Kottak argues that to understand culture we need to appreciate that • Culture is shared with others as the basis for interaction, • Culture is learned in the process of our individual development and through our interaction with others • The symbolic properties of culture enable it to be shared and learned • Culture is material in the ways it organises our practical activity, means of livelihood and environment • Culture takes the form of integrated systems of meaning and enables the integration of people into social systems. For your essay choose two of the ethnographic articles we will have covered. These include Evans-Pritchard (1940), Millar (2008), Lansing & Kremer (1993), Shaw (2003) and Rademacher (2009). In your essay you should 1) identify three of the aspects of culture listed above, and compare and contrast the ways in which they are made evident in the arguments of the two articles you have chosen. 2) consider the ways in which these aspects of culture are all part of a single process.
Kottak argues that to understand culture we need to appreciate that
• Culture is shared with others as the basis for interaction,
• Culture is learned in the process of our individual development and
through our interaction with others
• The symbolic properties of culture enable it to be shared and
learned
• Culture is material in the ways it organises our practical activity,
means of livelihood and environment
• Culture takes the form of integrated systems of meaning and
enables the integration of people into social systems.
For your essay choose two of the ethnographic articles we will have
covered. These include Evans-Pritchard (1940), Millar (2008), Lansing &
Kremer (1993), Shaw (2003) and Rademacher (2009).
In your essay you should
1) identify three of the aspects of culture listed above, and compare
and contrast the ways in which they are made evident in the
arguments of the two articles you have chosen.
2) consider the ways in which these aspects of culture are all part of a
single process.