Lecture Four - Culture
This lecture looks at culture. We will start to think about the world from the perspective of humans who are born into an ongoing society. This is hard to do because we are taught to see the world in a particular way. We have a language or maybe two. We have a certain culinary tradition we operate from. The food we eat comes from our environment and our beliefs and values. We live is a certain time in history. This also shapes our likes and dislikes. The music we love is based on how it is distributed and who owns the rights as well as who makes it. Culture is changing rapidly as globalization occurs. Contact with other cultures is increasing as immigration and consumerism intensifies. The newly formed connections to others means we are defining ourselves in new ways.
This lecture covers: 1) material and nonmaterial culture; 2) the transmission of culture; 3) ethnocentrism and cultural relativism; 4) subcultures.
I will use examples of east Tennessee culture throughout the lecture. I'm sure you have a keen interest in east Tennessee if you are from this region. You will also need to think about some of the ideas here for understanding your role in participating in community development and leading east Tennessee into the future. As we all know we are the leaders of tomorrow and the voice of the voiceless. We must provide the justice and guidance when it is not present. After all we don't live in a democracy, we participate in a democracy.
Cultural relativity and cultural diversity are key concepts in sociology and master trends in society. We first address these ideas here.
I. Culture
Culture is best defined as a way of life. Another definition includes the beliefs, behaviors, and products common to the members of a society. Culture is learned. Its transmission begins at birth and is learned. We learn all our lives. There are some 5 to 6 thousand cultures in the world today. There are just under 200 countries in which all 5 to 6 thousand cultures live. U.S. culture makes up 5 percent of the world's population. 56% percent of the world's population live in Asia. Five percent of the world's cultures are indigenous or native people. These are people who are native to a region such as Native Americans. Culture is often so all- embracing we do not see ourselves as cultural actors. Braudel (1979) the French historian tells that,
"Civilizations or cultures-either word can legitimately be used in this context- are great reservoirs of habits, constraints, accumulated lore, accepted practice and statements which may seem, to the individual, personal and spontaneous, but which have been handed down from a great distance. They are as much our inheritance as the language we speak. Whenever splits and chasms begin to open up in a society, it is the ever-present culture which fills them in, or covers them up, holding them to our tasks."
What he is saying is that culture comes before us and after us. We live during the time of a culture. Culture is the oldest character in human history. We are actors in a culture. What does it mean then to be a part of American, southern, Appalachian, or South African culture?
Culture is our beliefs and at the same time our understanding of body habits or how we relate to animals. Culture is how individuals make sense of the world. When cultures collide people experience cultural shock. This is the feeling we get when we have the wrong instructions guiding our behavior. Cultures use symbols to create shared. We agree upon the meaning of a stop sign, a dollar bill, or a baseball game. Culture is based on cooperaion derived from norms. Norms are socially accepted ways of doing things. Our mores are our core norms. We have to follow our mores or sanctions will be exacted. The enforce norms and mores societies use social control. This can mean many things. Violation of mores can lead to strict forms of punishment.
Our folkways are cultural routines we use in daily practice. Folkways are often regional. Rural east Tennesseans, for instance, wave at strangers or speak to unknown people in the supermarket. They consider people who do not talk back as different or even rude. Violations of folkways do not lead to strict sanctions. Foodways are a part of folkways. Stop for a second and identify which of following foods you are most comfortable with. What are the four you will eat. The four you will not:
1) Blood Sausage (meat cooked in blood) (German, Scottish); 2) Chittlings, cracklings or Swine Intestines (U.S. South, Germany); 3) Horse meat (France, Eastern Europe); 4) Dog/Cats (Asia); 5) Kim Chee or aged or Rotten Cabbage (Korea); 6) Eel (most seas faring countries); 7) Collard greens (U.S. South); 8) Hot Dogs or Whole Ground pig parts; (U.S/Europe); 9) Pickled Herring (Sweden/Denmark); Monkey (African); 10) Grubs (South American and African tribes); 11) Sheep and pig brains (Sweetbread) (English); 12) Kidney Pie (English) 12); Drinking Cow and Goat Blood (African tribes); 13) Ramps or Wild Onions (Appalachian); 14) Shoe fly pie (Amish); 15) Chess pie (Southern); You might want to choose the last two. They are my favorites.
Which in order would you try? Which would you not consider at all? Most Americans would not like to eat dogs or cats. They are pets to us. We like cows or pigs or chickens but never horses. Many Hindus in India are vegetarians. Cows are not considered a food source. Cultural shock is normal. As the world gets closer culture shock will occur more often. Culture shock is the anxiety found in strangerhood. Other cultures mean other ways of doing things.
Material Culture Material culture is the physical world and the objects in which we attach meaning. It is our inventions and our possessions. Today, we often call our possessions "stuff". In modern society we work to pay for luxury goods. The global economy creates material objects which are inexpensive and standardized. Taste and style is influenced by mass production. Today we often use an object because it is inexpensive not because it is aesthetic. This is true with food. Fast food is quick but is it a correct choice for long-term health.
Human culture adapts to the terrain and environment. Our material culture is derived from our physical environment. Flatlanders in the midwestern part of the U.S. experience few hills or mountains. The roads are laid out straight. They have square towns laid out on a grid. In contrast, Appalachian and east Tennessee towns are laid out as they could be by the terrain. Rivers run downhill and seek flat and low lying areas. Flat areas attracted the first settlers in east Tennessee as well as earlier the native cultures. Our cities are laid out in the valley sections of the area between the mountain ranges. Settlers here lived off of the land which was good for raising hogs and growing corn. Getting around here requires adapting to mountains, terrain with soil erosion, and a scarcity of flat land. Appalachian towns are not laid off in a grid but in low lying areas which survive flooding from the river system.
If we look back up to the previous section we might add the following east Tennessee foods to the list of locally produced foodways. (Cornbread ('cornpone' a Cherokee dish), pinto beans, sausage, bacon, grits, wilted lettuce, ramps, poke weed, dandelion greens, turnip greens, fried okra, potato cakes, pan-fried chicken, jam cake, fried rabbit, dried apple stack cake, apple butter, corn grits, chow chow, and my favorite angel biscuits).
While we see these foods as east tennessean they are from other cultures around the world that make up east Tennessee's past. East Tennessee is part of the old south. The hog is the most prevalent symbol of the old south according to Jonathon Bass in an article in Southern Cultures entitled, "How 'Bout a Hand for the Hog The Enduring Symbol of the Swine as a Cultural Symbol in the South" Many of us identify with barbeque, smokehouses, and grandparent's morning routines of bacon and sausage. Others, myself included, are on strict diets and do not engage in these traditions. The upper South and east Tennessee once had a hog driving economy centered in Cocke county through North Carolina. The region centered social occasions around hog killings. The hog provided soap, footballs, and the endless variations of barbeque in the region. What is your favorite type of barbeque?
If you are interested in Appalachian cooking you might want to consider the following books.
Mark Sohn. 1996. Mountain Cooking: A Gathering of the best Recipes from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge. (New York: St. Martin's Press). and Joseph E. Dahney. 1998. Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread and Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern Appalachian Cooking (Nashville: Cumberland House).
Today as our foodways are impacted by the outside, younger folks eat fast food and standardized grocery foods. What are your favorite foods? Pizza? Ice Cream? Twinkies? Cornbread? All have a cultural story. Pizza began to have tomato sauce after Latin America was colonized (Tomatoes are native to Mexico and Latin America). Most early pizza styles had olive oil only. Besides grapes and olives are the only things that you can grow on Italian and Greek hillsides. (You can raise goats also). American pizza is thick (Chicago style) or thin more of a New York style.
As east Tennessee has connected to other areas in the last 50 years we have more ethnic restaurants. Mexican foods and dining establishments are more common today. What are your favorite Mexican foods? Do you like chili peppers? Peppers are eaten by over 25 percent of the world's people. Peppers evolved in Latin America. They help people adapt to high levels of heat during Summer. People sweat when they eat them. When they sweat peppers help lower their body temperature. They adapt to the heat better when they have a lower temperature. Today, peppers are found in India and Africa as culinary habits. Some of you may also like to eat peppers. Curry is popular in India but also in London as England colonized India. Many of London's immigrants are Bengalis just as many of east Tennessee's new arrivals are Hispanics.
You might want to try a curry or a spice mixture from one of these regions. You probably already have been to a Mexican dining establishment. Chinese culture use herbs and spices as medicine. They do not separate what they eat from medicine.
Many foods in east Tennessee came from the Cherokee. Natives ate the game and plants that were used by the white and black frontier settlers. Wild foods ate by the Cherokees include buckberries, huckleberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries, and elderberries. Nuts and wild fruits eaten by native Cherokees include persimmons, grapes, hazelnuts, chestnuts, butternuts, chinquapins, walnuts, and hickory nuts. Game was killed to augment the native diet. Animals hunted include black bear, groundhog, raccoon, rabbit, and squirrel. Birds included pheasants, grouse, and quail. Other foods we still like include trout, bass, crayfish, frogs, and turtles. The Cherokee ate grub worms and locust also.
Cherokee bread was made out of corn. It often contained grains and other vegetables. Examples: Bean Bread, Chestnut Bread, Sweet Potato Bread, Carrot Bread, Sweet bread, Fried Bread, Pumpkin Fried Bread, Fruit Fried Bread). (French and Hornbuckle 1981).
The Cherokee Perspective Written By the Eastern Cherokees (Appalachian Consortium Press, 1981).
Nonmaterial Culture Nonmaterial culture includes our beliefs, norms, and values. Nonmaterial culture makes up our religion, our political views, and what we hold true. Norms are rules for behavior. Norms are set of expectations. They vary tremendously between cultures. Nudity is illegal in the U.S. Nudity is legal in many places in Europe. Europeans, however, have stringent gun laws. It is difficult to own a gun in many parts of Europe. In the U.S. guns are more available. What people believe varies between cultures. Values are our understanding of what is good and bad. Guns and nude bodies for instance.
Your text tells us that Americans have a set of values that can be recognized. We value individualism, personal achievement, materialism (we like stuff), and personal liberty. People from Sweden on the other hand value communal social relations. Universal access to health care, education, and jobs/unemployment characterize Swedish society. By the way, one of five Swedes have ancestors who came to America during the 18th and 19th century (mainly in the North). Today, they have different values than their ancestors who stayed in Sweden.
America is also multicultural. It is made up on Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, Europeans, Africans among many other groups. We will talk about ethnic heritage later but this diversity is a key feature of our culture.
I think folkways are an interesting aspect of culture. Folkways are norms for daily life. East Tennessee has rural folkways. They are friendly. Many feel safe enough to leave their doors unlocked. They live in small scale cultures where they know many of the people they have contact with everyday. People wave to stranger and friend alike in rural communities. Outsiders are often put off by strangers who wave at them. This is unknown in many cities.
What are you most interested in? Culture covers all aspects of human live.
II. Transmission of Culture
Language shapes the way we think. The vocabulary we use is our only way to describe what we experience. Language is learned. Language shapes our social reality. Historically, in this area few people have spoken a language other than English since white settlement. Today Spanish speaking populations are changing this. Teachers are facing a growing problem with bilingualism (Speaking more than one language). This is not a new problem. Nor is it on the scale it is in urban areas. In Los Angeles school systems students speak some 114 different languages.
Not only do people speak different languages but the same language is also spoken in different ways. East Tennessee has a particular set of language use patterns. Isolated communities in the area have often kept idioms and phrases from previous times. Southerners and Tennesseans are often perceived as speaking slower than people in other parts of the country. Generally, slower speaking people are viewed as less intelligent in all cultures in the world. Southerners are often seen as backwards and uneducated by the mass media. We, of course, enjoy the attention. From the following list which country idiom do you recognize:
(ain't-am not); (ary - any); (bad off- ill); (doins- a party); (fur piece -long distance); (I don't care to - not will to do something); (afeared - afraid); (ax-asked); (deef-deaf); (larn-learn); (thar-there); (aig -egg); (fahr-fire)
Dialects and idioms are found throughout the world. What are some of the differences in language you have encountered in your travels and contacts? The Appalachian and east Tennessee dialect is very distinctive. If you are from these regions how has language shaped the way others treat and respond to you? If you are not from the South how has your dialect led to your treatment in these areas?
Symbols are the way we create language and transmit culture. The dialect, vocabulary, and folkways of a region can create a regional identity. Southerners often face the symbols of the hillbilly. The hillbilly in mainstream American culture is cast as lazy, inept, violent, and an outlaw.
Communication also is invented by contemporary culture. Cyber society has its own vocabulary. The word 'computer' is not in a 1950s dictionary. We use words like hackers, virtual reality, dude, and surfing the web. Its a youth based vocabulary for the most part.
Nonverbal communication is also a significant part of culture. How we use space or respond to body language is important for understanding cultural differences. We will look at these differences in other chapters.
Tonality is also important to language. Chinese and some Asian languages have different meanings for level of volume and how a word is pronounced. A low volume may mean one thing and a high volume may mean another. There are 100,000 different characters in the Chinese language. The average Chinese person uses 3,500 characters in a life time.
III. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Ethnocentrism is a natural state for human beings. It is the idea that we see the world from the perspective of our own culture. Ethnocentrism is what sociologist call the anguish and horror we get from thinking about eating cats. We see the world from our frame of reference. We may not be used to people who eat with their hands or a man who has several wives or cultures which engage in nudity in public displays. Ethnocentrism faces people who immigrate to another culture. Many America men do not hug or touch other men in public. They often have trouble with cultures that do. Saudi men hold hands in public. Saudi families live in virtual gender separation. Customs and habits vary throughout the world. How does our culture look at a 7 year old child still breastfeeding? Many cultures breastfeed longer than in the U.S.
Ethnocentrism taken to the extreme can become oppression and domination of one culture over another. It can also lead to genocide or the destruction of an entire race of people. Native Americans were seen as subhuman to Europeans and were exterminated for their cultural practices. Today, genocide continues throughout the world. Religion and cultural conflict has replaced national conflict as the main types of violence were social groups.
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism is the opposite of ethnocentrism. It is the idea that a culture must be understood from its own perspective. In order to understand the folkways East Tennessee's practices must be seen from the eyes of east Tennesseans. The same goes for other cultures. Sociologist understand cultural relativism as the idea that we should never judge a culture because of its folkways and norms. This is hard. Why would anyone eat greens? What are the reasons for going to church on Wednesday? What are ramps? Where is St. Claire? Why would you leave your doors unlocked?
Cultural relativism emerged in the 1930s as anthropologists began to view nonwestern societies as having legitimate cultural and value systems. Prior to this, social scientist often viewed nonwestern societies as primitive and their cultures as needing reform to fit western values. Since this period the social sciences have taken on cultural relativism to get a better understanding of other cultures.
Cultural diversity and multiculturalism are the extension of this idea to understand the differences in lifestyles and cultures found inside of societies.
Subcultures
Subcultures are groups in society possessing distinctive traits. They have their own language or other cultural practices separating them from the dominant social order. Minority groups in the U.S. may be considered subcultures. Native Americans or Hispanics may be subcultures for instance. Many times a subculture is cut off from the dominant culture. Social groups are also subcultures. The Amish or the homosexual community in a city are seen as subcultures. We discuss this topic in greater detail in other sections.
Cultural Reproduction
On page 72 your text draws a picture of culture as both a constraint and a freedom. Increasingly the mass media is a main source where we interpret meaning and create our view of ourselves and others. While we make ideas our television is becoming our predominant source of information. It is an important component in cultural production. The ideas of what a culture is continually defined. What we eat as described above is changing due to mass marketing of processed and frozen food. Fast food is more than a way to consume, it is also a lifestyle.
Tourism is another emerging way we define a certain culture. Global tourism is expanding rapidly in the postindustrial age due to declining transportation costs and expanding information. The connection between cultures through increased contact has led to a booming global tourism trade. Tourism varies by geography and culture. Dollywood and Cherokee are in the same geography but represent two distinctively different cultural traditions. They present a view of a way of life. For the tourist they are entertainment as well as a way to suspend the reality of their daily life. Graburn (1983:15) argues that
"Tourism, even of the recreational sort-sun, sea, sex, and sport is a ritual expression-individual or societal-of deeply held values about health, freedom, nature, and self improvement, a recreation ritual which parallels pilgrimages and other ritual in more traditional, prevasively religious societies"
We engage is ecotourism to observe nature, recreational tourism to engage is sport often in nature, and cultural heritage tourism to be entertained by patterns of culture. What is your favorite vacation? Where would you like to go? What does that say about your likes?
This completes lecture four. You need to go over the main parts and identify questions on the material. You can do this by giving examples of your our cultural contexts and folkways.
Key Questions
1) What is material and nonmaterial culture? How has the environment shaped east Tennessee's culture? What are your experiences?
2) Compare ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. What are examples of situations which have created a sense of ethnocentrism for you?
Links
Appalachia Sites
http:/www.appalachianstudies.org The Appalachian Studies Association began in the late 1970s to address the needs of scholarly and grassroots organizations in the region. Today, the ASA has several hundred members. This site gives you syllabi in several areas of study to view.
http;//ns.appalshop.org/ Appalshop is a film company specializing in issues throughout Appalachia.
http://cva.morehead-st.edu/ Morehead State University offers a website on virtual Appalachia. Here you can search data on literature, economics, land use, geology, and others.
Cultural Studies
http://cass.etsu.edu/albaeire/ ETSU Scottish Studies
http://www.ibiblio.org/uncpress/catalogs/anthro.html Books on Appalachia
http://vax.wcsu.edu/socialsci/antres.html Native Cultures
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/index.html Roma/Gypsies
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html Country Studies
http://undcp.org/odccp/unlinks.html United Nations
www.countryreports.org/ Country Reports
http://www.cobblestonepub.com/pages/FavLinksGeography.htm Cultures
http://www.research-library.com/ Research Library
http://www.familydiscussions.com/links.htm Family Search