1009IBA Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Microbiological Culture, Edward Burnett Tylor, Acculturation
4 May 2018
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L2. Understanding Culture
Lecture Outline and Aims
• Recognise the multifaceted nature of culture
o Many definitions of culture that look at factors like community, minority, society, etc.
• Identify different component and characteristics of culture
o A group or community's traditions, values, thought patterns, history, etc.
• Significance and identification of values
• Define different types of subcultures
• Appreciate and value cultural diversity
Culture: Historical Precedents and Definitions
• 19th Century
o 'Culture' was associated with Western civilisation (commonly associated as a synonym
for Western civilisation)
• High culture
▪ Word given a capital 'W' (Western)
• Refers to skills of the elite
• Recent anthropology
o Word given a small 'w' (western)
• Removing capital deemphasises the unity of the west, and was encouraged
because the capitalisation of 'western' would further privilege the west
• There are approximately 200 definitions of culture, illustrating the multifaceted nature of the
concept
o Studies of culture range from 'the arts' to the entire system of meanings and the way of
life of a society
Culture: Views and Interpretations
• Hall 1996
o Culture is those deep common unstated experiences which members of a given culture
share, communicate without knowing, and which form a background from which all
things are judged
• Implies you have been nurtured by its core values and understand what is valuable or
desirable behaviours
• All people see the world through cultural lenses ('culturally-tinted glasses'), although we can
change these lenses
Defining Culture
• Liu et al. (2015, p.55)
o "partiular a of life … oprisig the deposit of koledge, eperiee, eliefs, alues,
traditions, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material objects
and geographic territory"
• Haviland (2002, p.34)
o "values, beliefs and perceptions of the world shared by members of a society, that they
use to interpret experience and generate behaviour, and that are reflected in their
behaviour"
Characteristics of Culture
• Instructions for living and behaving
• Socialisation is learned, not innate
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• Culture is pervasive, everyone has it
• Culture is shared, but not totally (e.g. sub-cultures)
o Knowledge
• Ideas about what is known
o Values
• How things should be
o Norms
• Rules about how things should be done
• Transmitted from generation to generation
o Dynamic
o Continuity and discontinuity
• New technology, etc. changes cultural situations
• Culture changes
o There is no pure culture
o Diffusion
o Acculturation
o Innovation
• Culture is holistic
o Integrated-systematic
• Based on symbols or symbolic resources
o Process and product of communication
Culture and Context
• Significance of context
o Tylor, 1871, quoted in Haviland, 2002, p.34
• "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom
and any other capabilities or habits aquired by man [sic] as a member of society"
• Note the emphasis of complex whole
▪ Context is vital to understanding elements
▪ Different perspectives influence world views and therefore communication
and relations
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism and Moral Judgement
• Ethnicity
o Frequently the basis of a subculture within a large national culture
o Identifiable groups of people with common culture and heritage
• E.g. Chinese Australians, Mexican Americans, etc.
o Not always the basis of subcultures
• Formed around the idea of inherited culture different from those surrounding
them
• Cultural construct that refers to social youth of cultural difference
• Ethnocentrism
o Studying or making judgements about other societies on the basis of one's own cultural
values
• Assumption of superiority
▪ E.g. The way my culture does things is best, the only way, etc.
• Cultural Relativism
o Any element of a culture can only be understood in the context of the whole of that
culture
o Hard line position
• No basis for making judgements
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