Culture

WELCOME TO
Thinking About Culture
.......................................

What is Culture? Culture is one of the fundamental focus points of Anthropology. Understanding what culture is, how culture is shaped, how culture changes, and how to study and write about it, is an ongoing learning process within the discipline and within our department.

VIEWS OF CULTURE
Professor Michael C. Ennis-McMillan

Static or fixed (closed) views of culture tend to. . .	Dynamic and fluid (open) views of culture tend to . . .
1. . . . see culture in terms of behaviors, customs, rules, traditions, and knowledge. [Homogenous]	1. . . . see culture in terms of webs of meanings, values, symbols, and related terms (themes, interpretations, signs, messages, conversations, discourse, practices)
This view emphasizes a way of life people share and learn from past generations. It presents culture as generalizations ("the Maya do this or believe that").	This view emphasizes the way people make sense of their social conditions, and how people within the same group may disagree about what some object, idea, or action means (we want to know what things like "corn," "virginity," and "veils" may mean or symbolize to different people within the same group depending on the situation and context).
This view emphasizes the system and following predetermined roles. [Coherent]	This view emphasizes how people think about their identity, and continually think about what it means to have a certain position in society (as a woman, a Muslim, a co-wife, a poor person). People may teach themselves and may disagree (rather than share) with others about how to interpret the world and act in the world.
2. . . . see culture change as something that comes from the outside only. [Timeless]	2. . . . see culture change as something that occurs as a result of internal and external forces. People may have interests to create new traditions, new ways of applying a tradition, or use foreign techniques and ideas in the context of their traditions. People may negotiate with each other of the need to change things.
3. . . . NOT see connections between local and global material social processes. That is, the focus on a "way of life" tends to overlook a group's "way of making a living." [Bounded] Traditional behaviors are bounded in one place, and somehow belonging to the past. Tradition is portrayed as "different," "unique," "distinct," "primitive," "backward," and separate from modern.	3. . . . see connections between local and global material social processes. That is, there are connections between a group's way of life and way of making a living. A culture is often shaped by a group's access to vital natural resources, many of which are controlled by outside powerful groups. Traditions mean something to people who to practice them, but they are always related to current conditions. Tradition is not separate from the modern world. People often create traditions or persist in using traditions as a response to other social groups.