SKKN

CULTURE
What is culture?
What are the components of culture?
What are the characteristics of culture?
WHAT IS CULTURE?
English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871.  Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." 
The values, traditions, norms, customs, arts, history, folklore, and institutions that a group of people, who are unified by race, ethnicity, language, nationality, or religion, share.
Culture includes arts, beliefs, customs, inventions, language, technology and traditions.
Culture is the total set of beliefs, attitudes, customs, behaviors, social habits, etc of the members of a particular society.
What are the components of culture ?




What are the characteristics of culture?
Characteristic 01: Culture Is An Adaptive Mechanism
The first humans evolved in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa about 2.5 million years ago.  Since then, we have successfully occupied all of the major geographic regions of the world, but our bodies have remained essentially those of warm climate animals.  We cannot survive outside of the warmer regions of our planet without our cultural knowledge and technology.  What made it possible for our ancestors to begin living in temperate and ultimately subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere after half a million years ago was the invention of efficient hunting skills, fire use, and, ultimately, clothing, warm housing, agriculture, and commerce.  Culture has been a highly successful adaptive mechanism for our species.  It has given us a major selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms.
Characteristic 02: Culture is learned
Human infants come into the world with basic drives such as hunger and thirst, but they do not possess instinctive patterns of behavior to satisfy them.  Likewise, they are without any cultural knowledge.  However, they are genetically predisposed to rapidly learn language and other cultural traits.  New born humans are amazing learning machines.  Any normal baby can be placed into any family on earth and grow up to learn their culture and accept it as his or her own.  Since culture is non-instinctive, we are not genetically programmed to learn a particular one. 
Every human generation potentially can discover new things and invent better technologies.  The new cultural skills and knowledge are added onto what was learned in previous generations.  As a result, culture is cumulative.  Due to this cumulative effect, most high school students today are now familiar with mathematical insights and solutions that ancient Greeks such as Archimedes and Pythagoras struggled their lives to discover.
Characteristic 03: Cultures Change
All cultural knowledge does not perpetually accumulate.  At the same time that new cultural traits are added, some old ones are lost because they are no longer useful.  For example, most city dwellers today do not have or need the skills required for survival in a wilderness.  Most would very likely starve to death because they do not know how to acquire wild foods and survive the extremes of weather outdoors
The regular addition and subtraction of cultural traits results in culture change.  All cultures change over time--none is static.  However, the rate of change and the aspects of culture that change varies from society to society.  For instance, people in Germany today generally seem eager to adopt new words from other languages, especially from American English, while many French people are resistant to it because of the threat of "corrupting" their own language. 
Characteristic 04: People Usually are not Aware of Their Culture
We are unaware of our culture because we are so close to it and know it so well.  For most people, it is as if their learned behavior was biologically inherited.  It is usually only when they come into contact with people from another culture that they become aware that their patterns of behavior are not universal.
The common response in all societies to other cultures is to judge them in terms of the values and customs of their own familiar culture.  This is ethnocentrism .  Being fond of your own way of life and condescending or even hostile toward other cultures is normal for all people.  Alien culture traits are often viewed as being not just different but inferior, less sensible, and even "unnatural."
Characteristic 05: We Do Not Know All of Our Own Culture
No one knows everything about his or her own culture.  In all societies, there are bodies of specialized cultural knowledge that are gender specific--they are known to men but not women or vice versa.  In many societies there are also bodies of knowledge that are limited largely to particular social classes, occupations, religious groups, or other special purpose associations.
Gender based skills, knowledge, and perceptions largely stem from the fact that boys and girls to some extent are treated differently from each other in all societies.  While there may be considerable overlap in what they are taught, there are some things that are gender specific.
There are many professions in large-scale societies.  Each one usually has its own terminology and specialized tools.  Lawyers, medical doctors, soldiers, and other specialists use numerous technical terms in their professions.
Characteristic 06: Culture Gives Us a Range of Permissible Behavior Patterns
Cultures commonly allow a range of ways in which men can be men and women can be women.  Culture also tells us how different activities should be conducted, such as how one should act as a husband, wife, parent, child, etc.  These rules of permissible behavior are usually flexible to a degree--there are some alternatives rather than hard rules.
The range of permissible ways of dressing and acting as a man or woman are often very limited in strictly fundamental Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu societies
Characteristic 07: Cultures No Longer Exist in Isolation
It is highly unlikely that there are any societies still existing in total isolation from the outside world.  Even small, out of the way tribal societies are now being integrated to some extent into the global economy.  That was not the case a few short generations ago.  Some of the societies in the Highlands of New Guinea were unaware of anyone beyond their homeland until the arrival of European Australian miners in the 1930`s. 
Backdrops:
- These are full sized backdrops, just scale them up!
- Can be Copy-Pasted out of Templates for use anywhere!
Title Backdrop
Slide Backdrop
Print Backdrop
www.animationfactory.com