explain the meaning of culture according to tylor essay

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Definition of Culture By Different Authors | 10 Definitions of Culture

Culture is the sum of human life, values, beliefs, language system, communication, and behavior. Although culture is a complex concept, it affects every aspect of our lives, both consciously and subconsciously.

Culture can be defined as a form of human life. For example, a culture is formed by combining how people in a particular region think, how they act, their behavior, attitudes, dress, their speech or language, their religious activities, music, literature, etc.

Definition of Culture By Different Authors

According to E. B. Tylor (1871), “Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

Ralph Linton (1940) defines, “The sum total of knowledge, attitudes and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society.”

Maclver defines, “Culture is the expression of our nature in our modes of living and our thinking, intercourse, in our literature, in religion, in recreation and enjoyment.”

According to John Paul Lederach, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them.”

Geert Hofstede defines, “Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.”

“Culture is the framework of beliefs, expressive symbols, and values in terms of which individuals define their feelings and make their judgments.” — (Geertz 1957 American Anthropologist 59: 32 -54)

According to Ward Goodenough (1957), “The pattern of life within a community, the regularly recurring activities and material and social arrangements characteristic of a particular group.”

Malinowski defines, “Culture is the handiwork of man and the medium through which he achieves his ends.”

According to Spencer, “Culture is the super organic environment as distinguished from the organic, or physical, the worlds of plants and animals.”

According to Samuel Koenig, “Culture may be defined as the sum-total of man’s efforts to adjust himself to his environment and to improve his modes of living.”

Lundberg defines, “Culture refers to the social mechanisms of behavior and to the physical and symbolic products of these behaviors.”

H.T. Mazumdar defines, “Culture is the total of human achievements, material and non-material, capable of transmission, sociologically, i.e., by tradition and communication, vertically as well as horizontally.”

Definition of culture and discussions:

Culture is a term that refers to a large and varied set of the most essential aspects of social life. It is the values, beliefs, language, and methods of communication and the things that people share in general and which as a whole can be used to define the elements or material objects that are common to that group or society.

Culture is also what we are and what we behave and perform. It explains and understands how we walk, sit, carry our bodies, and communicate with others; How we behave depending on space, time, and audience.

The term culture is widely used in sociology. Culture encompasses all aspects of our lives in a broad sense. According to Tylor, culture is a complex combination of the combined knowledge, beliefs, arts, ethics, customs, laws, and various habits and skills acquired by the society.

Culture is one of the most important concepts in sociology because sociologists recognize that it plays an important role in our social life. It is important for maintaining social relationships, social maintenance and challenging, how we determine the knowledge of the world and our position in it, and the outline of our daily actions and experiences in society . It is made up of both non-material and material things.

Definition of Statistics by different authors

Expert Previews Team

2 The Culture Concept

Priscilla medeiros, women’s college hospital [email protected], emily cowall, mcmaster university [email protected].

Learning Objectives

Compare and contrast the ideas of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

Describe the role that early anthropologists Sir James Frazer and Sir E. B. Tylor played in defining the concept of culture in anthropology.

Identify the differences between armchair anthropology and participant-observer fieldwork and explain how Bronislaw Malinowski contributed to the development of anthropological fieldwork techniques.

Identify the contributions Franz Boas and his students made to the development of new theories about culture.

Assess some of the ethical issues that can arise from anthropological research.

THOUGHTS ON CULTURE OVER A CUP OF COFFEE

Do you think culture can be studied in a coffee shop? Have you ever gone to a coffee shop, sat down with a book or laptop, and listened to conversations around you? If you just answered yes, in a way, you were acting as an anthropologist. Anthropologists like to become a part of their surroundings, observing and participating with people doing day-to-day things. As two anthropologists writing a chapter about the culture concept, we wanted to know what other people thought about culture. What better place to meet than at our community coffee shop?

Our small coffee shop was filled with the aroma of coffee beans, and the voices of people competed with the sound of the coffee grinder. At the counter a chalkboard listed the daily specials of sandwiches and desserts. (Coffee shops have their own language, with vocabulary such as macchiato and latte . It can feel like entering a foreign culture.) We found a quiet corner that would allow us to observe other people (and hopefully identify a few to engage with) without disturbing them too much with our conversation. We understand the way that anthropologists think about culture, but we were also wondering what the people sitting around us might have to say. Would having a definition of culture really mean something to the average coffee-shop patron? Is a definition important? Do people care? We were very lucky that morning because sitting next to us was a man working on his laptop, a service dog lying at his feet.

Meeting Bob at the Coffee Shop

Having an animal in a food-service business is not usually allowed, but in our community people can have their service dogs with them. This young golden retriever wore a harness that displayed a sign stating the owner was diabetic. This dog was very friendly; in fact, she wanted to be touched and would not leave us alone, wagging her tail and pushing her nose against our hands. This is very unusual because many service dogs, like seeing eye dogs, are not to be touched. Her owner, Bob, let us know that his dog must be friendly and not afraid to approach people: if Bob needs help in an emergency, such as a diabetic coma, the dog must go to someone else for help.

We enjoyed meeting Bob and his dog, and we asked if he would like to answer our question: what is culture? Bob was happy to share his thoughts and ideas.

Bob feels that language is very important to cultural identity. He believes that if one loses language, one also loses important information about wildlife, indigenous plants, and ways of being. As a member of a First Nations tribe, Bob believes that words have deep cultural meaning. Most importantly, he views English as the language of commerce. Bob is concerned with the influence of Western consumerism and how it changes cultural identity.

With Bob’s opinions in mind, we started thinking about how we, two cultural anthropologists, would answer the same question about culture. Our training shapes our understandings of the question, yet we know there is more to culture concepts than a simple definition. Why is asking the culture concept question important to anthropologists? Does it matter? Is culture something that we can understand without studying it formally?

In this chapter, we will illustrate how anthropology developed the culture concept. Our journey will include the importance of storytelling and the way that anthropology became a social science. Along the way, we will learn about some important scholars and be introduced to anthropology in North America. Let’s begin with our discussion of storytelling by taking a look at Gulliver’s Travels .

STORIES AS A REFLECTION ON CULTURE

Stories are told in every culture and often teach a moral lesson to young children. Fables are similar, but often set an example for people to live by or describe what to do when in a dangerous situation. They can also be a part of traditions, help to preserve ways of life, or explain mysteries. Storytelling takes many different forms such as tall tales and folktales. These are for entertainment or to discuss problems encountered in life. Both are also a form of cultural preservation, a way to communicate morals or values to the next generation. Stories can also be a form of social control over certain activities or customs that are not allowed in a society.

A fable becomes a tradition by being retold and accepted by others in the community. Different cultures have very similar stories sharing common themes. One of the most common themes is the battle between good and evil. Another is the story of the quest. The quest often takes the character to distant lands, filled with real-life situations, opportunities, hardships, and heartaches. In both of these types of stories, the reader is introduced to the anthropological concept known as the Other . What exactly is the Other ? The Other is a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own.

Illustration from the book Gulliver's Travels showing Gulliver captured by the Lilliputians

Can a story explain the concept of the Other? Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is about four different voyages that Gulliver undertakes. His first adventure is the most well-known; in the story, Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon who plans a sea voyage when his business fails. During a storm at sea, he is shipwrecked, and he awakens to find himself bound and secured by a group of captors—the Lilliputians—who are six inches tall. Gulliver, having what Europeans consider a normal body height, suddenly becomes a giant. During this adventure, Gulliver is seen as an outsider, a stranger with different features and language. Gulliver becomes the Other.

What lessons about culture can we learn from Gulliver’s Travels ? Swift’s story offers lessons about cultural differences, conflicts occurring in human society, and the balance of power. It also provides an important example of the Other. The Other is a matter of perspective in this story: Gulliver thinks the Lilliputians are strange and unusual. To Gulliver, the Lilliputians are the Other, but the Lilliputians equally see Gulliver as the Other—he is their captive and is a rare species of man because of his size.

The themes in Gulliver’s Travels describe different cultures and aspects of storytelling. The story uses language, customary behaviors, and the conflict between different groups to explore ideas of the exotic and strange. The story is framed as an adventure, but is really about how similar cultures can be. In the end, Gulliver becomes a member of another cultural group, learning new norms, attitudes, and behaviors. At the same time, he wants to colonize them, a reflection of his former cultural self.

Stories are an important part of culture, and when used to pass on traditions or cultural values, they can connect people to the past. Stories are also a way to validate religious, social, political, and economic practices from one generation to another. Stories are important because they are used in some societies to apply social pressure, to keep people in line, and are part of shaping the way that people think and behave.

Anthropologists as Storytellers

People throughout recorded history have relied on storytelling as a way to share cultural details. When early anthropologists studied people from other civilizations, they relied on the written accounts and opinions of others; they presented facts and developed their “stories,” about other cultures based solely on information gathered by others. These scholars did not have any direct contact with the people they were studying. This approach has come to be known as armchair anthropology . Simply put, if a culture is viewed from a distance (as from an armchair), the anthropologist tends to measure that culture from his or her own vantage point and to draw comparisons that place the anthropologist’s culture as superior to the one being studied. This point of view is also called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is an attitude based on the idea that one’s own group or culture is better than any other.

Early anthropological studies often presented a biased ethnocentric interpretation of the human condition. For example, ideas about racial superiority emerged as a result of studying the cultures that were encountered during the colonial era. During the colonial era from the sixteenth century to the mid–twentieth century, European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Dutch Republic, Spain, Portugal) asserted control over land (Asia, Africa, the Americas) and people. European ideas of wrong and right were used as a measuring stick to judge the way that people in different cultures lived. These other cultures were considered primitive, which was an ethnocentric term for people who were non-European. It is also a negative term suggesting that indigenous cultures had a lack of technological advancement. Colonizers thought that they were superior to the Other in every way.

Image of Sir James Frazer, one of the founders of modern anthropology.

Armchair anthropologists were unlikely to be aware of their ethnocentric ideas because they did not visit the cultures they studied. Scottish social anthropologist Sir James Frazer is well-known for his 1890 work The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religions . Its title was later changed to A Study in Magic and Religion , and it was one of the first books to describe and record magical and religious beliefs of different culture groups around the world. Yet, this book was not the outcome of extensive study in the field. Instead, Frazer relied on the accounts of others who had traveled, such as scholars, missionaries, and government officials, to formulate his study.

Another example of anthropological writing without the use of fieldwork is Sir E. B. Tylor’s 1871 work Primitive Culture. Tylor, who went on to become the first professor of anthropology at Oxford University in 1896, was an important influence in the development of sociocultural anthropology as a separate discipline. Tylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” [1] His definition of culture is still used frequently today and remains the foundation to the culture concept in anthropology.

Drawing of a Mother and Child in Malaysia From Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization, E.B. Tylor, 1904

Tylor’s definition of culture was influenced by the popular theories and philosophies of his time, including the work of Charles Darwin. Darwin formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species . Scholars of the time period, including Tylor, believed that cultures were subject to evolution just like plants and animals and thought that cultures developed over time from simple to complex. Many nineteenth century anthropologists believed that cultures evolved through distinct stages. They labeled these stages with terms such as savagery, barbarism, and civilization. [2] These theories of cultural evolutionism would later be successfully refuted, but conflicting views about cultural evolutionism in the nineteenth century highlight an ongoing nature versus nurture debate about whether biology shapes behavior more than culture.

Both Frazer and Tylor contributed important and foundational studies even though they never went into the field to gather their information. Armchair anthropologists were important in the development of anthropology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century because although these early scholars were not directly experiencing the cultures they were studying, their work did ask important questions—questions that could ultimately only be answered by going into the field.

Anthropologists as Cultural Participants

The armchair approach as a way to study culture changed when scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead took to the field and studied by being participants and observers. As they did, fieldwork became the most important tool anthropologists used to understand the “complex whole” of culture.

Bronislaw Malinowski, a Polish anthropologist, was greatly influenced by the work of Frazer . However , unlike the armchair anthropology approach Frazer used in writing The Golden Bough , Malinowski used more innovative ethnographic techniques, and his fieldwork took him off the veranda to study different cultures. The off the veranda approach is different from armchair anthropology because it includes active participant-observation : traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day-to-day lives.

Image of Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands

What happened when Malinowski came off the veranda? The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) was considered the first modern ethnography and redefined the approach to fieldwork. This book is part of Malinowski’s trilogy on the Trobriand Islanders. Malinowski lived with them and observed life in their villages. By living among the islanders, Malinowski was able to learn about their social life, food and shelter, sexual behaviors, community economics, patterns of kinship , and family. [3]

Malinowski went “native” to some extent during his fieldwork with the Trobriand Islanders. Going native means to become fully integrated into a cultural group: taking leadership positions and assuming key roles in society; entering into a marriage or spousal contract; exploring sexuality or fully participating in rituals. When an anthropologist goes native, the anthropologist is personally involved with locals. In The Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Malinowski suggested that other anthropologists should “grasp the native’s point of view, his relations to life, to realize his vision of his world.” [4] However, as we will see later in this chapter, Malinowski’s practice of going native presented problems from an ethical point of view. Participant-observation is a method to gather ethnographic data, but going native places both the anthropologist and the culture group at risk by blurring the lines on both sides of the relationship.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEORIES OF CULTURE

Anthropology in europe.

The discipline of cultural anthropology developed somewhat differently in Europe and North America, in particular in the United States, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with each region contributing new dimensions to the concept of culture. Many European anthropologists were particularly interested in questions about how societies were structured and how they remained stable over time. This highlighted emerging recognition that culture and society are not the same. Culture had been defined by Tylor as knowledge, beliefs, and customs, but a society is more than just shared ideas or habits. In every society, people are linked to one another through social institutions such as families, political organizations, and businesses. Anthropologists across Europe often focused their research on understanding the form and function of these social institutions.

European anthropologists developed theories of functionalism to explain how social institutions contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order. Bronislaw Malinowski believed that cultural traditions were developed as a response to specific human needs such as food, comfort, safety, knowledge, reproduction, and economic livelihood. One function of educational institutions like schools, for instance, is to provide knowledge that prepares people to obtain jobs and make contributions to society. Although he preferred the term structural-functionalism , the British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown was also interested in the way that social structures functioned to maintain social stability in a society over time. [5] He suggested that in many societies it was the family that served as the most important social structure because family relationships determined much about an individual’s social, political, and economic relationships and these patterns were repeated from one generation to the next. In a family unit in which the father is the breadwinner and the mother stays home to raise the children, the social and economic roles of both the husband and the wife will be largely defined by their specific responsibilities within the family. If their children grow up to follow the same arrangement, these social roles will be continued in the next generation.

In the twentieth century, functionalist approaches also became popular in North American anthropology, but eventually fell out of favor. One of the biggest critiques of functionalism is that it views cultures as stable and orderly and ignores or cannot explain social change. Functionalism also struggles to explain why a society develops one particular kind of social institution instead of another. Functionalist perspectives did contribute to the development of more sophisticated concepts of culture by establishing the importance of social institutions in holding societies together. While defining the division between what is cultural and what is social continues to be complex, functionalist theory helped to develop the concept of culture by demonstrating that culture is not just set of ideas or beliefs, but consists of specific practices and social institutions that give structure to daily life and allow human communities to function.

Anthropology in the United States

During the development of anthropology in North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico), the significant contribution made by the American School of Anthropology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the concept of cultural relativism , which is the idea that cultures cannot be objectively understood since all humans see the world through the lens of their own culture. Cultural relativism is different than ethnocentrism because it emphasizes understanding culture from an insider’s view. The focus on culture, along with the idea of cultural relativism, distinguished cultural anthropology in the United States from social anthropology in Europe.

The participant-observation method of fieldwork was a revolutionary change to the practice of anthropology, but at the same time it presented problems that needed to be overcome. The challenge was to move away from ethnocentrism, race stereotypes, and colonial attitudes, and to move forward by encouraging anthropologists to maintain high ethical standards and open minds.

Portrait of Franz Boas, One of the Founders of American Anthropology, 1915

Franz Boas, an American anthropologist, is acknowledged for redirecting American anthropologists away from cultural evolutionism and toward cultural relativism. Boas first studied physical science at the University of Kiel in Germany. Because he was a trained scientist, he was familiar with using empirical methods as a way to study a subject. Empirical methods are based on evidence that can be tested using observation and experiment.

In 1883, Franz Boas went on a geographical expedition to Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. The Central Eskimo (1888) details his time spent on Baffin Island studying the culture and language of the central Eskimo (Inuit) people. He studied every aspect of their culture such as tools, clothing, and shelters. This study was Boas’ first major contribution to the American school of anthropology and convinced him that cultures could only be understood through extensive field research. As he observed on Baffin Island, cultural ideas and practices are shaped through interactions with the natural environment. The cultural traditions of the Inuit were suited for the environment in which they lived. This work led him to promote cultural relativism: the principle that a culture must be understood on its own terms rather than compared to an outsider’s standard. This was an important turning point in correcting the challenge of ethnocentrism in ethnographic fieldwork. [6]

Boas is often considered the originator of American anthropology because he trained the first generation of American anthropologists including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Alfred Kroeber. Using a commitment to cultural relativism as a starting point, these students continued to refine the concept of culture. Ruth Benedict, one of Boas’ first female students, used cultural relativism as a starting point for investigating the cultures of the American northwest and southwest. Her best-selling book Patterns of Culture (1934) emphasized that culture gives people coherent patterns for thinking and behaving. She argued that culture affects individuals psychologically, shaping individual personality traits and leading the members of a culture to exhibit similar traits such as tendency toward aggression, or calmness.

Benedict was a professor at Columbia University and in turn greatly influenced her student Margaret Mead, who went on to become one of the most well-known female American cultural anthropologists. Mead was a pioneer in conducting ethnographic research at a time when the discipline was predominately male. Her 1925 research on adolescent girls on the island of Ta‘ū in the Samoan Islands, published as Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), revealed that teenagers in Samoa did not experience the same stress and emotional difficulties as those in the United States. The book was an important contribution to the nature versus nurture debate, providing an argument that learned cultural roles were more important than biology. The book also reinforced the idea that individual emotions and personality traits are products of culture.

Alfred Louis Kroeber, another student of Boas, also shared the commitment to field research and cultural relativism, but Kroeber was particularly interested in how cultures change over time and influence one another. Through publications like T he Nature of Culture (1952), Kroeber examined the historical processes that led cultures to emerge as distinct configurations as well as the way cultures could become more similar through the spread or diffusion of cultural traits. Kroeber was also interested in language and the role it plays in transmitting culture. He devoted much of his career to studying Native American languages in an attempt to document these languages before they disappeared.

Anthropologists in the United States have used cultural relativism to add depth to the concept of culture in several ways. Tylor had defined culture as including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, capabilities and habits. Boas and his students added to this definition by emphasizing the importance of e nculturation , the process of learning culture, in the lives of individuals. Benedict, Mead, and others established that through enculturation culture shapes individual identity, self-awareness, and emotions in fundamental ways. They also emphasized the need for holism , approaches to research that considered the entire context of a society including its history.

Kroeber and others also established the importance of language as an element of culture and documented the ways in which language was used to communicate complex ideas. By the late twentieth century, new approaches to symbolic anthropology put language at the center of analysis. Later on, Clifford Geertz, the founding member of postmodernist anthropology, noted in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) that culture should not be seen as something that was “locked inside people’s heads.” Instead, culture was publically communicated through speech and other behaviors. Culture , he concluded, is “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life.” [7] This definition, which continues to be influential today, reflects the influence of many earlier efforts to refine the concept of culture in American anthropology.

Ethical Issues in Truth Telling

As anthropologists developed more sophisticated concepts of culture, they also gained a greater understanding of the ethical challenges associated with anthropological research. Because participant-observation fieldwork brings anthropologists into close relationships with the people they study, many complicated issues can arise. Cultural relativism is a perspective that encourages anthropologists to show respect to members of other cultures, but it was not until after World War II that the profession of anthropology recognized a need to develop formal standards of professional conduct.

The Nuremberg trials, which began in 1945 in Nuremberg, Germany and were conducted under the direction of the France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, prosecuted members of the Nazi regime for war crimes. In addition to military and political figures, physicians and scientists were also prosecuted for unethical human experimentation and mass murder. The trials demonstrated that physicians and other scientists could be dangerous if they used their skills for abusive or exploitative goals. The Nuremberg Code that emerged from the trials is considered a landmark document in medical and research ethics. It established principles for the ethical treatment of the human subjects involved in any medical or scientific research.

Many universities adopted principles from the Nuremberg Code to write ethical guidelines for the treatment of human subjects. Anthropologists and students who work in universities where these guidelines exist are obliged to follow these rules. The American Anthropological Association (AAA), along with many anthropology organizations in other countries, developed codes of ethics describing specific expectations for anthropologists engaged in research in a variety of settings. The principles in the AAA code of ethics include: do no harm; be open and honest regarding your work; obtain informed consent and necessary permissions; ensure the vulnerable populations in every study are protected from competing ethical obligations; make your results accessible; protect and preserve your records; and maintain respectful and ethical professional relationships. These principles sound simple, but can be complicated in practice.

Bronislaw Malinowski

The career of Bronislaw Malinowski provides an example of how investigations of culture can lead anthropologists into difficult ethical areas. As discussed above, Malinowski is widely regarded as a leading figure in the history of anthropology. He initiated the practice of participant-observation fieldwork and published several highly regarded books including The Argonauts of the Western Pacific . Following his death, the private diary he kept while conducting fieldwork was discovered and published as A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term (1967). The diary described Malinowski’s feelings of loneliness and isolation, but also included a great deal of information about his sexual fantasies as well his some insensitive and contemptuous opinions about the Trobriand Islanders. The diary provided valuable insight into the mind of an important ethnographer, but also raised questions about the extent to which his personal feelings, including bias and racism, were reflected in his official conclusions.

Most anthropologists keep diaries or daily notes as a means of keeping track of the research project, but these records are almost never made public. Because Malinowski’s diary was published after his death, he could not explain why he wrote what he did, or assess the extent to which he was able to separate the personal from the professional. Which of these books best reflects the truth about Malinowski’s interaction with the Trobriand Islanders? This rare insight into the private life of a field researcher demonstrates that even when anthropologists are acting within the boundaries of professional ethics, they still struggle to set aside their own ethnocentric attitudes and prejudices.

Napoleon Chagnon

A more serious and complicated incident concerned research conducted among the Yanomami, an indigenous group living in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Venezuela. Starting in the 1960s, the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and James Neel, a geneticist, carried out research among the Yanomami. Neel was interested in studying the effects of radiation released by nuclear explosions on people living in remote areas. Chagnon was investigating theories about the role of violence in Yanomami society. In 2000, an American journalist, Patrick Tierney, published a book about Chagnon and Neel’s research: Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon . The book contained numerous stunning allegations, including a claim that the pair had deliberately infected the Yanomami with measles, starting an epidemic that killed thousands of people. The book also claimed that Neel had conducted medical experiments without the consent of the Yanomami and that Chagnon had deliberately created conflicts between Yanomami groups so he could study the resulting violence.

These allegations were brought to the attention of the American Anthropological Association, and a number of inquiries were eventually conducted. James Neel was deceased, but Napoleon Chagnon steadfastly denied the allegations. In 2002, the AAA issued their report; Chagnon was judged to have misrepresented the violent nature of Yanomami culture in ways that caused them harm and to have failed to obtain proper consent for his research. However, Chagnon continued to reject these conclusions and complained that the process used to evaluate the evidence was unfair. In 2005, the AAA rescinded its own conclusion, citing problems with the investigation process. The results of several years of inquiry into the situation satisfied few people. Chagnon was not definitively pronounced guilty, nor was he exonerated. Years later, debate over this episode continues. [8] The controversy demonstrates the extent to which truth can be elusive in anthropological inquiry. Although anthropologists should not be storytellers in the sense that they deliberately create fictions, differences in perspective and theoretical orientation create unavoidable differences in the way anthropologists interpret the same situation. Anthropologists must try to use their toolkit of theory and methods to ensure that the stories they tell are truthful and represent the voice of the people being studied using an ethical approach.

BACK IN THE COFFEE SHOP

This chapter has looked at some historic turning points in the way anthropologists have defined culture. There is not one true, absolute definition of culture. Anthropologists respect traditions such as language; the development of self, especially from infancy to adulthood; kinship; and the structure of the social unit, or the strata of a person within their class structure; marriage, families, and rites of passage; systems of belief; and ritual. However, anthropologists also look at change and the impact it has on those traditions.

With globalization moving at a dramatic pace, and change unfolding daily, how will emerging trends redefine the culture concept? For example, social media and the Internet connect the world and have created new languages, relationships, and an online culture without borders. This leads to the question: is digital, or cyber anthropology the future? Is the study of online cultures, which are encountered largely through reading text, considered armchair or off the veranda research? Is the cyber world a real or virtual culture? In some ways, addressing online cultures takes anthropology back to its roots as anthropologists can explore new worlds without leaving home. At the same time, cyberspaces and new technologies allow people to see, hear, and communicate with others around the world in real time.

Back in the coffee shop, where we spent time with Bob, we discovered that he hoped to keep familiar aspects of his own culture, traditions such as language, social structure, and unique expressions of values, alive. The question, what is culture, caused us to reflect on our own understandings of the cultural self and the cultural Other , and on the importance of self and cultural awareness.

My cultural self has evolved from the first customary traditions of my childhood, yet my life with the Inuit caused me to consider that I have similar values and community traits as my friends in the North. My childhood was focused on caring, acceptance, and working together to achieve the necessities of life. Life on the land with the Inuit was no different, and throughout the years, I have seen how much we are the same, just living in different locations and circumstances. My anthropological training has enriched my life experiences by teaching me to enjoy the world and its peoples. I have also experienced being the cultural Other when working in the field, and this has always reminded me that the cultural self and the cultural Other will always be in conflict with each other on both sides of the experience.

Living with different indigenous tribes in Kenya gave me a chance to learn how communities maintain their traditional culture and ways of living. I come from a Portuguese- Canadian family that has kept strong ties to the culture and religion of our ancestors. Portuguese people believe storytelling is a way to keep one’s traditions, cultural identity, indigenous knowledge, and language alive. When I lived in Nairobi Province, Kenya, I discovered that people there had the same point of view. I found it odd that people still define their identities by their cultural history. What I have learned by conducting cultural fieldwork is that the meanings of culture not only vary from one group to another, but that all human societies define themselves through culture.

Our Final Reflection

Bob took us on a journey to understand what is at the heart of the culture concept. Clearly, the culture concept does not follow a straight line. Scholars, storytellers, and the people one meets in everyday life have something to say about the components of culture. The story that emerges from different voices brings insight into what it is to be human. Defining the culture concept is like putting together a puzzle with many pieces. The puzzle of culture concepts is almost complete, but it is not finished…yet.

Discussion Questions

How did the armchair anthropology and the off the veranda approaches differ as methods to study culture? What can be learned about a culture by experiencing it in person that cannot be learned from reading about it?

Why is the concept of culture difficult to define? What do you think are the most important elements of culture?

Why is it difficult to separate the “social” from the “cultural”? Do you think this is an important distinction?

In the twenty-first century, people have much greater contact with members of other cultures than they did in the past. Which topics or concerns should be priorities for future studies of culture?

Armchair anthropology : an early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.

Cultural determinism : the idea that behavioral differences are a result of cultural, not racial or genetic causes.

C ultural evolutionism: a discredited theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced.

Cultural relativism : the idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

Culture : a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that are learned and shared. Together, they form an all-encompassing, integrated whole that binds people together and shapes their worldview and lifeways.

Enculturation: the process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group.

Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.

Functionalism: an approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

Going native : becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.

Holism: taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.

Kinship: blood ties, common ancestry, and social relationships that form families within human groups.

Participant observation: a type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

Structural-Functionalism: an approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

The Other: is a term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture . Boston: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1934.

Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species . London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1859.

Kroeber, Alfred. The Nature of Culture . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific . London: Routledge and Sons, 1922.

Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization . New York: William Morrow and Company, 1928.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World . London: Benjamin Motte, 1726.

Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs . London: Cambridge University Press. 1871.

Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Customs (London: Cambridge University Press, 1871), preface. ↵
Lewis Henry Morgan was one anthropologist who proposed an evolutionary framework based on these terms in his book Ancient Society (New York: Henry Holt, 1877). ↵
The film Bronislaw Malinowski: Off the Veranda , (Films Media Group, 1986) further describes Malinowski’s research practices. ↵
Bronislaw Malinowski. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1922), 290. ↵
For more on this topic see Adam Kuper, Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School (New York: Routledge, 1983) and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (London: Cohen and West, 1952). ↵
Boas’ attitudes about cultural relativism were influenced by his experiences in the Canadian Arctic as he struggled to survive in a natural environment foreign to his own prior experience. His private diary and letters record the evolution of his thinking about what it means to be “civilized.” In a letter to his fiancé, he wrote: “I often ask myself what advantages our 'good society' possesses over that of the 'savages' and find, the more I see of their customs, that we have no right to look down upon them ... We have no right to blame them for their forms and superstitions which may seem ridiculous to us. We ‘highly educated people’ are much worse, relatively speaking.” The entire letter can be read in George Stocking, ed. Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 33. ↵
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, Geertz 1973), 89. ↵
For more information about the controversy, see Thomas Gregor and Daniel Gross, “Guilt by Association: The Culture of Accusation and the American Anthropological Associations Investigation of Darkness in El Dorado.” American Anthropologist 106 no. 4 (2004):687-698 and Robert Borofsky, Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn From It (Berkley: University California Press, 2005). Napoleon Chagnon has written his rebuttal in Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—The Yanomamo and the Anthropologists (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013). ↵

A term that has been used to describe people whose customs, beliefs, or behaviors are “different” from one’s own

An early and discredited method of anthropological research that did not involve direct contact with the people studied.

The tendency to view one’s own culture as most important and correct and as the stick by which to measure all other cultures.

A discredited theory popular in nineteenth century anthropology suggesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced.

A type of observation in which the anthropologist observes while participating in the same activities in which her informants are engaged.

Blood ties, common ancestry, and social relationships that form families within human groups.

Becoming fully integrated into a cultural group through acts such as taking a leadership position, assuming key roles in society, entering into marriage, or other behaviors that incorporate an anthropologist into the society he or she is studying.

An approach to anthropology developed in British anthropology that emphasized the way that parts of a society work together to support the functioning of the whole.

An approach to anthropology that focuses on the ways in which the customs or social institutions in a culture contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order.

The idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture and not our own.

The process of learning the characteristics and expectations of a culture or group.

Taking a broad view of the historical, environmental, and cultural foundations of behavior.

Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition Copyright © 2020 by American Anthropological Association is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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2 What is Culture?

Taylor Livingston

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

Define culture.
Compare cultural relativism, moral relativism, and ethnocentrism with examples of each.
Describe emic vs etic perspective.
List and explain the six aspects of culture.

Culture Some Definitions:

The first widely accepted notion of what exactly is culture was compiled by Edward B. Tylor. Tylor, a Quaker, school dropout, and British man who kept a fantastic beard throughout his life (see image), is often considered the father of cultural anthropology. He became interested in other cultures because he was encouraged to travel to warm climates for his tuberculosis. While this did nothing for his tuberculosis, it did a great deal for anthropology. Tylor traveled to Mexico and wrote about its peoples ( Lowie, 1917 ). From his experiences in Mexico and studies of other societies as a professor at Oxford (though he had no degrees), he compiled a definition of culture : “A complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by people” (Tylor, 1871, p. 1).

explain the meaning of culture according to tylor essay

From this first definition, the concept of culture has been expanded to include:

Learned behaviors and symbols that allow people to live in groups.
The primary means by which humans adapt to their environments.
The way of life characteristic of a particular group of humans.

Examples of the first bullet include that official language (a collection of symbols) of the United States is English, which allows us to communicate. We share common symbols, such as a bright, red octagon that we have learned means “stop” that enables us not to crash our cars into each other. While an example of the second bullet is that we do not adapt to winter in Nebraska by increasing our stores of brown fat like other animals do, nor do we develop thicker hair on our bodies, like our cats and dogs do. We adapt by cultural means: we put on a coat, scarf, and mittens for outside and turn on the heat in our homes. The final bullet is a little trickier. What is “a way of life”? It’s all the bullet above, plus the knowledge and beliefs Tylor mentions. If we take football fans of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a particular group of people, what might be some of their “ways of life”? Perhaps, it would include: wearing red or black clothing on game days with the word “Nebraska” or the symbol “N” on it, tailgating (consuming alcohol for those over 21 and eating all the things dipped in ranch dressing) in the parking lot of Memorial Stadium, gathering in the Railyard to watch the game, cheering when the players take a diamond-shaped ball across a large field into the opponent’s territory, and hearing a cannon sound when they do.

The Concept:

While definitions and examples of the parts of the definition may be easy to understand, the concept of culture can be difficult to grasp. Most likely because unless you have ever travelled out of the country or to a vastly different area of the country, you have not spent much time thinking about how the way you believe and how you do things are unique to a specific part of the world. This leads some Anthropology textbooks to compare the concept of culture to the water in which a fish swims. Sure, this is an apt analogy as most of us are unaware of the extent culture surrounds us and shapes our lives and we cannot live without it. But, culture has moral and historical underpinning that are not quite captured by the fish in water analogy. As a result, the example of American barbeque to illustrate the concept of culture and its six aspects:

Six Aspects of Culture

Learned—taught by someone to someone else, usually parent to child. This process is called enculturation.
Shared—groups share norms—the way things ought to be done—and values—what is true, right, and beautiful
Symbolic—culture creates meaning; it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves
Patterned—practices make sense; culture is an integrated system—changes in one area, cause changes in others
Adaptive—culture is the way humans adapt to the world; current adaptations may be maladaptive in the long term
Changes—culture constantly shifts and transforms; it is not static

Barbeque: More American than Apple Pie

When referring to American barbeque, it is not hamburgers and hotdogs cooked on a gas grill, but meat cooked “low (over an indirect flame) and slow” (at least eight hours and as long as 18!). Legend has it the term “barbeque” comes from an Indigenous group, the Tainoused, from the Caribbean who likely cooked fish for an extended time over a wooden pit made with green wood (so as not to catch on fire) called a “barabicu” (or “sacred pit” in the Taino language). Christopher Columbus observed the practice and took stories of it back to Spain where the term became “barbacoa” ( KM, no date ; Suddath, 2009 ). Another Spaniard, De Soto, notes that around 1540 near what is now known as the state of Mississippi, he observes the Chickasaw roasting a pig over a “barbacoa.” Eventually, the practice of cooking meat “low and slow” makes its way to the American colonies and becomes known as “barbeque” ( Geiling 2013 ; Suddath, 2009) . This way of cooking meat lasts longer than British rule, as parties serving barbeque were held for several days, celebrating the conclusion of the Revolutionary War ( KM, no date ).

The practice of barbequing meat becomes most popular in the Southern states. Pork was the first meat used in this cooking practice, as pigs could be left free to roam and feed in the temperate Southeastern forest, while cows needed large amounts of cleared land, enclosures and feed. It is thought that barbeque would have been the preferred method to cook pigs because of the lean, tougher meat forest living and foraging would engender. By barbequing the pigs, the meat would become “fall of the bone” tender ( Gieling, 2013 ).

The South’s immigrants largely influenced the seasoning and dressing flavors of the meat. Early British settlers to the Colonies taste for tart seasoning likely influenced the vinegar-based seasoning of barbeque in Virginia and North Carolina, known as Carolina-style barbeque today (Gieling, 2013). This was likely the type of barbeque eaten at the celebrations following the winning of Revolutionary War and mentioned by George Washington as taking place on his plantation ( KM, no date ). In South Carolina, the large number of German and French immigrants influenced the addition of mustard to the vinegar sauce of barbeque. While in Memphis, access to a large port on the Mississippi River, created the “Memphis style” of barbeque, known for tomato-based barbeque sauce sweetened with molasses, which was imported from the Caribbean. Westward expansion brought the practice of barbequing to Texas, where German immigrants used the practice on their vast supplies of cattle, creating the Texas style of barbeque still around today. The Kansas City style of barbeque, which is the most common style of barbeque (what most people consider barbeque sauce—think about what you would receive at McDonalds, Burger King, or Chick fil A if you asked for barbeque sauce—it’s that style), blends the Texas tradition of using beef with the Memphis style of a sweet and tangy sauce (Gieling, 2013). Kansas City owes its unique blending of styles to Henry Perry, an African American man from Memphis who adapted his home city’s style of barbeque to the large beef meat packing industry in Kansas City when he moved to the area in 1907 ( Gieling, 2013 ).

Indeed, people of African descent have a long connection to the practice of barbequing as the likely cookers of much of the pork-based barbeque consumed in the Southern Colonies and later states were enslaved Africans. Later, many African Americans, like Mr. Perry, took this cooking tradition with them as they migrated out of the rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities during the Great Migration. By the middle of the 20th century, every city in the US had an African American owned and operated barbeque restaurant, cementing the connection between barbeque and African American culture ( Suddath, 2009 ).

Sc mustard-based barbeque sauce poured over pulled pork

Which style of barbeque one prefers is very contentious, especially in the American South, and often a result of what style is most familiar. For example, I am from South Carolina and have been eating mustard-based barbeque for most of my life. When I attended graduate school in North Carolina, I did not understand how people were referring to the almost pure vinegar concoction the shredded meat was in as “sauce.” This was decidedly “wrong” in my opinion. Vinegar is an ingredient to a sauce, not THE sauce. Plus, a sauce is closer to a solid than a liquid! Similarly, when visiting Birmingham, Alabama, I was severed their version of barbeque sauce. While closer to an actual sauce than North Carolina style, it was mayonnaise-based! Surely, one cannot get more wrong than THAT!

The story of barbeque tells the story of America. From its origins in the Caribbean, witnessing in Indigenous cuisines to sauces based on immigrants’ tastes, and finally, it’s popularization through African American-owned restaurants, barbeque symbolizes the melting pot of America and illustrates the concept of culture. The practice is rooted in history, and what style of barbeque one believes to be the best depends on from which region they hail. Further, the story of barbeque illustrates the six aspects of culture:

Barbeque and the Six Aspects of Culture

Barbeque practices are learned :

Like culture, what iteration of barbeque is THE type of barbeque (Carolina, Memphis, Texas, or Kansas City style) is learned by children through the cooking or consumption practices of their parents.

Barbeque is also shared:

Whether you are in Newberry, SC or Charleston, SC, you know that when someone is serving barbeque, it is mustard-based.

Barbeque practices are patterned:

The Texas style of barbeque using beef instead of pork makes sense due to the large number of cattle ranches in the area; what happens in one area (economic) is also found in another (foodways).

Barbeque is symbolic:

For many African Americans during the Great Migration, barbeque was a symbol (a short hand call back) to home and family–way to keep family and regional traditions alive in a new area.

Barbeque is adaptive:

The first Southern Colonists used pigs for barbeque because they were readily available in the area, applying the barbeque technique made this meat edible and a useful resource.

Barbeque practices change:

The addition of mustard to the sauce by South Carolina French and German immigrants changed the barbeque recipe to fit their pallet, based on the cuisine of their countries of origin.

Finally, my last paragraph on mustard-based barbeque sauce being the best and the standard by which other styles should be measured, is related to another aspect of culture— ethnocentrism , the idea that your culture’s way is the best way and every other way is wrong. This concept is what anthropologists try to argue against. Instead, anthropologists argue for us to practice cultural relativism when exposed to new ideas or practices. Cultural relativism is the opposite of ethnocentrism . Cultural relativism argues that the beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that culture’s reasoning and history, and not be judged against the criteria of another culture. Using our barbeque example, a cultural relativist would try all the different types of barbeque and attempt to understand the different styles based on the history and practices of the region. They can have a favorite style, but they do not think their favorite style is the best or only way to prepare meat.

Another form of relativism is moral relativism , which argues there is no universal system of right and wrong. What is considered “right” or “wrong” depends on the context (is relative) that that particular culture or historical time period. A moral relativist would argue there is no such things as universal human rights. Using a barbeque example, a moral relativist would argue the best and only way to prepare barbeque is whatever that region thought was the best, even if they murdered people to make the barbeque. If people in that region did not seeing murder and cannibalism as morally or ethically wrong, then it was not wrong. Anthropologists are not moral relativists, as all ascribe to a code of ethics (links to external site) that guide their practice based on the idea of universal human rights (links to external site) as set forth by the United Nations. While anthropologists may study groups, who practice cannibalism or female genital cutting, they do not believe these practices are morally or ethically correct. Instead, they attempt understand the culture’s reasons for such practices and not use their own culture’s standards and values in their evaluation.

The differences in ways of understanding cultural practices, whether from a perspective of someone of that culture or from someone outside of that culture bring us to the concepts of emic and etic perspectives. An emic perspective is the insider’s (how members of the culture) view and understanding of that culture’s practices, while an etic perspective is the outsider (how people who are not members of that culture) view and understand that culture’s practices. Consider these tweets from two different news sources:

Both are about banning the halal and kosher practice of slaughtering animals without stunning, but use different images with different connotations to illustrate this point. Why might that be? First, more information on the differences in animal slaughter is necessary: The halal method of slaughter requires an observant Muslim (someone who practices Islam) to slaughter the animal using a sharp knife to cut the arteries in the animal’s neck to maximize blood loss and swiftly kill the animal. The practitioner must say a blessing before the slaughter. The animal’s head must be facing toward Mecca. The kosher method is similar, also requiring a sharp knife to cut the arteries of the animal’s neck and the stating of a blessing by someone who is Jewish ( Aghwan and Regenstein 2019 ). The stunning method shocks the animal into unconsciousness before slaughter and uses different bleeding and cutting techniques to maximize blood loss. So which of these different methods is considered less harmful to the animal—stunning before slaughter or a swift cut to the main arteries? For many years, animal rights supporters have argued stunning is a more humane method, which led Belgian to pass a law excluding the religious exemptions of halal and kosher slaughter methods. While most halal slaughters do stun the animal before cutting, most slaughters making the meat kosher require that the animal not be stunned. Thus, the issue arises for the minority of halal slaughters not stunning the animal prior and most Jewish slaughters requiring the animal to not be stunned for the meat to be deemed kosher.

The tweets use of different images, one of a meat market and the other of sheep being slaughtered, speak to the different perspectives on this issue. Al Jazeera is a Middle Eastern based news media company, many of their audience practicing Islam, while the BBC is a European-based news media company, with many of their audience not practicing Islam. Al Jazeera may be demonstrating an emic perspective, portraying the court’s ruling of the ban with the image of a meat market to signal the normalcy of halal practices, while the BBC displays a gorier photo of halal slaughter to possibly signal brutality of the non-stunning methods, an etic perspective.

Another example of the etic perspective comes from a tweet by Patrick Gathara, a Kenyan reporter, cartoonist, and satirist:

As Gathara is not American, he reports on the American cultural practice of inauguration from an outsider, etic, perspective, referring to Joe Biden as an “opposition leader” and the ceremony as a “religious oathing ritual” and Washington DC as “home to sacred monuments to revered ancestors.” Nonetheless, Gathara’s description is not technically incorrect: Biden won the Presidency by defeating the incumbent, Donald Trump, making him the opposition; inauguration does have a religious element as US Presidents swear the Oath of Office on a Bible; and the National Mall does contain monuments to ancestors like the Lincoln Memorial, honoring Abraham Lincoln. However, the description does depict the ceremony of inauguration as strange, using terms (“opposition”, “religious”, “revered ancestors”) usually reserved for describing the practices of faraway, remote, Indigenous peoples, not practices of most powerful country in the world. This is not how someone who was American would describe the swearing in of the new President of the United States. This exactly Gathara’s objective as his Twitter account presents US and other Western nations’ news using the etic perspective (which is often derogatory and distancing/othering—see the BBC tweet’s image above to non-Western nations). How one views certain practices, depends on the perspective they are taking, be that emic or etic, ethnocentric, or culturally relative.

An anthropological perspective seeks to combine the emic and etic perspectives. It understands culture practices in a culturally relative way, which views culture as patterned, learned, shared, symbolic, adaptive, and ever-changing.

Key Takeaways

What anthropologists call “culture”, knowledge, beliefs, and practices of a group of people, is all around us, but it can be difficult to see and understand because it shapes how we see the world.
Viewing cultural practices from the insider’s perspective with a knowledge of context and history like that of a fish in water, is taking an emic view. Believing that your culture’s way of doing things is the only and best way to do things is called ethnocentrism.
Culture is learned—taught by someone to someone else, usually parent to child. This process is called enculturation.
Culture is shared—groups share norms—the way things ought to be done—and values—what is true, right, and beautiful
Culture is symbolic—culture creates meaning; it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
Culture is patterned—practices make sense; culture is an integrated system—changes in one area, cause changes in others.
Culture is adaptive—culture is the way humans adapt to the world; current adaptations may be maladaptive in the long term.
Culture changes—culture constantly shifts and transforms; it is not static.
Anthropologists use all these aspects of culture to try to understand the practices of another culture, which is called cultural relativism.

Geiling, N. (2013, July 18). The Evolution of American Barbecue. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-evolution-of-american-barbecue-13770775/

KM (no d). The History of Barbecuing. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2019/6/the-history-of-barbecuing

Lowie, R. (1917). Edward B. Tylor. American Anthropologist, 19 (2), new series, 262-268. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/660758

Suddath, C. (2009, July 03). Barbecue: A Brief History. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://time.com/3957444/barbecue/

Aghwan, Z. A., & Regenstein, J. M. (2019). Slaughter practices of different faiths in different countries. Journal of animal science and technology , 61 (3), 111–121. https://doi.org/10.5187/jast.2019.61.3.111

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art and custom (Vol. 2). J. Murray.

cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people

evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.

the notion that the beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that culture’s reasoning and history, and not be judged against the criteria of another culture

the concept that argues there is no universal system of right and wrong. What is considered “right” or “wrong” depends on the context (is relative) that that particular culture or historical time period

the insider’s (how members of the culture) view and understanding of that culture’s practices

the perspective of the outsider (how people who are not members of that culture) view and understand that culture’s practices

An Introduction to Anthropology: the Biological and Cultural Evolution of Humans Copyright © by Taylor Livingston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Defining and Understanding Culture

Learning objectives.

Define culture.
Identify the differences between armchair anthropology and participant-observer fieldwork.
Compare and contrast the ideas of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.
Define engaged anthropology.
Identify the key historical figures in the development of cultural anthropology.
Distinguish between the approaches used by these four schools of anthropological thought: C ultural Evolutionism, European Structural Functionalism, Historical Particularism, and Interpretive Anthropology.

This lesson introduces you to the concept of culture , a system of knowledge, beliefs, behavioral norms, values, traditions, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a group of people, often to be challenged and transformed over time. The lesson begins with a discussion of how we can learn about groups of people and their cultures through stories, and how anthropologists themselves are storytellers. It then overviews the history of the field of cultural anthropology, and significant moments, perspectives and people in that history.

Stories as a Reflection of Culture by Emily Cowall and Priscilla Medeiros

Figure 1: Travel writer Lemuel Gulliver is captured and tied down by the Lilliputians.

Can a story explain the concept of the Other? Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is about four different voyages that Gulliver undertakes. His first adventure is the most well-known; in the story, Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon who plans a sea voyage when his business fails. During a storm at sea, he is shipwrecked, and he awakens to find himself bound and secured by a group of captors, the Lilliputians, who are six inches tall. Gulliver, having what Europeans consider a normal body height, suddenly becomes a giant. During this adventure, Gulliver is seen as an outsider, a stranger with different features and language. Gulliver becomes the Other.

What lessons about culture can we learn from Gulliver’s Travels ? Swift’s story offers lessons about cultural differences, conflicts occurring in human society, and the balance of power. It also provides an important example of the Other. The Other is a matter of perspective in this story: Gulliver thinks the Lilliputians are strange and unusual. To Gulliver, the Lilliputians are the Other, but the Lilliputians equally see Gulliver as the Other—he is a their captive and is a rare species of man because of his size.

WATCH: Ted talk

Anthropologists as storytellers by emily cowall and priscilla medeiros, and melanie a. medeiros.

People throughout recorded history have relied on storytelling as a way to share cultural details. When early anthropologists studied people from other civilizations, they relied on the written accounts and opinions of others; they presented facts and developed their stories, about other cultures based solely on information gathered by others. These scholars did not have any direct contact with the people they were studying. This approach has come to be known as armchair anthropology . Simply put, if a culture is viewed from a distance (as from an armchair), the anthropologist tends to measure that culture from his or her own vantage point and to draw comparisons that place the anthropologist’s culture as superior to the one being studied. This point of view is also called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is an attitude based on the idea that one’s own group or culture is better than any other.

Armchair anthropologists were unlikely to be aware of their ethnocentric ideas because they did not visit the cultures they studied. Scottish social anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) is well-known for his 1890 work The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religions . Its title was later changed to A Study in Magic and Religion , and it was one of the first books to describe and record magical and religious beliefs of different culture groups around the world. Yet, this book was not the outcome of extensive study in the field. Instead, Frazer relied on the accounts of others who had traveled, such as scholars, missionaries, and government officials, to formulate his study.

Figure 2: Sir James Frazer

Another example of anthropological writing without the use of fieldwork is Sir E. B. Tylor ’s (1832-1917) book Primitive Culture (1871). Tylor, who went on to become the first professor of anthropology at Oxford University in 1896, was an important influence in the development of cultural anthropology as a separate discipline.

Figure 3: Sir E.B. Tylor

Frazer, Tylor and Morgan contributed important and foundational studies even though they never went into the field to gather their information. Armchair anthropologists were important in the development of anthropology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century because although these early scholars were not directly experiencing the cultures they were studying, their work did ask important questions that could ultimately only be answered by going into the field.

At the same time that Frazer, Tyler and Morgan were writing their armchair ethnographies about “the other,” members of otherized societies were writing their own portrayals of life in their communities. Ohíye S’a (1858-1939) was an Indigenous Santee Dakota Sioux, born in what is now the state of Minnesota. He grew up in a semi-nomadic society before moving in with his father who had a European lifestyle. His father baptized him as Charles Eastman and he began learning English and attending colonial schools. Although Ohíye S’a was not trained as an anthropologist, his 1905 book Red Hunters and the Animal People is considered to be the first book about American history written by a Native American author and from the Native American point of view. The book describes Indigenous knowledge and perspectives on non-human animals, with whom who they had a kinship. Ohíye S’a was also an indigenous rights activist. Therefore, Ohíye S’a is one of the first engaged anthropologists , anthropologists who use their research to bring awareness to and address social problems.

Figure 4: Charles Eastman, Ohíye S’a

In the early 20th century, anthropologists continued to be storytellers, however the discipline transformed in such a way that the stories they told were beginning to be informed by in-depth, face-to-face interactions with the people about whom they wrote. While the perspective of the anthropologist always influences the story they tell, later anthropologists attempted to tell stories about groups of people that were informed by their experiences, conversations and perspectives of members of the community themselves.

Anthropologists as Cultural Participants by Emily Cowall and Priscilla Medeiros

The armchair approach as a way to study culture changed when scholars took to the field and studied people by being participants and observers. As they did, fieldwork became the most important tool anthropologists used to understand the “complex whole” of culture.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), a Polish anthropologist, was greatly influenced by the work of Frazer . However , unlike the armchair anthropology approach Frazer used in writing The Golden Bough , Malinowski used more innovative ethnographic techniques, and his fieldwork took him off the veranda to study different cultures. The off the veranda approach is different from armchair anthropology because it includes active participant observation : traveling to a location, living among people, and observing their day-to-day lives. Malinowski wrote The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), which was considered the first modern ethnography and redefined the approach to fieldwork. This book is part of Malinowski’s trilogy on the Trobriand Islanders. Malinowski lived with them and observed life in their villages. By living among the islanders, Malinowski was able to learn about their social life, food and shelter, sexual behaviors, community economics, patterns of kinship, and family. [1] In The Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Malinowski suggested that other anthropologists should “grasp the native’s point of view, his relations to life, to realize his vision of his world.” [2] However, as we will see in the next lesson on ethnographic field work and ethics , Malinowski’s research presented problems from an ethical point of view.

Figure 5: Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands, 1915–1918

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEORIES OF CULTURE

European structural functionalism.

The discipline of cultural anthropology developed somewhat differently in Europe, North America, and other countries during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many European anthropologists were particularly interested in questions about how societies were structured and how they remained stable over time. In every society, people are linked to one another through social institutions such as families, political organizations, and businesses. Anthropologists across Europe often focused their research on understanding the form and function of these social institutions.

European anthropologists developed theories of structural functionalism to explain how social institutions contribute to the organization of society and the maintenance of social order. Bronislaw Malinowski believed that cultural traditions were developed as a response to specific human needs such as food, comfort, safety, knowledge, reproduction, and economic livelihood. One function of educational institutions like schools, for instance, is to provide knowledge that prepares people to obtain jobs and make contributions to society. The British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) was also interested in the way that social structures functioned to maintain social stability in a society over time. [3] He suggested that in many societies it was the family that served as the most important social structure because family relationships determined much about an individual’s social, political, and economic relationships and these patterns were repeated from one generation to the next. In a family unit in which the father is the breadwinner and the mother stays home to raise the children, the social and economic roles of both the husband and the wife will be largely defined by their specific responsibilities within the family. If their children grow up to follow the same arrangement, these social roles will be continued in the next generation.

Figure 6: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown

European structural functionalism influenced the work of anthropologists outside of Europe as well. Hsiao-t’ung Fei (1910-2005) was a groundbreaking Chinese anthropologist and sociologist who studied under Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown at the London School of Economics. Fei’s 1939 book, Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley presents the findings of his ethnographic study of the economic life of Chinese peasants. Fei’s work was a testament that anthropologists do not need to travel outside of one’s home country to study culture and society.

Figure 7: Hsiao-t’ung Fei

E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) was another respected European structural functionalist. His trilogy, The Nuer: A Description of Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940), Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (1951), and Nuer Religion (1956) are classic examples of structural functionalism, examining specific social institutions in detail in each book.

Figure 8: E. E. Evans-Pritchard

One of the biggest critiques of structural functionalism is that it views cultures as stable and orderly and ignores or cannot explain social change. Functionalism also struggles to explain why a society develops one particular kind of social institution instead of another. Functionalist perspectives did contribute to the development of more sophisticated concepts of culture by establishing the importance of social institutions in holding societies together. Functionalist theory helped to develop the concept of culture by demonstrating that culture is not just a set of ideas or beliefs, but consists of specific practices and social institutions that give structure to daily life and allow human communities to function.

Although Evans-Pritchard was also one of the first anthropologists to study the religion, and psychological effects of religion in his 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande , Ibrahim Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer from Martinique studied and wrote about the cultural and psychological life of Algerians. He also examined the psychological, social, and cultural impact of colonization and decolonization. His most well-known book the Wretched of the Earth was published shortly after his death in 1961 and was a controversial discussion of colonialism and resistance to it.

Figure 9: Frantz Fanon

Anthropology in the Americas: Historical Particularism

The participant-observation method of fieldwork was a revolutionary change to the practice of anthropology, but at the same time it presented problems that needed to be overcome. The challenge was to move away from ethnocentrism, racial stereotypes, and colonial attitudes, and to move forward by encouraging anthropologists to maintain high ethical standards and open minds.

Franz Boas (1858-1942), an American anthropologist, is acknowledged for redirecting American anthropologists away from theories of cultural evolutionism and toward cultural relativism. Boas first studied physical science at the University of Kiel in Germany. Because he was a trained scientist, he was familiar with using empirical methods as a way to study a subject. Empirical methods are based on evidence that can be tested using observation and experiment. In 1883, Franz Boas went on a geographical expedition to Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. The Central Eskimo (1888) details his time spent on Baffin Island studying the culture and language of the central Eskimo (Inuit) people. He studied every aspect of their culture such as tools, clothing, and shelters. This study was Boas’ first major contribution to the American school of anthropology and convinced him that cultures could only be understood through extensive field research. As he observed on Baffin Island, cultural ideas and practices are shaped through interactions with the natural environment. The cultural traditions of the Inuit were suited for the environment in which they lived. This work led him to promote cultural relativism : the principle that a culture must be understood on its own terms rather than compared to an outsider’s standard. This was an important turning point in correcting the challenge of ethnocentrism in ethnographic fieldwork. [4]

Figure 10: Franz Boas, One of the founders of American Anthropology, 1915

Although Boas’s contribution of cultural relativism and his challenge of the theory of cultural evolution was critical to the development of the discipline of cultural anthropology, it is important to note that Boas was not only scholar openly challenging the notions of cultural evolution and racial hierarchies that had been popular for decades. In his book, The Equality of Human Races (1885), Anténor Firmin (1850-1911), a Haitian anthropologist, lawyer and journalist, challenged the racist ideas of early anthropologists, arguing that “all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form. The races are equal” (450). Not only did his work predate that of Boas, it was also influential in the Pan-African movement, which advocated for the rights of all people of African descent around the world.

Figure 11: Anténor Firmin

Additionally, although W.E.B DuBois (1868-1963)–an American sociologist, historian, writer, and civil rights activist– was not trained as an anthropologist, his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903) critically examines the effects of “race” on society. DuBois demonstrated the negative and divisive effects of racism on society, and for individual sense of self. He outlined the rights he believed should be afforded to all people irrespective of race, including voting rights, education, and fair treatment. Like Firmin, DuBois’s work was central to the Pan-Africanist movement and later to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Figure 12 : W.E.B. DuBois in 1918

Franz Boas also influenced American anthropology through his students. Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was one of Boas’s first female students. Benedict continued to use the approach of cultural relativism as a starting point for investigating the cultures of the American northwest and southwest. Her best-selling book Patterns of Culture (1934) emphasized that culture gives people coherent patterns for thinking and behaving. She argued that culture affects individuals psychologically, shaping individual personality traits and leading the members of a culture to exhibit similar traits such as a tendency toward aggression, or calmness.

Figure 13: Ruth Benedict, 1936

Figure 14: Ella C. Deloria

Figure 15: Margaret Mead in 1950

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) was another engaged anthropologist, as well as a dancer, choreographer, and activist. She shared the findings of her fieldwork in Jamaica, Martinique, Trinidad and Tabago, and Haiti through her choreography and dance. “ Among her many lasting contributions is the deep concern for the politics of representation that she brought to her work. She recognized early on that not all stories were hers to tell and carefully attended to the responsibilities that came with translating across places, audiences, languages, and genres throughout her acclaimed career.” “Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of dance anthropology, or ethnochoreology.”

Figure 16: Katherine Dunham

Zora Neal Hurston (1891-1960) is another well-respected anthropologist who helped develop the American school of anthropological thought. Hurston embodied the anthropologist as participant observer and story-teller. In 1925, Hurston started studying anthropology as an undergraduate student at Barnard College of Columbia University, where she was the only black student. After graduating with her B.A. in 1928 she began a graduate program in anthropology at Columbia, where she worked with Boas, Benedict and fellow student Mead. Hurston was interested in Southern, African-American and Caribbean folklore, and how these contributed to a community’s identity. She also wrote fiction about contemporary issues in the black community and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston wrote and published her literary anthropology on African-American folklore in North Florida, Mules and Men (1935). Also published during this time was Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938), documenting her research on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti. Hurston’s works concerned both the African-American experience and her struggles as an African-American woman.

Figure 17: Zora Neale Hurston

In summary, anthropologists in the Americas have used cultural relativism to add depth to the concept of culture in several ways. In the late 19th century British anthropologist Tylor defined culture as including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, capabilities and habits. Anthropologists in the Americas added to this definition by emphasizing the importance of enculturation , the process of learning culture, in the lives of individuals. They established that through enculturation culture shapes individual identity, self-awareness, and emotions in fundamental ways. They also emphasized the need for holism , approaches to research that considered the entire context of a society including its history.

Late 20th Century Interpretive Anthropology

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), the founding member of interpretive anthropology, noted in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) that culture should not be seen as something that was “locked inside people’s heads.” Instead, culture was publicly communicated through speech and other behaviors. Culture , he concluded, is “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life.” [5] Geertz’s definition, which continues to be influential today, reflects the influence of many earlier efforts to refine the concept of culture in anthropology.

There are many definitions of culture, all influenced by historical perspectives and figures. For our purposes, we will combine these perspectives into this definition: a system of knowledge, beliefs, behavioral norms, values, traditions, and institutions that are created, learned, and shared by a group of people, often to be challenged and transformed over time.

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How do the armchair anthropology and the fieldwork approaches differ as methods to study culture? What can be learned about a culture by experiencing it in person that cannot be learned from reading about it?
What do you think are the most important elements of culture?
In the twenty-first century, people have much greater contact with members of other cultures than they did in the past. Which topics or concerns should be priorities for future studies of culture?