make them up. The parts and the whole mutually define, or codetermine, each other and coevolve.
All anthropologists fight against ethnocentric ways of thinking and acting toward others. Anthropologists believe that ethnocentrism can be countered by a commitment to cultural relativism, an attempt to understand the cultural underpinnings of behaviour. Cultural relativism does not require us to abandon every value our society has taught us; however, it does discourage the easy solution of refusing to consider alternatives from the outset. Cultural relativism makes moral decisions more difficult because it requires us to take many things into account before we make up our minds.
Because culture is a learned phenomenon, it is passed on from one generation to the next via enculturation. In many ways, it provides a moral compass and blueprint for knowing how to behave in society in an appropriate manner. At the same time, culture provides resources human beings can make use of in the pursuit of their own goals. Thus, the anthropological understanding of human life recognizes the importance of human agency.
Many anthropologists have criticized the use of the term cultures to refer to particular, learned ways of life belonging to specific groups of human beings. Critics argue that this way of talking about culture seems to endorse a kind of oppressive cultural determinism. Supporters, however, argue that in some cases the concept of culture can be used to defend vulnerable social groups against exploitation and oppression by outsiders.
Learning Objectives
In this chapter, the student should learn to do the following:
- outline and explain five key features of human culture;
- define the concept of ethnocentrism and provide examples;
- define cultural relativism and outline why it can raise ethical concerns;
- define holism and outline how it contributes to our understanding of different cultures;
- discuss the difference between culture and Culture; and
- define human agency and outline its relationship to the concepts of culture and enculturation.