Test Week 6

Question 1

CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Answer 1

• Cultural relativism is the view that all beliefs, customs, and ethics are relative to the individual within his own social context.
• “right” and “wrong” are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs
• Cultural relativism is widely accepted in modern anthropology
• Cultural relativists believe that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value
• Diversity of cultures, even those with conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad
• Today’s anthropologist considers all cultures to be equally legitimate expressions of human existence, to be studied from a purely neutral perspective
• Cultural relativism is closely related to ethical relativism, which views truth as variable and not absolute
• What constitutes right and wrong is determined solely by the individual or by society.
• Since truth is not objective, there can be no objective standard which applies to all cultures
• No one can say if someone else is right or wrong; it is a matter of personal opinion, and no society can pass judgment on another society
• Cultural relativism sees nothing inherently wrong (and nothing inherently good) with any cultural expression
• So, the ancient Mayan practices of self-mutilation and human sacrifice are neither good nor bad; they are simply cultural distinctive, akin to the American custom of shooting fireworks on the Fourth of July
• Human sacrifice and fireworks—both are simply different products of separate socialization.

Question 2

CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Answer 2

• Has many elements
• Understand concept of culture by understanding elements
• Understanding elements is influenced by what we understand by the concept

Question 3

WORKING DEFINITION OF CULTURE

Answer 3

• The whole complex of learned behaviour, the traditions and techniques and the material possessions, the language and other symbolism of some body of people
• Influences how people see the world and how they behave in it

Question 4

DIFFICULTIES TO UNDERSTANDING CULTURE

Answer 4

• We are already immersed in it
• Take for granted many things that an OUTSIDER will find strange
• Culture exists BEFORE we become apart of it
• LEARNED our own culture from parents, friends, relatives and members of our community
• We have INTERNALISED it
• This influences the way we THINK and the WAY we UNDERSTAND
• Preconditioned to see in a certain way

Question 5

CULTURE

Answer 5

• Comprises of patterns of behaviour and thinking
• Gives particle meaning to particular SYMBOLS
• Meaning given to symbols is based on random choice, subject to individual will and not NATURAL LAWS

Question 6

ANTHROPOLOGY DEFINITION OF CULTURE

Answer 6

• Study of human cultures, focused on customs and social structure
• Culture; seen as consisting of four elements that are passed between the generations in any single society
• 1. VALUES (ideas about what is important in life)
• 2. NORMS (expectations of how people will behave)
• 3. INSTITUTIONS (structures within a society that transmit values and norms)
• 4. ARTEFACTS (MATERIAL OBJECTS derived from a culture’s values and norms)

Question 7

SOCIOLOGY DEFINTION OF CULTURE

Answer 7

• That part of the total repertoire of human actions … which is socially as opposed to genetically transmitted
• Tie the idea of culture to the idea of a society or of a ‘people’

Question 8

STUDYING CULTURE – INSIDE

Answer 8

• To view from within, we must be apart of the CULTURE (to some degree)
• Conducted by members of a culture or by people who have spent a long time trying to understand the culture

Question 9

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Answer 9

• Food
• Language
• Music
• Gestures
• Behaviour
• People
• Architecture
• Art
• Entertainment
• Clothing

Question 10

SUBCULTURES

Answer 10

• Within cultures
• E.g. Surfers (shared understanding of certain symbols, certain ways in which they demonstrate that they belong to group or subcultures)

Question 11

HOW WE SEE – STUDYING CULTURE

Answer 11

• How we see a culture will often spend on our own background and the influences we have been exposed to
• The cultures we are raised in influence our perceptions of events
• IDEOLOGY; one of the ways to understand ideology is through the lens in which we view the world, lens distorts the way we SEEE and UNDERSTAND events around us
• If we aren’t aware of the lens, we will make judgments about actions (right/wrong) without FULLY understanding them
• POLITICS; is a way to describe relationships within a culture; common element in all political relationships is POWER
• POWER; there is a complex relationship of power involving individuals, power exercised by agents (parent-child, government-governed, teacher-student), understand culture understand the power relationships that operate within a culture and effect work to help define culture, has capacity to foster or suppress change
• Cultural Hegemony; that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class, that everyday practices and shared believes provide the foundation for complex systems for domination
• EMERGENCE; look back at where we first see signs of change (art galleries, museums, journals), observe who is exercising power (authorities), ask how the culture is determining what should and what shouldn’t be included in the dominant way of thinking … understanding CULTURAL CHANGES EMERGING
• ETHICS AND CULTURE; interpret actions and symbols (action, intention, consequences, nature)

Question 12

A PRIORI OBLIGATION

Answer 12

• Moral agent is able to make choices about the actions they take and make conscious decisions about those actions while recognizing that they have the capacity to affect others
• Moral patient has interests that can be harmed or benefitted (humans, animals, living things)
• ‘Prior Obligation’; moral agents have an obligation to a set of moral patients before hanging is exercise e.g. How can I help you?

Question 13

HOW WE SAY – STUDYING CULTURE

Answer 13

• DESCRIBING;
• AS A TEXT; we learn to read a culture, also live in a culture and culture is written into us (INTERNALISATION)
• Cultures are modified, accommodate to a variety of conflictions, in CULTURE we each have our own position from which we read e.g. how we make meaning and interpret the events within a culture
• KNOWLEDGE; positivists think that all is needed to explain cultural difference is to find a neutral observation language and describe what is happening within a culture in terms of OBJECTIVE TRUTH; Hermeneutics deals with interpretation of this
• Those studying culture acknowledge that there is a significant difference between studying science and studying culture – PEOPLE HAVE VOICES, they are influenced by the fact they are members and knowledge itself raises moral issues – because decisions are made on the basis of SOCIALLY-GROUNDED knowledge have the ability to affect people
• Cultural values had fused with scientific ones, making objectivity universally acceptable

Question 14

HOW WE DO – STUDYING CULTURE

Answer 14

• ECONOMY; every society has an economic base because every society has to have the means of production for the basic necessities of lie
• AGENCY AND APPROPRIATED CULTURE; we take accepted habits, behaviours, and ways of understanding (cultural norms) from groups we associate with and make them our own which is unconscious, culture is appropriated by agents (people who can do, make decisions and act on them), also change culture
• RESISTANCE; resistance to a dominant culture, contributing to significant change – women movement