SOCL 2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Xenocentrism, Protestantism, Ethnocentrism
16 Oct 2018
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It includes all human phenomena in a society that are not the products of biological inheritance. It includes all learnt behavior, not just the behavior of the wealthy or highly educated. They are the products of group experiences and needs: only humans can assign symbols to represent the objects around them. This enables us to create cultures: symbols are arbitrary (based on random choice, rather than any reason). In most cases there is no connection between a symbol and what it represents: language. Is the systematic usage of speech and hearing to convey or express feelings and ideas. It is the chief factor to transmit culture (our ideas, values, beliefs, knowledge: all human societies have language (some societies cannot read or write their language but they all have a spoken language) Like symbols, language is uniquely human (though some animals emit sounds and respond to commands, these do not involve a system of shared definitions or meanings)
