What is Culture?

Culture Defined

     The unifying concept across the four fields of anthropology is the concept of culture. Culture has been defined in numerous ways over time. Many of those definitions give the impression that culture is a concrete thing, but American culture probably means something different to a Mexican American family in El Paso compared to an Anglo family in Boston. Thus, while culture involves the beliefs, behaviors, and symbols shared by members of a group, it is also a process. We create the American culture we experience every day as we interact with people around us. Further, we learn and internalize our cultural meanings and express our culture as individuals. Because culture is a process that we are creating every day it is also always changing.

     Humans are not the only species to employ social learning. Some anthropologists argue that chimpanzees possess a rudimentary form of culture because they transmit their knowledge of simple tool use from generation to generation. However, humans are the only species that possess complex culture and depend on it as a fundamental means of survival and adaptation. Because culture can vary widely even in the same society, it is easier to talk about some of its characteristics than define it. Five essential characteristics of human culture are that it is shared, learned, symbolic, integrated, and always changes. Culture also provides us with the models through which cultural members interpret reality.

The Characteristics of Culture

Culture Is Shared

     A key characteristic of culture is that it is shared. That means that culture is a feature of group life and that the behavior of members of a cultural group is predictable. For example, in the United States if you introduce yourself to someone and hold out your right hand, you expect that they will shake your hand and tell you their name. But in Lacandon Maya culture there is no such greeting. People do not shake hands and are most likely to greet you by asking what you are doing. Another example of this predictability is that if you look around the room at your classmates you will notice that everyone is dressed according to the same basic pattern with blue jeans or shorts, t-shirts, wearing tennis shoes, sandals (or in Texas) boots, and if they have something on their heads it is a beanie or ball cap with a team or corporate logo. None of your classmates thought to dress up in their fanciest penis gourd (called koteka) because that is not an item in the American cultural model of clothing.

Culture Is Learned

     Human beings are not the only species that is capable of social learning. However, humans as a species differ from all other species in the degree of their dependence on social learning for survival. For the most part, nonhuman species adapt to their varying environmental conditions through physical changes or somatic adaptations. For instance, you are all aware that when it begins to get cooler in the Fall and Winter months your pet dogs and cats grow a heavier coat of fur. However, humans do not grow winter coats, we make them. Humans also adapt through evolutionary processes, but adults teach children their culture through a process anthropologists call enculturation. Your cat didn’t need to learn how to grow a winter coat, but humans learn their cultures.

     Enculturation can take place through active efforts by parents or other members of the group to teach the younger members. Importantly, much of the enculturation process is not conscious, but is learned through the day-to-day process of living with members of the group. Children are not always specifically instructed in important cultural information, but they often learn by watching and imitating elders as illustrated in the film clip Children are Watching.

Children Are Watching

     Enculturation contrasts with the heavy reliance of animals on instinctive behaviors and biological adaptation. Even highly intelligent non-human primates are limited in the extent of their social learning and ability to transmit what they learn over time. For example, non-human primate species are adapted to warm tropical or savannah climates. With the exception of the snow monkey, they do not survive well in cold temperatures. In contrast, human beings have culturally adapted to virtually every environment. Humans in the Arctic can survive freezing temperatures because they have learned to make warm houses, heavy clothing, and they use fire for warmth. They can also pass that knowledge on to their children. A polar bear, by contrast, is biologically adapted through evolutionary processes with its thick fur and insulating layer of fat.

Culture Is Symbolic

     Human beings are symbol makers. We live in a world of symbols that we create. A symbol can be a visual sign, a sound, or object that stands for or suggests something else. Symbols are a way that humans store information through stories, performances, and especially books. Symbols are also a way humans communicate complex meanings. The American flag, for example, is a symbol that condenses whole constellations of complex meanings that cannot be summarized in a word or two. Because humans internalize the meaning of their symbols those meanings seem obvious and natural. However, symbols, for the most part, are arbitrary, which means that there is no necessary relationship between the symbol and the object or idea it is referencing. From an anthropological perspective, the critical element of symbols is the fact that a social group agrees on the meaning of the symbol.

     Colors are an example of cultural symbolism. Traffic lights use red, yellow, and green visual symbols to indicate how to proceed in traffic. The colors themselves are arbitrary because green could just as easily be used to mean stop instead of go. White is the traditional color for a wedding dress in Western societies, while Japanese women traditionally wear black kimonos. Similarly, black is often worn to funerals in Western societies, while in China white is worn to funerals.

Marital Symbols of Indian Women

     The most important form of symbolic behavior humans engage in is communication through language. For the most part, the sounds that form our words have no relationship to the objects they reference. Most languages do have some words that have sound symbolism or onomatopoeia. For example, the word “meow” is similar to the sound made by a cat, and other languages have similar words such as the Italian “miao” and Bengali “meu-meu.” But the sounds of most words are arbitrary. An easy way to see this is to hear a word in another language. If the meaning of the maya word xikin was not arbitrary, but contained some aspect of what the word referred to you would know what it means when you read it. Because the meaning of words is arbitrary you don’t know what it means until I tell you that xikin in English is “ear.” The film clip Animal Sounds illustrates this same idea.

Animal Sounds

Culture Is Integrated

     One of the most powerful concepts in anthropology is the notion that elements of culture are integrated and that the integration of culture relates to its holism. This idea is derived from a nineteenth century concept called the organic analogy, in which culture was compared to a biological organism. As the analogy goes, just as the parts of an organism such as the heart, lungs, and liver all work together to maintain the life of that organism, so too all of the parts of a culture relate to one another. Individual features of a culture do not exist in isolation, but articulate with other dimensions of culture and all must work together for a “healthy” society. One example of this way of thinking is an analysis of the association of marriage with fish by the Guajá hunter-gatherers of the Brazilian Amazon. The divinity who is believed to be in charge of marriage is called “Pira-ya,” literally, fish divinity. Thus marriage, religion, and ecology are all related. The Guajá have a fission-fusion seasonal hunting and fishing pattern. In the wet season, they break up into small family bands and rely heavily on hunting game. In the dry season, the bands come together in larger groups and fish. It is during the fishing season that marriages are decided. While at first glance, a symbolic association between marriage and fish might seem strange to an outsider, it makes sense in the way that ecology, kinship, and religion are integrated.

     While the organic analogy is a powerful tool for understanding how different elements of culture operate, it also assumes that the function of the parts is to ensure the culture’s stability, and that conflict and change are not normal. However, in any complex society different groups of people have different interests and goals, and this creates tensions between them. Furthermore, cultures are always changing. I grew up in Texas during the nineteen sixties when segregation was still legal. Today, American society has changed a great deal. So, while it is convenient to think of cultures as integrated and stable, it is equally useful to study culture change.

Culture Changes

     All cultures and human societies change over time. The causes of culture change are numerous and include ecological change, technological change, socio-political change, ideological change, and contact with other cultures. Some changes in a culture have specific causes; other changes are due to a variety of factors such as contact with other cultures or the development of new technology.

     Some cultural differences are caused by environmental changes. When environmental conditions change, cultures must adapt and change in order to survive. As the arctic regions of the earth warm for example, an igloo may no longer be a shelter option for the people who live there. Similarly, in our society climate change has encouraged the development of solar and wind power because we need to find cleaner sources of energy that do not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Innovations in technology can result in major culture changes. One classic example is when a culture domesticates plants and animals, they become more settled and less nomadic because it is not necessary to forage for food. Socio-political changes in the power structure of a group can also bring dramatic change, and some cultural changes occur through ideological changes in religious, philosophical, or value systems. For instance, have you ever thought about the impact of the Civil Rights movement on American society? Culture contact always creates change in both cultures that interact with one another. K-Pop, sushi, and chocolate are all products of our contact with other cultures. These changes can be positive when they involve cooperative trade relationships and cross-cultural borrowing of beneficial technologies, food, and music. However, culture contact also occurs that involves hostilities such as the initiation of warfare, slavery, or colonization of one group by another. All of these factors will be discussed at great length in later chapters.

     For any culture or society, practices that may seem bizarre to outsiders make sense only when they are understood in their cultural and historical context. Take for example the celebration of Christmas by many Americans. An outsider would find the behaviors and material objects that are used to celebrate Christmas puzzling. Trees are placed inside the house and decorated with ornaments. Children are told a myth that an overweight man who wears a red suit and lives in the Arctic will travel through the sky using magic flying reindeer and bring presents to them. Streets may be decorated with candy canes and fake holly.

     If a foreign visitor were to ask why some Americans decorate Christmas trees and have inflatable Santas in their front yards, the answer would be that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus. Our foreigner might reasonably ask, is Jesus from the Arctic like Santa or associated with fir trees? Similarly, a visitor might ask why the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus involves tales of giant rabbits hiding colored eggs in the yard. Many of the rituals and customs that are, normal traditions in one culture may seem bizarre, illogical, and inscrutable to outsiders.

     Such traditions are often taken for granted by members of a culture and are not consciously questioned. The traditions of Christmas and Easter do have an origin and historical meaning deriving from the integration of customs of non-Christian Europeans (so-called “pagans”) with the later conversion of many European societies to Christianity during the time of the Roman Empire. Over time, the practices have been woven together and have been repeated over many generations so that they have become traditions. While the Easter Bunny hiding eggs would seem to be a very bizarre ritual to an outsider, it has become a normal and expected part of that holiday. We can reconstruct the merging of these traditions: the Christmas tree is a remnant of ancient European symbolism of the evergreen as good luck; similarly, rabbits and eggs are old European symbols of fertility associated with the Spring; Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas) derives from a Catholic patron saint of children. The film clip Wild Baby Easter Bunnies discusses the origins of Western Easter traditions.

Wild Baby Easter Bunnies: Easter Traditions

     While it is possible to research each and every symbolic meaning attached to Christian religious holidays, it is important to understand that most Christians in Western society who practice these rituals do not know their historical genesis and meanings. Rather, internal cultural logic (which may seem illogical to outsiders) is often reinforced by repetition over time, imitation of behaviors of the young by elders, and becomes integrated into the patterns with which we are familiar.

Culture Provides a Model of Reality

     A powerful feature of culture is that our cultural beliefs influence how we perceive and interpret the world in very subtle ways. Because the culture we learn provides us with ready-made models for how to interpret what is going on around us, we come to accept those models as reality. It is as if you were wearing blinders that allow you to see some things and not others. However, when you start learning another culture you start to experience the models through which another people define their world. At first this can be confusing, but over time the American blinders come off and you start to see the world as other do. For example, on campus you may see Muslim women wearing a head covering that in the United States we call hijab. However, while it is ok to refer to a woman’s head scarf as hijab, to a Muslim hijab refers to acting modestly. In other words, a woman who wears a head scarf is not so much wearing hijab as she is being hijab. Similarly, Muslim men should also be hijab, for example, by wearing shirt and trousers to the beach.

     The cultural models through which we interpret the world can be so subtle and profound that they are hard to see. Take for example, the American concept of time. Americans talk about time as a quantity. You can save or waste time or use it wisely. We have a linear conception of time, with the past behind us and the future stretching out in front of us. During his initial field work with the Lacandon Maya, it took McGee a long time to realize that the Lacandon model of time was different, and that Lacandon did not understand when he tried to force Lacandon phrases into the American concept of time. The Lacandon are rainforest farmers who live in a world of seasonal cycles. They tell the time of day by the position of the sun in the sky and the time of month by the phases of the moon. They don’t follow the months in the Western calendar but live in a rainy and dry season, and they time the planting of their crops by the flowering or leafing out of plants in the forest. Consequently, while it is hard for an American to understand, it is logical that the Lacandon conceptualize time as a circle. It has no beginning and no end, and what we would call the past and the future are the same. Things got a lot easier for McGee when he learned to talk about things in reference to the position of the sun and the phase of the moon instead of time of day and weeks and months.

     If you understand that people in different cultures may live with different models of reality, then you can also see that this same notion can also apply to different groups within your own culture. Have you thought about how a Black classmate’s experience of American culture may be very different from an Anglo student’s? Can you imagine how a woman’s experience of American culture can be very different from a man’s, leading each to very different views of the world? One reason many Americans find the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements controversial is that they don’t try to understand the perspectives of the people who have joined these movements. Imagine how profoundly American culture might change if more people acted like anthropologists and tried to understand and respect points of view that were different from their own.