Nature of Culture

Adopted by “The Nature of Culture Dayak Khalimantan” by Wallpaper Flare is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

On their own, humans are not very good at surviving. Humans have weak muscles relative to their size and even the few they have are not very agile. They lack a strong hide and do not have much fur. In fact, humans are physically inferior to nearly every other species on the planet. The evolutionary trait that humans have grown to compensate for this physical weakness is culture. Culture provides humans with the knowledge of how to survive in their environment. Methods for food-getting and creating shelter are purely cultural traits- humans are not born with this knowledge.

Because environments change over time, the culture living in that environment, too, must change over time. Because cultures must constantly adapt to meet the changing needs of societies, cultures are dynamic systems. Anthropologists often take this into account and periodically update ethnographies with an extra chapter dedicated to changes in the culture since the ethnography was written.

Definition of Culture

“Definition of Culture” by capesociologytutor is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Source adapted from “The Nature of Culture” by WikiMedia Project is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

And an anthropologist would look at that and study their ways to learn from them.

• Learned through active teaching, and passive habitus.
• Shared meaning that it defines a group and meets common needs.
• Patterned meaning that that there is a recourse of similar ideas. Related cultural beliefs and practices show up repeatedly in different areas of social life.
• Adaptive which helps individuals meet needs across variable environments.
• Symbolic which means that there are simple and arbitrary signs that represent something else, something more.

Source adapted from “Cuture” by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0