Chapter 5. Cultural Patterns and Processes
5.2 Explaining Culture
5.2.1 Defining Culture
Culture consists of learned human behaviors, such as languages, prejudices, traditions, and values, shared by a group of people. Humans are constantly creating and changing their culture, as well as sharing it by teaching it to other people. Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens nearly 250,000 years ago, people have grouped together into communities to survive. Living together, people form common habits and behaviors—from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food.
Example: Shopping for Food
In modern-day Paris, many people shop daily at outdoor markets to pick up what they need for their evening meal, buying cheese, meat, and vegetables from different specialty stalls. In the United States, the majority of people shop once a week at supermarkets, filling large carts to the brim. How would a Parisian perceive U.S. shopping behaviors that Americans see as normal?
Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is learned.
Example: Views on Marriage
In the United States, people tend to view marriage as a choice between two people, based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other cases, through a direct system, such as a “mail order bride.” To someone raised in New York City, the marriage customs of a family from Nigeria may seem strange or even wrong. Conversely, someone from a traditional Kolkata family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love as the foundation for marriage and lifelong commitment. In other words, the way in which people view marriage depends largely on what they have been taught. Behavior based on learned customs is not a bad thing.
Being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and “normal.” Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidence a great deal of cultural propriety.
Example: Commuting by Public Transportation
Let’s look at going to work on public transportation, bus, subway or train. Whether people are commuting in Dublin, Cairo, Mumbai, or San Francisco, many behaviors will be the same, but there are some significant differences.. Typically, a passenger will find a marked bus stop or station, wait for their bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a seat if one is available. However, when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might have to run, because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. Dublin bus riders would be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behavior would be considered the height of rudeness in the United States, but in Mumbai, it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.
5.2.2 Components of Culture
In this last example of commuting, culture consists of thoughts (expectations about personal space, for example) and tangible things (bus stops, trains, and seating capacity). Material culture refers to the objects / artifacts or belongings of a group of people. Metro passes and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are automobiles, stores, and the physical structures where people worship. The same goes for technology. Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society – including religion and language.
Nonmaterial culture includes mentifacts (ideas or beliefs) and sociofacts (forms of social organization). People convey culture through various outlets such as festivals, language, religion, food, and architecture. With culture, people are taught to meet their basic needs while maintaining individual group qualities.
Material and Nonmaterial Aspects of Culture
Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked; physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. For example, a metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture, namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.
Source: “C-Shaped Jade Dragon” by Wheielapn via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
“Norwegian smelling salt container” by Norsk Folkemuseum via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“Traditional Moroccan shoes called “babouches” by Pitchoon76 via Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
These material and nonmaterial aspects of culture can vary subtly from region to region. As people travel farther away from where they live, moving from one region to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between the world of others and our own. As a matter of fact we recognize our own culture best when comparing aspects of other cultures to our own.
Cultural Universals
Often, a comparison of one culture to another will reveal obvious differences; however, all cultures share common elements. Such cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies.
Cultural Universal Example: Family Units
Every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and the care of children. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In the United States, by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit that consists of parents and their offspring. Other cultural universals include customs like funeral rites, weddings, and celebrations of births. However, each culture may view the ceremonies quite differently.
Anthropologist George Murdock first recognized the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter, or around shared human experiences, such as birth and death or illness and healing. Through his research, Murdock identified other universals including language, the concept of personal names, and, interestingly, jokes. Humor seems to be a universal way to release tensions and create a sense of unity among people. Sociologists consider humor necessary to human interaction because it helps individuals navigate otherwise tense situations.
Is Music a Cultural Universal?
Imagine that you are sitting in a theater, watching a film. The movie opens with the heroine sitting on a park bench with a grim expression on her face. Cue the music. The first slow and mournful notes play in a minor key. As the melody continues, the heroine turns her head and sees a man walking toward her. The music slowly gets louder, and the dissonance of the chords sends a prickle of fear running down your spine. You sense that the heroine is in danger.
Now imagine that you are watching the same movie, but with a different soundtrack. As the scene opens, the music is soft and soothing, with a hint of sadness. You see the heroine sitting on the park bench and sense her loneliness. Suddenly, the music swells. The woman looks up and sees a man walking toward her. The music grows fuller, and the pace picks up. You feel your heart rise in your chest. This is a happy moment.
Music has the ability to evoke emotional responses. In television shows, movies, even commercials, music elicits laughter, sadness, or fear. Are these types of musical cues cultural universals?
In 2009, a team of psychologists, led by Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, studied people’s reactions to music that they’d never heard (Fritz et al. 2009). The research team traveled to Cameroon, Africa, and asked Mafa tribal members to listen to Western music. The tribe, isolated from Western culture, had never been exposed to Western culture and had no context or experience within which to interpret its music. Even so, as the tribal members listened to a Western piano piece, they were able to recognize three basic emotions: happiness, sadness, and fear. Music, it turns out, is a sort of universal language.
Researchers also found that music can foster a sense of wholeness within a group. In fact, scientists who study the evolution of language have concluded that originally language (an established component of group identity) and music were one (Darwin 1871). Additionally, since music is largely nonverbal, the sounds of music can cross societal boundaries more easily than words. Music allows people to make connections, where language might be a more difficult barricade. As Fritz and his team found, music and the emotions it conveys can be cultural universals.
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Beliefs and Ideas / Nonmaterial Culture
All cultures have underlying beliefs and thought processes. These beliefs include religion (Chapter 8) and language (Chapter 6) but go far beyond that. Other important beliefs include things like nationalism (see Chapter 9), customs, or prejudices. These beliefs can be expressed through various avenues, using a variety of auditory, visual, and tactile means. For example, nationalism can be expressed through song, cuisine, dress, and public events. You can see prejudices in the form of an anthem, see it in the form of a flag, taste it when you eat a dish that represents a group of people, and feel it in the form of a piece of jewelry.
Technology is a human construct. From our earliest inventions (fire and weapons) to a supercomputer, the things that people build are products of their perceived needs, their technical abilities, and their available resources. Technology includes clothing, food, and housing. Technology is material culture. Think of material culture as the material that archaeologists study. The materials that we use are often left behind for later people to study, like the clay tablets the Sumerians used to record their writing or Native American earthen mounds, such as Poverty Point, built up along riverways. Other components of culture (nonmaterial culture like ideas) leave fewer traces. We can find material culture related to burial practices that date back millennia but may not always have the material evidence to show how people grieve.
Lifestyle is a component of culture that can be overlooked, but it is vitally important. In many cultures, a family is a very large unit, and people can tell in great detail their exact relationship to everyone else in a place. In the modern context, a family could consist of a single parent and a child, and it is possible to live in a neighborhood filled with unrelated people and not know the name of a single neighbor.
