Week 2 · Chapter

Chapter 2 — The Culture Concept

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~25–35 minutes · Objective 1 (explain the anthropological perspective (holism, comparison, and fieldwork), the four subfields and applied anthropology, and the culture concept, distinguishing culture from society, enculturation from acculturation, and ethnocentrism from cultural relativism as a method and from moral relativism) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

People use the word "culture" every day, but anthropology gives it a precise meaning. This week you will meet culture (a group's whole learned way of life, not only its arts) through the field's first definition, and the five features that every culture shares. You will learn to spot norms (shared expectations for how to behave), values (shared ideas about what matters), and symbols (things that stand for something else by agreement), starting at a family dinner and ending at the course's market. You will also meet cultural relativism (a method for describing a practice before you judge it) and see where its limits lie. By the end, your own habits will start to look like a culture too.

Why you already care about this

Picture a graduation. Hundreds of people in matching caps and gowns sit in rows. A name is read, one person crosses a stage, and a family in the stands cheers far louder than the rest. Then a tassel moves from one side of a cap to the other, and everyone knows that something changed.

Nobody hands the families a manual that explains any of this. They already know when to clap, what the gown means, and why the tassel matters. They learned it, a little at a time, the way you learned when to stand, when to be quiet, and what a handshake means. In 1871 the scholar Tylor wrote the first anthropological definition of the thing all those people share. Its name is culture, and this chapter is about what that word means when an anthropologist uses it.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

quote Tylor's definition of culture and explain why culture is more than the arts;
describe culture as learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, and changing;
tell culture from society, and enculturation from acculturation;
find a norm, a value, and a symbol in an everyday setting, including the running fieldwork site;
tell ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and moral relativism apart, and say where the method stops;
use Miner's Nacirema to look at your own habits as if they were strange.

Carry this line with you: describe first; judge later — and never alone.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 defined anthropology, named its four subfields, and gave you the anthropological perspective: holism, comparison, and fieldwork.
This week: what culture is, its five characteristics, norms, values, and symbols, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and Miner's Nacirema.
How they connect: holism and comparison need something to look at whole and to compare; this week names that something, culture, and gives you a method for comparing without ranking.
Where we're going next: Week 3, Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methods, shows how an anthropologist learns a culture and records it fairly.

Week 1 gave you three habits. Holism means looking at how the parts of a way of life fit together. Comparison means setting a practice beside the same kind of practice somewhere else, so that what seems natural shows up as one arrangement among several. Fieldwork means long-term research among the people being studied. This week uses all three. You will also return to the running fieldwork site, the illustrative market with 24 stalls, open one morning a week, from 8:00 a.m. to noon, and look closely at its opening bell.

1. Define culture: Tylor's complex whole

Ask ten friends what "culture" means, and you may hear about opera, museums, or a city's food scene. In everyday talk the word often points at the arts, or at "high culture", the kind you dress up for. Anthropology uses the word far more widely.

The field's first definition came from Tylor (1871), Primitive Culture. One honesty note: the title uses the period's wording, which this course never uses in its own voice. The definition inside it is still the place to start. Here it is, quoted exactly:

"Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, 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."

Three phrases do the heavy lifting. "That complex whole" means culture is a whole way of life, with parts that fit together, which is holism again. "Acquired" means people learn it; nobody is born knowing it. "As a member of society" means people learn it from the people around them. One word needs a note: "man" is the period's usage for all people.

Here is the course's own definition. Culture is the whole learned, shared way of life of a group, including its knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs, and habits, acquired as a member of society rather than inherited; not the arts alone. The course calls Tylor's wording Tylor's definition of culture. It is the first anthropological definition of culture, from Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871), which calls culture "that complex whole" that people acquire as members of society.

Worked example — counting Tylor's list. Read the definition slowly and count what it names before the open-ended phrase "any other capabilities and habits".

The named items are knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, and custom. That is 6 items.
Only 1 of them is art, the part of life the everyday word "culture" usually means.
Subtract: 6 − 1 = 5. So 5 of the 6 named items are not the arts at all.
Notice the open end. "Any other capabilities and habits" means the list keeps going: how to greet, how to queue, how to eat.

In words: Tylor's definition makes art one part of culture among many, so culture is the whole learned way of life, not the arts alone.

Misconception check. Students often think culture means the arts or "high culture", the things in a museum or a concert hall. That is tempting, because that is how the word is used in everyday talk. But Tylor's list names art as only one item out of 6, beside knowledge, belief, morals, law, and custom. A family's way of passing dishes at dinner is as much culture as a symphony.

2. Describe culture: five characteristics, and what culture is not

Watch two people meet. In one setting they shake hands, in another they bow, and between two friends on a team it might be a fist bump. None of these greetings is built into the body. Each person learned which one fits which moment, and they learned it from the people around them.

The course describes every culture with the same five features. The characteristics of culture are the five features this course uses to describe any culture: it is learned, shared but never uniform, symbolic, integrated, and changing.

Learned. Culture is learned, not inherited biologically. A child adopted at birth into a family on another continent grows up speaking that family's language and using that family's greetings.
Shared, but never uniform. A culture is shared by a group, yet people inside it disagree. Every culture holds many voices.
Symbolic. Meaning is attached by convention. A tassel moved from one side to the other means "graduated" only because people agree it does.
Integrated. A change in one part ripples through others. If a workplace moves its meetings online, it changes how people dress, when they chat, and who gets heard.
Changing. Every culture changes. Graduation customs, greetings, and words all shift over time; even Tylor's word "man" now reads as the period's usage.

Two pairs of terms keep this tidy. Society is the group of people who live a way of life together and interact; culture is the learned way of life, and society is the people who share it. You can leave a society by moving away, yet carry much of its culture with you.

The second pair is about how culture is learned. Enculturation is the way a person learns their own culture growing up, mostly without noticing it. Acculturation is the cultural change that follows sustained contact between groups, as each takes up and reworks some of the other's ways. You will meet acculturation again in Week 15, when the course looks at global connections.

Worked example — sorting a moment at a graduation. Take the graduation from the opening (an illustrative scene) and match each detail to a characteristic.

A child in the stands copies the adults and claps at each name. That is learned: enculturation in action.
Most families clap politely, but one family cheers with an air horn, and a few people frown. That is shared, but not uniform: one ceremony, more than one view of how to celebrate.
The tassel moves from one side of the cap to the other. That is symbolic: the meaning comes from agreement, not from the tassel.
Moving the ceremony indoors because of rain changes the seating, the timing, and the photos. That is integrated: one change ripples through the rest.

In words: one ceremony shows culture as learned, shared but not uniform, symbolic, and integrated, and each detail is something people learned rather than were born with.

Misconception check. Students often think culture is inherited, "in the blood", or that it never changes. That is tempting, because habits we learned early feel natural, and old customs feel permanent. But culture is acquired as a member of society, which is why an adopted child learns the culture of the family that raises them. And every culture changes; the word "man" in Tylor's definition is one small sign of how much.

3. Read norms, values, and symbols: from the dinner table to the market bell

Think of a family that keeps phones off the table at dinner. Nobody may have written the rule down, yet a teenager who checks a message gets a look from across the table. The rule tells you how to behave, and the look tells you the rule is real.

Three terms name the parts of that moment. A norm is a shared expectation for how people should behave in a setting, such as waiting for a signal before starting. A value is a shared idea about what is good, right, or important, which norms often protect. A symbol is something that stands for something else by convention, such as a flag, a gesture, a word, or a bell, with no natural link between the thing and its meaning.

At the dinner table, "no phones" is the norm. One value it may protect is time spent paying attention to each other. A symbol might be the empty basket by the door where the phones go. Now take the same three tools to the course's market.

Worked example — the market's opening bell. Use the running fieldwork site (Dataset A, illustrative, constructed for this course, not a real place): 24 stalls, open one morning a week, from 8:00 a.m. to noon.

The setting. The market manager rings a hand bell at 8:00 a.m. Vendors call out "Bell's rung!", and the first sales begin within a minute.
The symbol. The bell stands for "selling may begin". Nothing about the sound of a bell means selling, so the meaning is learned and shared, which makes it a symbol.
The norm. The vendors share an expectation that no one sells before the bell rings. On an illustrative visit, at 7:40 a.m., vendors unloaded crates and no money changed hands, though two shoppers were already waiting. From 7:40 to 8:00 is 60 − 40 = 20 minutes of waiting with buyers already present. People kept the rule even when a sale was standing in front of them.
A possible value. One value the norm may protect is a fair start for every stall. A caveat: that is a reading to test with the vendors, not a fact about them.
Shared, not uniform. Two vendors disagreed about whether bagging a regular's order before the bell "counts" as selling early. One said a regular is the exception; the other said the rule is the rule.

In words: the market's bell is a learned symbol, the wait for it is a shared norm, and the two vendors' argument shows that a shared culture still holds more than one voice.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a rule in your own home, team, or workplace that nobody wrote down. What is the norm, and what value might it protect?
(b) Think of a symbol you use every week, such as a gesture, an object, or a word. What does it stand for, and how did you learn what it means?

Misconception check. Students often think that if a group shares a culture, everyone in it thinks the same way. That is tempting, because outsiders usually see the shared part first, such as all 24 stalls waiting for the same bell. But the two vendors who disagreed about bagging a regular's order show that people inside a culture argue about its rules. A culture is shared, never uniform.

4. Judge later: ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and where the method stops

Imagine visiting a friend's family for the first time. They take their shoes off at the door, eat dinner late, and talk loudly over each other. Your first thought might be "that's weird" or "that's rude". That reaction is not a flaw in you. It is where everyone starts.

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture by the standards of one's own; everyone begins from it by default. It is not something only other people have. Your sense of what counts as "on time", "polite", or "clean" came from your own enculturation, so it feels like common sense rather than a choice.

Anthropology's answer is a method. Cultural relativism is a method: describing and understanding a practice in the terms of the culture it belongs to before judging it; it does not mean that anything goes. Benedict (1934), Patterns of Culture, is often named as an early, influential statement of this relativist approach, comparing how whole cultures are patterned.

Keep a second idea apart from the method. Moral relativism is the philosophical claim that no moral judgment holds across cultures; it is a different idea from cultural relativism as a method. Cultural relativism tells you what to do first, which is describe. It does not tell you that every judgment is off limits.

The discipline's own positions show where the method stops. The American Anthropological Association, the field's professional body, takes public positions, for example on race and on research ethics. A field that takes positions is not saying "anything goes". It is saying: understand first, then judge with care.

Worked example — describing before judging at the market. Take the bell rule from Section 3.

An ethnocentric first reaction. A shopper used to supermarkets says, "Making buyers wait for a bell is slow and old-fashioned."
Describe it in the market's own terms. For the vendors, the bell marks the line between setting up and selling, and all 24 stalls keep it.
Ask what it does for the people involved. It may give every stall the same start, which would connect the norm to a value.
Then judge, with the description in hand. A shopper may still prefer an earlier start, but now the judgment is about a real rule with a real purpose, not about strangeness.

In words: cultural relativism puts description before judgment; it does not forbid judgment, and it never means that anything goes.

Misconception check. Students often think cultural relativism means "anything goes": that anthropologists must accept every practice as fine. That is tempting, because the method asks you to hold back your first judgment. But holding back is not the same as giving up judgment. The American Anthropological Association takes public positions on race and on research ethics, and moral relativism is a separate philosophical claim, not the method itself.

5. Make the familiar strange: Miner's Nacirema

Try describing brushing your teeth to someone who has never seen it. Twice a day, you put a small brush with stiff bristles and a flavored paste into your mouth and move it in set patterns. Said that way, an ordinary habit starts to sound like a ritual.

That is the move in Miner (1956), "Body Ritual among the Nacirema", American Anthropologist. Miner described ordinary American body care as if it were the ritual of an unfamiliar people. Nacirema is the invented people of Miner's 1956 article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"; the name is "American" spelled backward, and the Nacirema are not a real people.

Why would a scholar write that way? Ethnocentrism makes other people's habits look strange and our own look natural. Miner flipped it. By describing the familiar in the voice usually used for faraway people, he showed readers how strange their own routines could sound, and how unfair a stranger's description can be.

Worked example — placing Miner after Tylor. Line up the two pinned dates.

Tylor's definition appeared in 1871.
Miner's article appeared in 1956.
Subtract: 1956 − 1871 = 85. Miner's article appeared 85 years after Tylor's definition.

In words: Tylor gave the field a definition of culture wide enough to include every habit, and 85 years later Miner used that wide view to make his readers' own habits look as strange as anyone else's.

Worked example — making one habit strange. Pick a familiar routine, a graduation, and describe it Miner's way (an illustrative exercise). "Once a year, young adults of this people put on identical dark robes and flat square hats. They file past an elder, who hands each one a rolled paper. At that moment, each moves a hanging cord from one side of the hat to the other, and the watching kin cry out." Nothing in that description is false; it only refuses to explain.

In words: making the familiar strange shows that your own habits are culture too, which makes it easier to describe other people's habits fairly.

Misconception check. Students often think the Nacirema are a real people somewhere in the world. That is tempting, because the article is written in the voice of an ethnography. But "Nacirema" is "American" spelled backward, and the article describes ordinary American body care. The article is not really about the Nacirema at all; it is about you.

Key terms

Culture — The whole learned, shared way of life of a group, including its knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs, and habits, acquired as a member of society rather than inherited; not the arts alone. (first used: 1. Define culture: Tylor's complex whole)
Tylor's definition of culture — The first anthropological definition of culture, from Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871), which calls culture "that complex whole" that people acquire as members of society. (first used: 1. Define culture: Tylor's complex whole)
Characteristics of culture — The five features this course uses to describe any culture: it is learned, shared but never uniform, symbolic, integrated, and changing. (first used: 2. Describe culture: five characteristics, and what culture is not)
Society — The group of people who live a way of life together and interact; culture is the learned way of life, and society is the people who share it. (first used: 2. Describe culture: five characteristics, and what culture is not)
Enculturation — The way a person learns their own culture growing up, mostly without noticing it. (first used: 2. Describe culture: five characteristics, and what culture is not)
Acculturation — The cultural change that follows sustained contact between groups, as each takes up and reworks some of the other's ways. (first used: 2. Describe culture: five characteristics, and what culture is not)
Norm — A shared expectation for how people should behave in a setting, such as waiting for a signal before starting. (first used: 3. Read norms, values, and symbols: from the dinner table to the market bell)
Value — A shared idea about what is good, right, or important, which norms often protect. (first used: 3. Read norms, values, and symbols: from the dinner table to the market bell)
Symbol — Something that stands for something else by convention, such as a flag, a gesture, a word, or a bell, with no natural link between the thing and its meaning. (first used: 3. Read norms, values, and symbols: from the dinner table to the market bell)
Ethnocentrism — Judging another culture by the standards of one's own; everyone begins from it by default. (first used: 4. Judge later: ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and where the method stops)
Cultural relativism — A method: describing and understanding a practice in the terms of the culture it belongs to before judging it; it does not mean that anything goes. (first used: 4. Judge later: ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and where the method stops)
Moral relativism — The philosophical claim that no moral judgment holds across cultures; it is a different idea from cultural relativism as a method. (first used: 4. Judge later: ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and where the method stops)
Nacirema — The invented people of Miner's 1956 article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"; the name is "American" spelled backward, and the Nacirema are not a real people. (first used: 5. Make the familiar strange: Miner's Nacirema)

Summary

Culture is a whole learned way of life, not the arts alone; Tylor's 1871 list names art as one item of 6.
Culture is learned, shared but never uniform, symbolic, integrated, and changing.
Culture is the way of life; society is the people who share it.
Enculturation is learning your own culture; acculturation is change after sustained contact.
A norm is an expectation, a value is what matters, and a symbol stands for something by agreement.
At the market, the bell is a symbol, waiting for it is a norm, and two vendors disagree about it.
Ethnocentrism is everyone's default; cultural relativism is a method, not "anything goes".
Miner's Nacirema, 85 years after Tylor, makes the familiar strange; they are not a real people.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

At a busy coffee shop (an illustrative example), regulars wait on the right side of the counter after ordering. Staff tap a bell when a drink is ready, and they believe every customer deserves the same wait. Name the norm, the value, and the symbol.
A classmate says, "My culture is in my DNA. I was born knowing how to act at a family wedding." Use two of the five characteristics of culture to answer the classmate.
A family moves to a new country. Their youngest child picks up the local language at school, and over several years the whole family starts cooking some local dishes while the neighbors learn two of the family's recipes. Which of these is enculturation, and which is acculturation?
A traveler writes, "People in that town eat dinner very late, which is a lazy habit. But anthropologists say every culture is valid, so I suppose anything goes." Find the ethnocentric judgment and the misreading of cultural relativism, and rewrite the first sentence the way the method asks.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The norm is the shared expectation that regulars wait on the right side of the counter after ordering, because it tells people how to behave there. The value is the idea that every customer deserves the same wait, because it is a shared idea about what is fair. The symbol is the tap of the bell, because a sound stands for "your drink is ready" only by agreement. Notice that the value is the one you cannot see; you learn it by asking the staff.
Culture is learned, not inherited biologically: the classmate learned how to act at a family wedding by watching and joining in, through enculturation. Culture is also changing: wedding customs shift over time, which would not happen if they were fixed in the body. A child raised by a different family would have learned different wedding customs.
The youngest child learning the local language at school, as a child growing up there, is closest to enculturation, learning a culture while growing up. The family and the neighbors each taking up some of the other's dishes after years of contact is acculturation, cultural change that follows sustained contact between groups. Acculturation runs both ways here, which is common.
"A lazy habit" is the ethnocentric judgment: it measures another town's dinner time by the traveler's own standard. "Anything goes" misreads cultural relativism, which is a method for describing first, not a claim that no judgment is possible; that broader claim is moral relativism, a separate idea. A rewrite: "People in that town eat dinner late; I would need to learn how their workday, weather, and family routines fit with that schedule before judging it."

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methods shows the method anthropologists use to learn a culture from the inside.

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