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Week 2 · Module overview

Week 2 — The Culture Concept

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 2 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A business student puzzling over why a handshake or a bow closes a deal and a future teacher noticing each family's rule about phones at dinner are both reading culture.

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.

  • Already covered: Week 1 defined anthropology and its perspective: holism, comparison, and fieldwork.
  • This week: Tylor's definition, the five characteristics, norms, values, symbols, and cultural relativism.
  • How they connect: this week names what holism and comparison look at.
  • Where we're going next: Week 3, Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methods.

Focus

What exactly is culture, and how do you describe a way of life before you judge it?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] explain culture as a whole learned way of life, not the arts alone
  • [ ] find a norm, a value, and a symbol in an everyday setting
  • [ ] tell ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and moral relativism apart
  • [ ] describe a familiar habit as if it were strange

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 2 (about 30 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Ethnography Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: describe one unwritten rule as a norm before you judge it.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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