philarts quiz 1.docx

Understanding the value of arts & culture Culture and art: a brief intellectual history - We can\'t just ask about culture and their significance in a general aspect because we have very different traditions of thought. - *Defining culture and significance is difficult due to the...

Understanding the value of arts & culture Culture and art: a brief intellectual history - We can\'t just ask about culture and their significance in a general aspect because we have very different traditions of thought. - *Defining culture and significance is difficult due to the different traditions  of thought.* **Italian tradition** - Puts the value of culture in a framework about the value of humanistic education **German tradition** - Preoccupied with the relationship between cultural value, *Bildung,* and the nation associated with Herder - Bildung - Bildung is the combination of the education and knowledge necessary to thrive in your society, and the moral and emotional maturity to both be a team player and have personal autonomy. Bildung is also knowing your roots and being able to imagine the future (European Bildung Network). **United Kingdom** - **Arnold/Leavis tradition** - Considered as 'the best and brightest' - Reducing the value of culture to the appreciation of privileged cultural objects - **Tylor, Eliot, Williams** - Culture as a 'way of life' - Produced the tension in anthropologists vs. culturalists - **Anthropologists** - Culture as a particular way of life whether of a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general - **Culturalists** - Culture as the abstract noun which describes the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity **William's latter definition** - Culture is used to refer to artistic activities (music, literature, painting and sculpture, theatre, film and so on)** ** **Institutional Definition** - Include heritage and museums - There is a long-standing debate about whether it\'s possible, practical, or a good idea to clearly define what art is.  - Pre-enlightenment world - Art production was entangled with religious and ritual purposes along with craftsmanship **Instrumentalism** - 2500 years old - The arts have been used as a tool to enforce and express power in social relations. - The first lucid, cogent, and systematic theorisation of instrumental cultural policy can be found in Plato's Republic **Debate over the value and impact of the arts** - Plato  - stressing the negative effects - Corrupting nature of the arts - Destabilizing effects, iconoclasm, the Puritan polemic against theatre - Arts are escapist and distract from more important things - Aristotle defended their beneficial aspects - Potential role of arts to educate and improve mankind **Hedonic vs eudemonic effects of cultural engagement** - Hedonic approach - Concerned with pleasure and the absence of pain - Eudemonic - Reaches beyond what it sees as the momentary and one-dimensional and looks at the relationship between cultural engagement and a sense of purposefulness, meaningfulness and intrinsic goals. Invitation to anthropology \[*Lassiter*\] - Human biology and culture became the primary concern of modern anthropology in the years following WW2 **Anthropology** - Discipline concerned with understanding human beings through a careful and comparative study of **biological** differences and similarities as well as **cultural** similarities and differences. **Modern anthropology** - Develop into four main subdisciplines 1. Biological anthropology (human biology) 2. Archaeology (human technology/material culture) 3. Linguistic anthropology (language) 4. Cultural anthropology (culture) From Biology to Culture to Application: On the Subfields of Anthropology **Physical or Biological Anthropology** - Concerned with human biology - Conceptualization by biological anthropologists - Social problem of race to the actual biological complexity of populations - Disease to health - Heredity to genetics - Bone structure to cell structure **Biological change or evolution** - a unifying concept in biological anthropology - Biological anthropologists seek to understand biological changes over the long and short terms - Take up as subjects the evolution - They seek to understand human biological variation within the larger framework of the biological variation found among animals *We depend on language so we can express ourselves by communication.* - We use it to communicate complex ideas and concepts thus it can be considered as the very heart of culture. - A rich source for expressing the diversity of human experience - *We can have a different understanding of the same words because of the community's diversion.* **Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis** - *Language not only reflects but can also shape how we think and how we act* - Important concept for understanding differences across cultural groups - Historical use and development within particular cultural contexts help linguist anthropologists understand how certain feelings are thought about and acted upon differently **Communication** - Central concept in linguistics because language can mean both spoken and unspoken discourse - *Anthropological terms:* the use of arbitrary symbols to impart meaning. - Means that certain sounds or gestures have no inherent meaning in and of themselves - We assign meaning to them then impart meaning to others - Linguistic anthropologists seek to understand the intricacies of human communication within larger social contexts - From sounds and gestures to the composition of language families - From history of words to their ongoing evolution - From the different ways of men and women communicate to how power structures are transmitted through spoken language **Cultural Anthropology** - Often called **sociocultural anthropology** - Focus on human communication - Culture is a shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior - Lens through which we all view the world - Produces the human differences found in our world - Study culture to understand the powerful role it has in our lives - From gender roles to the cultural construction of race - Music to the social construction of violence - Politics to economics - Law to the concept of freedom The essence of American society compared to French society, the distinct atmosphere of different towns, and the uniqueness of families all stem from culture. Likewise, there are commonalities in culture, such as the shared questions about birth, marriage, inheritance, and death. These aspects form the core of cultural anthropology. **Applied Anthropology** - Application of anthropology to human problems - More of a perspective - An approach that is applied in all areas of anthropology Holism and Comparativism - Two main concepts organize the subfields into a larger whole **Holism** - **Holistic perspective** - A perspective that emphasizes the whole rather than just a part  - Pushes an understanding of the big picture that can often be lost by focusing solely on details - Encourages us to understand humans both biological and cultural beings living in both past and present - Inherent to anthropology - A driving concept behind both the theory and practice of the field - Understanding the connections within everything related to humanity is particularly significant for holism. - Concerned with understanding the human condition in all its complexities - Anthropology is influenced by both the sciences (biology, physics, chemistry) and the humanities (history, literature, music). - Biological and archaeological anthropology often use the scientific method, while linguistic and cultural anthropology lean towards the interpretive method (similar to historical and literary studies). - Anthropologists may identify as scientists, artisans, or a combination of both. - Despite different approaches, most anthropologists recognize they contribute to a broader disciplinary project. **Comparativism** - The search for similarities and differences between and among human beings in all of their biological and cultural complexities. - Define for ourselves how we are similar and different from others - The use of diverse information from all the subfields from many different populations to make generalizations about the complexity of human beings - **In anthropology, comparing is to understand the general trends that make human life what it is, from evolution to language to society.** - The organizing concepts in anthropology are crucial because they serve as tools for critiquing oversimplified ideas about human diversity.  - This critique has been ongoing since the time of Boas and has continued through successive generations of anthropologists.  - Anthropology, its subfields, applied anthropology, holism, and comparativism are fundamental concepts used by anthropologists to develop a more nuanced comprehension of human biology and culture. Defining Culture **Edward Burnett Tylor** - First culture definition - Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. - The differences between humans and societies could be identified by their differences in customs, morals, or beliefs. - He developed his definition of culture to elaborate the stages of social evolution - Helped to hint early on that behavior, or knowledge, or customs, or habits were primarily learned rather than inscribed in our biology. - Emphasizes things and expressions - Identifying the by-products or artifacts of culture, not culture itself - Culture is the meaning behind that which humans produce - The significance that humans give to morals, beliefs, customs or laws is **meaning**. - A flag is not a culture but its negotiated meaning where it is something which people discuss, debate, and argue. - Culture is a complex system of meaning created and maintained by people - Culture is a shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior. Culture as a Shared and Negotiated System of Meaning - A system refers to a group of interacting or interrelated parts that operate in relation to one another - People - Culture as a shared and negotiated system of meaning permeates every aspect of our lives - The goal in the anthropological study of culture is to uncover the shared and negotiated systems of meaning behind something. - Anthropologists try to understand that such a system of meaning exists in conjunction with other systems of meaning. - For these people to interrelate as a meaningful system, there must be a broad base of shared meanings. - Culture is at any point where people can communicate and negotiate these shared meanings. - Diverse people interact with each other on many different levels and contexts, where they communicate and negotiate to varying degrees the experiences and give rise to culture. - Human societies give rise to various *system of meanings* (**culture**) - These various systems of meaning are necessarily limited by **clear boundaries** (*geographical or political borders*). They overlap, intersect with, and compete with one another thus, culture is better understood as a process. - Culture in a family - Different families within a society also have their own systems of meanings that make them unique and different from one another. - **Collective memory** - Particular stories that were told related to a particular experience that we share is a system of meaning that we constructed and reconstructed each time we argue about the details and meaning of a story. - These stories make us who we are - In an anthropological sense, our collective system of meaning is our culture. - Negotiated, debated, and contested system of meaning Culture as Informed by Knowledge - **Knowledge** - the process of learning and discovery - Understanding gained through experience - Grasping something in mind with certainty - Exists in the minds of any people who share and negotiate culture - Used to interpret each family experience and to generate behavior within this context - Used in conjunction with a larger and broader range of sophisticated knowledge to interact in a variety of other meaningful systems besides the culture of our families - Culture is a system of meaning informed by shared knowledge that we use without even thinking about it. - Cultural knowledge is both unconscious and conscious - Implicit and unspoken - People are usually unaware of this knowledge and do not communicate it verbally - *Rule of language* - we don't even think about where *hello* comes from or what it means when answering a phone call - Explicitly on a conscious level - Shared knowledge that people are usually aware of and can talk about - *Cultural traditions or rules* - They represent opposite ends of the same continuum - What is initially taken for granted can shift into conscious awareness and vice versa.  - At one time people were aware of the strangeness of the new telephone word hello and talked to one another about its use. Overtime, it entered into the realm of unconscious knowledge and people use it as though it has always existed. Culture as Learned - Understanding that systems of meaning are informed by knowledge, we must also understand that this knowledge is primarily learned. - To acquire knowledge is to learn something - **We are not born with culture, we learn it**. - Referred to culture, the process of learning necessarily implies that the majority of cultural knowledge is not inherited or inscribed in our biology. - Common human biology can be influenced by cultural knowledge imposed upon it. - Atuan  - We learn to forge our vision of the world around us - **Morality** - what we consider to be right or wrong - We learn what is right and wrong - All this learning must take place within a system of meaning. - **Enculturation** - Process of learning culture from others - Refers to the passing of cultural knowledge to children - A constant and ongoing process - examples: - Both children and adults have learned to use computers and society now takes them so much for granted that we can barely imagine our lives without them - Learning what's cool and what's not - Learning grammar, syntax, and meaning of a new language Culture as Practice - To serve the workings of culture people must put the learned knowledge into practice by interpreting our own and others' experience in everyday social interactions that we use to shape our actions. - So much of our knowledge about the world around us is derived from our experiences that we use to interpret every successive experience - Every human life is composed of experiences -- our encounters with the natural and cultural environments. - Previous experiences help to decide how the new experience will be shaped, interpreted, and understood. - These new experiences are framed not only by our own experiences but also by the experiences of the groups we interact with. - **Interpreting experiences** - Refers to both the way we interpret the experience of self within a particular culture and how we encounter and experience others. - We are viewing cultural practices through the lens of our experiences through our own enculturation into particular groups - We learn and share knowledge that we use to interpret our own experiences as well as the experiences of others. - **Behavior** means to act or conduct oneself in a specified way. - Our knowledge shapes those actions but our systems of meaning become enacted, embodied, and practiced through behavior which we negotiate with others in the context of society.. - We are putting a particular system of meaning into action when we are acting out the knowledge that exists in our mind. - We are enacting systems of meaning which are in our minds into the actions of our very bodies, shaping and reshaping the process from gen to gen. - Behavior implies a far broader range of actions and practices - Makes experience real - Forges culture into the diversity of human activities found in the world - **Spradley and McCurdy** - Culture is the system of knowledge by which people design their own actions and interpret the behaviors of others - Cultural categories are arbitrary. - It is not the action itself that has meaning, it is the context within which that action occurs. - Actions and practices can have different connotations in different social contexts and in different systems of meaning. - Culture does include the things humans produce but these are always in a shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior Studying Culture Lassiter Definition of Culture **Edward Burnett Tylor (1871)** - Knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society - Used synonymously with civilisation - Implications-learned; artifacts - Philippines examples - Roman Catholicism practices (*belief*) - Fiestas of saints - Supernatural beliefs - Anito - Anting-anting - *Learned, the way people interact* - Meaning behind that which humans practice **Lassiter (2014)** - shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior. - A shared and negotiated system and meaning - social groups - sects in religion - Have culture that are not shared with others - practices in festivals - Differences in how they are celebrated - Informed by knowledge - conscious or unconscious - Social media etiquette - Family values - Something that is already a practice in the family that we took up as we grow up - That people learn - enculturation - Gender roles - stereotype - Protocols - Put into practice by interpreting experience and generating behavior - context of actions - Woman with wet hair - Head shake