Ucsp 1

• Culture


  An organized group of learned responses
• Individual


  A living organism capable of independent thought, feeling, and action
• Society cannot exist apart from groupings
• Society is always made of persons and culture
• Aspects of culture


  • The complexity of culture
  • The what, how, and why of culture
• Culture


  The complex whole that encompasses beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge and everything that a person learns and shares as a member of society
• Complex whole


  Suggests that culture cannot be simply broken down into a set of attributes
• What


  Contains the actions, artifacts, language, and behavior that characterize a given culture
• How


  Identifies the processes that guarantee the transmission and dissemination of the content
• Why

  Pinpoints the reasons why individuals comply and the mechanisms that facilitate the performance of expected behavior
• Enculturation


  The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture/group by a person, another culture, etc.
• Third culture shock

  Created when an individual's birth culture is a product of enculturation in the second culture
• E.B. Taylor was the first to win the term "culture" in the eighteenth century
• Definition of culture


  Culture is an organized system that is superior to nature, integrated, pervasive, and a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action
• Culture is social because it is the product of behavior
• Culture does not exist in isolation, it is a product of society
• Culture varies from society to society
• Characteristics of culture


  Historically derived, shared, learned, not innate, transmitted among members of society, continuous and cumulative, gratifying and idealistic, explicit and implicit
• Functions of culture


  Defines situations, attitudes, values, goals, myths, legends, and the supernatural, provides behavior patterns
• Ethnocentrism


  The tendency of each society to place its own culture pattern at the center of things
• Functions of ethnocentrism


  Encourages group solidarity, hinders understanding and cooperation between groups
• Cultural relativism


  The idea that all norms, beliefs and values are dependent on their cultural context and should be treated as such
• Xenocentrism


  A preference for the foreign or strange
• Xenophobia


  The fear of what is perceived as foreign or strange
• Culture as heritage


  Tangible (visible) and intangible (nonmaterial) components, cultural artifacts may become "heritage objects"
• Biological and cultural evolutions are key concepts in the study of modern humans (Homo Sapiens Sapiens)
• Biological evolution


  Refers to the changes, modifications, and variations in the genetics and inherited traits of biological populations from offspring
• Natural selection


  The process by which certain traits become either more or less common in a population based on their relative fitness
• Variation


  Differences between individuals in a population
• Heritability


  The proportion of variation in a population that is due to genetic differences between individuals
• Differential reproductive success


  The process by which some individuals in a population produce more offspring than others
• Categories of hominids


  • Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo
• Australopithecus


  Hominid with height almost similar to chimpanzees and brain size of about 320-380 cc
• Homo erectus


  First Homo to use spoken language, first fossil found in Asia in the Longgupo Cave in China
• Homo sapiens


  The last genus in the evolution of the Homo family, considered the oldest population of Homo sapiens in Europe
• Biological, cultural, and social evolution can be studied through the artifacts and fossils excavated by archaeologists and anthropologists
• Sociocultural evolution


  Explains why human societies change through time
• Types of societies based on level of development

  • Hunting and gathering, horticultural, pastoral, agricultural, industrial, post-industrial
• Hunting and gathering societies


  Used simple forms of tools to hunt animals and gather plants and vegetation for food, lived in small groups of only about 20 people
• Most people were hunting and gathering societies during the Paleolithic Period (2,500,000 - 10,000 BCE)