Alright, so I’ve started TAing for a class here at UMich called the Archaeology of Early Humans. Thus far I have only had one week of section to teach so naturally it was mostly devoted to the syllabus, but then I gave them an introduction to the concept of Four Field Anthropology and defined some basic anthropological terms to help them make their way through the course as many of the students have no background in anthropology or archaeology. Of course, because I am a jerk, I asked my students to define culture. There were a few good responses, most highlighting ritual or religious systems, but mostly, there were blank stares. So I gave them my working definition of culture, for which I currently have two variants (and obviously I favour one), and it is upon these two variants which I would like to get your feedback. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, the variations revolve around the relationship between behaviour and culture. Here are the two variants:
Culture A – Shared, learned, and cumulative knowledge that structures, guides, and patterns human behaviour and interaction with the social and natural environment
Culture B – Shared, learned, cumulative, and patterned human behaviour that structures and guides how people interact with their social and natural environments
While the difference in wording is relatively slight Culture B implies that behaviour IS culture, while Culture A separates the two. Now why is this difference important? Here’s my logic. Point one: not all human behaviour is cultural, and I don’t think many would argue with me about that once we got down to thinking and talking about it. BUT culture (as we observe it in practice or in the archaeological record) is inherently behavioural because cultural knowledge has to be acted out in some way (intentionally or unintentionally) for the external or internal observer to be able to identify (again intentionally or unintentionally) said behaviour as cultural. Does that make sense? While culture and behaviour are two very different things we often are dealing with somewhat of a conflation of the two because we need behaviour to “see” culture, otherwise cultural knowledge remains in the realm of ideas as opposed to the realm of actions and materiality that we depend on to decipher it. So basically we can have behaviour without culture and we can have cultural knowledge without behaviour, but we can’t “see” culture without the behaviour part. A little fuzzy? Yes, I know, my thoughts are currently a bit fuzzy on the matter, and hell, is this distinction even really that important? Probably, we should be able to adequately define the actual material we study yes? Would stating that we study the material record of past human cultural behaviour do it? And upon a second look over Culture B, it seems to imply that the behaviour itself structures and guides interaction…that seems a bit problematic to me.
Anyway, long story short, and as you probably could have guessed, I’ve been using Culture A because it distinguishes between culture and behaviour in a much clearer fashion than Culture B, even though one could interpret the human behaviour aspect of Culture B as highly qualified and therefore distinct from non-cultural behaviour. Do you think I’ve made the right decision? or do you think I’ve completely missed the mark? What are your thoughts on the behaviour/culture relationship? Should we actively enforce such a distinction? This was originally only going to be a quick post so that I could get back to work, but my inability to elucidate my argument (is it even an argument? or are we all in agreement?) has turned it into an hour long ordeal, and now I need a beer. This is why I would like your feedback. Bouncing ideas off of the walls of my own head becomes unproductive after a while, I start to feel like I’m chasing my own tail.
And before you all get scared by my fuzzy headed attempts at grand theory, I’m not going off the deep end into radical post-processual land. I’m just trying to see whether my favoured definition of culture does an adequate job!
Also: SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE, HYPOTHESIS TESTS AND FALSIFIABILITY. Don’t worry, I’m still here.
REVISION: So I stepped away from the computer for a while and my mind is now clear(er), and I realize that maybe the whole post’s confusion was unnecessary if we sit down and define our terms more clearly. If we define culture as a body of knowledge as above (shared, learned and cumulative) and we say that culture is enacted through behaviour, and we distinguish between cultural and non-cultural behaviour, we have clearly defined our relationship between culture and behaviour while still emphasizing that not all behaviour is cultural. I think anyway. And in terms of translating that to the archaeological record I would say that we are dealing with (generally) the material residues of cultural behaviours – once we have filtered out the non-cultural influences/modifications (A la Schiffer) – in the Archaeological record, as I stated above. Anyway, I think that makes sense, and it still fits very well with the definition of culture I’ve been giving to my students…thoughts? The fuzziness had lifted temporarily for me, how about you?
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No, it’s still fuzzy, but for some really neat (in my opinion) reasons. I will comment more later, but for now I just wanted to say that I think it’s very cool that you are putting this out there – we need more thinking about the relationship of culture and behaviour.
- SC
Comment by Stephen Chrisomalis September 19, 2010 @ 8:21 pmAs I just told you on Facebook, my position has always been that culture is shaped by human behaviour and in turn shapes human behaviour. Culture is both a driving force of human behaviour and is constrained by the limits of it.
I’m also inclined to think that at some point in our cognitive evolution we hit a point of no return where culture as opposed to biology/genetics became the dominant driver of human behaviour (and, therefore, of more/different culture) – probably sometime not too long before anatomically modern humans. When we were monkeys we basically did what our bodies and genes told us to do, and then when the wizard came and made us smart and we started thinking about why we do things, the answers to those questions became the dominant guide of how we live our lives.
Comment by Sol September 21, 2010 @ 2:52 amThe question of whether culture should be defined primarily as knowledge or behaviour is old, going back to the 50s. Ward Goodenough famously defined culture as what you need to know to meet the standards of a group (i.e., as knowledge). But that knowledge is only evaluated through behaviour, both for individual actors, and for anthropologists themselves as observers. You get into the question of whether any knowledge that we, as social scientists, can say anything about, must by definition be behavioural, because otherwise we couldn’t say anything about it.
Cognitive anthropologists like myself have tried to deal with this issue by assuming that models, schemata, taxonomies, etc., can be elicited linguistically (language is a reflection of thought, fairly unmediated, so we’re actually getting at mental representations) but is that always the case? Especially in the case of things like working with technology, a lot of ‘knowledge’ is implicit and non-linguistic, and really can only be observed through watching individuals in action (think about how one learns knapping, e.g.). And by forcing people to make those ideas explicit, we may be leading them to think in new ways, rather than in the actual ways they tend to think in ordinary contexts. Archaeologists don’t have informants (except the ethno- kind) but they still have this problem.
Then you get into activity theory, which presumes that a) there is sharing of knowledge, but always partial and unbalanced (e.g. the student does not simply acquire what the teacher knows) and b) a lot of knowledge is acquired through repetition, practice, trial+error, etc. Part of the reason it’s not explicit is that while it’s learned, it’s not taught, and it varies a lot between individuals. But one would hardly want to call, e.g., the set of skills involved in blacksmithing, non-cultural.
How do you deal with the vast amount of knowledge that is non-cultural: i.e., that is not shared and/or learned and/or patterned and/or cumulative? So, for instance, knowledge acquired through individuals interacting directly with their environments without the mediation of others? Or, alternately, the fact that all “cultural transmission” is really a process of distortion and incorporation?
So yeah, you may have guessed already, but I’m not picking A or B. Sorry.
- SC
Comment by schrisomalis September 23, 2010 @ 3:12 amGood stuff guys!
While I realize that this question is old hat we need to really get into it because, as you have demonstrated quite nicely Steve, nobody has really answered it satisfactorily yet (to my knowledge anyway). And to me it looks like we have started the arduous process of tackling it!
I don’t have the time right away to give a full response, but give me a few days and I will be able to. And in the meantime, you’re asking some provocative questions Steve, and you’ve outlined why this subject can quickly turn into a convoluted mess (and certainly has in the past, hell, I think my post certainly exemplifies this), but if you don’t think either of the definitions work, what’s your alternative suggestion? And how do you suggest we approach the grey areas in the culture/behaviour problem and definitions of culture adequately? I’m curious to know what you think!
I’ll let you know what I’m thinking soon, I’m thinking some flow charts and a discussion on what characteristics we think are absolute musts in a definition of culture is in order.
And I haven’t forget about your comments either Sol – I think we could really hash out the Culture/biology/behaviour stuff quite well with some discussion and some figures.
Again, great feedback guys!
Comment by Lars Anderson September 23, 2010 @ 1:55 pmYou and your figures.
Comment by Sol September 23, 2010 @ 2:47 pm