PHILARTS 1 Philippine Arts and Culture

• The early colonizers thought that pre-colonial Filipino people don't have a concept of culture
• In the western world, the idea of culture is summed as EUROCENTRIC
• Culture


  A complex of whole knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society
• Culture is an indication of an elaborate stages of social evolution from the prehistoric caveman to the Victorian man
• Indications of a Eurocentric mindset on culture


  • Christianity is a person's moral compass
  • Science dominates indigenous knowledge such as myths, legends, epics, etc.
  • Being cultured means having good manners, well-educated, knowledgeable about arts
• Our understanding of culture as Eurocentric are indicative of artifacts: objects created by man
• Artifacts are culture because they tell a lot about the larger social context and human behavior in both past and present
• Branches of Anthropology


  • Biological Anthropology: human biology & evolution
  • Archaeology: material culture
  • Linguistic Anthropology: language
  • Cultural Anthropology: culture, sociocultural
  • Applied Anthropology: application of anthropology to human problems (e.g. forensic anthropology)
• Homo Luzonensis (Callao Cave, Tuguegarao)
• Language


  • Central role in defining who we are as humans
• SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS


  Language not only reflects, but can also shape how we think & act
• Communication


  Use of arbitrary symbols to impart meaning
• Pidgin vs creole


  Central concept in linguistics
• Cultural Anthropology


  Study how people who share a common cultural system organize & shape the physical and social world around them
• Applied Anthropology


  Also called as Practical Anthropology
• Anthropology


  Scientific study of human cultures, societies, behavior, biology & linguistics
• Holism


  Perspective that emphasizes the whole rather than just the parts
• Holism


  • Encourages understanding of humans as both biological and cultural beings, living in the past & present
• Comparativism


  The search for similarities & differences between and among human beings in all of their biological and cultural complexities
• Comparativism


  • Use of diverse information from all of the subfields from many different population to make generalizations about the complexity of human beings
• Culture


  A shared & negotiated system of meanings informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice by interpreting experience & generating behavior
• Why is this definition of culture at par with contemporary discussions on culture?
• We should not only look at culture as something
• Culture


  Not static or absolute, like an artifact, but a meaning-making process
• Culture


  1. Production

  2. Circulation

  3. Reception
• Culture


  A shared, negotiated system of meaning
• System


  • Group of interacting or interrelated parts that operate in relation to one another
• Parts of a system

  • Reference to culture are people
• People/Human


  • Must have a broad shared meanings to interrelate a meaningful system
• Culture


  Informed by knowledge
• Knowledge


  Process of learning & discovery, understanding gained through experience, grasping something in the mind with certainty
• Knowledge


  • Exists in the minds of many people who share and negotiate culture
• Learn


  To acquire knowledge
• In culture, it implies that cultural knowledge is not inherited/inscribed in our biology</b>
• We are not born with culture
• Enculturation


  Process of learning culture, passing of cultural knowledge
• Interpreting experience


  Both the way we interpret the experience of self within a particular culture & how we encounter and experience others
• Behavior


  Means to act or conduct oneself in a specified way
• Why is the Eurocentric view problematic?

  Because its understanding of culture is dependent on the colonizer's view point
• Archaeology


  Study of past cultures