ANTH 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Clifford Geertz, Jane Goodall, Enculturation
9 May 2016
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Enculturation- the process by which a child learns his or her culture. What is culture: culture is learned. Our own cultural learning depends on the uniquely developed human capacity to use symbols- signs that have no necessary or natural connection to the things they stand for. Through cultural learning, people create, remember, and deal with ideas. Clifford geertz described cultures as sets of control mechanisms plans, rules, recipes, instructions . During enculturation, people gradually absorb and internalize their particular culture. Culture is also absorbed unconsciously: culture is symbolic. A symbol is something verbal or nonverbal, within a particular language or culture, that comes to stand for something else. Leslie white- culture originated when our ancestors acquired the ability to use symbols. There are also a lot of nonverbal symbols: culture is shared. Culture is not an attribute of individuals, but of individuals as members of groups. We learn our culture by observing, listening, talking, and interacting with many other people.
