Unit 2

Human Culture and Ties that Connect

2.1. Conceptualizing Culture: What Culture is and What
Culture isn't
 Definition of Culture
 A widely accepted and the more comprehensive
definition of culture was provided by the Br ant.gist
Edward B.Tylor.
 He defined culture as “a complex whole which

includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,

custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society”.
 B. Malinowski has defined culture “as
cumulative creation of man".
- He regarded culture as the handiwork of man
and the medium through which he achieves
his ends.
 Robert Bierstedt says, “Culture is the

complex whole that consists of everything we

think and do and have as members of
society.”
 we may define culture as the common way of life
shared by a group of people.
 It includes all things beyond nature and biology.
 Culture therefore, is moral, intellectual and spiritual
discipline for advancement, in accordance with the
norms and values based on accumulated heritage.
 Culture is a system of learned behaviour shared by and
transmitted among the members of the group.
 Culture is a collective heritage learned by individuals
and passed from one generation to another.
 Characteristic Features of Culture
Culture Is Learned
 Culture is not transmitted genetically rather; it
is acquired through the process of learning or
interacting with one’s environment.
 Human have no instinct, which genetically
programmed to direct to behave in a particular
way.
 This process of acquiring culture after we born
is called enculturation.
 Enculturation..the process by which an
individual learns the rules and values of one’s
culture.
 Culture Is Shared
 For a thing, idea, or behaviour pattern to qualify as being
“cultural” it must have a shared meaning by at least two
people within a society.
 In order for a society to operate effectively, the guidelines
must be shared by its members.
 Culture Is Symbolic:

 Symbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans

and to cultural learning.
 A symbol is something verbal or nonverbal, within a

particular language or culture that comes to stand

for something else.
 There need be no obvious, natural, or necessary

connection between the symbol and what it

symbolizes
 A symbol’s meaning is not always obvious.
 For example, the designs and colors of the flags of

different countries represent symbolic associations

with abstract ideas and concepts.
 Culture Is All-Encompassing
 Culture encompasses all aspects, which affect

people in their everyday lives.

 Culture comprises countless material and

non-material aspects of human lives.

 Culture is the sum total of human creation:

intellectual, technical, artistic, physical, and

moral;
 Culture Is Integrated
 Cultures are not haphazard collections of customs and

beliefs.
 Instead, culture should be thought as of integrated

wholes, the parts of which, to some degree, are

interconnected with one another.
 A culture is a system, change in one aspect will likely

generate changes in other aspects.

 A good way of describing this integrated nature of

culture is by using the analogy between a culture and a

living organism.
 The physical human body comprises a number of

systems, all functioning to maintain the overall health of

the organisms, including among others... respiratory ,
digestive system.....
 :

Culture Can Be Adaptive and Maladaptive

 This means that humans have biological and

cultural ways of adapting to their

environment. However, some groups find it
difficult to adapt to certain culture making it
maladaptive.
 People adapt themselves to the environment

using culture.
 The ability to adapt themselves to practically

any ecological condition, unlike other animals,

makes humans unique.
 Culture Is Dynamic
 There are no cultures that remain completely

static year after year.

 Culture is changing constantly as new ideas

and new techniques are added as time passes

modifying or changing the old ways.
 This is the characteristics of culture that

stems from the culture’s cumulative quality.

 Aspects/Elements of Culture

 Two of the most basic aspects of culture are

material and nonmaterial culture.

Material culture
 consist of man-made objects such as tools,

implements, furniture, automobiles, buildings, dams,

roads, bridges, and in fact, the physical substance
which has been changed and used by man.
 It is concerned with the external, mechanical and

utilitarian objects..
 Non – Material culture
 It is something internal and intrinsically
valuable, reflects the inward nature of man.
 consists of the words the people use or the
language they speak, the beliefs they hold,
values and virtues they cherish, habits they
follow, rituals and practices that they do and
the ceremonies they observe.
 It also includes our customs and tastes,
attitudes and outlook, in brief, our ways of
acting, feeling and thinking.
 Some of the aspects of nonmaterial culture listed
as follows:
 Values: Values are the standards by which

member of a society define what is good or bad,

beautiful or ugly.
 Every society develops both values and

expectations regarding the right way to reflect

them.
 are generalized notions of what is good and bad
 wealth is good and important .
 important because they influence the behaviour

of the members of a society

 Beliefs: are cultural conventions that concern true
or false assumptions, specific descriptions of the
nature of the universe and humanity’s place in it.
 are more specific and, in form at least, have more
content.
 “Education is good” is a fundamental value in
American society, whereas “Grading is the best way
to evaluate students” is a belief that reflects
assumptions about the most appropriate way to
determine educational achievement.
Cont...
 Norms:. are shared rules or guidelines that
define how people “ought” to behave under
certain circumstances.
 Norms are generally connected to the
values, beliefs, and ideologies of a society.
 Norms vary in terms of their importance to a
culture, these are:
A) Folkway: Norms guiding ordinary usages
and conventions of everyday life are known
as folkways.
 Folkways are norms that are not strictly

enforced, such as not leaving your seat for an

elderly people inside a bus/taxi.
Cont...
B) Mores: are much stronger norms than are
folkways.
 norms that are believed to be essential to core

values and we insist on conformity.

 A person who steals, rapes, and kills has

violated some of society’s most important

mores.
 It may take the form of ostracism, vicious

gossip, public ridicule, exile, loss of one’s job,

physical beating, imprisonment, commitment to
a mental asylum, or even execution
 Cultural Unity and Variations:
Universality, Generality and Particularity of Culture
 Universality: are cultural traits that span across all
cultures( found in every culture)
 Most are biologically–
 Long period of infant dependency –
 – Complex brain that enables use of symbols,
languages, and tools
 Social universals – Life in groups
 – Incest taboo –
 Exogamy (marriage outside one’s group)
 Family
 Generality: are cultural traits that occur in
many societies but not all of them.
 Societies can share same beliefs and
customs because of borrowing Domination
(colonial rule) when customs and procedures
are imposed on one culture can also cause
generality Independent innovation of same
cultural trait – Farming Examples: – Nuclear
family Parents and children.
Cont...
 Particularity: Trait of a culture that is not
widespread Cultural borrowing – traits once
limited are more widespread Useful traits
that don’t clash with current culture get
borrowed Examples: – Food dishes
Particularities are becoming rarer in some
ways but also becoming more obvious
Borrowed cultural traits are modified
Marriage, parenthood, death, puberty, birth
all celebrated differently
 Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism and
Human Rights

Ethnocentrism: refers to the tendency to see the behaviours,

beliefs, values, and norms of one's own group as the only
right way of living and to judge others by those standards.
 Being fond of your own way of life and condescending or
even hostile toward other cultures is normal for all people.
Cont....
 Because of ethnocentrism, we often operate on the premise
that our own society’s ways are the correct, normal, better
ways, for acting, thinking, feeling and behaving.
 Our own group is the centre or axis of everything, and we
scale and rate all others with reference to it.
 Ethnocentrism is not characteristic only of complex modern
societies.
 Our ethnocentrism can prevent us from understanding and
appreciating another culture.
 When there is contact with people from other cultures,
ethnocentrism can prevent open communication and result in
misunderstanding and mistrust
cultrualrelativism:
 The concept of cultural relativism states that cultures differ, so
that a cultural trait, act, or idea has no meaning but its
meaning only within its cultural setting.
 Cultural relativism suspends judgment and views about the
behaviour of people from the perspective of their own culture.
 Every society has its own culture, which is more or less unique.
 A culture has to be studied in terms of its own meanings and
values.
 Cultural relativism describes a situation where there is an
attitude of respect for cultural differences rather than
condemning other people's culture as uncivilized or backward.
 Respect for cultural differences involves:
 Appreciating cultural diversity;
 Accepting and respecting other cultures;
 Trying to understand every culture and its

elements in terms of its own context and

logic;
 Knowing that a person's own culture is

only one among many; and

 Recognizing that what is immoral, ethical,

acceptable, etc, in one culture may not be

so in another culture.
 Human rights
 rights based on justice and morality beyond
and superior to particular countries, cultures,
and religions.
 Human rights include the right to speak

freely, to hold religious beliefs without

persecution, and to not be murdered, injured,
or enslaved or imprisoned without charge.
 Such rights are seen as inalienable (nations

cannot abridge or terminate them) and

international (larger than and superior to
individual nations and cultures).
 Culture Change
 When We examine the history of a society, it is obvious that its
culture has changed over time.
 Culture change can occur as a result of the following

Mechanisms:
i. Diffusion:.
 The process by which cultural elements are borrowed from

another society and incorporated into the culture of the recipient

group is called diffusion.
 Diffusion is direct when two cultures trade with, intermarry

among, or wage war on one another.

 Diffusion is forced when one culture subjugates another and

imposes its customs on the dominated group.

 Diffusion is indirect when items or traits move from group A to
group C via group B without any firsthand contact between A and C.
 In today's world, much international diffusion is indirect-culture
spread by the mass media and advanced information technology.

ii. Acculturation:
Is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups have
continuous firsthand contact?
 The cultures of either or both groups may be changed by this contact.
 This usually happens in situations of trade or colonialism.
 In situations of continuous contact, cultures have also exchanged
and blended foods, recipes, music, dances, clothing, tools, and
technologies.
iii. Invention: the process by which
humans innovate, creatively finding
solutions to problems
Faced with comparable problems and
challenges, people in different societies
have innovated and changed in similar
ways, which is one reason cultural
generalities exist.
Cont...
iv. Globalization:..encompasses a series of
processes, including diffusion and acculturation,
working to promote change in a world in which
nations and people are increasingly interlinked
and mutually dependent.
 Promoting such linkages are economic and

political forces, as well as modem systems of

transportation and communication.
 Due to globalization, long-distance

communication is easier, faster, and cheaper

than ever, and extends to remote areas.
 Marriage, Family and Kinship

 marriage a permanent legal union between a man

and a woman.
 It is an important institution without which the

society could never be sustained

 Almost all known societies recognize marriage.
 The ritual of marriage marks a change in status

for a man and a woman and the acceptance by

society of the new family that is formed.
 Rules of Marriage
Societies also have rules that state whom one can and cannot
marry.
Every society has established for itself some type of rules
regulating mating (sexual intercourse).
The most common form of prohibition is mating with certain
type of kin that are defined by the society as being inappropriate
sexual partners. immediate (nuclear) family: mother-sons,
father-daughters, and brother-sisters
 These prohibitions on mating with certain categories of
relatives known as incest taboos.
 One of the most basic and universal rules of
exclusion to marriage is the incest taboo,
 The most common form of incest taboo

across societies is against marriage or sexual

intercourse between fathers and their
children and mothers and their children.
Mate Selection: Whom Should You Marry
 In a society one cannot marry anyone whom he or she

likes. There are certain strict rules and regulations.

A) Exogamy: This is the rule by which a man is not allowed
to marry someone from his own social group.
 In fact, there are some definite reasons for which practice

of exogamy got approval. They are:

 A conception of blood relation prevails among the
members of a group. Therefore, marriage within the
group-members is considered a marriage between a
brother and sister.
 Attraction between a male and female gets lost due to
close relationship in a small group.
B ) Endogamy: A rule individuals to marry
within their own group and forbids them to
marry outside it. E.g Religious groups such
as the Catholics, and Jews have rules of
endogamy,
 most cultures are endogamous units
C) Preferential Cousin Marriage:
cousin..achild ones person uncle/aunt
 is practiced in one form or another in most of the major
regions of the world.
 Kinship systems based on lineages distinguish between

two different types of first cousins, these are:

 Cross Cousins: are children of siblings of the opposite

sex- that is one’s mother’s brothers’ children and one’s

father’s sisters’ children.
 Parallel Cousins: When marriage takes place between

the children of the siblings of the same sex.

 are children of siblings of the same sex, namely the

children of one’s mother’s sister and one’s father

brother.
 ትይዩ የአጎት ልጆች መካከል ያለው ጋብቻ የአባት ወንድም ወይም የእናት
እህት ልጆችን ያቀፈ ነው (ወንድሞች እና እህቶች አንድ አይነት ጾታ
ናቸው)። በአጎት ልጆች መካከል ያለው ጋብቻ የአባት እህት ወይም
የእናት ወንድም ልጆችን ያጠቃልላል (ወንድሞች እና እህቶች የተለያየ
ጾታ ያላቸው ናቸው)
 A cousin marriage is a marriage where the partners are
cousins
 Cousin marriage has often been practised to keep cultural
values intact, preserve family wealth, maintain geographic
proximity, keep tradition, strengthen family ties, and
maintain family structure or a closer relationship between
the wife and her in-laws.
 There are several examples in the Bible of cousins marrying.
 Isaac married Rebekah, his first cousin
 Also, Isaac's son Jacob married Leah and Rachel, both his
cousins (Genesis 28–29).
 Jacob's brother Esau also married his cousin Mahalath,
daughter of Ishmael.
 Found among some Arabic societies in North
Africa, it involves the marriage of a man to his
father’s brother’s daughter.
 Since parallel cousins belong to the same
family, such a practice can serve to prevent the
fragmentation of family property.
 The importance of family ties and the desire to
maintain a close relationship with one's relatives
is an essential reason for marrying cousins.
 For example, if I give my sister to X in
marriage, she will always keep in contact with
my family thereafter; she will come back to
my house.
 In order to keep this relationship with my

family alive, she will also wish to give her

daughter to my own son.
 but if she has a son and no daughter, she will

insist on taking my daughter for her son:

 The danger of marrying outside the family is
that of going into the unknown and losing
some relative:
Cont...
D) The Levirate and Sororate:
 tends to limit individual choice
 are those that require a person to marry the husband or wide

of deceased kin.
 The levirate- is the custom whereby a widow is expected to

marry the brother (or some close male relative) of her dead
husband.
 Usually any children fathered by the woman’s new husband

are considered to belong legally to the dead brother rather

than to the actual genitor.
 Such a custom both serves as a form of social security for

the widow and her children and preserved the rights of her
husband’s family to her sexuality and future children.
 Sororate, which comes into play when a
wife dies, is the practice of a widower’s
marrying the sister (or some close female
relative) of his deceased wife.
 In the event that the deceased spouse has

no sibling, the family of the deceased is

under a general obligation to supply some
equivalent relative as a substitute.
 NUMBER OF SPOUSES
 Societies have rules specifying how many mates a

person may/should have. 

 Monogamy: the marriage of one man to one woman at a

time.
 This is the most common marriage pattern

around the world today.

 Polygamy : marriage of a man or woman with two or

more mates.
 the generic term for marriage to more than

one spouse at the same time.


 Polygamy can be of two types:
 Polygyny: the marriage of a man to two or more women at a
time.
 Polyandy: the marraige of a woman to two or more men at a
time
 Marriage of a man with two or more sisters at a time is
called sororal polygyny.
 When the co-wives are not sisters, the marriage is

termed as nonsororal polygyny.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Polygamy marriage
 Having two/more wives is often seen as a sign
of pristige.
 Having multiple wives means wealth, power, &

status both for the polygnous husband, wives

and children.
 It produces more children, who are considered

valuable for future economic and political

assets.
 Economic advantage: It encourages to work

hard (more cows, goats..) for more wives

 The Drawbacks of Polygyny: Jealousy among

the co-wives who frequently compete for the

husband’s attention.
 Economic Consideration of Marriage
 Most societies view as a binding contract between at
least the husband and wife and, in many cases, between
their respective families as well.
 Most marriages (approximately 75%) are accompanied
by some type of economic transaction, and exchanges
between partners of goods or services and their
families.
 Such a contract includes the transfer of certain rights
between the parties involved: rights of sexual access, legal
rights to children, and rights of the spouses to each other’s
economic goods and services.
 Often the transfer of rights is accompanied by the transfer
of some type of economic consideration.
 These transactions, which may take place either before or
after the marriage can be divided into three categories:
1. Bride Price
2. Bride Service
3. Dowry
1.Bride Price /Bride wealth/
 is the compensation given upon marriage by the

family of the groom to the family of the bride.

 Payment of the bride price can be in the form of

money, livestock, or even food.

 bride price has been seen:-

 As security or insurance for the good treatment of

the wife:
 As mechanism to stabilize marriage by reducing the

possibility of divorce
 As a form of compensation to the bride’s lineage for

the loss of her economic potential and childbearing

capacity and
 As a symbol of the union between two large groups

of kin
Bride Service:
 When the groom works for his wife’s family.

 It may be recalled that in the Old Testament, Jacob laboured for 7

years in order to marry Leah, and then another seven years to marry
Rachel; Leah’s younger sister, thus performed 14 years of bride
service for his father-in-law.
Dowry: involves a transfer of goods or money in the opposite
direction, from the bride's family to the groom’s family.
 Occurring in about 8% of societies with economic transactions at

marriage, the dowry normally includes household goods such as

furniture, cooking utensils, and perhaps even a house. Dowries are
still practiced in parts of Eastern Europe, southern Italy, France, and
India (Ember et al., 2006).
 Post-Marital Residence
Once a person is married, the couple must live
somewhere.
Post-marital residence rule: Where the newly

married couple lives after the marriage ritual is

governed by cultural rules
 Patrilocal Residence: the married couple lives

with or near the relatives of the husband’s father.

 If the couple lives with the husband’s family,
 Matrilocal Residence: the married couple lives

with or near the relatives of the wife.

 Avunculocal Residence: The married couple lives

with or near the husband’s mother’s brother.


 Ambilocal/Bilocal Residence: The married
couple has a choice of living with relatives of
the wife or relatives of the husband
 Neolocal Residence: The Married couple

forms an independent place of residence

away from the relatives of either spouse.
 FAMILY
 Family is the basis of human society.
 It is the most important primary group in society.
 The family, as an institution, is universal.
 It is the most permanent and most pervasive of all social institutions.
 Cultural anthropologists have identified two fundamentally different types
of family structure-
 nuclear family and
 extended family.
1. The Nuclear Family: Consisting of husband and wife and their children,
 is a two-generation family formed around the conjugal or marital union.

 Even though the unclear family to some degree is part of a larger family

structure, it remains relatively autonomous and independent unity..

The Extended Family
 Extended families consist of two or more
families that are linked by blood ties.
 Most commonly, this takes the form of a

married couple living with one or more of

their married children in a single household
or homestead and under the authority of a
family head.
 In the case of a patrilineal extended family,
the young couple takes up residence in the
homestead of the husband’s father, and the
husband continues to work for his father,
who also runs the household.
 Moreover, most of the personal property in

the household is not owned by the

newlyweds, but is controlled by the
husbands’ father.
 Functions Marriage and Family
1. Biological Function:
 The institution of marriage and family serves biological (sexual and
reproductive) function.
 The institution of marriage regulates and socially validates long term,
sexual relations between males and females.
 Thus, husband wife relationship come into existence and become a
socially approved means to control sexual relation and a socially
approved basis of the family.
 Sexual cohabitation between spouses automatically leads to the birth of
off-springs.
 The task of perpetuating the population of a society is an important
function of a family.
 Society reproduces itself through family.
2. Economic Function
 brings economic co-operation between men and

women and ensure survival of individuals in a

society.
 With the birth of off-springs the division of labor

based on sex and generation come into play.

 In small scale societies family is a self-contained

economic unit of production, consumption and

distribution.
3. Social Function: Marriage is based on the desire to
perpetuate one’s family line.
 In marriage one adds, not only a spouse but most of

the spouse’s relatives to one’s own group of kin.

 This means the institution of marriage brings with it the

creation and perpetuation of the family, the form of

person to person relations and linking once kin group
to another kin group
4. Educational and Socialization Function:
 The burden of socialization (via processes of
enculturation and education) of new born infants
fall primarily upon the family.
 In addition, children learn an immense amount of

knowledge, culture, values prescribed by society,

before they assume their place as adult members
of a society.
 The task of educating and enculturating children

is distributed among parents.

 Moreover, family behaves as an effective agent in

the transmission of social heritage.

 KINSHIP
 Kinship is the method of reckoning relationship.
 In any society every adult individual belongs to two

different nuclear families.

 The family in which he was born and reared is called

‘family of orientation’. the family in which one is born

and grows up,
 The other family to which he establishes relation

through marriage is called ‘family of procreation’.

 A kinship system is neither a social group nor does it

correspond to organized aggregation of individuals.

 It is a structured system of relationships where

individuals are bound together by complex

interlocking and ramifying ties.
 The relationship based on blood ties is
called “consanguineous kinship”, and the
relatives of this kind are called
‘consanguineous kin’.
 The desire for reproduction gives rise to

another kind of binding relationship. “This

kind of bond, which arises out of a socially
or legally defined marital relationship, is
called a final relationship”, and the
relatives so related are called ‘a final kin’.
 The final kinds [husband and wife] are not

related to one another through blood.

 My great grandfather:
 My great grandmother:
 My grandfather:
 My grandmother:
 My father:
 My father’s brother: ‘
 My father’s brother’s son:
 My father’s brother’s daughter:
 My father’s sister:
 My father’s sister’s son:
 My father’s sister’s daughter
 My mother:
 My mother’s sister:
 My mother’s sister’s daughter:
 My mother’s sister’s son:
 My mother’s brother:
 My mother’s brother’s daughter:
 My mother’s brother’s son:
 My son:
 My daughter
 My grandson:
 DESCENT
 In addition to classifying individual relationships, as we have
just seen, kin groups also organize into descent groups,
which create a collective identity by classifying a number of
people into one group, according to a line of descent that is
traced through either the father, the mother, or both.
 Descent refers to the social recognition of the biological
relationship that exists between the individuals.
 The rule of descent refers to a set of principles by which an
individual traces his descent.
 An individual always possesses certain obligations towards
his kinsmen and he also expects the same from his kinsmen.
 Succession and inheritance is related to this rule of descent.
 There are three important rules of decent are
follows;
1. Patrilineal descent: When descent is
traced solely through the male line,
 A man’s sons and daughters all belong to
the same descent group by birth, but it only
the sons who continue the affiliation.
 Succession and inheritance pass through the

male line.
2. Matrilineal descent:
 When the descent is traced solely through

the female line.

 At birth, children of both sexes belong to

mother’s descent group, but later only

females acquire the succession and
inheritance.
 Therefore, daughters carry the tradition,

generation after generation.

3. Cognatic Descent:
In some society’s individuals are free to show their
genealogical links either through men or women.
 Some people of such society are therefore connected

with the kin-group of father and others with the kin

group of mothers.
 There is no fixed rule to trace the succession and

inheritance; any combination of lineal link is possible in

such societies.
 A significant number of societies have both patrilines

and matrilines, creating a more complex kind of

descent system, in which identity with regard to both
lines of descent is recognized and perpetuated.
THE END