Culture, Social life and Sociocultural systems - Part 1: Introduction
Introduction
- How do humans develop sociocultural systems or culture?
- How do humans meet the challenges of survival?
- How do humans respond to the challenges of adapting to their physical or natural environments?
- How do humans adapt to each other (ie their human environment), for example, in order to live together in smaller or larger groups, and with people in other groupings?
How do humans:
- regulate relationships between kin?
- maintain health and prevent sickness?
- regulate relationships within a community and between communities?
- satisfy the need for creative expression?
- communicate?
- provide for their material needs?
- provide for the need to explain the inexplicable and to relate to supernatural beings?
- provide for a process of learning or acquiring or passing on acquired knowledge and appropriate behavior, that is, culture?
- ensure that they live together in an orderly manner?
These questions are intended to focus our attention on the fact that human adaptation has become mainly cultural and not biological, and that different aspects (parts) of culture, that is, the various sociocultural systems, are more specific responses to the demands of living (and living together) and that they thus fulfil particular functions.
During their evolutionary development, humans, like all animals, have continually faced the challenge of adapting to their environment. By means of natural selection, organisms adapt, biologically, as more favorable anatomical and physiological features develop (ie to cope with the development). For example, body hair protects mammals from the effects of extreme temperatures; other physiological traits (eg fangs and claws) enable animals to protect themselves and, of course, hunt for food.
The term adaptation refers to a gradual process by which organisms (including animals and humans) adjust to the conditions of the locality in which they live.
Human beings, however, have progressively become dependent on cultural, rather than biological, adaption. Because humans have a combination of particular intellectual and physical attributes, abilities and skills they have increasingly adjusted and changed their environment rather than adapted to it.
Human beings do not have enough hair or fur covering their bodies to protect them in cold climates, but they can make coats and blankets (even electric blankets or thermal underwear!) and fires and build shelters or houses to protect themselves from the cold. Humans beings all over the world use a vast array of objects - tools, artefacts and appliances - which they use to shape or manipulate the environment to their benefit. If we consider only the procurement /production and processing of food, imagine a situation where:
- there were no ploughs, tractors and harvesting machinery to produce food
- the San bushmen did not have no bows and arrows or digging sticks to hunt game or dig for roots and bulbs
- kitchens did not have stoves, fridges, ovens, pots or kettles with which to prepare food
- there were no matches or lighters to start a fire
This list is, of course, endless.
By manipulating the environment, human beings have been able to live in different, even extreme environments, from the dry, hot Kalahari Desert to the icy Arctic Regions. The process of doing this what is known as the technology or material culture of a community. Importantly, though, human beings have not only adapted to their environment by means of material objects
- they have also developed sociocultural systems, that is, different ways of organising their lives and themselves to better deal with the environment. The various aspects of systems of culture are manifestations of human beings' creative responses to the challenge of survival, of adapting to the environment and to other people within or beyond their own group.
These creative responses produce culture and, of course, the different aspects and systems of culture (ie the various spheres of human activity). Let us consider a few examples:
- The production, as well as the distribution and consumption of food, takes place in an organised manner. This is how a community's economic system comes into being.
- The human body is exposed to disease and ailments as well as psychological and psychic deviations. In order to prevent disease and restore health, people create a medical system.
- People are not only threatened by diseases but may also be threatened or attacked by other people. This means that all human beings take measures to protect and defend themselves, often in a highly organised manner. This is how a military organisation or system comes into being.
- Human adaptation in order to survive in the natural environment is not an individual effort. People associated with each other in order to reproduce, they marry and start family units and organise themselves in other social units so that they can live together in an orderly manner. This is how kinship system comes into being which I will discuss in much further detail in my next series.
- A political system develops from the appointment or recognition of a leader or an authoritative body which makes the rules and laws and which is accepted and obeyed by the members of the community
- A judicial system comes into being because people need rules and laws if they are to live together in an orderly manner. These rules and laws are enforced by means of courts and other sanctions. The judicial system is headed by recognised leaders or officials (eg judges).
- In order to pass on accumulated knowledge and the rules for correct behaviour to children and young people, every community has an informal or formal education system. All education systems are based on the deep-seated values and norms of the community.
- People not only try to live in harmony with others, but most communities believe in the existence of non-human forces or supernatural beings. These beings and forces are believed to have a very definite influence on the life of the community and the people who make up that community. In order to remain in harmony with these forces and beings, prayers are said and rituals acts are performed. This is how religious systems are created.
- People also have certain emotional experiences that they express by means of sound, color, rhythm and movement. This is the basis of all artistic life - song, literature (poetry and prose), paintings and dance.
Having explained all of this we must also sound a note of caution: the development of culture and its various systems is not as deliberate, mechanical or simplistic a process as it may seem. Instead, it depends on people - people with different personalities and peculiarities. Also, not everything that people do is an endeavour to adapt to a particular environment. For example, people do not just react to an environment as a given; instead, they react to it as they perceive it, and different people perceive and experience the same environment differently. They also react to things other than the physical environment; their own biological natures; their beliefs and attitudes; each other; other people; and changing circumstances and conditions.
In brief, people develop and perpetuate and adapt their sociocultural systems to deal with the demands of living - but some sociocultural practices are, or become, maladaptive and create new problems, there is also the challenge of having to adapt to new demands imposed on a community by the environment.
End of Part 1
Thank you for reading.
Images are linked to their sources in their description and references are stated below.
Authors and Text Titles
Aceves, JB & King 1979: Introduction to Anthropology
WA Haviland 2008: Anthropology: The Human Challenge 12th Edition
C Delaney 2004: Investigating Culture
Beattie, J 1964: Other cultures
