Culture

Culture has been defined in a number of ways; some thinkers include in culture all the major social components
that bind men together in a society. In sociology we use the word to denote acquired behaviours that are shared
by and transmitted among the members of the society. It is an accumulation that a new generation inherits. It is a
heritage into which a child is born. Thus to the student of sociology a person lacking in culture is an impossibility
because individuals of necessity share in the culture of their group. The essential point in regard to culture is that
it is acquired by man as a member of society and persists through tradition. Taylor and Redfield in their
definitions have emphasized these points of acquisition and tradition. The essential factor in this acquisition
through tradition is the ability to learn from the group. Man learns his behaviour and behaviour that is learnt
denotes his culture. Thus culture is a system of learned behaviour shared by and transmitted among the
members of a group. Man begins to learn it since his birth. By picking up the culture and by tapping the heritage
of his past, man becomes distinctively human. Man is therefore called the culture-bearing animal. Culture is not
innate. Traits learnt through socialization, habits and thoughts are what is called culture. Culture is learned. Any
behaviour that is socially acquired is called learned behavior. Culture is inclusive of the expectations of the
members of the group. It is a social product that is shared by most members of the group. Culture embodies the
ideas and norms of the group. It is a sum-total of the ideal patterns and norms of behavior of a group. Culture
fulfills those ethical and social needs of the groups that are ends in themselves. Culture possesses an order and
system. Its various parts are integrated with each other and any new element that is introduced is also integrated.
Culture evolves into more complex forms through division of labour that develops special skills and increases the
interdependence of societys members.

Culture in Anthropological Perspective

Attributes of Culture
Theories of Cultural Growth
Patterns of Culture
Themes of Culture
Culture Terms

Culture in Anthropological Perspective

According to the definition given by E.B Taylor culture has been portrayed as a social heritage as the gift of
society to an individual. Malinowski pointed out that the social heritage has both material and non-material
aspects to it. Marett defines culture as communicable intelligence. Redfield defined it as the sum total of
conventional meanings embodied in artifacts, social structure and symbols. This is an idealistic view of culture
which stems from a recognition of the all important role which symbols play in the communication and acquisition
of knowledge.

Ruth Benedict propagates the formalistic, aesthetic view point of culture. According to this view culture is not so
much to be conceived in terms of content of social life as in terms of its formal ordering and organization. Ruth
Benedict considers the pattern of culture not its content.

For Malinowski culture stands for a total way of life which secures for an individual the satisfaction of his
biopsychic drives and the fulfilment of other wants and cravings and ultimately invests him with freedom.
Radcliffe Brown regards culture as cultivation, the process of transmitting and acquiring traditions as a result of
which society is perpetuated.

Attributes of Culture
Anthropologists have identified many attributes

Ethos and Eidos

This distinction as given by Kroeber highlights two different aspects of culture.Eidos is the formal appearance of a
culture derived from its constituents. Ethos on the other hand is the disposition of a culture which determines its
quality, its main themes and interests. According to Batson the first consisting of the total emotional emphasis of
a culture is called ethos and the second consisting of the emphasis resulting from the cognitive processes
operative within a culture is called eidos.
Explicit and Implicit Elements
The celebration of festivals when people are filled with joy, happiness, togetherness and a devotional fervour is
an example of explicit element of our culture. However behind every festival there are mythological stories or
otherwise deep-routed meanings and implications and these could be termed as the implicit elements of our
culture.

Culture determinism
The term culture determinism proposes a viewpoint according to which culture determines everything in the
society. Culture is the matrix of everything else and is itself governed by its own laws of growth and operation.
Neither human biology nor human society is regarded as capable of explaining its reality.

With the increasing accumulation of the evidence of the role which individuals play in fashioning and changing
culture it became obvious that among various other types of causes individuals also were at least to some extent
the creators of culture. To accommodate this evidence culture determinists said that a culture operates as if it
were independent of individuals. This viewpoint suffers from the culturalistic fallacy of regarding culture as the
essence and self mover of human life.

Culture versus individual

According to Linton, for majority of us culture plays the role of guide. It guides our behaviour by laying down
norms and values. Culture is must for our own survival which prompted some to people to call it liberation.

Theories of Cultural Growth

Evolutionism

Anthropology as a modern science was born when the star of evolution was shining high. Under the impact of the
evolutionary theorists, pioneers like Taylor and Morgan devoted themselves to the study of the evolution of
human society and culture. There was the belief that from the point of view of psychic make-up man was
everywhere the same. This was given expression in the phase the psychic unity of the mankind. Consequently it
was believed that given the same problems man would think out similar solutions. Thus culture was supposed to
grow through evolution from simpler towards complex and differentiated types and culture parallels were
explained to be the outcome of the psychic unity of mankind. Each institution was believed to be evolved
independently within the setting of the local culture. If two cultures exhibited similar traits or institutions the same
were referred as cases of convergent evolution.

Believing that human societies have evolved from lower into higher types Morgan postulated three stages- To
begin with man lived in savage society which had an older period, a middle period and a later period. With an
invention of pottery, man entered the older period of barbarism. Domestication of animals and cultivation of plants
by irrigation ushered in the middle period of barbarism. The process of smelting iron ore and iron tools saw man
lived in the later period of barbarism. Then came civilisation ushered in by the invention of alphabet and writing.
Morgan while discussing the evolution of family writes that the evolutionary process to have started from a
hypothetical stage of promiscuity and to have gone through stages of group marriage, polyandary, voluntary
monogamy and polygyny.Corresponding to the changes in the nature of the marital bond, various types of family
were also believed by him to have evolved out of the clan through stages of matrilineal and patrilineal into the
bilateral family.

Tylor made a similar study of the growth of religions. He regarded animistic polytheism to have been the simplest
form of religion. There must have an intermediary stage of a higher polytheistic ideology which gave way to
monotheism.

Evidence for all these conjectural reconstructions was collected from various cultures spread over time and
space without bothering too much about the significance of cultural context.

Various writers developed modified forms of evolutionism. There is a theory that social institutions do not develop
in an upward straight line but along a parabolic curve.An institution starts in a particular form develops into its
opposite and then further develops into its original form but a new higher level. Thus the earliest form of property
ownership was communal ownership. Later on the institution of private ownership emerged.

Diffusionism

The Kulturkreise School

Some German writers like Graebner,Ankermann and Schmidt presented a theory of diffusion. Their theory
consists of a belief in evolution tempered with diffusion. They said that various culture complexes develop at
various times in different parts of the world and later on diffuse over corresponding portions of the earth. Such
diffusion is a continuous process and layers of diffused in culture traits may be identified in a culture. Kulturkreise
means a culture-circle or a culture district.

They depend too much upon the evidence of material culture and did not substiate all their schemes of diffusion
of social institutions. According to Graebner when historical evidence is lacking, mere superficial resemblance is
not enough to conclude that diffusion has taken place. Along with the similarity of form there should be the
sameness of number and the arrangement of constituent elements of a trait or a complex. Thus if it is to be seen
that the knowledge of the zodiac has diffused from one place to another, one must look for some signs ,same
number of signs and same clockwise or anticlockwise way of reckoning distribution. This theory is an attempt at
explaining diffusion in certain areas and is also known as culture-historical school.

Culture area approach

Franz Boas divided the study of diffusion into various stages. Firstly the facts of the situation much be described.
Then analytical study may be started proceeding from the particular to the general making a map of actual
distribution in a restricted area before covering continents and the world. The reasons for the dynamics of
contacts must be sought in the psychic make-up of the individual.

Clark Wissler developed these basic viewpoints and defined the restricted area to which Boa refers as a culture
area. He also pointed out the need which necessitates such narrowing down of ambitions. He pointed out that a
culture trait particularly if it is non material cannot travel long distances without getting diluted en route partly by
getting associated and mixed up with features that do not belong to it. He demonstrated that in each culture area
consisting of a certain set of culture complexes a central point of dispersal could be located and boundaries fixed
when the culture complexes involved become most diluted and the influence of a vague but distinctly alien culture
is felt.

He also pointed out that long distances, mountains, oceans and deserts prove to be effective barriers to culture
diffusion. Wissler substantiated his theory by mapping out various culture areas in the Americas. Each area of
characterisation was defined by him in terms of technological, artistic and institutional features and he showed
that a culture area might embrace several distinct populations. British diffusionists is a description which refers to
Elliot Smith,W J Perry and their followers. They insisted on the universal spread of culture from Egypt but their
data have been found to be inadequate and unreliable. They put forward the hypothesis that man is very
unimaginative and uninventive and that only very favourable environmental stimuli may result in men making
inventions. Those favourable circumstances were found only in ancient Egypt. Therefore the Egyptians were the
chosen ones of history. These scholars tried to map worldwide distributions rooting them all in Egypt cradle of all
human civilization.

Cultures grow and cultural parallelism arises from both independent evolution as also diffusion. There are no
inexorable laws about sequential evolution or about the uninventiveness of man. Cultural borrowing will always
make impossible growth stage by stage and upwards in the straight line. Likewise distance and resistance will
always put checks on diffusion. Whether a particular case of growth is the outcome of evolution only or diffusion
only is a misleading question as both the processes operate. A particular case of parallelism may be the outcome
either of convergent evolution or diffusion.

Patterns of Culture
According to Ruth Benedict the integration in a culture is brought about by its content being arranged into a
permanent or semi permanent design or style. Such a design she called pattern. Within a culture there would be
the style of each large segment and these segmental styles would come together into super style which would be
the design of the culture as a whole. This is called the configuration. All styles are harmonious with each other
and blend into a harmonious configuration. This harmony arises out of a main tendency or trend which every
culture exhibits in all its aspects. This main tendency or trend is the genius of a culture. It is this genius or spirit of
a people which brings about integration in their culture, the integration of form. In human society this genius may
be one of the two possible types the Apollonian or the Dionysian. Apollonian is derived from Apollo the sun God
of the ancient Greeks and Dionysian is derived from Dionysius, the turbulent Greek God of drink and carnivals.
The Apollonian genius represents the principle of calm composure and the same would characterise all aspects
of the culture concerned and bring about its integration. The Dionysian genius represents the principle of storm
and would bring about integration and harmonious blending of a culture by pervading all its aspects.

Themes of Culture
M.E Opler has put forward the concept of themes to explain integration. Themes are defined as general
motivations which are responsible for various sets of behaviour types in a society. His themes are not tied down
to any types ; he leaves that to every field investigator to find out for himself .Themes are the specific expressions
of cultural integration in each individual case.Opler illustrated how this concept may be used in his account of the
Apache life way. The concepts of patterns and themes are both keys to the specific structure and character of a
way of living.

Culture Terms
Counterculture
Counterculture is a subculture not merely different from but in opposition to the conventional and approved
culture of the society.

Culture Area
Culture area is a geographical area in which the societies share common cultural features including language
type and social organizational forms;shared cultural features which are usually assumed to be related to
fundamental features of the ecology of the area.

Subculture
Subculture is a cluster of behaviour patterns related to the general culture of a society and yet distinguishable
from it; behaviour pattern of a distinct group within the general society.

Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is the belief that social arrangements developed gradually on the basis of a competitive
struggle in which the best adapted humans and social forms survived.

Belief System
Belief system is the configuration of beliefs which exist in a particular society or culture. The term may be used to
refer to the entirety of the knowledge and beliefs within a society including scientific and technological knowledge.
It is used to describe the patterns of religious beliefs and values and the central principles underlying these which
give distinctiveness and coherence to the modes of thought within a society or culture. Max Weber used the term
weltanshauung for the belief system of a particular social group.