What Is A Culture Nancy Jervis-Converted-1

What Is a Culture?
Nancy Jervis, Ph.D.

China Institute
THE GREAT DEBATE
There is a great debate in social science about what it is that shapes us both as individuals and
as members of society. With regard to individuals, this debate is about "nature versus
nurture," meaning whether it is our inherited genetic predisposition ("nature") or what we
learn as we grow up ("nurture") that predominantly shapes us and our differences as
individuals. Similarly, anthropologists ask how much of our behavior as a group is pre-
determined by geography, culture, or history. Studies increasingly indicate what most of us
know from common sense: these differences between us as individuals and those between
groups of people can be explained by no single factor alone, but by the complex interaction
between them.
Great differences, as well as startling similarities, can be seen when comparing world cultures.
People around the globe are similar in their essential humanity: we communicate with each
other, we sustain ourselves with food, and when we sleep we often dream. Yet we speak
different languages, eat different foods, and dream different dreams. These are what we call
cultural differences. What causes them is not always obvious to the ordinary person.
I remember being on a train many years ago, before many Westerners traveled in China, riding
through Gansu Province in western China with an Australian Chinese friend who spoke no
Chinese. I was often overheard translating for her. People on the train, mostly ethnic Han and
Hui (Chinese Moslems), were as startled to see a Chinese face without the language that
usually accompanies it, as they were to see my Caucasian face speaking Chinese. One man in
particular kept insisting that there must be a Chinese relative on my father's side of the family
(sic); otherwise, how could I have learned the language? The assumption was that one's ability
to speak a particular language (like an individual's physical characteristics) is genetically and
not culturally transmitted...and that genetics somehow mirrors social organization (i.e.,
everything is transmitted through the male's family line).
Similarly, as an English teacher that same year, in class with my students (all of whom were
male teachers of English from outlying provinces), I was told authoritatively by one of my
students that although he did not doubt my learning, I was a woman, and somewhere in
America there must be a man who was more knowledgeable than I. "Everyone," he went on to
say, "knows that, worldwide, men as a group are smarter than women." He pointed to the fact
that men in every culture held more powerful positions than women as proof. What he was
not aware of was how his Confucian ideas about gender and the superiority of males
influenced the way he thought about men's and women's roles.
Each of these incidents illustrates the fact that, for many people, culture is so internalized that
we take it as a given - as something we are born with. But both language and gender
categories are elements of culture and, as such, are transmitted from generation to
generation. As children, we are taught language, gender roles, how to behave, what to believe
(religion), what foods taste good, and so on. If, as an infant, you or I had been transported to
another culture to be raised in that culture, that culture would be ours today, rather than the
American one we share.
DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE
Anthropologists have been discussing and debating definitions of culture since the origin of the
discipline in the 19th century. In 1952 two prominent American anthropologists, Alfred
Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, published an entire volume cataloging different definitions of
culture. A useful summary of that discussion, grouping their 160 different definitions into eight
categories, is provided by John Bodley in his Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States and the
Global System (1994). Bodley goes on to distill what is useful in these categories and to define
culture in a useful way. Culture, he suggests, is made up of at least three components: what
people think, what they do, and the material products they produce. The problem with
defining culture as shared values and beliefs, as some anthropologists do, is that there can be
a vast difference between what people think they ought to do (value) and what they actually
do (behavior). Moreover, we get much of our evidence for what people do from what people
make - that is, from material things (what archaeologists study). So we really need to include
all three components in a definition of culture.
Besides these components, culture has several properties: to quote Bodley, it is "shared,
learned, symbolic, transmitted cross-generational - as discussed above - adaptive, and
integrated." For example, there is common agreement in a culture on what things mean.
Members of a culture share specific symbolic meanings, including (but not limited to)
language. In America, for example, brides wear white as a symbol of purity. In China, red is
worn by a bride as a celebratory or "happy" color, while white is the color of mourning. Thus
colors take on symbolic meaning, as do religious symbols (icons), art, etc. All culture is learned;
none is inherited. And it is passed on from one generation to the next, which is why schools
and families are so important in cultural transmission.
Culture is furthermore adaptive, which harkens back to how cultures - and subcultures - are
formed. Modes of behavior, social institutions, and technologies all foster our adaptation to
the particular niche of the ecological world we inhabit. That is what is meant by adaptive: if
you live in a cold climate, you will learn to make shelter and clothing that keep you warm. If
you are part of an island culture, most likely your diet will consist of fish and the local
technology will include boat making and the making of fishing gear. Culture is also integrated;
that is, each aspect of a culture is consonant with every other. If not, there is cultural
dissonance that risks a tearing apart. We speak of, in Clifford Geertz's terms, a "web of
culture." It is like a woven cloth, a fabric.

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What Is a Culture?

Nancy Jervis, Ph.D.

THE GREAT DEBATE

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