Culture and Civilization: Definitions

Unit 1: Culture and Civilization

• Culture and Civilization is the subject of this unit.
• Patricia Coloma Peñate, PhD is the author of the content.

Unit Content Overview

• Definitions of culture will be explored
• Definitions of civilization will be explored
• Cultural representations will be explored

Introduction to Defining Culture

• Defining culture is not an easy task
• American anthropologists Kroeber & Kluckhohn compiled 164 different definitions of culture
• While there was no agreement among anthropologists regarding the nature of culture in the 1990s

Definitions of Culture

• Culture includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired as a member of society (Tylor, 1975: 21)
• Culture is the study and pursuit of perfection (Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 1869)
• Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another (Hofstede 1994: 5)
• Culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, shared by a group of people, influencing but not determining individual behavior
• Culture includes attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated across generations (Matsumoto 1996:16)
• Historically, culture has been interpreted as an intellectual or artistic product.
• Culture has also been seen as a universal quality intrinsic to mankind
• Culture can also be viewed as specific knowledge acquired through socialization

Artistic Products

• Matthew Arnold promoted an elitist view of culture
• Culture means to pursue total perfection by knowing the best that has been thought and said (Culture and Anarchy (1869) preface.)
• The 'cultural elite' wanted to command cultural deference for social order against Industrial Revolution changes
• Arnold was not interested in popular culture

F.R. Leavis and Queenie Leavis

• The Leavises believed mass civilization and mass culture threaten society with ‘irreparable chaos'
• They stated the schools and universities should implement training in resistance by armed minority
• Ruling class anxieties were high during industrialization, especially related to rise of middle and popular classes
• Spread of 'democratic sentiment' led to reversal of traditions/culture 'by popular vote,' threatening social order

High vs Low Cultures According to the Leavises

• Cultured minorities:*
• Cultivate minds through 'high' arts and provide ways of discriminating between great and inferior forms of culture
• Are involved in consciousness-raising projects
• Provide training to counterbalance industrial machine culture’s effects
• The masses:*
• Enjoy mass culture and have no sense of taste
• Engage in unthinking consumption
• Lost in the cheap sentimental appeals of mass media and are subjected to dehumanizing forces of industry and commerce

High vs Low Cultures According to Adorno

• Marxist critic Theodor Adorno thought low culture would impoverish the lower classes
• Mass culture is a tool to control society and manipulate social consciousness, shaping people's perceptions

Culture as a Universal Quality

• Edward Tylor describes it as the whole complex including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and capabilities acquired by man as a member of society
• Tylor is considered the father of "cultural anthropology"
• Tylor analyzed the relationship between “primitive” and “civilized” societies

Culture via Socialization

• Franz Boas viewed "civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes"
• Boas reacted against Arnold and Tylor, emphasizing cultural relativism
• Cultural relativism: all systems of morality/ethics are equal, one isn't superior, beliefs/values in context of their own culture (Arat 2022,1)
• To Boas, culture is unique to each civilization, and his view was non-ethnocentric against racism

Cultural Evolution

• Edward Tylor believed in unilineal evolution: societies evolving from barbaric forms to civilization, while those who don't change are "stuck"
• Franz Boas saw a multilineal view of evolution with Cultural relativism

Modern Perspectives on Culture

• Anthropologically, culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared, and contested by a group (Guest 2023, 40)
• Thus, culture gets created, invented and contested

Levels of Culture

• Culture analysis involves distinguishing between observable artifacts, values, and basic underlying assumptions
• Observable artifacts:*
• How do people behave?
• Values:*
• Why do people behave in a certain way? Debatable, exposed values.
• Basic underlying assumptions:*
• Why do people really behave in a certain way? Non-debatable, taken-for-granted values.

The Iceberg Model

• Edward T. Hall (1970s) suggested culture is like an iceberg
• 10% of the iceberg is visible, the other 90% is hidden below the surface
• Culture has components facing outward and up, and the majority(about 90%) hidden
• The iceberg analogy illustrates culture's invisibility and intangibility, values and beliefs are deeply set
• Cultural iceberg is limited, and is viewed static, while culture is dynamic/complex
• Culture isn't a 'thing' as the image suggests, and it's used to illustrate a concept

Defining Culture's Limits

• Culture is learned, not inherited
• Culture influences biological processes
• Culture is associated with social groups
• Culture is both individual and a social construct
• Culture is learned through socialization
• Culture is subject to gradual change

Culture is Learned

• Culture derives from one's environment and it is different from nature.
• Human nature is feeling emotion, culture is managing those emotions.
• Personality is mental software unique to a person.

Cultural Influence

• Culture influences biological processes
• How people eat is part of their culture
• A cultural element must be shared by social groups like a nation or generation
• Social class and job category
• Role and region
• Gender
• Nation

Individual and Social Cultures

• Individual differences exist within cultures
• Self-conscience influences acceptance or rejection of culture
• Failing to recognize individual differences leads to stereotypes

Key Terms

• Stereotype:*
• How to categorize and label a person
• Prejudice:*
• How to feel about a person
• Discrimination:*
• How to act towards a person

Race

• A cultural category dividing the human race into supposed subspecies
• Lalueza (2001) argues races are a social invention without biological basis
• There are no objective reasons to divide human beings into any category than species
• Races are empty categories

Gradual Change

• Culture isn't static, it changes gradually
• Most ideas and behavioral patterns originate in another culture through cultural diffusion

Cultural Diffusion

• Ashley Crossman (2019) said cultural diffusion means a spread from society/group to another or a process of change and it is how it is
• Cultural elements are transferred from one culture to another via innovations
• Elements spread by diffusion include ideas, values, concepts, knowledge, practices, behaviors, materials, and symbols

Principles of Cultural Diffusion

• A society borrows elements from another changing/adapting those elements
• Typically, only elements fitting the host culture can be borrowed
• Elements not fitting will be rejected
• Cultural elements will only be accepted if they're useful to the host culture
• Borrowing groups are more likely to borrow more in the future

Definition of Civilization

• Civilization is the action/process of civilizing, a developed advanced state of human society (Oxford English Dictionary)
• Advanced is a high level of cultural and technological development

Etymological Origins

• 'Civilization' comes from the Latin civitas, or "city"
• The term is often linked to urban societies, excluding nomad people
• Settlements not urban or without state-level organization are often discriminated again

Anthropological Origins

• Civilization is opposite to barbarism synonym of culture
• "Chinese civilization" and "Egyptian civilization" are examples
• Arnold equated mass culture to barbarism, high culture to civilization
• During the late 19th/early 20th centuries, Europe believed human communities progress towards civilization

Civilization and Ethnocentrism

• There is a tendency to use the word civilization a society's type and values
• Ethnocentrism is judging by standards of a different culture, which risks promoting certain cultures or races
• White Man's Burden conveys this

Civilization and Racism

• Race divides humans based on inherited physical and behavioral differences
• Late 20th-century studies refuted biogenetically distinct races
• Scholars argue races are cultural interventions imposed on populations

Modern Civilization

• Present society is more individualistic, causing less solidarity, social relations, and happiness
• Adams and Allan (1998) blame the neoliberal capitalist market dynamics
• Consumerism drives people are more independent, causing less dependence in cosmopolitan areas

Cultural Representations: The Swedish Theory of Love

• The Swedish Theory of Love documentary looks into a country portrayed organized with equal opportunities
• Resulting in fewer needs, brings minimal contact between people Half the population lives in single households
• More women are choosing single motherhood through artificial insemination
• Number of people dying alone continually increases
• Sperm banks, deserted neighborhoods, forgotten deaths cast disturbing downside an independent society to depend on others
• One film poses whether being too safe leads to dissatisfaction
• Some Swedes create gatherings for emotions
• Other surgeon learned value of community by moving to Ethiopia
• Zygmunt Bauman explains a trouble-free life may not be happy

Popular Culture

• Popular culture arose in the 19th-century with political/social disruption, and the 20th influence of mass media/capitalism
• Definitions of Popular Culture include:*
• A widely favored product
• Everything not considered High Culture
• Commercial objects for mass consumption
• Folk culture from among the people against the elite
• Negotiated culture partly imposed dominance, partly changes from lower classes
• A neutral product for leisure that people can accept or reject

Global Examples of Pop Culture

• Globalization promotes global pop culture
• Americanization is largest producer of popular culture goods
• Disney is a major example

Low Culture Representation

• e.g. Keeping up with the Kardashians

UK Low Culture

• UK has the "chav" stereotype, characterized with brash behavior, and typically low social class person

Depictions of Mermaid Legends

• Stories are from 1000 BC, exist in cultures, is known for singing enchanting people (especially men) who blame shipwrecks
• A famous story is Hans Christian's The Little Mermaid is macabre
• One version involves killing one or becoming sea foam
• The fairy tales involves love so pure it is spiritual

Depictions of Hercules

• Disney cleaned the darkness of Greek mythology, originally Zeus was involved in adultery and Hera cursed Hercules
• These events caused madness and murdered his wife/children

Depictions of Vampires

• Vampires moved from fear to being a teenage superhero
• In the 21st century, less Dracula sharp nails cover a blood look but more Meyer “", an angelic,"" beautiful appearance
• Vampires seduce with beauty
• Contemporary vampires are now human superhero/protector

Orientalism

• The 1978's Edward Said shared Western society is right type of culture
• Orient exotic mysterious places is determined by the Western's values
• Orient became the cultural Other was inferior(stereotypical 'knowledge').

Aladdin Stereotypes

• Disney was also criticized for perpetuating Orientalist stereotypes in Aladdin
• The film was racist and portrayed the heroes being light-skinned, Arabic leaders were greedy, and street merchants had accents and grotesque features

Mass Manipulation via Pop Culture

• Mass-produced popular culture is associated with urbanization/industrialization creating mass propagandizing, elite may exploit, manipulate, persuade people (Strinati, 1996:4–9)
• Advertising world companies creates consumer generation through entertainment create history of products, the shopping is the synonym for happy life
• Marketing not just promote products/services comes some form of a conviction (Ambrosy, M. & Sokolovská, d.: 2018, 282)

Popular Culture and Mass Media

• Mass media can often influence and impact society
• It all is in a way one can come with illusory
• Agenda gets be implemented by someone
• The goal of mass media show way where surround a certain world or some images
• Manipulated by the certain environment

The Propaganda Model

• The propaganda model is advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
• Propaganda is systemic biased through the mass media
• How economic/social is "manufactured the public" mind via propaganda

Manipulation Strategies

• Media Concentration: media controlled restricts information
• Propaganda and Spin: presenting negative opposing views
• Manufactured Crisis: Government power create fear to follow rules
• Political rhetoric are emotive language for manipulative feelings
• Manipulation frame dominant narrative limits critical thinking
• Diversion techniques shift away focus critical news
• The system educate shape with the generation following interests
• Surveillance: spy on dissents
• Dissidence the censorship intimidate the character