Culture and Nature

Question 1

What are some different ways of defining culture?

Answer 1

Kottak - Culture, which is distinctive to humanity, refers to customary behavior and beliefs that are passed on through encultruation. Culture on the human capacity for cultural learning. Culture encompasses rules for conduct internalized in human beings, which lead them to think and act in characteristic ways.

Question 2

How do cultures change?

Answer 2

diffusion, acculturation and not dependent on invention

Question 3

Ethnocentrism

Answer 3

judging other cultures by using one’s own cultural standards

Question 4

Cultural Relativism

Answer 4

avoiding the use of outside standards to judge behavior in a a given society

Question 5

Williams, Raymond “Culture”

Answer 5

Culture is a process of development. It is a particular way of life and behavior. It is an intellectual/artistic activity. Nature is contradistinction to culture and opposed to it. It is the inherent quality of something and the force that directs the world.

Question 6

What are some of the key differences between nature vs. nurture models in explaining differences in human behavior?

Answer 6

Nature and nurture are binary; that is they are mutually exclusive. Some of the key differences are natural ability, biological determinism,

Question 7

Ridley, Matt “Nature vs. Nurture”

Answer 7

They both affect each other. Nature and nurture in human development: evolution and evolutionary circumstance becomes our genes and experience which become us as current organisms in our current situation which in turn defines our current behavior.

Question 8

Shenk, David “Can White Men Jump?

Answer 8

We are not prisoners of our nature [DNA], we all have the potential to become better people. Contribution of genetics is overrated.

Question 9

Define binary

Answer 9

mutually exclusive.