The term “culture” first originated in the 18th century to signify a way of living, and in the mid-19th century, scientists referred to it as a wide span of living space. Culture has come a long way, with many different meanings and ideas. The basic concept of culture is the basis of all human behaviors, traditions, customs, and actions, which were inherited through sharing and learned through generation. In his essay “Culture is Ordinary”, Raymond Williams states that, “Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, and its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning…” In many social sciences, culture is defined differently. For instance, according to Kottak and Kozaitis, Anthropologists began to refer to culture as the main aspects of human traditions, beliefs, and symbols that control behavior (Page 9).
At first, I used to think of culture as one nation’s traditional behaviors and customs. After learning that I am
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For this reason, at the beginning of the 20th century, ethnographic fieldwork had become essential to anthropology. Ethnography is a research strategy that uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and seeks to understand the culture through which members of a group perceive their world. Many ethnographers’ goals are to develop and transfer an excellent, “insider” perspective of people’s values, customs, behavior, and what drives it in. They notice interesting features of the culture in which they are studying. They also anticipate patterns among those events and explain those patterns and their importance to the readers. Their main goal is to understand another way of life from a native
Gender Importance of the Anthropologist of Ethnography What importance may the sex of the anthropologist have on the ethnographic process? There are many factors which can influence the ethnographic process for an anthropologist, and a very important one is his/her sex. This essay will examine the different attitudes towards sex, the problems that face all ethnographers when they embark on fieldwork in a different environment to their own, as well as the problems and benefits which can arise due to the sex of an anthropologist. In order to produce a written work about a certain culture or society (an ethnography, anthropologists must embark on what is known as the ethnographic process". This term refers to all of the various activities and research methods which the anthropologist must undertake if he/she wants to obtain a profound and objective understanding of the culture being studied.
According to Rivkin and Ryan (1998), the word ‘culture’ acquired a new meaning in the 1960s and 1970s. Prior to that time, ‘culture’ was associated with art, literature, and classical music. To have ‘culture’ was to possess a certain taste for particular kinds of artistic endeavor. Anthropologists have always used the word ‘culture’ in much broader sense to mean forms of life and of social expression. The way people behave while eating, talking to each other, becoming sexual partners, interacting at work, engaging in ritualized social behaviour such as family gatherings, and the like constitute a culture. This broad definition of the term includes language and the arts, but it also includes the regularities, procedures, and rituals of human life in communities.
Culture has been defined numerous ways throughout history. Throughout chapter three of, You May Ask Yourself, by Dalton Conley, the term “culture” is defined and supported numerous times by various groups of people. One may say that culture can be defined as a set of beliefs (excluding instinctual ones), traditions, and practices; however not all groups of people believe culture has the same set of values.
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Ethnography is typically defined as research designed to explore cultural phenomenon that take place in another part of society or even the world. This requires a researcher to analyze similarities and differences between cultures through a perspective that is not judgmental, but more so open to new concepts that aren’t necessarily normal to their own culture. For my research, I decided to interview a friend of mine who is culturally different when compared to myself. Before beginning my interview I created a hypothesis, which I hoped to prove through my findings. Initially, I believed that most children, who are raised within a specific’s culture influence, tend to absorb the lifestyle and mindsets of their parents. Almost similar to the quote “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” By growing up within a specific culture’s influence, a child will grasp what they learned from their parents and apply it to their own lives.
Culture is a difficult concept to put into words. “Traditionally anthropologists have used the term culture to refer to a way of life - traditions and customs - transmitted through learning” (Kottak, et al. 2008: p.11). Children inherit their culture, as well as social norms and ethics, through a process called enculturation. Enculturation, in essence, determines who a person will become, because culture defines who a person is. More specifically, “Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs arts, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities or habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Taylor, 1971/1951: p. 1). In modern society, our traditions and customs come from a variety of different sources. Television,
Embarking on a journey of anthropological fieldwork will undoubtedly include a plethora of setbacks. At its foundation, fieldwork requires developing rapport with the native people in order to gain access of genuine knowledge pertaining to the specific culture being studied. Subsequently, social communication between the researcher and the native people is a key component to the entire process; yet simultaneously it is a root of the many problems a researcher can encounter while in the field. It is no secret that the cultural background of the researcher can often highly contrast the culture he or she enters during fieldwork. This initial cultural adaptation one must undergo while doing anthropological fieldwork is what many in the realm describe as culture shock.
James P. Spradley (1979) described the insider approach to understanding culture as "a quiet revolution" among the social sciences (p. iii). Cultural anthropologists, however, have long emphasized the importance of the ethnographic method, an approach to understanding a different culture through participation, observation, the use of key informants, and interviews. Cultural anthropologists have employed the ethnographic method in an attempt to surmount several formidable cultural questions: How can one understand another's culture? How can culture be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed? What aspects of a culture make it unique and which connect it to other cultures? If ethnographies can provide answers to these difficult questions, then Spradley has correctly identified this method as revolutionary.
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people…Culture in its broadest sense of cultivated behavior; a totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning (http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html).
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
Ethnographic fieldwork defines cultural anthropology to be holism. It stresses that cultural anthropology embraces a holistic perspective for the study of human behaviour. The study of cultural anthropology deals with the entire characteristics of humans. It then focuses on the relationship between the different facets of human
There are many positive aspects of using an ethnographic conceptual lens. The lens examines how social interactions influence various occurrences. As social beings, culture and social groupings certainly play a role in our lives and therefore, there is a need for more understanding of ethnography. In healthcare a good understanding of a person’s culture can provide nurses with valuable information about their patient’s world views.
Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects and behavior. It includes the ideas, value, customs and artifacts of a group of people (Schaefer, 2002). Culture is a pattern of human activities and the symbols that give these activities significance. It is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold and activities they engage in. It is the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenges of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of organization thus distinguishing people from their neighbors.
The purpose of their research is to acquire ethnography data. They anthropologist obtaining qualitative data and observing how the people they are researching are living and their day -to-day activities. Some of their methodology includes participant observations in which the anthropologist is involved in the day-to-day activities to observe from first-hand experience of how the people live.
Culture refers to the collection of values, customs, and attitudes of a group of people belonging to certain area, country or a place. It shapes individuals’ habits, knowledge, experiences, and their perspectives. It is important to avoid ethnocentricity since it creates a bias in which, one views their own culture to be superior over other cultures. In the age of globalization, such single-minded bias can prove to be costly as it can lead to undermining positive characteristics of other cultures. This in return can create negative relationship with citizens from other cultures as well as their governments.