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Culture

 

" These conceptions have defects or shortcomings. The existence of behavioral traditions--that is, patterns of behavior transmitted by social rather than by biologic hereditary means--has definitely been established for non-human animals. "Ideas in the mind" become significant in society only as expressed in language, acts, and objects. "A logical construct" or "a statistical fiction" is not specific enough to be useful. The conception of culture as an abstraction led, first, to a questioning of the reality of culture (inasmuch as abstractions were regarded as imperceptible) and, second, to a denial of its existence; thus, the subject matter of non-biological anthropology, "culture," was defined out of existence, and without real, objective things and events in the external world there can be no science. Kroeber and Kluckhohn were led to their conclusion that culture is an abstraction by reasoning that if culture is behavior, it becomes the subject matter of psychology; therefore, they concluded that culture "is an abstraction from concrete behavior but is not itself behavior." But what is an abstraction of a marriage ceremony or a pottery bowl, using Kroeber and Kluckhohn's examples? A solution was provided by Leslie A. White in the essay "The Concept of Culture" (1959). The issue is not really whether culture is real or an abstraction, he reasoned; the issue is the context of the scientific interpretation. When things and events are considered in the context of their relation to the human organism, they constitute behavior; when they are considered not in terms of their relation to human, but in their relationship to one another, they become culture. The mother-in-law taboo is a complex of concepts, attitudes, and acts. When one considers them in their relationship to the human, they become behavior by definition. When one considers the mother-in-law taboo in its relationship to the place of residence of a newly married couple, the customary division of labor between the sexes, their respective roles in the society, and these in turn to the technology of society, the mother-in-law taboo becomes, again by definition, culture.


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