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Book No. – 17 (Sociology)
Book Name – Sociology (Yogesh Atal)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. MAN-THE CULTURE-BEARING AND CULTURE-BUILDING ANIMAL
2. BIOLOGICAL GIFTS TO MAN
3. BEGINNINGS OF CULTURE
4. LIVING CULTURES OF MAN: EVOLUTIONARY LADDER
5. DEFINITION OF CULTURE
6. ATTRIBUTES OF CULTURE
7. COMPONENTS OF CULTURE
8. THE PHENOMENON OF SANDWICH CULTURE
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LANGUAGE
Contours of Culture
Yogesh Atal
Chapter – 4
Table of Contents
- Living in groups is a characteristic shared by humans and other animals, especially primates.
- Some animals, like ants, also exhibit social organization and group life.
- What distinguishes humans from other biological beings is their capacity to build culture.
- Society among humans is unique because its identity is defined by its culture.
- The human population is divided into several societies, each distinct in terms of its culture.
- Culture is the feature that sets human society apart from the societies of lower-level animals.
- Infra-human beings (animals lower than Homo sapiens) exhibit mostly instinctive behaviour, ingrained in their genes and the same across different environments.
- Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are highly developed apes, regarded as distant cousins of humans and called primates.
- These primates also have a social life, interacting with their small group, mainly comprising of kin, and they have some ability to learn and invent.
- Despite their capacity for learning, most behaviour in these primates is biologically conditioned and similar regardless of their surroundings.
- Unlike humans, the social organization of chimpanzees is the same across all environments.
- Humans, however, do not have a fixed pattern of social organization, as their behaviours are shaped by culture rather than instinct.
MAN—THE CULTURE-BEARING AND CULTURE-BUILDING ANIMAL
- Human behaviour is largely learned, and therefore differs from society to society.
- Humans have a tremendous capacity to learn, forget, and relearn.
- A child of Indian parentage raised in an African tribal setting will acquire the culture of the environment they are raised in.
- Similarly, a Nuer or Bushman Hottentot child raised in India will adopt the culture of India, with almost no commonality with their parental society except for racial features.
- Culture defines a society and is specific to its geographical location.
- A human group, when it changes location, brings its own culture with it, expressed in visible (e.g., dress, food) and invisible (e.g., language, religion, rituals) traits.
- Humans have a great capacity to adapt to different environments and continually enrich their culture through acts and innovations.
- Culture is a constantly changing phenomenon, driven by human actions and inventions.
- Man is not just a recipient of nature’s gifts but transforms them for his benefit, though often at the cost of the environment.
- Man is responsible for the climate change crisis due to his impact on the environment.
- Humans’ biological gifts make them culture-building and culture-bearing animals.
- The number of languages humans have invented is vast, with 15,000 languages spoken 10,000 years ago, and 6,796 languages today.
- In India, most educated people speak two to three languages; the 1991 Census counted 1,576 languages/dialectsspoken in India.
- Language is one aspect of culture, and the variety of cultural traits is immense.
- Man the Toolmaker is distinctive in his capacity to build culture, which influences every individual’s life.
- Clothes serve as a concrete example of cultural variation, with different headgear styles across cultures and within the same culture based on status.
- Social behaviour is influenced by biological constraints and cultural conditioning.
- At birth, a human child is a biological brute and becomes a social animal through socialization and enculturation.
- The nature vs nurture controversy is almost resolved, with both biological environment and culture shaping human behaviour.
- Within the same environment and biological make-up, humans develop different cultural patterns.
- The example of headgear demonstrates cultural variation: people in the same environment wear different turbans, such as a Sikh turban, a Mewari Pagdi, or a Rajasthani Safa, each with variations in colour and style.
- In Mewar, kings used to wear different pagdis for festive and ordinary days, and variations in style exist across individuals and sects.
- Turbans are worn differently based on rituals or status: a white pagdi may signify a person who has lost their father, while a colourful turban may indicate a bridegroom or someone of royal connection.
- People may wear the same attire in different environments, such as a formal suit in hot weather, indicating that cultural norms dictate behaviour rather than comfort.