Anthropology (Anth1012)

Unit Three: Human Culture and Ties that Connect Society

1. Conceptualizing Culture: What Culture is and What Culture isn't

Definition of Culture

The term culture is not used with consistent meanings. It is used with various meanings in
common-sense. Anthropologists and sociologists define culture in different ways. Some of their
definitions have been quoted below:

 A widely accepted and the more comprehensive definition of culture were provided by
the British anthropologist Edward B. Tylor. He defined culture as “a complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society”.
 B. Malinowski has defined culture “as cumulative creation of man". He regarded culture
as the handiwork of man and the medium through which he achieves his ends.
 Robert Bierstedt says, “Culture is the complex whole that consists of everything we think
and do and have as members of society.”

Combining several of these definitions, we may define culture as the common way of life shared
by a group of people. It includes all things beyond nature and biology.

Culture, therefore, is moral, intellectual and spiritual discipline for advancement, in accordance
with the norms and values based on accumulated heritage. Culture is a system of learned
behavior shared by and transmitted among the members of the group.

Culture is a collective heritage learned by individuals and passed from one generation to the
other. The individual receives culture as part of social heritage and in turn, may reshape the
culture and introduce changes which then become part of the heritage of succeeding generations.

2. Characteristic Features of Culture

Culture has the following characteristic features. These are:-

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 A. Culture Is Learned

Culture is not transmitted genetically; rather it is acquired through the process of learning. This
process of acquiring culture after we born is called enculturation. Enculturation is defined as the
process by which an individual learns the rules and values of one’s culture.

B. Culture Is Shared

In order to say something as being “cultural” it must have a shared meaning by at least two
people within a society or its guidelines must be shared by its members.

C. Culture Is Symbolic

Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans and to cultural learning. A symbol is
something verbal or nonverbal, within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for
something else.

D. Culture Is All-Encompassing

Culture encompasses all aspects, all material and non-material aspects of human lives. Culture is
the sum total of human creation: intellectual, technical, artistic, physical, and moral; and it is the
complex pattern of living that directs human social life. Insist

E. Culture Is Integrated

Cultures are not haphazard/random collections of customs and beliefs. Instead, culture should be
thought as of integrated wholes, the parts of which, to some degree, are interconnected with one
another.

F. Culture Can Be Adaptive and Maladaptive

Humans have both biological and cultural ways of coping with environmental stresses. Besides
our biological means of adaptation, we also use "cultural adaptive kits," which contain customary
activities and tools that help us in managing everyday lives.

People adapt themselves to the environment using culture. The ability to adapt to any of the
ecological conditions, unlike other animals, makes humans unique. Sometimes, adaptive

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behavior that offers short-term benefits to particular subgroups or individuals may harm the
environment and threaten the group's long-term survival.

G. Culture is Dynamic

Culture is not completely static. It is changing constantly as new ideas and new techniques are
added as time passes modifying the old ways. This reveals culture’s cumulative quality.

3. Aspects/Elements of Culture

Culture is reflected through the various components such as values, norms, languages, myths,
customs, rituals and laws. Two of the most basic aspects of culture are material and nonmaterial
culture.

1. Material culture

Human-made objects such as tools, implements, furniture, automobiles, buildings, dams, roads,
bridges, and the physical substance which has been changed and used by man. It is concerned
with the external, mechanical and utilitarian objects. It includes technical and material
equipment. It is referred to as civilization.

2. Non – Material Culture

It is something internal and intrinsically valuable, reflects the inward nature of man. It includes
languages, beliefs, values, habits, rituals, customs, attitudes, outlooks feelings, thinking and etc.
practices. Some of the aspects of non-material culture are listed as follows:

Values: They are standards by which members of a society define what is good or bad, right or
wrong.

Beliefs: They are cultural conventions that concern true or false assumptions, specific
descriptions of the nature of the universe and humanity’s place in it. Values are generalized
notions of what is good and bad; beliefs are more specific and, in form at least, have more
content. “Education is good” is a fundamental value in American society, whereas “Grading is
the best way to evaluate students” is a belief that reflects assumptions about the most appropriate
way to determine educational achievement.

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Norms: They are shared rules or guidelines that define how people “ought” to behave under
certain circumstances. They are connected to the values, beliefs, and ideologies of a society.

Norms vary in terms of their importance to a culture, these are:

A. Folkways: Norms guiding ordinary usages and conventions of everyday life are known as
folkways. Folkways are norms that are not strictly enforced, such as not leaving your seat for an
elderly people inside a bus/taxi. They may result in a person getting a bad look.

B. Mores: Mores are much stronger norms than are folkways. Mores are norms that are believed
to be essential to core values and we insist on conformity. A person who steals, rapes, and kills
has violated some of society’s most important mores. They may result in punishment, ostracism,
vicious gossip, public ridicule, exile, loss of one’s job, physical beating and etc.

4. Cultural Unity and Variations: Universality, Generality and

Particularity of Culture

In studying human diversity in time and space, anthropologists distinguish among the universal,
the generalized, and the particular.

Certain biological, psychological, social, and cultural features are universal (found in every
culture), others are merely generalities (common to several but not all human groups), and other
traits are particularities (unique to certain cultural traditions).

1. Universality: Universals are cultural traits that span across all cultures. Most are biological
that distinguish us from other species – long period of infant dependency, year-round sexuality,
complex brain that enables use of symbols and use of languages and tools. Social universals –
life in groups – some kind of family organizes on social life and depends on social interactions
for expression and continuation of the society. E.g. Incest taboo, exogamy (marriage outside
one’s group).

2. Generality: Generalities are cultural traits that occur in many societies but not all of them.
Societies can share same beliefs and customs because of borrowing, domination (colonial rule)
when customs and procedures are imposed on one culture, or Independent innovation of same
cultural trait e.g., farming and nuclear family.

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3. Particularity: this includes the specific practices that distinguish cultures from one another.
E.g. the type of food or meat we eat/not eat (e.g. donkey meat is forbidden in Ethiopia).

5. Evaluating Cultural Differences: Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism and

Human Rights

The concepts of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism occupy key position in anthropology.

A. Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency to see the behaviors, beliefs, values, and norms of one's
own group as the only right way of living and to judge others by those standards. Ethnocentrism
results in prejudices about people from other cultures and the rejection of their "alien ways." Our
ethnocentrism can prevent us from understanding and appreciating another culture. It also
prevents open communication and result in misunderstanding and mistrust.

B. Cultural relativism

The concept of cultural relativism states that culture and its meaning should be seen only within
its cultural setting. It views about the behavior of people from the perspective of their own
culture. Every society has its own culture, which is more or less unique. Every culture contains
its own unique pattern of behavior which may seem alien to people from other cultural
backgrounds. We cannot understand the practices and beliefs separately from the wider culture
of which they are part. A culture has to be studied in terms of its own meanings and values.
Cultural relativism describes a situation where there is an attitude of respect for cultural
differences rather than condemning other people's culture as uncivilized or backward.

Respect for cultural differences involves:

 Appreciating cultural diversity;

 Accepting and respecting other cultures;
 Trying to understand every culture and its elements in terms of its own context and logic;
 Accepting that each body of custom has inherent dignity and meaning as the way of life
of one group which has worked out to its environment, to the biological needs of its
members, and to the group relationships;

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  Knowing that a person's own culture is only one among many; and
 Recognizing that what is immoral, ethical, and acceptable in one culture may not be so in
another culture.

C. Human rights

In today's world, human rights advocates challenge many of the tenets of cultural relativism.
Many anthropologists are uncomfortable with the strong form of cultural relativism that
suggests that all patterns of culture are equally valid. Human rights: rights based on justice
and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. The idea of
human rights challenges cultural relativism by invoking a realm of justice and morality
beyond and superior to the laws and customs of particular countries, cultures, and religions.

Human rights are seen as inalienable (nations cannot abridge or terminate them) and
international (larger than and superior to individual nations and cultures). A doctrine of
universal human right emphasizes the rights of the individual over those of the community.

Anthropologists respect human diversity. Most ethnographers try to be objective, accurate,

and sensitive in their accounts of other cultures. However, their objectivity, sensitivity and a
cross-cultural perspective got nothing to do with ignoring international standards of justice
and morality.

6. Culture Change

Culture has changed over time and modified or replaced at another time. Culture change can
occur as a result of the following Mechanisms:

A. Diffusion: The process by which cultural elements are borrowed from another society.

 Diffusion is direct when two cultures trade with, intermarry among, or wage war on one
another.
 Diffusion is forced when one culture subjugates another and imposes its customs on the
dominated group.
 Diffusion is indirect when items or traits move from group A to group C via group B
without any firsthand contact between A and C.

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B. Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups have continuous
firsthand contact. In situations of continuous contact, cultures have also exchanged and blended
foods, recipes, music, dances, clothing, tools, and technologies.

C. Invention-the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems

are a third mechanism of cultural change.

D. Globalization is a series of processes, including diffusion and acculturation, working to

promote change in a world in which nations and people are increasingly interlinked and mutually
dependent. Promoting such linkages is economic and political forces, as well as modem systems
of transportation and communication. Due to globalization, long-distance communication is
easier, faster, and cheaper than ever, and extends to remote areas. All these lead people to learn
to play various social roles and to change behavior and identity depending on the situation.

7. Ties That Connect: Marriage, Family and Kinship

This topics deals with how human society organize themselves and how the cultural rules
governing our ties on marriage, family organization, residence patterns after marriage, forms of
descent and descent groups, and other aspects of kinship.

1. Marriage

Almost all known societies recognize marriage though it is not an easy term to define.
Frequently, anthropologists have debated whether or not families and the institutions of marriage
are universals. It is a contractual agreement between males and females.

A. Rules of Marriage

Societies also have rules that state whom one can and cannot marry. Every society knows to
anthropology has established for itself some type of rules regulating mating (sexual intercourse).
The most common form of prohibition is mating with certain type of kin that are defined by the
society as being inappropriate sexual partners. These prohibitions on mating with certain
categories of relatives are known as incest taboo. The most universal form of incest taboo
involves mating between members of the immediate (nuclear) family: mother-sons, father-
daughters, and brother-sisters.

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 B. Mate Selection: Whom Should You Marry?

In a society one cannot marry anyone whom he or she likes. There are certain strict rules and
regulations.

1. Exogamy: This is the rule by which a man is not allowed to marry someone from his own
social group.

2. Endogamy: This rule requires individuals to marry within their own group and forbids them
to marry outside it.

3. Preferential Cousin Marriage: A common form of preferred marriage is called preferential

cousin marriage and is practiced in one form or another in most of the major regions of the
world. Kinship systems based on lineages distinguish between two different types of first
cousins. These are:

Cross Cousins: are children of siblings of the opposite sex- that is one’s mother’s brothers’
children and one’s father’s sisters’ children.

The most common form of preferential cousin marriage is between cross cousins because it
functions to strengthen and maintain ties between kin groups established by the marriages that
took place in the preceding generation.

Parallel Cousins: When marriage takes place between the children of the siblings of the same
sex, it is called parallel cousin marriage. Children of siblings of the same sex, namely the
children of one’s mother’s sister and one’s father brother. The mate may come either from one’s
father’s brother’s children or mother's sister’s children.

4. The Levirate and Sororate

Another form of mate selection that tends to limit individual choice is those that require a person
to marry the husband or widow of a deceased kin.

The levirate- is the custom whereby a widow is expected to marry the brother (or some close
male relative) of her dead husband. Wife inheritance

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The sororate, which comes into play when a wife dies, is the practice of a widower’s marrying
the sister (or some close female relative) of his deceased wife.

3. Number of spouses

Societies have rules regulating whom one may/may not marry; they have rules specifying how
many mates a person may/should have.

 Monogamy: the marriage of one man to one woman at a time.

 Polygamy: marriage of a man or woman with two or more mates. Polygamy can be of
two types:
 Polygyny: the marriage of a man to two or more women at a time.
 Polyandry: the marriage of a woman to two or more men at a time
 Marriage of a man with two or more sisters at a time is called sororal polygyny.
When the co-wives are not sisters, the marriage is termed as non-sororal
polygyny.
4. Economic Consideration of Marriage

Most societies view as a binding contract between at least the husband and wife and, in many
cases, between their respective families as well. Such a contract includes the transfer of certain
rights between the parties involved: rights of sexual access, legal rights to children, and rights of
the spouses to each other’s economic goods and services. Often the transfer of rights is
accompanied by the transfer of some type of economic consideration. These transactions, which
may take place either before or after the marriage can be divided into three categories: 1) Bride
Price/wealth, 2) Bride Service and 3) Dowry

1. Bride Price: It is also known as bride wealth, is the compensation given upon marriage by the
family of the groom to the family of the bride. Anthropologists identified a number of important
functions that the institutions of bride price/wealth performed for the well-being of the society.
For example, bride price/wealth has been seen:-as security or insurance for the good treatment of
the wife: as mechanism to stabilize marriage by reducing the possibility of divorce: as a form of
compensation to the bride’s lineage for the loss of her economic potential and childbearing
capacity: and as a symbol of the union between two large groups of kin.

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2. Bride Service: When the groom works for his wife’s family, this is known as bride service.

3. Dowry: A dowry involves a transfer of goods or money in the opposite direction, from the
bride's family to the groom’s family.

5. Post-Marital Residence

Where the newly married couple lives after the marriage ritual is governed by cultural rules,
which are referred to as post-marital residence rule.

Patrilocal Residence: the married couple lives with or near the relatives of the husband’s father.
Matrilocal Residence: the married couple lives with or near the relatives of the wife.

Avunculocal Residence: The married couple lives with or near the husband’s mother’s brother.
Ambilocal/Bilocal Residence: The married couple has a choice of living with relatives of the
wife or relatives of the husband.

Neolocal Residence: The Married couple forms an independent place of residence away from
the relatives of either spouse.

Family

Family is the basis of human society. It is the most important primary group in society. The
family, as an institution, is universal. It is the most permanent and most pervasive of all social
institutions. Cultural anthropologists have identified two fundamentally different types of family
structure-the nuclear family and the extended family.

1. The Nuclear Family: Consisting of husband and wife and their children, the nuclear family is
a two-generation family formed around the conjugal or marital union.

2. The Extended Family: In societies based on extended families, blood ties are more important
than ties of marriage. Extended families consist of two or more families that are linked by blood
ties. Most commonly, this takes the form of a married couple living with one or more of their
married children in a single household or homestead and under the authority of a family head.

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Functions of Marriage and Family

Family performs certain specific functions which can be summarized as follows:

1. Biological Function: The institution of marriage and family serves biological (sexual and
reproductive) function. Society reproduces itself through family.

2. Economic Function: Marriage brings economic co-operation between men and women and
ensures survival of individuals in a society.

3. Social Function: Marriage is based on the desire to perpetuate one’s family line. In marriage,
one adds not only a spouse but most of the spouse’s relatives to one’s own group of kin.

4. Educational and Socialization Function: The burden of socialization (via processes of

enculturation and education) of new born infants fall primarily upon the family.

Kinship

A significant concept in Anthropology –kinship is vitally important, because kinship and family
constitute the focal points in anthropological studies. Kinship is the method of reckoning
relationship. In any society every adult individual belongs to two different nuclear families. The
family in which he was born and reared is called ‘family of orientation’. The other family to
which he establishes relation through marriage is called ‘family of procreation’.

The relationship based on blood ties is called “consanguineous kinship”, and the relatives of
this kind are called ‘consanguineous kin’. The desire for reproduction gives rise to another kind
of binding relationship. “This kind of bond, which arises out of a socially or legally defined
marital relationship, is called affinal relationship”, and the relatives so related are called ‘affinal
kin’.

Descent

Descent refers to a set of principles by which an individual traces his descent. There are three
important rules of decent:

1. Patrilineal descent: When descent is traced solely through the male line.
2. Matrilineal descent: When the descent is traced solely through the female line.

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 3. Cognatic Descent: When individuals are free to show their genealogical links either
through men or women.
8. Culture areas and culture contact

Culture areas refer to a cluster of related cultures occupying a certain geographical region. In
anthropology the concept of culture area has been used beginning from the 1920s where Afred
Kroeber and his contemporaries were interested in examining the concentration of cultural trains
in a given geographic area.

In the context of Ethiopia, we may come up with different culture are in relation to subsistence.
These are plough culture, Enset culture area, and pastoral societies’ culture area.

A. Plough culture area

A part of the country’s where agriculture is predominantly practiced and used as subsistence
economy. Most of highland and central parts of the country serve as the backbone of the
economy is considered a plough culture.

B. Enset culture area

Enset culture area covers a vast region in the southern part of country such as the Guraghe,
Sidama and Gedeo areas constitute enset culture area.

C. Pastoral culture area

Pastoral culture area is found in the low land areas covering a large section of the Afar in the
northwest, Somali in the southeast and Borena of southern of Ethiopia. Pastoral culture area
relies significantly on their herds and cattle for a living as well as mobility of people and herds
are a major characteristic feature of the people.

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