ANTH 1150 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Hominidae, Ethnocentrism, Consumerism
8 Nov 2012
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Edward tylor proposed that cultures, systems of human behavior and thought, obey natural laws and therefore can be studied scientifically. Tylors definition focuses on attributes that people acquire not through biological inheritance but by growing up in a particular society in which they are exposed to a specific cultural tradition. Kottak was aware the conditions that the way tylor was observing culture was back then. Enculturation- the process by which a child learns his or her culture. What tylors definition entails: 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 or signify. Clifford geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols. Culture"s have been characterized as sets of control mechanisms plans, recipes, rules instructions, what computer engineers call programs for the governing of behavior.
