Week 3

• Worldview


  The perspective on the world of an individual in a given culture
• Language and worldviews


  Mutually influence each other
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis


  The structure of a language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience
• Your language influences your perception of color
• E.B. Tylor's definition of culture


  It "is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society"
• Tylor's definition of culture is problematic because it approaches culture as a list of characteristics, which might end up being too specific and exclusive
• Tylor's definition reflects an understanding of culture and civilization as characteristics that a group of people acquire as they become more civilized
• Tylor believed that all human culture passed through stages of development with the pinnacle being that of 19th century England, and that all other cultures were inherently inferior
• Franz Boas's definition of culture


  Culture is an integrated system of symbols, ideas and values that should be studied as a working system, an organic whole
• General definition of culture

  Patterns of behavior that are common within a particular population of people
• Big C


  The overarching general concept of culture that can be applied to all culture groups; the anthropological perspective
• Elements of the Big C

  • An integrated system of mental elements (beliefs, values, worldview, attitudes, norms), the behaviors motivated by those mental elements, and the material items created by those behaviors
  • A system shared by the members of the society
  • 100 percent learned, not innate
  • Based on symbolic systems, the most important of which is language
  • Humankind's most important adaptive mechanism
  • Dynamic, constantly changing
• Little c


  The particulars of any given culture group, such as traditions