Culture, Social life, and Sociocultural systems - Part 4: Characteristics of Culture
Characteristics of Culture
Anthropologists have studied a vast array of sociocultural systems or cultures for more than a hundred years, right up to and including, contemporary times. This has enabled them to develop an understanding of the main features or characteristics all human communities have in common: each community or group's sociocultural system is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, all-encompassing and dynamic.
Let us now discover what each of these cultural features or characteristics entails - by considering how we have experienced, and are experiencing, our own culture.
Culture is learned
Humans have the ability or capacity to learn. We all learn our culture by growing up-in and with it. Anthropologists refer to the process of learning a culture enculturation or sociolisation: this is the way culture is transmitted or carried over from one generation to the next. Importantly, therefore, culture is not biologically inherited.
You might suggest, quite rightly, that most animals seem to display learn't behavior in the sense that they exhibit shared behavior. However, the degree to which such behavior is instinctive or learned varies. Ants, for example, have patterned behavior, division of labour, construction of anthills and food-fetching columns or lines - but they do these things without having been taught, which means they do all this instinctively - and therefore their behavior cannot be considered sociocultural. Vervet monkeys again share certain behaviors which they learn - they all respond to a certain call which means "danger" of some kind (eg prowling leopard). Chimpanzees, on the other hand, fashion a branch into a stick to scratch termites out of a nest - and the young ones learn how to make this "tool" from their parents. This aspect of "culture" is learnt by trial and error or limitation and many primates may be said to possess an elementary culture, the difference with humans being that of degree.
What sets human beings apart, however, is the ability to use symbols. Symbols enabled human beings to communicate in a complex manner by means of language. Symbols or combinations of symbols thus signify or stand for certain things and thus convey meaning.
Like all animals, humans also become thirsty and hungry and thus have to eat and drink. But humans, unlike animals, do not usually just eat or drink whenever the urge to do so arises. Culture, however, prescribes that humans eat at certain times, that they eat certain things, prepared in certain ways - furthermore, culture dictates how food is eaten and even where it is eaten. Food preference varies from community to community (or society). Food is also not eaten by humans to satisfy hunger; it may be used to celebrate rituals or during religious activities or for a "business lunch". On a basis of cultural learning, then, people create, remember and deal with ideas - they understand, apply and live by various systems of symbolic meaning. Put differently, through enculturation - the learning of culture, people acquire socioculturally appropriate ways of satisfying basic biologically and socially determined needs: food, sleep, shelter, companionship, security, sexual gratification and procreation.
We can speak about something being cultural, therefore, if it is learnt behavior, belief, attitudes, values or ideals generally shared by most members of a group.
Culture is shared
If an individual thinks or behaves in a certain way, that thought or action might be personal, an idiosyncratic habit or mannerism - peculiar only to that person. For a thought, action, belief or particular kind of behavior to be regarded as cultural, it must be shared by most of the people in a group. Even if not everybody practices the behavior, it is still considered cultural if most or a significant number of people regard the behavior as appropriate.
Beliefs values, behaviors, memories and expectations which are shared link people together - and they share these because they grew up together and learnt this shared culture by observing, imitating, listening, being taught, talking and interacting with each other in a group context. However, there are different - what we may call "levels" - of sharing cultural characteristics. Thus, we share many values, beliefs, practices or behaviors (and/or other similarities) with:
- Friends or family
- Segments of our population whose ethnic or regional origins, religious affiliations and/or occupations are the same or similar to own (an "ethnic group" or "community")
- or citizens of whatever country you happen to be living in.
- With people beyond your own community, society or country, that is, people who have similar interests or origins.
If there are smaller groups within a community or society with distinguishable practices or patterns of behavior, we might refer to them as a subculture or as having a subculture.
We have referred to different kinds of groupings of people. Although we have normally used the term community, it might be useful to put some other kinds of groupings into perspective as well:
Society: An organised group of interdependent people who generally share a common territory, language and sociocultural system and who act together for their well-being and survival.
Community: The definition of a community is similar to that of a society, except that the concept of a society is a construct of anthropologists and is therefore less "real" than a community. A community is at a lower systematic level than a society, is more localised, is self-perpetuating and has more easily identifiable boundaries (ie it is a "natural" unit). Perhaps it is worth pointing out that a new dimension has come about by way of the development of the internet, Facebook, Steemit, Instagram "chat rooms or dimension groups" etc. These could be regarded as virtual communities - and, in fact, are more important as groupings to some of their avid participants than the participants' own, conventional communities.
Ethnic-group: People who collectively and explicitly identify themselves as a distinct group based on various sociocultural features, such as shared ancestry and common origin, language, customs and beliefs.
A culture: A way of referring to a group, such as a community or society, which shares similar sociocultural characteristics.
A subculture: A distinctive set of standards and behavior patterns by which a group within a larger community or society (or "culture") functions, while still sharing some common practices with those larger groupings.
Finally, we should keep in mind that, although culture may be shared by members of a community, it is not unvarying - in other words, it is not exactly the same for each individual. Each person does not share precisely the same version of their culture. For one, the roles of individuals differ. For example: males and females - gender roles; age - different roles for adults and children; status - leaders and followers, wealthy and poor; environment - rural and urban, etc.
End of Part 4
Thank you for reading.
Images are linked to their sources in their description and references are stated below.
Authors and Text Titles
Nanda & Warms 2004: Cultural Anthropology
Pelto & Pelto 1997: Studying knowledge, culture and behavior in applied medical anthropology
Sir Edward Tylor 1958: Primitive Culture
Eriksen 2004: What is Anthropology
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
