MaryahReedCulture2022.pdf

    Speaking of Culture

    SPEAKING OF CULTURE

    Nolan Weil

    Speaking of Culture by Nolan Weil is licensed under a Creative Commons

    Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

    Speaking of Culture by Nolan Weil is licensed under CC-BY-NC 3.0 US

    Contents

    A Note to Students

    Nolan Weil ix

    Introduction

    Nolan Weil 1

    PART I. MAIN BODY

    1. Chapter 1: What is Culture?

    Nolan Weil

    Culture, simply de=ned 8 Brief history of a concept 10 Franz Boas and the birth of American anthropology

    14

    Later 20th & 21st century developments 16 Final reflections 19

    7

    2. Chapter 2: The Human Family

    Nolan Weil

    Origins and Diversity of Humanity 28 Where did we all come from? 31 The Multiregional Origin Hypothesis 31 The Recent African Origin Hypothesis 32 But why do we all look so different on the surface?

    35

    Race is not a biologically meaningful concept 39 Final Reflection 44

    27

    3. Chapter 3: Origins and Early Developments of

    Culture

    Nolan Weil

    Culture as a product of human activity 49 Paleolithic material culture 50 Stone tools 53 Carved Figurines 55 Painting 58 Origins of mythology 61 Stories of creation – A sampling 62 Similarities among creation stories 69 Accounting for common motifs 72 The Laurasian “Novel” 75 Final Reflection 82 Video Clips & Documentaries 83 References 84

    48

    4. Chapter 4: Material Culture

    Nolan Weil

    The things we make 89 Taking to the road 89 From one end of the country to another 100 Final reflection 103

    88

    5. Chapter 5: Culture as Thought and Action

    Nolan Weil

    Non-material aspects of culture 107 Beliefs 108 Values 109 Norms 110 Customs and Traditions 111 Rituals 112 Final reflection 116

    106

    6. Chapter 6: Beliefs, Values, and Cultural

    Universals

    Nolan Weil

    Value Orientations Theory 120 Hofstede’s dimensions of culture theory 124 Critique of Hofstede’s theory 133 Final reflection 135

    119

    7. Chapter 7: Group Membership and Identity

    Nolan Weil

    Preliminary remarks 139 Cultures and subcultures 140 Ethnicity 141 Racial identity 144 Social class and culture 148 Nationality 150 The origin of nations 154 National identity 159 Final reflection 161

    138

    8. Chapter 8: Religion and Culture

    Eliza Rosenberg

    What is religion? 167 What religion is not 169 The world’s religions 170 Some common religious questions 171 Religion and right behavior 179 Conclusion 183

    166

    9. Chapter 9: Roots of American National

    Culture

    Nolan Weil

    Preliminary remarks 187 American beliefs and values 188 A closer look at American cultural diversity 195 Understanding U.S. Cultural Landscapes 197 Spanish influence 199 French influence 200 Dutch influence 201 Albion’s Seed 204 Englanders from Barbados 213 The Westward Expansion 216 Final reflection 218

    186

    A Note to Students

    Nolan Weil

    If you are a student, you may be reading this book because

    you are enrolled in:

    • IELI 2470—Cross-Cultural Perspectives, or perhaps

    • IELI 2475—Cross-Cultural Explorations

    These courses are designed to ful<ll General Education

    breadth requirements in social sciences at USU (Utah

    State University). As the USU Catalog states:

    General Education breadth requirements are intended to

    introduce students to the nature, history, and methods of

    different disciplines; and to help students understand the

    cultural, historical, and natural contexts shaping the human

    experience.

    The title of this book is Speaking of Culture and its

    purpose is to de<ne culture and other concepts associated

    with it. My hope is that the readings in this book will help

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | I X

    you to better understand the breadth of the concept of

    culture and provide you with a vocabulary for discussing it

    more articulately.

    Culture is one of those broad concepts that is used

    widely, although somewhat imprecisely, in everyday

    English. It also cuts across many academic disciplines, and

    this book draws on many of them. It touches, for instance,

    on anthropology, biology, history, mythology, political

    science, psychology, and sociology.

    This book will not be the only material you will study in

    IELI 2470/2475. Your professor may provide you with

    additional readings and/or encourage you to do

    independent research on topics of interest. You may watch

    culturally relevant movies or documentaries. You will, I

    hope, also have grand conversations with your peers.

    My name, by the way, is Nolan Weil. I have been a

    professor in the Intensive English Language Institute

    (IELI) since 2004 and have taught this course or similar

    courses many times over the years. Perhaps I will be your

    teacher for this course, or perhaps you will have another

    professor from IELI. If I am your teacher, you will get to

    know me better as we meet regularly face-to face

    throughout the semester. If I am not your teacher, you

    may know me perhaps only as the voice behind this text.

    X | N O L A N W E I L

    Introduction

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This introduction to the book will give you a brief survey of the

    topics covered in each chapter. Identify two chapters that you think

    might be particularly interesting. Why do you think so? Be

    prepared to discuss your choices with other readers.

    The word culture is among the most frequently used words

    in English. We use it frequently in daily speech and

    encounter it often in both popular and academic texts.

    Directly or indirectly, it is the subject matter of many

    university courses. Even when it is not the exclusive focus,

    it plays a role in many discussions across the humanities

    and social sciences. But most of the time, we use it without

    de<ning it or even thinking much about exactly what we

    mean by it.

    Despite the ease with which we use the term, culture is

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1

    not a simple concept. The primary purpose of this book is

    to promote a better understanding of the scope of the idea.

    Indeed, the word has a very wide range of meanings, and

    they are not all consistent with one another. For one thing,

    it has a relatively long history, and its primary uses have

    changed markedly over several centuries. Even in my

    lifetime (I was born in 1953) the ways in which scholars

    have de<ned culture have only become more diverse.

    To come to grips with culture then will require that we

    give an account of the various ways that culture has come

    to be de<ned. It also goes without saying that one cannot

    de<ne any concept without introducing still other

    associated concepts, so this book is rich in such secondary

    concepts.

    We begin our mission of de<ning culture in Chapter 1

    with a brief recounting of the history of the word. We

    point to its Latin root and recount the senses attached to it

    in 18th century France, and later, in 19th century England,

    before 20th century anthropologists made it a central

    concept of their discipline. We round out the chapter by

    calling attention to the proliferation of de<nitions of

    culture over the last 50 years. We end by introducing seven

    themes that Faulkner, Baldwin, Lindsley and Hecht (2006)

    have identi<ed as encompassing all of the most common

    ways in which scholars have sought to de<ne culture.

    In Chapter 2, we put de<nitions of culture on the shelf

    temporarily, and put on the hat of the physical

    anthropologist. Our purpose is to emphasize the idea that

    culture, as anthropologists originally conceived it, is

    characteristic of the human species. That being the case,

    we want to remind readers of the antiquity of our species

    because it lays a foundation for putting human culture

    into a historical perspective in the chapter that follows. We

    2 | N O L A N W E I L

    also want to shine a light on the relationship between

    human diversity and geography and advance the

    argument that “race” is, biologically speaking, a

    meaningless category. Concepts such as those of race and

    ethnicity are often seen as bound up with culture, but my

    hope is that readers leave Chapter 2 with a sense that when

    it comes to humanity, the only “race” is the “human race.”

    In Chapter 3, we return to an explicit focus on culture,

    de<ning it as a product of human activity. We learn that

    the <rst modern humans came into a world already

    swimming in culture. Their hominid precursors, for

    example, were already tool users. The <rst half of the

    chapter features a discussion of the material culture of the

    Paleolithic, a time stretching from roughly 50,000 to

    10,000 years ago. You will no doubt marvel at the

    remarkable tools of stone, bone, horn and ivory, and the

    various other artifacts that are hard to describe as

    anything less than art. The second half deals with the

    remarkable similarities in the world’s mythologies, tracing

    their major themes back to Africa, and proposing that a

    major innovation that took place roughly 40,000 years ago

    may have given rise to most of the world’s mythologies as

    they have come down to us today.

    Chapter 4 might best be regarded as a bridge from the

    Paleolithic to the present. There is no grand theory in the

    chapter and no technical terminology to master. It merely

    begins with a quote from a renowned folklorist, who

    declared that “Material culture records human intrusion in

    the environment” (Henry Glassie, 1999: 1). Taking

    inspiration from the quote and from Glassie’s descriptive

    approach to material culture, I was moved to write a

    simple homely narrative based on my travels across several

    regions of the country. I caught hold of the <rst

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3

    impressions that came to mind when I recalled several

    memorable travels. These recollections were of

    waterscapes and landscapes, and the most obvious

    intrusions were boats and buildings.

    Structural de<nitions of culture often consist of lists of

    elements that refer to products of thought (or those things

    that can be expressed by means of language) and those

    things which are recognizable primarily as actions (i.e.

    performances, or ways of doing things). The intent of

    Chapter 5 is to de<ne a handful of terms that are generally

    regarded as aspects of culture: beliefs, values, norms,

    customs, traditions, and rituals. This certainly does not

    exhaust the list of elements typically mentioned as integral

    to culture, but they are terms that we routinely fall back on

    when challenged to de<ne culture. They are also terms that

    we <nd dif<cult to differentiate. What, for example, is the

    difference between a custom and a tradition? Although it

    may be a fool’s errand, we will do our best to distinguish

    this handful of interrelated terms one from another.

    In Chapter 6, we take a closer look at several ways in

    which anthropologists have put beliefs and values to work

    in the service of cultural inquiry. We look at the theory of

    Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck, known as Values

    Orientation Theory, which proposes that human societies

    can be compared on the basis of how they answer a limited

    number of universal questions. We then summarize the

    results from another approach to universal values, that of

    Geert Hofstede, who has proposed a theory purporting to

    identify different orientations across national cultures.

    We contrast that with a Chinese Values Survey reflecting a

    Confucian worldview. We wrap up the chapter with a

    critique of Hofstede’s theory, motivated by a suspicion

    4 | N O L A N W E I L

    that the persistence of the theory is due more to charisma

    than to the veracity of the theory.

    Chapter 7 takes up the theme of culture as group-

    membership, questioning the labeling of large national

    groups as cultures on the grounds that few people in

    today’s multicultural societies actually live in groups where

    everyone shares the same culture. In other words, we

    argue, culture is not something that is contained within

    groups. We de<ne some social categories often discussed

    by sociologists including race, ethnicity and social class.

    We then examine group-membership as historians and

    political scientists have often discussed them through the

    lens of nationalism.

    Chapter 8 explores some relationships between religion

    and culture, not the least of which is the fact that the word

    “religion,” like the word “culture,” comes to us from the

    Latin. Therefore, like the word, “culture,” the word

    “religion” does not have exact equivalents in many

    languages. Throughout the chapter, we will touch on many

    of the world’s historically prominent religions. Along the

    way, we will see that while some religions are rooted in

    particular shared beliefs, other religions place more

    emphasis on everyday practices. In the end, exploring all

    the various aspects of religion might lead us to wonder

    whether “religion” and “culture” aren’t simply two different

    terms for referring to the same things. On the other hand,

    it seems unlikely that ordinary speakers of English could

    get by without distinguishing that which is simultaneously

    religious and cultural from that which is “merely” cultural.

    In Chapter 9, we explore the roots of American culture.

    In doing so, we employ many of the elements of culture

    discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, most particularly: beliefs,

    values, and folkways. But whereas Chapter 5 focused on

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5

    de<ning the terms, and Chapter 6 looked into beliefs and

    values as cultural universals, Chapter 9 examines some

    beliefs and values particularly associated with the United

    States. We start with a conventional depiction of the

    United States as exemplifying values such as

    individualism, freedom, equality, and beliefs in change and

    progress, and as embracing norms of competitiveness,

    informality, and so on. We continue by challenging that

    as perhaps too much of a stereotype. Then, drawing on

    the “nation” concept from Chapter 7, we take a historical

    view of the United States as a country of eleven nations

    all exerting regional influence, and four dominant cultures

    dueling for political authority.

    This book does not explicitly cover all of the seven

    themes introduced in Chapter 1. There isn’t really much

    about culture as process or culture as re<nement. And

    culture as power and ideology is only suggested in Chapter

    9. However, perhaps there is enough here for every student

    to gain some small measure of appreciation for the many

    ideas we might want to keep in mind when speaking of

    culture.

    References

    Faulkner, S. L., Baldwin, J. R., Lindsley, S. L. & Hecht, M. L.

    (2006). Layers of meaning: An analysis of de<nitions of

    culture. In J. R. Balwin, S. L. Faulkner, M. L. Hecht & S.

    L. Lindsley, (Eds.), RedeQning culture: Perspectives across the

    disciplines. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Glassie, H. (1999). Material culture. Bloomington, IN:

    Indiana University Press.

    6 | N O L A N W E I L

    1

    Chapter 1: What is Culture?

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    Here are some questions and some tasks to guide you in your

    reading of the chapter. If you can address everything on this list,

    you will be off to a good start.

    1. Simply stated, what is culture?

    2. How has the meaning of the word changed over time?

    Trace its evolution over the centuries.

    3. Contrast Sir Edward Tylor’s 19th century view of culture

    with that of Franz Boas at the beginning of the 20th

    century. How are they similar? How are they different?

    4. What is the signiTcance of Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s

    classic work published in 1952?

    5. List the seven themes that seem to capture the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7

    scholarly literature on culture. Which theme(s) do you

    Tnd most compelling?

    Culture, simply deTned

    Trying to settle on a simple de<nition of culture is not an

    easy task. Maybe you will feel the same as you work your

    way through this chapter. You will see, for example, that

    the idea of culture has changed many times over the

    centuries and that in the last 50 years, scholars have made

    the idea more and more dif<cult to understand. But in this

    chapter, I will try to offer the simplest de<nition that

    seems reasonably up to date. Scholars might object that

    this de<nition is too simple, but I hope it will be useful for

    the purpose of furthering cross-cultural understanding. In

    that spirit, we shall regard ‘culture’ simply as a term

    pointing to:

    all the products of human thought and action both material

    and non-material, particularly those that exist because we live

    in groups.

    Or to repeat the same idea in a slightly different way:

    culture consists of all the things we make and nearly

    everything that we think and do, again, to the extent that

    what we make, think and do is conditioned by our experience

    of life in groups.

    8 | N O L A N W E I L

    The <rst thing to emphasize is that we are not born with

    culture, like we are born with blue or brown eyes, or black

    hair. We are born into culture, and we learn it by living in

    human social groups. The way this idea is often expressed

    is to say that culture is something that is transmitted from

    one generation to the next. This is how we become

    ‘enculturated.’

    But we humans are clever animals, so although much of

    what we make, think, and do is a result of the cultural

    environment into which we were born, not every material

    object that a person may make, or every thought, or every

    action is the result of enculturation. Think about it for a

    moment. While much of what we call culture is

    transmitted from generation to generation, new items of

    culture are invented from time to time. That is to say,

    sometimes, some of us make things, think things, or do

    things that are new and different. We are then either

    honored as innovators or even geniuses, or we are

    punished as heretics or criminals, or dismissed as

    eccentric, depending on how open or how closed our

    societies are to change.

    Of course, few things are ever entirely new. For the most

    part, we stand on the shoulders of those who came before

    us. Still, suppose some clever person creates a completely

    unique tool to serve some entirely personal purpose of no

    interest or use to another living person. Then by our

    de<nition of culture (above), that tool would seem to have

    all the marks of culture except one; it would play no role in

    the life of any group. The same would go for an idea. Any

    idea not shared by one’s fellow group members would not

    seem to belong to culture. And similarly, a completely

    idiosyncratic practice marks a person as merely different,

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9

    if not strange, not as a person participating in a shared

    cultural practice.

    Having proposed a brief, simple and fairly modern

    de<nition of culture that not every scholar of culture

    would <nd satisfactory, let us next survey some of the

    complications one <nds in academic studies of culture.

    Brief history of a concept

    Since this discussion is intended for an international

    audience, it is important to know that the English word

    ‘culture’ does not refer to a universal concept. In fact, it

    may not even have direct counterparts in other European

    languages closely related to English. For example, even

    though the German word ‘Kultur’ and the Polish

    word ‘kultura’ resemble the English ‘culture’, there are

    important differences in meaning, and in more distant

    languages like Mandarin Chinese (wen hua), we might

    expect the differences to be even greater (Goddard, 2005).

    What this means is that if you are a speaker of Mandarin,

    you cannot rely on a simple translation of the term from a

    bilingual dictionary or Google Translate.

    Scholars often begin their attempts to de<ne culture by

    recounting the historical uses of the word. As Jahoda

    (2012) has noted, the word ‘culture’ comes originally from

    the Latin, colere, meaning “to till the ground” and so it has

    connections to agriculture. Now for historical reasons, a

    great many English words have Latin and French origins,

    so maybe it is not surprising that the word ‘culture’ was

    used centuries ago in English when talking about

    agricultural production, for example, ‘the culture of

    barley.’ Gardeners today still speak of ‘cultivating’

    tomatoes or strawberries, although if they want to be more

    1 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    plain-spoken, they may just speak of ‘growing’ them.

    Moreover, biologists still use the word culture in a similar

    way when they speak of preparing ‘cultures of bacteria.’

    Later, in 18th century France, says Jahoda, culture was

    thought to be “training or re<nement of the mind or

    taste.” In everyday English, we still use the word in this

    sense. For instance, we might call someone a cultured

    person if he or she enjoys <ne wine, or appreciates

    classical music, or visiting art museums. In other words,

    by the 18th century, plants were no longer the only things

    that could be cultured; people could be cultured as well.

    Still later, culture came to be associated with “the

    qualities of an educated person.” On the other hand, an

    uneducated person might be referred to as “uncultured.”

    Indeed, throughout the 19th century, culture was thought

    of as “re<nement through education.” For example, the

    English writer Matthew Arnold (1896, p. xi) referred to

    “acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known

    and said in the world.” If Arnold were still alive today, he

    would no doubt think that the person who reads

    Shakespeare is ‘cultured’ while the one who watches The

    Simpsons or Family Guy is not.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1

    Sir Edward Tylor

    Near the end of the 19th

    century, the meaning of

    culture began to converge on

    the meaning that

    anthropologists would adopt

    in the 20th century. Sir

    Edward Tylor (1871, p. 1), for

    instance, wrote that:

    Culture, or civilization … is that

    complex whole which includes

    knowledge, belief, arts, morals,

    laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired

    by man as a member of society.

    Notice that Tylor viewed culture as synonymous with

    civilization, which he claimed evolved in three stages.

    CAUTION: Today we generally regard Tylor’s theory as

    mistaken, so please do not get too excited about the details

    that follow, but according to Tylor, the <rst stage of the

    evolution of culture was “savagery.” People who lived by

    hunting and gathering, Tylor claimed, exempli<ed this

    stage. The second stage, “barbarism,” Tylor said, described

    nomadic pastoralists, or people who lived by tending

    animals. The third stage, the civilized stage, described

    societies characterized by: urbanization, social

    strati<cation, specialization of labor, and centralization of

    political authority.

    As a result, European observers of 19th century North

    America, noticing that many Indian tribes lived by

    hunting and gathering, thought of America as a “land of

    savagery” (Billington, 1985). Presumably, tribes that

    1 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    farmed and tended sheep were not savages but merely

    barbarians. But by this de<nition, many early English

    settlers in North America, as well as some populations still

    living in England, in so far as they lived mainly by farming

    and tending animals, could rightly be called barbarians. In

    fact, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, many

    ‘cultured Europeans’ did regard Americans in the colonies

    as barbarians.

    Now just to be clear, Europeans were not the only

    people with an inflated sense of their own superiority. In

    China, those living within the various imperial dynasties

    thought of people living far away from the center of the

    empire as barbarians. Moreover, they regarded everyone

    outside of China as barbarians. And this included the

    British.

    But let’s return to Sir Edward Tylor and the elements

    that he identi<ed as belonging to culture–knowledge,

    beliefs, arts, morals, laws, customs, and so on. This view of

    culture is certainly not far from 20th and 21st century

    views. But contemporary cultural scholars <nd Tylor

    mistaken in equating culture with civilization. Among the

    <rst scholars to drive this point home was Franz Boas.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3

    Franz Boas

    Franz Boas and the birth of American

    anthropology

    Franz Boas is widely

    regarded as the father of

    cultural anthropology in

    the United States. Boas

    was a German of Jewish

    heritage (though from a

    not religiously observant

    family). Educated in

    Germany, Boas was

    exposed to two competing

    intellectual traditions, the

    Naturwissenschaften

    (natural sciences) and the Geisteswissenschaften (human

    sciences). Boas embraced both, as a student of physics on

    the one hand and geography on the other. In 1896, Boas

    immigrated to the United States (Liron, 2003). Without

    the contributions of Boas, American anthropology might

    have developed very differently.

    Unlike the British scholars of the time, Boas insisted

    that the study of culture should be based on careful

    observation, not speculation, which was the tendency of

    writers like Matthews and Tylor. Boas spent many years

    studying Native American cultures, and over the course of

    his career, he collected volumes of information on

    linguistics, art, dance, and archaeology. Boas’ studies

    convinced him of the sophistication of Native cultures, so

    in contrast to Tylor, Boas and his students rejected the

    idea of indigenous cultures as inferior stages along the

    route to civilized re<nement presumably represented by

    “Western” cultures (Franz Boas, 2017).

    1 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    In fact, Boas is responsible for a number of tendencies

    in American anthropology:

    For one thing, as we have just suggested, Boas rejected

    the idea that culture was something that evolved within

    societies by stages from lower forms to higher. Instead, he

    argued that culture was a historical, not an evolutionary

    development. Boas insisted that cultural ideas and

    practices diffused across groups who were living in

    proximity and interacting within similar environments.

    For Boas cultural developments were in many ways just

    accidents of history (Franz Boas, 2017).

    Moreover, Boas was a vehement opponent of the

    scienti<c racism of the era (Liron, 2003). Scienti<c racists

    pushed the idea that race was a biological characteristic

    and that it was possible to explain human behavior by

    appealing to racial differences. During the 19th and 20th

    centuries, scienti<c racism had many proponents, not just

    in Europe and North America but as far away as China and

    Japan (Dikötter, 1992). Many anthropologists in Boas’ day

    busied themselves in activities like describing and

    measuring the skulls of various groups of people and using

    this data to draw conclusions about the intellectual and

    moral characteristics of people. Boas, however, conducted

    his own studies of skeletal anatomy, and argued that the

    shape and size of the human skull was greatly affected by

    environmental factors like health and nutrition (Franz

    Boas, 2017).

    For better or for worse, Boas is also responsible for

    transforming culture into a count noun, or a noun with

    both singular and plural forms. Before Boas, culture was

    an abstract idea, not countable, like beauty, knowledge, or

    love. After Boas, one could refer to “cultures,” that is,

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5

    groups sharing a common set of ideas, beliefs, practices,

    etc.

    Finally, we also owe the notion of cultural relativism to

    Franz Boas. Cultural relativism is the idea that cultures

    cannot be objectively evaluated as higher or lower, better

    or worse, right or wrong. From the perspective of the

    cultural relativist, cultures can only be judged on their own

    terms. For the cultural relativist, the job of the

    anthropologist is to understand how a culture works, not

    to make aesthetic or moral judgments about other

    cultures. (Cultural relativism though was a double-edged

    sword. On the one hand, it may have helped students of

    culture combat their own ethnocentrism. After all, most of

    the practices of any given culture are surely neither right

    nor wrong relative to those of another culture but only

    different. On the other hand, a cultural relativist would be

    forced to admit that there was nothing morally wrong with

    chattel slavery as practiced across wide regions of the

    country in 19th

    century America. That idea clearly offends

    the moral intuitions of most contemporary Americans.)

    Franz Boas had extraordinary influence on American

    anthropology. He not only introduced important ideas and

    methods but also nurtured a generation of students that

    would turn anthropology into a thriving and popular

    academic <eld. Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Edward

    Sapir, and Margaret Mead were just a few of Boas’ most

    well-known students (Franz Boas, 2017).

    Later 20th & 21st century developments

    Academic interest in culture flourished in the 20th century

    and still continues today. Scholars who try to de<ne the

    subject often begin with the classic work of Kroeber and

    1 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Kluckhohn who in 1952 reviewed over 160 de<nitions from

    the literature of their day. And as if 160 de<nitions were

    not enough, Kroeber and Kluckhohn went on to offer their

    own:

    Culture consists of patterns … of … behavior acquired and

    transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive

    achievement of human groups, including their embodiments

    in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional,

    … historical … ideas and especially their attached values;

    culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as

    products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of

    further action. (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952: 181)

    Since Kroeber and Kluckhohn, scholars have continued

    to revise old de<nitions and invent new ones. A recent

    survey identi<ed 313 de<nitions in the scholarly literature

    comprising seven distinct themes! These included

    de<nitions framed in terms of:

    1. Structure/pattern – culture as a system or framework

    of elements (e.g., ideas, behavior, symbols, or any

    combination of these or other elements)

    2. Function – culture as a means for achieving some

    end

    3. Process – culture as an ongoing process of social

    construction

    4. Product – culture as a collection of artifacts (with or

    without deliberate symbolic intent)

    5. ReQnement – culture as individual or group

    cultivation to higher intellect or morality

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7

    6. Group membership – culture as signifying a place or

    group of people, including a focus on belonging to

    a place or group

    7. Power or ideology – culture as an expression of

    group-based domination and power

    (Faulkner, Baldwin, Lindsley & Hecht, 2006: 29-30)

    Given so many themes, you might feel like agreeing with

    Jahoda (2012: 299) who complained that:

    more than half a century after Kroeber and Kluckhohn, and

    a literature that could easily Tll a sizeable library, the most

    striking feature of these deTnitions is their diversity.

    But perhaps this laundry list of themes need not be

    confusing. Perhaps they are not even as inconsistent as

    they might seem. I am reminded of the parable of the blind

    men and the elephant.

    Six blind men confronting an elephant for the <rst time,

    came away from the experience with six different

    descriptions owing to their different angles of approach.

    One blind man, reaching up to touch the animal’s broad

    side, concluded that the elephant was like a wall. Another

    man running into a leg, decided that an elephant was like

    a tree. A third man seizing the elephant’s trunk,

    proclaimed the elephant to be a snake, while the fourth

    man grasping the tail, declared the elephant to be more

    like a rope. Meanwhile, a <fth man grasping the ear was

    sure the elephant was like a fan, while the sixth man

    encountering a tusk was equally sure the elephant was a

    spear. Only by bringing all of the separate parts of the

    1 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    elephant together could anyone hope to acquire a complete

    and coherent impression of an elephant. Perhaps culture is

    a bit like this. Our concept of it is enriched when we are

    able to see it from many different angles.

    Blind monks examining an elephant by Itcho Hanabusa (1652-1724)

    Still maybe some of the themes of Faulkner and

    colleagues seem more basic than others, so in rounding

    out this chapter, I attempt a <nal synthesis bringing

    together the simple de<nition with which I started the

    chapter and relating it to the seven themes of Faulkner et

    al.

    Final reflections

    How does the simple de<nition of culture offered at the

    beginning of the chapter intersect with those of Faulkner

    and colleagues? If you go back and review the simple

    de<nition carefully, you will see that it encompasses items

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9

    1 and 4 from the list, with a nod to item 6 as well. It

    emphasizes that culture is a product of human making. It

    allows that those products can be material artifacts, or

    merely expressions of cognitive activities, i.e., thoughts, or

    both. A story passed along by word of mouth is a product

    of thought. Retelling the story to an audience is an action.

    A story written down on a scroll or printed in a book

    means that the thoughts of the story-teller are preserved in

    material form. In emphasizing that culture consists of

    elements, we have tried to reduce those elements down to

    two basic categories: thought and action. In later chapters,

    we will expand upon each category.

    Our de<nition does not rule out the possibility that

    some elements of culture, what we call material culture,

    can remain long after the people that produced it are gone,

    e.g., stone tools from prehistoric times. On the other hand,

    it implies that material artifacts do not come into being

    without human intervention. Somebody made the stone

    tools. And it leaves open the possibility that some elements

    of culture are behavioral; in other words, they are

    performances that require no props, e.g., shaking hands in

    greeting. Finally, my simple de<nition acknowledges that

    in so far as people are not solitary animals but live in

    groups, culture is a collective phenomenon. We will revisit

    all of these themes in the chapters that follow.

    As for de<nitions that emphasize culture as a function

    or culture as a process, my de<nition is silent. I would say,

    of course, one can look at culture from a functional point

    of view, or one can emphasize the processual aspects of

    cultural phenomena. But are these not secondary

    considerations? Don’t they follow only after some initial

    observation and description? We <nd a stone arrow head

    buried in the ground. Isn’t the <rst order of business to

    2 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    gaze in wonder at the object, to describe it and name it? Of

    course, we soon want to know: What was this used for?

    What was its function? In what ways does it <t together

    with other objects? And how was it made? And knowing

    full well that crafting a tool requires learning, we wonder,

    how did novices learn this craft, by what process? But in

    the interest of brevity, I have purposely tried not to cram

    every conceivable quali<cation into the basic de<nition.

    Looking over Faulkner et al’s list for other items about

    which our opening de<nition is silent, we also note the

    preservation of one of the oldest notions of culture, culture

    as re<nement. With the career of Franz Boas freshly in

    mind, we might imagine that Boas would wonder how

    such an anachronism appears in our modern context. (An

    anachronism is something old-fashioned, something

    belonging to an earlier time and place than the one

    portrayed.) However, while Tylor may have been wrong to

    think that the culture of Native Americans or Africans was

    rudimentary compared to that of Englishmen, perhaps we

    should not be too quick to banish the idea of re<nement as

    an integral aspect of culture. One could well imagine our

    stone-age tool master, for instance, becoming better and

    better at the craft and teaching others the <ner points of

    arrowhead making. Indeed, human culture may have built

    into it the urge to perfection, and so the idea of culture as

    re<nement need not necessarily be an elite pretension of

    either Western (or imperial Chinese) “high society.”

    Finally, there is the idea that culture is an expression of

    group-based domination and power. In my <rst

    reflections on this theme I was inclined to say that surely

    this does not reflect the most basic de<nition of culture

    but is instead an observation about a dynamic that might

    come about when populations grow and splinter into

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1

    multiple groups that inevitably vie with each other. (Come

    to think of it, isn’t that exactly what a study of Neolithic

    China will reveal.) And so I may be forced to acknowledge

    that perhaps culture as power and domination over others

    deserves a more prominent place in my scheme of things,

    but for now I will have to leave things stand as they are,

    i.e., incomplete.

    To sum it all up, the English word, “culture,” has a long

    history, and it has also undergone many modern

    developments. In contemporary discourse, it continues to

    be used in all the old ways, even as it has acquired new

    meanings. It is a product of human thought and action.

    Some products are tangible and some are not. Culture is

    learned. Culture is passed from one generation to another.

    Sometimes culture is invented anew. Culture is the

    instrument by means of which humans both adapt to the

    physical environment and regulate their lives in groups.

    Culture is not <xed once and for all but changes in

    response to changing circumstances. Culture can be a

    source as well as an instrument of conflict. Culture is

    complicated.

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    Below are some excerpts of deTnitions from various sources,

    organized in seven groups. Keep in mind the proposal of Faulkner,

    Baldwin, Lindsley and Hecht that scholarly deTnitions tend to fall

    into one (or more) thematic categories:

    1. Structure

    2 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    2. Function

    3. Process

    4. Product

    5. ReTnement

    6. Group Membership

    7. Power/Ideology

    For each cluster of deTnitions below, name the category from

    above that best describes the theme represented by the items

    included in the cluster.

    Cluster 1: Culture as _______________

    • the moral and social passion for doing good; it is the study and pursuit of perfection, and this perfection is the growth and predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our animality (Harrison, 1971)

    • the attainment of higher awareness, with the aid of which one succeeds in understanding one’s own historical value, one’s own function in life, one’s own rights and obligations (Gramsci, 1981)

    Cluster 2: Culture as _______________

    • what happens when people makes sense of their lives and the behavior of other people with whom they have to deal (Spindler and Spindler, 1990)

    • how information is transmitted, particularly in teaching and learning (Bonner, 1980)

    Cluster 3: Culture as ________________

    • a community or population sufFciently large enough to be self-sustaining, i.e., large enough to produce new generations of members without relying on outside people (Jandt, 2016)

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 3

    • people who share learned patterns of behavior (Winkelman, 1993)

    Cluster 4: Culture as ________________

    • a contested zone in which different groups struggle to deFne issues in their own interests (Moon, 2002)

    • a Feld on which a cacophonous cluster of diverse voices plays itself out (Shore, 1996)

    Cluster 5: Culture as ________________

    • the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving (Samovar and Porter, 1991)

    • an organized group of learned responses characteristic of a particular society (Linton, 1955)

    • a commonly shared system of symbols, the meanings of which are understood on both sides with an approximation to agreement (Parsons, 1964)

    Cluster 6: Culture as ________________

    • that which gives people a sense of who they are, of belonging, of how they should behave, and of what they should be doing (Harris & Moran, 1996)

    • means and mechanisms through which the general biological nature of the individuals comprising the society is regulated, their behavior is programmed and directed … (Markarian, 1973)

    Cluster 7: Culture as _________________

    • the artifacts that are produced by society, e.g., clothing, food, technology, etc. (Barnett & Kincaid, 1983)

    2 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    • popular production of images . . . as part of a larger process which . . . may be called popular culture (Fabian, 1999)

    References

    Arnold, M. (1896). Literature and dogma. (Preface). New

    York, NY: The Macmillan Co.

    Baldwin, J. R., Faulkner, S. L., Hecht, M. L. & Lindsley, S. L.

    (Eds.), (2006). RedeQning culture: Perspectives across the

    disciplines. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Billington, R. A. (1985). Land of savagery, land of promise: The

    European image of the American frontier in the nineteenth

    century. University of Oklahoma Press.

    Dikötter, F. (1992). Discourse of race in modern

    China. Stanford University Press.

    Faulkner, S. L., Baldwin, J. R., Lindsley, S. L. & Hecht, M. L.

    (2006). Layers of meaning: An analysis of de<nitions of

    culture. In RedeQning culture: Perspectives across the

    disciplines. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Franz Boas. (2017, June 2). In Wikipedia, The Free

    Encyclopedia.

    Goddard, C. (2005). The lexical semantics of ‘culture’.

    Language Sciences, 27, 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/

    j.langsci.2004.05.001

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 5

    Jahoda, G. (2012). Critical reflections on some recent

    de<nitions of ‘‘culture.’’ Culture & Psychology, 18(3),

    289–303.

    Kroeber, A. L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A critical

    review of concepts and deQnitions. Cambridge, MA: Peabody

    Museum.

    Liron, T. (2003). Franz Boas and the discovery of culture.

    Senior Honors Thesis, Amherst College.

    Tylor, E. B. (1871/1958). The origins of culture. New York, NY:

    Harper & Brothers.

    Image Attribution

    Image 1: “Edward Burnett Tylor” by The GNU Project is

    licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

    Image 2: “Franz Boas” from the Canadian Museum of

    Civilization is licensed under Public Domain-1923

    Image 3: “Blind monks examining an elephant” from

    Wikimedia Commons is licensed under Public

    Domain-1923

    2 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    2

    Chapter 2: The Human

    Family

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    There are several important arguments in this chapter. If you

    follow them carefully, you may come away with all the necessary

    resources to address the following questions and tasks.

    1. What does it mean to say that human diversity is

    geographically structured?

    2. Explain the essential difference between the

    Multiregional Origin Hypothesis and the Recent African

    Origin Hypothesis. How does your previous

    understanding of human origins compare with these

    explanations?

    3. List at least three genetically determined traits

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 7

    discussed in the chapter. Which two seem linked to

    geography and climate? Which one might be due

    mainly to chance?

    4. Explain the connection between geography, human

    nutritional requirements, and skin color.

    5. How has the concept of race changed since the time of

    Carl Linnaeus?

    Origins and Diversity of Humanity

    In the chapter after this one, we will trace human culture

    back to its earliest origins and then linger for a while in the

    Upper Paleolithic, which lasted from about 50,000 to

    10,000 years ago. But in this chapter, we will set the stage

    for that story by looking at the origins and diversity of

    Homo sapiens, which is the scienti<c name of our species.

    Although we humans are not the only species to exhibit

    culture, we depend on it in a way that no other species

    does. Moreover, human culture is certainly as old as the

    human species itself. But how old is that? And how do we

    explain human diversity? Finally, how did our species

    come to be distributed across the whole earth?

    Anyone who has ever visited an ethnically diverse city

    like New York, London, Toronto, or Sydney, is surely

    impressed by the diversity of people living in these cities.

    These cities, and others like them, have attracted migrants

    from every corner of the world. Noticing this diversity may

    naturally make some of us curious. Where is this or that

    person from? Or to be more precise, where are the person’s

    ancestors from (for the person in question may be truly

    2 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    from New York, having been born there and having never

    lived anywhere else). Sometimes it is hard to guess from a

    person’s appearance where his/her ancestors are from

    originally. But sometimes it is not so hard. Where do you

    suppose the ancestors of the people depicted below

    probably originated?

    Indeed, a person’s physical appearance can be a good

    clue from where in the world the person’s ancestors came.

    We see a person with a particular face, and we think —

    India, while for others, we think — China, or Africa, or

    Europe. Sometimes we can be even more precise—that

    person looks Somali, we think (if we are familiar with

    Somalis), while another we guess is an Eastern European

    of some sort. Of course, we can be mistaken, but those of

    us who have met people from many different places may

    become quite good at guessing a person’s ancestral

    origins. On the other hand, many people in the world

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 9

    today have mixed ancestry, which complicates the point I

    am trying to make. You may be wondering, “just what is

    that point?”

    Only that humans exhibit a lot of genetic diversity (for it

    is our genes that determine our physical characteristics)

    and also that genetic diversity is geographically

    structured, which is the geneticist’s way of saying that

    people from particular regions resemble each other more

    than they resemble people from other regions. In the past,

    this observation led both laymen and scholars to believe

    that people could be neatly classi<ed into easily

    distinguishable groups, called ‘races.’

    Today, most biologists believe that (biologically

    speaking) the only race is the human race. What does this

    mean? Where did our respective ancestors come from in

    the <rst place? Did our ancestral groups just spring into

    existence independent of all other groups? Or is each

    group a branch from the trunk of one great tree, which

    came from a single seed? In other words, if we trace our

    ancestry back far enough, will we discover that we really

    belong, not to different regional tribes, but to one original

    tribe?

    The academic discipline most intimately connected with

    the search for answers to questions about human origins

    is physical anthropology (also known as biological

    anthropology). We thus begin our cross-cultural

    explorations by <rst situating ourselves as a species.

    3 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Artist’s depiction of Homo erectus

    Where did we all come from?

    Scienti<c knowledge of

    human origins is based on

    the study of skulls and

    other skeletal remains,

    many of which were

    unearthed in the 20th

    century. In the last 30

    years, advances in

    molecular genetics have

    also advanced our

    knowledge. Based on this

    material, many

    anthropologists have concluded that our <rst fully human

    (but not quite modern) ancestors appeared in Africa about

    2 million years ago. We know them as Homo

    erectus (“upright man”). We call ourselves Homo sapiens

    (“wise man”), meaning that while we might see these

    distant cousins as somehow human, we do not see them as

    belonging to our species. But their exact relationship to us

    has been a subject of controversy over the last half-century,

    as scholars have debated two competing theories for

    explaining how human beings populated the planet. Let’s

    look at these two theories.

    The Multiregional Origin Hypothesis

    There are many variations of the Multiregional Origin

    Hypothesis, making it hard to construct a simple narrative,

    but the basic story goes something like this.

    As suggested above, Homo erectus, <rst appeared in

    Africa about 2 million years ago. From fossil evidence, we

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3 1

    guess that some groups migrated out of Africa reaching

    Indonesia, China, and Georgia about 1.7 million years ago.

    Other groups may have wandered into Europe about 1.5

    million years ago. According to multi-regionalists, (e.g.,

    Thorne & Wolpoff, 2003), as Homo erectus spread across

    Asia and Europe, they established separate regional

    populations. These populations gradually evolved with

    some gene mixing occurring when migrating groups

    sometimes came into contact with one another. Multi-

    regionalists propose that Homo erectus gradually evolved to

    eventually become Homo sapiens. If this theory is correct,

    say the multi-regionalists, it explains why Homo sapiens

    appeared suddenly across Europe, Asia and Australia

    about 50,000 years ago.

    The Recent African Origin Hypothesis

    Not every anthropologist accepts the Multiregional Origin

    Hypothesis. Supporters of the Recent African Origin

    Hypothesis agree that various species of the genus Homo,

    including Homo erectus <rst appeared in Africa and that

    some groups migrated out of Africa. They doubt, however,

    that Asian populations of Homo erectus gave rise to Homo

    sapiens. Instead, they argue, there were many migrations

    of various archaic humans out of Africa over 1.5-2.0 million

    years, none of which gave rise to Homo sapiens. According

    to the Recent African Origin Hypothesis, our immediate

    ancestors evolved—perhaps from Homo erectus, yes,

    although not of the world travelling Asian variety, but

    instead from those Homo erectus who had remained,

    evolving, in Africa (Cann & Wilson, 2003).

    According to the Recent African Origin Hypothesis, our

    closest ancestors originated in East Africa about 150,000 –

    3 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    200,000 years ago and migrated out of Africa in several

    waves beginning about 100,000 years ago. Some of these

    waves may have died out. But one wave, which began

    about 90,000 years ago, carried early humans out of Africa,

    possibly through present day Yemen. Over the next 15,000

    years, groups of early moderns followed the coast of the

    Indian Ocean, around the Indian subcontinent as far as

    present day Indonesia and southern China. By about

    65,000 years ago, some groups reached Australia, Borneo

    and New Guinea. About 50,000 years ago, after the climate

    in Europe began to warm following an Ice Age, some

    groups moved north and east across the European

    continent (Oppenheimer, 2003).

    Map of hypothesized global migrations of humans out of Africa

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3 3

    Artist’s depiction of Neanderthal Man

    On these migrations,

    Homo sapiens may have

    encountered various

    hominid cousins,

    including Homo

    neanderthalensis

    (Neanderthal man). Some

    geneticists believe modern

    humans may carry a small

    amount (~2.5%) of

    Neanderthal DNA (Green,

    et al., 2010). Otherwise

    there is not much evidence of interbreeding between

    moderns and archaic humans. Eventually, all

    representatives of the genus Homo other than Homo sapiens

    disappeared; we do not know exactly why.

    About 40,000-45,000 years ago, modern humans began

    spreading north throughout Asia. Then beginning about

    25,000 years ago, some groups crossed over a Bering land

    bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Gradually, over the next

    10,000 years, these migrants from Asia spread throughout

    all of North and South America. Of course, not everyone

    left Africa. Some descendants of groups that left may have

    even returned. We do not know all of the details, but over

    the past 30 years, a lot of evidence has been discovered that

    supports the Recent African Origin hypothesis

    (Oppenheimer, 2003). Today, it is probably fair to say, it is

    the consensus view among anthropologists although few

    would say the matter is completely settled.

    If the Recent African Origin theory is correct, it means

    every living human being can trace his/her ancestry to

    Africans who left Africa roughly 90,000 years ago. In other

    words, there is a fundamental sense in which deep down

    3 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    we are all African, and ultimately as different as we may

    seem to be, we are all one big family.

    But why do we all look so different on the

    surface?

    If our ancestors all came from Africa, you may be

    wondering, why do we all look as different as we do? To

    answer this question, we have to draw on principles from

    evolutionary biology and population genetics.

    To survive, a species must be well adapted to its

    environment. Some species occupy a very narrow

    geographic range; we say it is specialized. For example,

    the koala lives only in Australia and eats primarily the

    leaves of eucalyptus trees. Koalas do not exhibit much

    variation and cannot live in very many places. Other

    species, however, are generalized; they inhabit a wide

    range of environments and exhibit a greater degree of

    variation. We humans are an example of a generalized

    species. We inhabit environments from the tropics to the

    arctic, from deserts to rainforests, and from sea level to

    high mountains. Many of the traits we possess are what

    biologists call polymorphic, that is they exist in many different forms, which allow us to adapt to a wider range

    of environments (Feder and Park, 1993: p. 328).

    One trait that shows great variation in humans is skin

    color. If we look at a map showing the distribution of skin

    color across the world today, we <nd that darker skin is

    concentrated near the equator while lighter skin is

    concentrated in the northern latitudes. If the recent

    African origin theory is correct, our earliest modern

    human ancestors evolved in Africa for about 100,000 years

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3 5

    before leaving on their journeys to the far ends of the

    earth. Those ancient ancestors were most certainly black,

    having evolved in the intense equatorial sun.

    Global human skin color distribution

    Black skin provides some protection against sunburn

    and skin cancer. That much is true. But this is probably not

    the reason our African ancestors evolved dark skin.

    More important may have been a connection between

    skin color, ultraviolet radiation (UV), and an important

    vitamin. According to Jablonski & Chaplin (2010), dark

    skin is the body’s way of preserving folate (Vitamin B),

    which is rapidly destroyed by UV radiation leading to

    folate de<ciency, a major cause of birth defects,

    developmental disorders, and various degenerative

    diseases (Lucock et al., 2003). Light skinned people would

    not have thrived in such an environment; therefore, the

    frequency of genes for light skin would have been greatly

    reduced or eliminated from the gene pool.

    When the earliest migrations out of Africa took humans

    around the coast of India, the selective pressures (with

    regard to skin color) remained the same. Indeed, people

    indigenous to southern India tend to be quite dark. But as

    human populations moved northward, selective pressure

    for dark skin diminished. In fact, populations in the

    3 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    northern most latitudes encountered a different kind of

    adaptive challenge. Adequate Vitamin D synthesis requires

    exposure to UV radiation. Humans in the northern

    latitudes needed to absorb all the UV light they could for

    Vitamin D synthesis. Since white skin allows in more UV

    while dark skin <lters it out, populations that settled in the

    north underwent selection for white skin. Dark skinned

    people in the far north would have suffered from rickets, a

    bone disease caused by Vitamin D de<ciency. The fact that

    some northern people (like the Inuit) are darker than we

    would expect is explained by their diet of <sh and marine

    mammals, which is rich in Vitamin D. Because the Inuit

    got adequate Vitamin D from their food, they did not

    depend on sunlight for Vitamin D synthesis and so did not

    face selective pressure for lighter skin.

    Populations that settled in the middle latitudes

    (between 23° and 46°) evolved yet another adaptive trait. In

    the middle latitudes, UV radiation varies greatly by season,

    so people indigenous to the middle latitudes evolved white

    skin with the ability to tan (i.e., become darker). In

    essence, they could change their color considerably,

    becoming several shades darker in summer, and getting

    pale again with the winter. In the modern era, of course,

    people of all colors have migrated, or been otherwise

    displaced, to places not originally inhabited by their

    ancestors. Cultural adaptations compensate for any

    environmental disadvantages associated with particular

    skin colors. For instance, white people in sun-drenched

    regions shield themselves from UV radiation with

    clothing, and black children in sun-deprived regions may

    drink milk, which in places like the U.S. is routinely

    forti<ed with Vitamin D.

    Body build is another trait that may have undergone

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3 7

    selection. People like the Maasai of Kenya, who live in a hot

    climate, are often long limbed and slender, which

    promotes heat loss. People like the Inuit (mentioned

    above), who live in a cold climate, are often stocky with

    short <ngers and toes, a body build that helps preserve

    body heat. Similarly, people whose ancestors settled in

    cold or dry areas often have long noses to warm or moisten

    the air before taking it into the lungs. People whose

    ancestors stayed in hot humid places (where the air is

    already warm and moist) have noses that are short and

    broad.

    So one explanation for human physical variation is

    natural selection, which is the idea that the environment

    (e.g., geography and climate) selected particular traits and

    not others. Why? Because those traits enabled the

    individuals that possessed them to reproduce more

    successfully and therefore to pass these genetically

    determined traits to their offspring. As our African

    ancestors settled in different regions over tens of

    thousands of years, they gradually acquired physical traits

    well suited to their environments. They began to look more

    and more like the people that today we would tag as

    Indian, and Chinese, and Northern European, and for that

    matter African too.

    But while natural selection shapes the physical

    characteristics of populations, random processes also play

    a role. Gene flow and genetic drift are random processes that

    also surely affected our ancestors on their global

    migrations. For much of human history, humans lived in

    small, geographically separated groups of interbreeding

    individuals. Sometimes, different populations came into

    contact and interbred. When this occurred, there was gene

    flow, or the mixing of genes between two populations.

    3 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    Gene flow served to reduce the genetic variation between

    interbreeding groups. Physical differences between the

    groups became blurred as a result of mixing.

    On the other hand, sometimes a population may have

    split into two or more groups, each of which went its own

    way. This led to genetic drift. Especially when populations

    are small, chances are that the frequencies of particular

    genes in populations that split will be quite different. For

    example, it is not likely that the (many) genes that control

    height will be equally distributed when a relatively small

    population splits into two groups. One group may retain

    more of the genes that contribute to a taller stature, and

    after several generations, the average height of one group

    will tend to be greater than that of another (Feder & Park,

    1993).

    In conclusion, nearly 100,000 years of migrations have

    shaped from an original population of Africans an

    assortment of regional groups differing phenotypically

    from each other in ways shaped by geography, climate,

    and chance. At the same time, Africans themselves have

    also continued to evolve. Today Africa remains the

    continent with the greatest amount of genetic (and

    linguistic) diversity anywhere on the earth, further lending

    support to the idea that it all started in Africa.

    Race is not a biologically meaningful concept

    The topic of race is a sensitive one because race is

    historically tied to issues of inequality and oppression that

    still trouble us today. But what is race? Simply stated, race

    involves the idea that humans can be classi<ed into a few

    basic groups based on genetic and physical traits, ancestry,

    or social relations. Today scholars think of race as a folk

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 3 9

    concept, not a scienti<c concept although once upon a time,

    the concept was treated with great scienti<c authority.

    It is true that most groups tend to classify other groups

    in relationship to themselves. A group with limited

    knowledge and experience of another group living nearby

    may merely create a simple category that distinguishes the

    in-group from the out-group. For instance, the Abenaki

    who inhabited the northern regions of North America, and

    referred to themselves as Alnôbak, “real people,” referred to

    their neighbors in the arctic as Eskimo, “eaters of raw

    flesh,” or so it is widely believed. Meanwhile, the ‘Eskimo’

    called themselves Inuit, or … you guessed it, “real people.”

    Each group thought of itself as “real people,” while they

    thought of the other group as, well, perhaps not real

    people.

    On the other hand, complex societies with considerable

    knowledge of other people may produce elaborate systems

    of classi<cation. It is often said that Europeans had no

    particular awareness of race until the 1700s; however, a

    variety of cultural documents from the European Middle

    Ages show that during the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries,

    Europeans were already creating a discourse of race even

    before the development of an explicit vocabulary of race

    (Heng, 2011).

    Europeans had, of course, long been familiar with the

    peoples of Africa and the Middle East. But from the

    15th-18th centuries, Europeans also began to encounter

    many of the world’s other peoples for the <rst time,

    especially in the Americas, Australia and the Paci<c

    Islands. These encounters along with the rise of science set

    the stage for the development of scienti<c attempts to

    explain human diversity, and the concept of race became a

    subject of scienti<c interest.

    4 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Scientists such as the Swedish botanist, physician and

    zoologist, Carl Linnaeus, laid the foundation for a

    scienti<c racism that would last well into the 20th century.

    In 1735, Linnaeus invented a system for classifying living

    organisms that would greatly influence European ideas

    about race. Linnaeus classi<ed humans into four racial

    types based on skin color and facial and bodily features.

    He named the types after their assumed place of origin,

    associating each type with a color: Africanus (black),

    Asiaticus (yellow), Americanus (red), and Europeaeaus

    (white). He even described behavioral traits he thought

    distinguished each race. While biologists still regard the

    Linnaean system as useful for classifying living organisms

    generally, modern biologists eventually rejected Linnaeus’

    classi<cation of humans by racial type (Jandt, 2016, pp.

    9-10).

    For centuries though, racial classi<cation was

    considered scienti<cally legitimate. Moreover, Europeans’

    embrace of scienti<c racism assured them of their own

    racial superiority. From the 16th to the mid-20th century,

    scienti<c racism made it easy for Europeans to justify

    their colonial domination and exploitation of indigenous

    populations in North and South America, Africa, the

    Middle East, South Asia, Australia and the Paci<c Islands.

    The history of nations in the ‘New World,’ from the United

    States to Brazil, is still tarnished by the legacy of black

    slavery, justi<ed by a theory of race reinforced by the

    science of the day. Unfortunately, even after slavery was

    <nally ended, racist assumptions continued, casting a long

    shadow over the lives of the descendants of enslaved

    peoples.

    In the mid to late 20th century, Western nations began

    the slow and painful work of confronting and redressing

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 4 1

    racial injustices of the past. Biologists, working with the

    bene<t of advanced technologies, particularly in the <eld

    of genetics, began to realize that the centuries old theory

    of race was genetically incoherent. Today, the scienti<c

    consensus is that while human diversity is undeniable,

    traditional systems of racial classi<cation have no

    biological basis (Feder & Park, 1993).

    Nevertheless, it is dif<cult for many people to accept

    that when we think we see people of different races, we are

    deceived. To understand how this is so, we should realize

    that despite the visibility of a few (genetically determined)

    traits, humans vary (genetically) in many other ways that

    are not visible. And if we are going to <nd a genetic basis

    for race, we should look at all of our genes, not just the

    ones that result in a few visible traits. For a theory of race

    to have any genetic basis, geneticists should be able to <nd

    large groups of people that are genetically homogeneous

    within their group but heterogeneous with respect to

    contrasting groups. This is just not the case. A tremendous

    amount of genetic variability is actually shared among

    supposed racial groups, and genetic variation between

    individuals of the “same racial group” is sometimes greater

    than the genetic variation between individuals of two

    “different racial groups.” In other words, geneticists are

    not able to <nd any non-arbitrary way to draw boundaries

    around groups (Marks, 2010).

    But surely, some people may still argue, the fact that one

    person’s skin is as black as mahogany while another’s is

    almost as white as snow is evidence of some typological

    difference. Indeed, skin color, in particular, continues to

    be a salient feature for many, even if they agree that skin

    color is just one trait among many. For any reader that is

    not persuaded by the arguments against the reality of race

    4 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    articulated above, Relethford (2009, p. 21) has suggested

    that comparing traits such as skin color to height might

    help us understand the problem better. Borrowing from

    Relethford’s argument, we might note, for instance, that

    like skin color, height too is a continuous variable. In other

    words, people come in all sizes from very short to very tall

    and everywhere in between just as people come in many

    different shades of color. In daily conversation, we may

    use crude labels such as ‘‘short,’’ ‘‘medium,’’ and ‘‘tall,’’ but

    do we think that these represent three precisely de<ned

    groups. In most places in the world, 198 cm would

    certainly be tall. But how about someone who is 218 cm.

    Suddenly, we might feel the need for a new

    category—“very tall.” And where exactly should we draw

    the line between tall and very tall: 207 cm, 208 cm, or 207.5

    cm? And how many categories would we feel we needed to

    cover people of every height? Relethford’s point is that we

    know that the labels we use in everyday life are subjective

    and imprecise, but no one thinks that terms like ‘‘short,’’

    ‘‘medium,’’ and ‘‘tall’’ refer to discrete groups, and that

    human beings comes in only three, or <ve, or seven

    varieties of height.

    In the end, Relethford says:

    Race is a crude Trst-order approximation to human biological

    variation that is arbitrary in terms of the number and

    deTnition of races. As such, race may not provide the best way

    of describing or analyzing human variation.

    This does not contradict what we have said earlier, that

    human variability is geographically structured, and that

    based on a person’s appearance, we can often guess at the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 4 3

    geographical origins of his/her ancestors. But that is not

    the same thing as saying that the person in question

    belongs to some genetically coherent category that one

    could call a race. In the end, there is only one race, the

    human race.

    Final Reflection

    Although socially constructed concepts of race do not

    appear to rest on <rm biological foundations, race will no

    doubt continue to occupy a prominent place in the social

    and political discourse, especially in countries with

    colonial legacies or histories stained by slavery and racial

    injustice. And scienti<c or not, the social construction of

    race is often a basis for the formation of identity, although

    whether that identity can in every instance be legitimately

    called a cultural identity is another matter for debate.

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    1. Now that you have Tnished reading Chapter 2 what is

    your response? What was familiar to you? Did anything

    surprise you?

    2. How was the origin of humans explained in the

    community where you grew up? Was there more than

    one explanation?

    3. How much attention do people where you are from pay

    to skin color? Is skin color seen as a basis for

    differentiating people in any way? If so, how?

    4 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    4. What is the writer’s point of view on race? Do you Tnd it

    persuasive? Why or why not?

    For Further Reading

    Human skin color. Wikipedia contributors, (2019,

    September 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

    Retrieved 18:39, September 5, 2019, from

    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

    index.php?title=Human_skin_color&oldid=914032650

    References

    Cann, R. L. & Wilson, A. C. (2003). The recent African

    genesis of humans. ScientiQc American, 13, 54-61.

    doi:10.1038/scienti<camerican0503-54sp

    Feder, K. L. & Park, M. A. (1993). Human antiquity: An

    introduction to physical anthropology and archaeology, (2nd

    ed.). Mountain View, CA: May<eld.

    Green, R. E., Krause, J., Briggs, A. W., et al. (2010). A draft

    sequence of the Neanderthal genome. Science, 328(5979),

    710-722. doi: 10.1126/science.1188021

    Heng, G. (2011). The invention of race in the European

    Middle Ages I: Race studies, modernity, and the Middle

    Ages. Literature Compass 8(5), 315-331.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/

    j.1741-4113.2011.00790.x

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 4 5

    Jablonski, N. G. & Chaplin, G. (2010). Human skin

    pigmentation as an adaptation to UV radiation.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (Suppl.

    2), 8962-8968. doi:10.1073/pnas.0914628107

    Jandt, F. E. (2016). An introduction to intercultural

    communication: Identities in a global community, (8th ed.)

    Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

    Lucock, M., Yates, Z., Glanville, T., Leeming, R., Simpson,

    N. & Daskalakis, I. (2003). A critical role for B-vitamin

    nutrition in human development and evolutionary

    biology. Nutrition Research, 23, 1463-1475.

    Marks, J. (2010). Ten facts about human variation. In M. P.

    Muehlenbein (Ed.), Evolutionary Biology. New York:

    Cambridge p. 270.

    Oppenheimer, S. (2003). The real Eve: Modern man’s journey

    out of Africa. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf.

    Relethford, J. H. (2009). Race and global patterns of

    phenotypic variation. American Journal of Physical

    Anthropology, 139(1), 16–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/

    ajpa.20900

    Thorne, A. G. & Wolpoff, M. H. (2003). The multiregional

    evolution of humans. ScientiQc American, 13, 46-53.

    doi:10.1038/scienti<camerican0492-76

    Image Attribution

    Image 1: “Chinese woman” by Aldousleung is licensed

    under Public Domain 1.0

    Image 2: “Indian Man” is licensed under CC0 Public

    Domain

    Image 3: “Somali Man” is licensed under CC0 1.0

    4 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Image 4: “Karolina Kurkova Shankbone 2009

    Metropolitan Opera” by David Shankbone is licensed

    under CC BY 3.0

    Image 5: “Homo erectus adult female – head model –

    Smithsonian Museum of Natural History” by Tim Evanson

    is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

    Image 6: “Human Migration Out of Africa” by Ephert is

    licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

    Image 7: “Neanderthals, based on the skull from

    Shanidar 1, Iraq.” Artwork: John Gurche. Image credit:

    Human Origins Program. Copyright, Smithsonian

    Institution.

    Image 8: “Unlabeled Renatto Luschan Skin color map”

    by Dark Tichondrias/Dark Tea is licensed under CC BY-SA

    3.0

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 4 7

    3

    Chapter 3: Origins and Early

    Developments of Culture

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This chapter is full of details. The questions and tasks below will

    help you pick out the most important ones. Of course, main ideas

    are important as well. As you pick out details, be sure to ask what it

    all adds up to.

    1. Identify two ways in which human culture differs from

    the culture-like behavior of other animals.

    2. List all of the tools named in the chapter. Identify the

    material they were made from and their use. Identify a

    major innovation in tool making that increased the

    effectiveness of single tools.

    3. Make a list of all the objects mentioned in the reading

    4 8 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    that we moderns might regard as art. Indicate their

    place of discovery, material, and a notable fact about

    each item.

    4. Explain the bold new theory of Michael Witzel. In what

    way does Witzel’s theory draw on ideas from Chapter 2?

    Culture as a product of human activity

    Once upon a time, social scientists regarded humans as

    the only species to exhibit culture. But if language and tool

    use are both signs of culture, we must acknowledge that

    other species may also possess some rudiments of culture.

    Whales and dolphins, for instance, may have some

    capacity for language. And chimpanzees have been

    observed making tools, “<shing rods” so to speak, for

    retrieving termites from their nests. Bottle-nosed dolphins

    also appear to be tool-users. They have been observed to

    break off pieces of sea sponge and use them in order to

    probe for <sh along the sea bottom. Ethologists have even

    observed that some species of songbirds, and some species

    of <sh too, exhibit “socially learned cultural traditions”

    (Mesoudi, 2011: 195-196).

    However, no other species demonstrates the cultural

    virtuosity of human beings. For one thing, the cultures of

    non-human species do not seem to show the same

    tendencies of development and innovation from one

    generation to the next, as human culture does. For

    example, the combining of two or more separate elements

    into entirely new tools or practices does not seem to occur

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 4 9

    among non-humans, whereas it is a hallmark of human

    cultural development.

    In the last chapter, we placed humanity in a biological

    context. If the Recent African Origin theory is correct, we

    said, our earliest ancestors came from Africa and spent

    90,000 years migrating to every habitable continent on

    earth. Along the way, they assumed a variety of different

    regional appearances. But as they migrated to geographic

    and climatic regions that sometimes differed from the

    lands of their ancestors, they met new environmental

    challenges. New environments required the invention of

    new tools and new ways of doing things. In turn, the

    continual development of culturally transmitted

    knowledge and skill enabled people to become ever more

    able to thrive in new environments.

    In this chapter, we return to our story of human

    migrations out of Africa and across the globe. This time,

    however, we will focus on the origins of culture. As you

    read, keep in mind the seven themes introduced in

    Chapter 1. In this chapter, we shall frame culture as a

    product of human activity. But be on the lookout for other

    themes that may enter the discussion, in particular themes

    that call attention to functions and processes.

    Paleolithic material culture

    Our knowledge of pre-historic culture is limited. We can

    only guess at the beliefs and the daily social interactions of

    early humans. Our best knowledge of pre-historic life

    comes from the discoveries of archaeologists who have

    uncovered many material objects buried or even laying

    about in old river beds and elsewhere. Sometimes the

    skeletal remains of early humans are found nearby. Of

    5 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    course, such found objects are limited to those made of

    materials able to resist the natural forces of

    decomposition. Among the most plentiful objects are

    stone tools, the most important of which seem to have

    served the purpose of securing and processing food. To the

    casual modern observer, the tools seem rough and

    unsophisticated. However, careful study of them suggests

    that their creation required careful planning, detailed

    knowledge of various materials, and skillful

    craftsmanship.

    To convince yourself that the knowledge and skill of

    early humans is deserving of admiration and respect,

    imagine the following situation. You (and a group of

    friends) are dropped off in a remote wilderness, naked,

    and with none of the tools or materials you now take for

    granted. (OK, you may have some matches since it is

    almost certain you would not know how to start a <re

    without them.)

    All around you is everything you need to survive: rock,

    wood, edible plants and animals. How will you get food?

    How about some clothing? You probably will not even

    know what plants you can eat. You might have some idea

    what animals you could eat. Suppose you are lucky enough

    to catch a <sh, or a rabbit, perhaps a deer. What will you do

    with it? With no metal knives, you will have to reinvent

    stone blades for skinning and cutting up the deer. Stone

    blades will also be your best bet for scraping the deerskin

    to make leather for clothing. Good luck (unless you already

    know something about both stone tools and leather

    making).

    Of course, the exercise imagined above is clearly unfair.

    If you had been born in the Upper Paleolithic (say 40,000

    years ago), you would have been born into a group of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5 1

    people who already had all the necessary tools for hunting,

    skinning, butchering, and everything else necessary for

    survival. You would have grown up under the watchful eye

    of people who knew how to make and use the tools. You

    probably would have learned by watching and doing, and

    those more skillful than you would have guided you

    (Barham, 2013).

    When our ancestors left Africa 90,000 years ago, they

    already possessed technologies for exploiting the

    environment. At that time, our people, Homo sapiens, were

    not the only cultural species in the world. Our close

    cousins, Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis were still

    around, and there is evidence that both of them knew how

    to control <re. They were makers and users of tools as well.

    Even the much earlier Homo habilis may have been a

    toolmaker. Maybe even Australopithecus. Many of the tools

    that Homo sapiens used had already been in use for over 2

    million years. In other words, our ancestors came from a

    long line of hominid species that survived by means of

    cultural know-how. So our ancestors ventured forth out of

    Africa with the best (Stone Age) technology of the day.

    Encountering new environments and new needs, they

    re<ned those tools and developed new ones too (Brown,

    1990).

    Archaeologists refer to the time between 50,000 and

    10,000 years ago as the Upper Paleolithic. It was a

    remarkably creative period of human cultural

    development (Feder & Park, 2007). Let’s have a look now at

    some of the material culture typical of the Upper

    Paleolithic.

    5 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Stone tools

    Stone tools were among the most important early tools.

    Items like the ones shown below enabled early humans to

    secure protein rich diets. Hammerstones and hand axes

    were the oldest stone tools in the ancient human “toolkit.”

    Hammerstones were

    used for smashing animal

    bones to get the nutritious

    marrow inside (“Stone

    Tool Technology,” 2015).

    Hammerstones were also

    used to manufacture sharp

    stone tools such as hand axes, and a wide variety of other

    stone blades and projectile points. Toolmakers used a

    technique known as knapping. By striking a hard

    sedimentary rock, such as flint, a toolmaker fractured the

    stone to create a sharp edge. By carefully chipping the

    edges of the entire rock, the knapper created large hand

    axes and various smaller blades of stone. Hand axes and

    blades were used for jobs like cutting meat, scrapping

    animal skins to make leather for clothing, and for carving

    or whittling wood (“Stone Age Tool Makers,” 2010; “Stone

    Tool Technology,” 2015).

    A major innovation involved the insight that blades

    could be attached to shafts and handles. We call this

    technology hafting. For example, a projectile point, such as

    the one shown above, was attached to a long, straight

    shaft, fashioned from an appropriate tree branch. This

    involved considerable knowledge of materials and design.

    The shaft had to be notched to create a slot to insert the

    projectile point. A sticky material needed to be added to

    help hold the stone projectile point in place. This required

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5 3

    Harpoons carved from bone

    some knowledge of natural glues and how to get them,

    e.g., the resins of tree bark, or bitumen from tar pits. The

    point also had to be tightly bound to the shaft. This was

    usually done with strips of leather or sinews. Toolmakers

    learned that if the leather was soaked in water, and tightly

    wrapped around the point and shaft, the leather would

    shrink as it dried, creating a very tight wrap, holding the

    point <rmly in place (Barham, 2013).

    Besides stone,

    early humans also used

    bone to make things like

    knives, <shhooks,

    harpoons, and sewing

    needles. Of course,

    materials like stone and

    bone remain long after

    other types of materials

    have decomposed. The

    animal skin clothing, for instance, is long gone even

    though the needles used to make it can still be found. And

    speaking of clothes, early humans were not so busy with

    survival that they had to neglect fashion. They may have

    adorned their clothing with beads, made from soapstone

    through which they punched small holes (Feder & Park,

    2007; “Great Human Odyssey,” 2015).

    5 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Bone Needles

    Carved Figurines

    In a sense, our species simply improved upon the tool

    making traditions of earlier hominids. On the other hand,

    as far as we know, we were the <rst to create objects of

    art. Carved <gurines are found in abundance in the Upper

    Paleolithic. Examples include items like the

    Löwenmensch, found in a cave in Germany. The

    Löwenmensch, carved from wholly mammoth ivory, is

    about 35,000-40,000 years old (“Lion-Man,” 2017). The

    “Venus of Dolní Věstonice,” (2017) depicting a nude female

    was found in the Czech Republic. It is the oldest known

    ceramic <gurine at about 25,000-30,000 years old. More

    well-known perhaps is the “Venus of Willendorf,” (2017),

    discovered in Austria. Carved out of limestone, it is about

    27,000-29,000 years old. In fact, many <gurines

    resembling, in form, these Venus <gurines have been

    discovered, so many that we could regard the artifact as an

    Upper Paleolithic meme. The “Venus of Brassempouy,”

    (2017), made of ivory and discovered in a cave in France, is

    one of the earliest realistic representations of a human

    face. It is about 25,000 years old. Notice the hairstyles on

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5 5

    the Venuses. Don’t they suggest that hairstyling is a

    thoroughly ancient cultural practice? (“Great Human

    Odyssey,” 2015).

    5 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Löwenmensch (upper left); Venus of Dolní Věstonice (upper right); Venus of Willendorf (lower left); Venus of Brassempouy (lower right)

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5 7

    Painting

    Painting too is an ancient achievement. There is evidence

    of it in every part of the world. Perhaps the oldest and

    most remarkable paintings are those that have been

    discovered in caves in France and Spain. Particularly

    awesome are the 30,000-32,000-year-old paintings

    discovered in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France. In

    the interest of preserving and protecting the site, the cave

    is no longer open to the public, but today, tourists can visit

    a facsimile of the cave, where full-scale replicas of the

    paintings are on display. The museum faithfully

    reproduces the ambience of the cave its silence, darkness,

    temperature, humidity and acoustics (“Chauvet Cave,”

    2017). The documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams by the

    renowned German cinematographer, Werner Herzog, is

    also a great way to experience the mystery of the Chauvet

    Cave.

    5 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    Flute, discovered in Hohle Fels Cave (Germany), carved from wing bone of a griffon vulture

    Paleolithic animals depicted with stunning realism (Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave, France)

    Hundreds of animals of

    at least 13 different species

    are depicted with

    astounding realism. The

    paintings have a

    3-dimensional quality

    that suggests movement,

    and some animals are

    even depicted interacting,

    for example, wholly

    rhinoceroses butting horns. Of course, we do not know

    what the artists of the Upper Paleolithic thought about

    their painting. Was it simply an expression of aesthetic

    sensibility? Or was it connected with ritual and magic

    intent, as some interpreters have suggested? There is

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 5 9

    more to know about the material culture of the Upper

    Paleolithic than we can summarize here. There is evidence,

    for instance, that the <rst musical instruments may have

    emerged at that time. Indeed, flutes made of bone and

    even ivory, some as old as 40,000 years, have been

    discovered in caves in southern Germany (Conard, Malina

    & Münzel, 2009).

    Although this discussion has featured the Upper

    Paleolithic of Europe as a center of pre-historic art, we

    cannot conclude that therefore the early humans of

    Europe were more advanced than people elsewhere on the

    earth. It may simply be that Europe provided an

    environment more conducive to the preservation of

    artifacts such as cave paintings. In fact, in 2014 a cave

    painting depicting a pig, and dated at 35,000 years old,

    was discovered in Indonesia, and other paintings have

    been discovered in Australia, depicting animals thought to

    have become extinct 40,000 years ago. The Australian

    <nds though have not been de<nitively dated, and it is

    possible that scientists are wrong in their estimates of the

    time of extinction of the depicted animals. But it seems

    possible if not probable that people all over the world were

    painting during the Upper Paleolithic.

    In conclusion, with the tool use of Paleolithic humans,

    we see cultural continuity with the hominids that came

    before us. But we see evidence of a dramatic development

    of culture in Homo sapiens beginning about 40,000 years

    ago with the rise of art and music. If culture is de<ned as

    “re<nement,” it was surely in full swing in the Upper

    Paleolithic.

    6 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Origins of mythology

    While some products of human activity can be classi<ed as

    material culture, other products are non-material. Stone

    tools, for instance, that remain long after their creators are

    gone, are obviously material. Music, on the other hand, is

    ephemeral. We suppose, quite reasonably, that flute music

    drifted through the valleys of Ice Age Europe only because

    we have found flutes, and where there were flutes (a

    material product), there must have been music (a non-

    material product). Was there also spoken language? There

    is certainly no good reason to doubt it. Then how about

    stories? Music and stories would be examples of cultural

    products that are non-material.

    If anything, storytelling may be more ancient than

    painting, sculpting, and music. Even more surprising is

    that just as all humans may have come from an original

    population of Africans, there may have also been a single

    African source for all of our collective creation myths.

    Creation myths are stories that seem intended to answer

    our deepest human curiosities. On the surface, at least,

    these myths seem to answer questions such as:

    • Where did this world in which we <nd ourselves

    come from?

    • How did it arise?

    • How did we humans come to be here?

    • What will become of us?

    In this section, we’ll summarize a remarkable piece of

    scholarship by Michael Witzel (2012) on the origins of the

    world’s mythologies. Witzel’s work was inspired, in part,

    by the Recent African Origin hypothesis. In brief, Witzel

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 6 1

    claims that when humans left Africa, they did so telling a

    particular story about the origins of the world, (today we

    would call it the universe). The story told of the beginnings

    of the earth and everything in it, as well as the sky above. It

    included a recounting of the appearance of generations of

    humans, and it ended with a <nal destruction.

    But before we examine Witzel’s ideas about the origin of

    world mythology, let’s sample some of the creation stories

    of various peoples around the world.

    Stories of creation – A sampling

    In the beginning, neither heaven nor earth had names.

    Apsu, the god of fresh waters, and Tiamat, the goddess

    of the salt oceans, and Mummu, the god of the mist

    that rises from both of them, were still mingled as one.

    There were no mountains, there was no pastureland,

    and not even a reed-marsh could be found to break the

    surface of the waters.

    It was then that Apsu and Tiamat parented two gods,

    and then two more who outgrew the Trst pair. These

    further parented gods, until Ea, who was the god of

    rivers and was Tiamat and Apsu’s great-grandson, was

    born. Ea was the cleverest of the gods, and with his

    magic Ea became the most powerful of the gods, ruling

    even his forebears.

    Apsu and Tiamat’s descendants became an unruly

    crowd. Eventually Apsu, in his frustration and inability

    6 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    to sleep with the clamor, went to Tiamat, and he

    proposed to her that he slay their noisy offspring.

    Tiamat was furious at his suggestion to kill their clan,

    but after leaving her Apsu resolved to proceed with his

    murderous plan. When the young gods heard of his

    plot against them, they were silent and fearful, but

    soon Ea was hatching a scheme. He cast a spell on Apsu,

    pulled Apsu’s crown from his head, and slew him. Ea

    then built his palace on Apsu’s waters, and it was there

    that, with the goddess Damkina, he fathered Marduk,

    the four-eared, four-eyed giant who was god of the

    rains and storms.

    Enuma Elish – Babylonia, 1100 BCE in writing; possibly existed from c. 1800 BCE, (Creation Stories from Around the World)

    * * *

    There was neither “being” [sat] nor “nonbeing” [asat]

    then, nor intermediate space, nor heaven beyond it.

    What turned around? Where? In whose protection?

    Was there water? —Only a deep abyss.

    There was neither death nor immortality then, nor was

    there a mark of day and night. It breathed, windless, by

    its own determination, this One. Beyond this there was

    nothing at all. Darkness was hidden by darkness, in the

    beginning.

    A featureless salty ocean was all this (universe). A germ,

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 6 3

    covered by emptiness, was born through the power of

    heat as the One. Desire arose then in this (One), in the

    beginning, which was the Trst seed of mind. In

    “nonbeing” the seers found the umbilical cord

    [relationship] of being, searching (for it) in their hearts

    with planning. Obliquely stretched out was their cord.

    Was there really “below”? Was there really “above”?

    There were the ones bestowing seed, there were

    “greatnesses” [pregnancies]. Below were their own

    determinations, above was granting.

    Who then knows well, who will proclaim here, from

    where they have been born, from where (came) this

    wide emanation? Later than its emanation are the gods.

    Who then knows from where it developed?

    From where this emanation developed, whether it has

    been created or not—if there is an “overseer” of this

    (world) in the highest heaven, he alone knows it—or

    (what) if he does not know?

    Rig Veda – India, c. 1000 BCE, (Witzel, 2012: 107)

    * * *

    Verily, at Trst Chaos [void] came to be, but next wide-

    bosomed Earth, the ever sure foundation of all … and

    Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods… From

    Chaos came forth Erebus [darkness] and black Night;

    6 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    but of Night were born Aether and Day, who she

    conceived and bore in union with love from Erebus. And

    Earth Trst bore starry heaven, equal to herself, to cover

    her on every side.

    Theogony – Greece, c. 700 BCE, (Witzel, 2012: 108)

    * * *

    In the beginning the Elohim made the sky and the

    earth, but the earth was shapeless and everything was

    dark. The Elohim said “Let there be light,” and there was

    the light that made day different from night. And that

    was the Trst day.

    The Elohim said, “Let there be a dome to separate the

    heavens from the waters below,” and there were the

    heavens. And that was the second day.The Elohim said,

    “Let the waters of the earth gather so that there are seas

    and there is dry land,” and so it was. The Elohim said,

    “Let there be vegetation on the land, with plants to yield

    seeds and fruits,” and so it was. And that was the third

    day.

    The Elohim said, “Let there be light in the heavens, and

    let them change with the seasons,” and so there were

    stars. Then the Elohim made a sun and a moon to rule

    over the day and to rule over the night. And that was the

    fourth day.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 6 5

    The Elohim said, “Let there be creatures in the waters,

    and let there be birds in the skies,” and so there were

    sea monsters and sea creatures and birds. The Elohim

    blessed them, saying “Be fruitful and multiply”. And

    that was the Tfth day.

    The Elohim said, “Let the earth have animals of various

    kinds”, and so it was. Then the Elohim said, “Let us make

    humans after our own likeness, and let them rule over

    the Tsh of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the

    cattle and creeping things of the land, and over all the

    earth.” The Elohim said to these humans, “Be fruitful

    and multiply, and Tll the earth and subdue it, ruling

    over the Tsh and the birds and the animals of the land.

    We have given you every plant and tree yielding seed.

    To every beast and bird of the Earth we have given every

    green plant for food.” And that was the sixth day.

    And on the seventh day the making of the heavens and

    earth was Tnished, and the Elohim rested.

    The Elohim – Hebrew, c. 600 BCE, (Creation Stories from Around the World)

    * * *

    In a time when Heaven and Earth still were without

    form, was called the great beginning. The tao began in

    the great emptiness… Then “breaths” were born from

    space and time. What was light moved and formed the

    6 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    sky (easily); what was heavy, the earth … this process

    was difTcult.

    Huainan zi – China, c. 150 BCE, (Witzel, 2012: 107)

    * * *

    Once there was the age when Ymir lived.

    There was neither sand, nor sea, nor salty waves,

    Not was Earth found, not Upper Heaven,

    A yawning gap [abyss], and grass nowhere.

    Edda – Iceland, c. 1177 CE, (Witzel, 2012: 109)

    * * *

    Io dwelt within the breathing space of immensity.

    The Universe was in darkness, with water everywhere.

    There was no glimmer of dawn, no clearness, no light.

    And he began by saying these words—

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 6 7

    That he might cease remaining inactive:

    “Darkness become a light-possessing darkness.”

    And at once light appeared

    …Then (he) looked to the waters which compassed him

    about, and spake a fourth time, saying:

    “The waters of Tai-kama, be ye separate.Heaven be

    formed.” Then the sky became suspended.

    “Bring forth thou Tupua-horo-nuku.”

    And at once the moving earth lay stretched abroad.

    Maori – New Zealand, compiled 1840-50s, (Witzel, 2012: 109)

    * * *

    The Trst world was Tokpela [Endless Space].

    But Trst, they say, there was only the Creator, Taiowa. All

    else was endless space. There was no beginning and no

    end, no time, no shape, no life. Just an immeasurable

    6 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    void that had its beginning and end, time, shape, and

    life in the mind of Taiowa the Creator.

    Then he, the inTnite, conceived the Tnite. First he

    created Sótuknang to make it manifest, saying to him,

    “I have created you, the Trst power and instrument as a

    person, to carry out my plan for life in endless space…

    Go now and lay out these universes in proper order so

    they may work harmoniously with one another

    according to my plan.

    Sótuknang did as he was commanded. From endless

    space, he gathered that which was to be manifest as

    solid substance, molded it into forms, and arranged

    them in nine universal kingdoms: one for Taiowa the

    Creator, one for himself, and seven universes for the life

    to come…

    Hopi – Arizona, compiled in 1950s, (Waters & Fredericks, 1977)

    Similarities among creation stories

    Upon <rst reading, the stories may seem quite different.

    But perhaps you noticed that beyond the differences in

    style, and in particular details, the basic theme is the same.

    Each myth, for instance, begins in much the same way.

    The world comes into existence out of chaos, formlessness,

    and darkness. Or, in some cases, out of primordial sea. At

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 6 9

    <rst, the world comes about not by an act of creation, but

    as an emergence, an emanation.

    Some accounts are more abstract and philosophical. The

    passage from the Rig Veda, for instance, begins in

    philosophical abstraction making the distinction between

    “being” [sat] and “nonbeing” [asat]. Moreover, it remains

    reflective, never quite becoming something the reader can

    easily visualize. (If you need to be convinced, please read it

    again.)

    Other accounts, like the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the

    Greek Theogony portray the emergence of the world using

    more sensual, anthropomorphic images. However, the

    basic theme is the same. You may have noticed in many of

    these stories that powerful beings, such as gods, come only

    after the world has emanated out of the void:

    • Apsu, the god of fresh waters, and Tiamat, the goddess of

    the salt oceans, and Mummu, the god of the mist that rises

    from both of them, were still mingled as one. There were no

    mountains, there was no pastureland, and not even a reed-

    marsh could be found to break the surface of the waters. It

    was then that Apsu and Tiamat parented two gods, and then

    two more who outgrew the Qrst pair. (Enuma Elish)

    • Later than its emanation are the gods. (Rig Veda)

    • … at Qrst Chaos [void] came to be, but next wide-bosomed

    Earth, the ever sure foundation of all … and Eros (Love),

    fairest among the deathless gods… From Chaos came forth

    Erebus [darkness] and black Night… (Theogony)

    And notice how many of the narratives emphasize the

    emergence of mind or a primordial consciousness arising

    out of the void:

    7 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    • Desire arose then in this (One), in the beginning, which was

    the Qrst seed of mind. (Rig Veda)

    Sometimes this emergence is characterized in terms of

    breath or breathing:

    • The Tao began in the great emptiness… Then “breaths” were

    born from space and time. (Huainan Zi)

    Breathing, or mind are sometimes characterized as co-

    existent with the void:

    • Io dwelt within the breathing space of immensity. (Maori)

    • There was no beginning and no end, no time, no shape, no

    life. Just an immeasurable void that had its beginning and

    end, time, shape, and life in the mind of Taiowa the Creator.

    (Hopi)

    In some versions of the story, the qualities of the material

    world are sometimes brought into existence by an act of

    imagination:

    • Then he, the inQnite, conceived the Qnite. (Hopi)

    In other versions, the qualities of the world are brought

    about by an act of speech:

    • And he began by saying these words—That he might cease

    remaining inactive: “Darkness become a light-possessing

    darkness.” And at once light appeared …etc. (Maori)

    • … but the earth was shapeless and everything was dark. The

    Elohim said “Let there be light,” and there was the light that

    made day different from night. (Hebrew)

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7 1

    Witzel has hypothesized that the Laurasian myth complex originated in Southwest Asia

    Accounting for common motifs

    What do we make of these worldwide similarities? Are

    they simply coincidental? Scholars of comparative

    mythology have proposed several possible theories.

    1. Diffusion

    One theory is that

    individual motifs spread

    outward from an early

    civilization, such as Egypt

    or Mesopotamia to the

    older hunter and gatherer

    cultures living on the

    frontiers of the empire.

    These tribal peoples then

    adopted the “parent”

    myths and developed their

    own local variations of the

    myth based on their own local experiences.

    Witzel acknowledges that some religious mythologies,

    e.g., Judeo-Christian-Islamic and Buddhist are known to

    have spread regionally in this way. However, he notes that

    the many myths continue according to a complex

    sequence of episodes. In literature, we would call this a

    plot. Witzel questions whether an entire myth complex

    could really successfully spread worldwide across such

    great distances to end up as far away from the early

    centers of civilization as South America and the Paci<c

    Islands.

    7 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    2. Myths as universal features of human

    psychology

    Other scholars see myths as expressions of universal

    patterns of human thought (Campbell, 1949; Jung, 1953).

    According to this theory being human naturally involves

    universal experiences: of human relationship, of

    nurturance, of struggle for survival, of conflict, of passing

    through life stages, of death, and so on. Moreover, humans

    evolved as language using and concept-forming animals,

    and as creators of symbolic forms of expression. As a

    result, certain thoughts and images arise spontaneously in

    human imagination by virtue of our common humanity.

    Supporters of this theory suggest that the motifs

    expressed in myths arose independently in many different

    places around the world because human experience, out of

    which the mythical imagination arises, is similar

    everywhere. But the myths differ in speci<c details

    because the imagery is also influenced by local geography

    and history. (Hmmm, a kind of Multiregional Origins

    hypothesis?)

    Witzel agrees that humans may be biologically

    structured, with the kind of brain that produces similar

    images in people everywhere. However, he argues, it is

    hard to believe that the motifs would be organized

    everywhere into the same long, elaborately structured

    tales. Instead, Witzel offers a third explanation.

    3. Creation myths all arose from a single (very)

    ancient source

    Witzel has argued that an original mythology sprang up in

    ancestral Africa. From there, it was told and retold by our

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7 3

    ancestors as they began their global migrations out of

    Africa 90,000 years ago. Ah-ha, the Recent African Origin

    hypothesis applied to mythology. Witzel’s argument is

    quite persuasive and seems to be supported by major

    discoveries over the last 30 years in linguistics, population

    genetics, and archaeology.

    Based on extensive study of the themes and storylines

    across mythologies all over the world, Witzel has identi<ed

    two classes of myths. He calls these two types Gondwana

    and Laurasian. Of the two, the Gondwana type appears to

    be older and less elaborately developed. Gondwana

    mythology is still found today among people in sub-

    Saharan Africa, and in Melanesia, Australia, and the

    Andamanese Islands. Laurasian mythology is found across

    Europe, Asia, northern and eastern Africa and the

    Americas. (Witzel hypthesizes an even earlier, Pan-Gaian

    mythology, ancestral to both the Gondwanan and

    Laurasian but doubts that we have the means to learn very

    much about it.)

    Witzel thinks the Laurasian myth probably diverged

    from the Gondwana myth at least 40,000 years ago,

    originating somewhere in southwestern Asia, before

    spreading to northern and eastern Africa, Europe,

    northern and eastern Asia, and eventually throughout the

    Americas. If Witzel is correct, Laurasian mythology

    thrived long before the great early civilizations and the

    major religious traditions of the world. In other words, the

    world’s mythologies did not spread outward from the

    great civilizations. On the contrary, the <rst great

    civilizations (including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt,

    India and China) adopted oral traditions that were already

    tens of thousands of years old by the time these early

    civilizations arose. Today we engage with Laurasian

    7 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Pangu

    mythology when we study the literature of classical

    civilizations. And many of the motifs are still discernable

    in the great religious traditions of today, in Hinduism,

    Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

    The Laurasian “Novel”

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7 5

    The Laurasian Novel

    Witzel characterizes

    Laurasian mythology as a

    sort of <rst novel. By this

    he means that the creation

    myths found among

    people everywhere in the

    world all seem to be

    variations on one basic

    plot as shown in the

    sidebar. Although

    particular elements may

    be minimized or missing

    in some myths, or more elaborately developed in others,

    the basic storylines are remarkably similar. The Laurasian

    novel begins with the primordial creation, the earth

    emerging <nally out of chaos, darkness, or water. In

    versions where the earth emerges out of water, an “earth

    diver” pulls the earth up out of the sea. In some versions,

    the earth comes out of a great, cosmic egg (for example

    Pangu in Chinese mythology).

    In some versions, the earth is formed when a giant who

    existed before the world emerged is killed and carved into

    pieces and whose body parts become the heavens and

    earth (Pangu again, or Ymir in Norse mythology, and

    Kronos in Greek mythology). In many creation myths, the

    earth is closely associated with the idea of a Great Mother

    and in many myths is personi<ed by woman. At the same

    time, the sky makes an appearance as the counterpart of

    the earth, and the idea, the image, of a Sky Father is born.

    Interestingly, in the Egyptian relief from the Book of the

    Dead of Nesitqnebtashru (below), the usual arrangement

    is reversed. The sky is the goddess, Nut (held up by the air

    god, Shu, and two ram-headed deities). The Earth God,

    7 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Geb, reclines beneath. Originally, however, Nut was

    regarded as goddess of the nighttime sky, so this may

    depict the situation at night, when the daytime sky is

    overshadowed by the darkness of earth (Campbell, 1988,

    cited in Witzel, 2012: 380).

    Egyptian relief from the Book of the Dead of Nesitanebtashru

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7 7

    Maori primal couple, Papa and Rangui

    But <rst in the

    imagination of some early

    storytellers, the father is

    laying with the mother in

    sexual union and they

    must be pulled apart. The

    sky is pushed into place

    sometimes by the children,

    the offspring of the

    original parents. The

    theme is illustrated (right)

    in a Maori carving

    depicting the primal

    couple, the earth

    mother—Papa, and the sky

    father—Rangui, locked

    together in a tight

    embrace.

    Sometimes the sky is propped into place by a world tree,

    or a stone pillar, or a world mountain. The cosmos is

    beginning to take the shape that we know. Now there is an

    earth and sky, but it is often a watery earth, and so the

    early storytellers must make provisions for the creation of

    dry land.

    In many myths, there is a demiurge, a being who must form the whole of the material world, who must prepare

    the world for habitation. The demiurge may come out of

    the mind of a Supreme Being and be sent to build the

    world and put into it all of the things, animate and

    inanimate. The demiurge brings light to the world and sets

    the sun in place. Once there is a sun and an alternation of

    day and night, the earth is ready to support life. The earth

    then receives moisture (water); in some traditions, there is

    7 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    The Fall of the Titans, oil painting by Cornelis van Haarlem (1588–1590)

    the slaying of a dragon and the earth is fertilized in its

    blood.

    The demiurge, sometimes known too as a trickster, not

    only prepares the world but brings human life into it as

    well. The trickster also brings culturally important

    elements to humans such as “<re” and “the heavenly

    drink,” (i.e., alcoholic drink). But the creation of humans

    and many of these cultural developments do not emerge

    until later in the story, so as with any good novel, we can

    leave the trickster, lurking in the background as we turn to

    the next important chapter in our Laurasian novel.

    Back to the two original

    gods, Earth and Sky. Earth

    and Sky produce children.

    These are the <rst gods

    and goddesses, and the

    story progresses through

    an epic spanning four or

    <ve generations of gods/

    goddesses and their

    exploits. These are tales of

    conflict and treachery

    among the gods but in the process the lands of the earth

    are laid out and the earth is peopled. In some versions of

    the story an original giant, sometimes one of the

    primordial gods is cut into pieces, and scattered to form

    the dry land. Themes of incest among the various gods or

    deities and continuing competition and conflict dominate

    many versions of the Laurasian novel. There is often

    warfare between two groups of gods who sometimes agree

    to share power; sometimes, defeated gods leave the

    inhabited center of the world. In Greek mythology, for

    example, the younger generation of gods, the Olympians,

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 7 9

    Huitzilopochtl, Aztec god of the sun

    go to war with the older generation, the Titans, to see who

    will reign over the universe.

    After several

    generations of gods,

    human beings make their

    appearance and the plot

    follows the succession of

    noble lineages of humans.

    The <rst humans are

    semidivine. Across the

    globe, from Egypt and

    Mesopotamia and on to

    India, China, Japan, and

    Polynesia, and into the

    Americas, there are stories

    of noble lineages; often the characters in these

    lineages trace their ancestry to a sun deity. A common

    feature of these stories is that after one or two

    generations, the descendants of the sun deity lose their

    immortality; i.e., humans become mortal.

    In some myths, there is a competing storyline though.

    Many creation stories involve the creation of humans from

    clay. In other stories humans come from trees, maize, an

    egg, or a gourd. However, according to Witzel, this

    particular storyline is more representative of Gondwana

    mythology. Witzel surmises that Laurasian mythology is

    intimately tied to shamanism—a male vocation—and that

    when older Gondwana motifs <nd their way into the

    Laurasia storyline, it may be because of the co-existence in

    various cultures of “grandmothers tales,” motifs kept alive

    through stories told by women.

    A dramatic chapter in the story of humans comes after

    humans have lived for many generations on the earth.

    8 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Somehow humans displease or anger a powerful being

    who destroys most of humankind in a great flood. The

    Laurasian saga then continues with the reemergence of

    humans and there are many overlapping tales of heroes.

    Some heroes are semidivine, and their exploits coincide

    with those of the gods. Sometimes, there is an age of

    heroes after the gods.

    Finally, the Laurasian novel ends in a <nal destruction

    of the world. Even the gods are destroyed. The Ragnarök in

    Norse mythology is one of the most detailed stories of the

    <nal destruction. Odin and Thor and all the major gods

    and their adversaries, Fenrir, the wolf and the giant

    poisonous serpent, Jörmungandr are all destroyed. The

    sun turns black, the earth sinks into the sea, the stars

    vanish, steam rises, and flames touch the heavens. After

    the destruction, the world resurfaces new and fertile.

    Some surviving gods return and the world will be

    populated anew by two human survivors. The <nal

    destruction is thus paired with the hope for a new, more

    perfect world. In many myths, the world is created anew

    and there are a series of Four or Five Ages, each age ending

    in a <nal destruction.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 8 1

    The Ragnarök in Norse mythology is one of the most detailed stories of the Snal destruction.

    Final Reflection

    What does this discussion about an apparently very old

    plot have to do with us today? Well if Witzel is correct, the

    basic storyline of creation and human origins found in

    both oral and literary traditions worldwide was conceived

    a very long time ago, and we humans have been telling

    various versions of this same story for over 100,000 years.

    Following the stories of our own traditions back to their

    earliest origins, we all <nd ourselves, perhaps, sitting in

    the same circle. In this chapter, we have suggested that the

    well-known creation myths found in the literature and oral

    traditions from every corner of the world are a dramatic

    reminder of the power of cultural transmission in shaping

    the human imagination.

    8 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    1. Review the seven themes of culture from Chapter 1.

    Which themes do you think are reflected (either

    explicitly or implicitly) in this chapter? Make a case for

    several of the themes, i.e., explain how they are relevant

    to the chapter.

    2. Read through the myths again in the Stories of Creation section. Which, if any, were you already familiar with?

    Which were new? Which one do you Tnd the most

    interesting? Why?

    3. In what way is culture different from civilization? (This

    question is not answered directly in the chapter. You

    must infer it.)

    4. In what way(s) has your knowledge of culture changed

    after reading this chapter? What did you already know?

    What was new? Did anything surprise you?

    Video Clips & Documentaries

    “Great human odyssey.” 5 Oct. 2016. Webcast. NOVA. PBS.

    KUED, Salt Lake City. Accessed on 24 June 2017.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/great-human-

    odyssey.html

    Scenes from ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams.’ YouTube.

    “Stone Tool Technology of Our Human Ancestors.” 27

    March 2015. HHMI BioInteractive Video. YouTube.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 8 3

    Accessed on 24 June 2017. https://www.youtube.com/

    watch?v=L87Wdt044b0

    “The Minds of Stone Age Tool Makers.” 3 Nov. 2010.

    YouTube. Accessed on 24 June 2017.

    References

    Barham, L. (2013). From hand to handle: The Qrst industrial

    revolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford.

    Brown, M. H. (1990). The search for Eve. New York: Harper &

    Row.

    Campbell, J. (1968). The hero with a thousand faces, (2nd ed.).

    Princeton, NJ: Princeton.

    Campbell, J. (1988). Historical atlas of world mythology, (vol 1).

    New York: Harper & Row.

    “Chauvet Cave.” (2017, May 18). In Wikipedia, The Free

    Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 25, 2017 from

    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

    index.php?title=Chauvet_Cave&oldid=780942868

    Conard, N. J., Malina, M. & Münzel, S. C. (2009). New

    flutes document the earliest musical tradition in

    southwestern Germany. Nature 460,

    737-740. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08169

    Creation stories from around the world. Retrieved June 25, 2017

    from http://railsback.org/CS/CSIndex.html

    Feder, K. L. & Park, M. A. (2007). Human antiquity: An

    introduction to physical anthropology and archaeology, (5th

    ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

    “Great human odyssey.” 5 Oct. 2016. Webcast. NOVA. PBS.

    KUED, Salt Lake City. Accessed on 24 June 2017.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/great-

    human-odyssey.html

    8 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Herzog, W. (2010). “Cave of Forgotten Dream.” YouTube.

    Jung, C. G. (1953). Two essays in analytical psychology.

    Princeton, NJ: Princeton.

    “Lion-man.” (2017, June 24). In Wikipedia, The Free

    Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 25, 2017 from

    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lion-

    man&oldid=787303025

    Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian

    evolution can explain human evolution and synthesize the

    social sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    “Stone Tool Technology of Our Human Ancestors.” 27

    March 2015. HHMI BioInteractive Video. YouTube.

    Accessed on 24 June 2017. https://www.youtube.com/

    watch?v=L87Wdt044b0

    “The Minds of Stone Age Tool Makers.” 3 Nov. 2010.

    YouTube. Accessed on 24 June 2017.

    “Venus of Brassempouy.” (2017, March 15). In Wikipedia,

    The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 25, 2017

    from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

    index.php?title=Venus_of_Brassempouy&oldid=770380

    639

    “Venus of Dolní Věstonice.” (2017, June 17). In Wikipedia,

    The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 25, 2017

    from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

    index.php?title=Venus_of_Doln%C3%AD_V%C4%9Bston

    ice&oldid=786138534

    Venus of Willendorf. (2017, May 28). In Wikipedia, The Free

    Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 25, 2017

    from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/

    index.php?title=Venus_of_Willendorf&oldid=782669278

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 8 5

    Waters, F. & Fredericks, O. W. B. (1977). Book of the Hopi.

    New York: Penguin.

    Wilford, John N. (June 24, 2009). “Flutes Offer Clues to

    Stone-Age Music”. Nature. 459 (7244): 248–52. Retrieved

    June 25, 2017

    from http://www.nature.com.dist.lib.usu.edu/articles/

    nature08169

    Witzel, E. J. M. (2012). The origins of the world’s mythologies.

    New York: Oxford. Image Attribution

    Image 1: “Makavot-even” by The GNU Project is licensed

    under CC BY-SA 2.5; “Happisburg handaxe” by Portable

    Antiquities Scheme is licensed under CC BY-SA

    3.0; “Burins and blades – Bernifal – Meyrals – MNP” by

    Sémhur is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; “Blombos point”

    by Vincent Mourre is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0;

    Image 2: “Hafted stone pick” by Mark Marathon is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

    Image 3: “Magdalenian” by Rama is licensed under CC

    BY-SA 2.0 FR

    Image 4: “Aiguille” by Didier Descouens is licensed

    under CC BY-SA 4.0

    Image 5: “Loewenmensch2” by Thilo Parg is licensed

    under CC BY-SA 3.0; “Vestonicka venuse edit” by Petr

    Novák, Wikipedia and is licensed under CC BY-SA

    2.5; “Willendorf-Venus-1468” by Don Hitchcock is licensed

    under CC BY-SA 3.0; “Venus of Brassempouy” by Jean-

    Giles Berizzi is licensed under Public Domain 1.0

    Image 6: “Paintings from Chauvet Cave” is licensed

    under Public Domain-1923; “Rhinos” is licensed under

    Public Domain-1923;“Chauvethorses” is licensed under

    Public Domain-1923; “Lions” is licensed under Public

    Domain-1923

    8 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Image 7: “Bone flute from Hohle Fels archaeological

    horizon Vb” is licensed under Nature Research

    Image 8: “Southwest-Asia-map” by Vervictorio is

    licensed under Public Domain 1.0

    Image 9: “Laurasian Novel” by Nolan Weil is licensed

    under CC BY 4.0

    Image 10: “Pangu” by Wang Qui is licensed under Public

    Domain-1923

    Image 11: “Geb, Net, Shu” photographed by the British

    Museum is licensed under Public Domain-1923

    Image 12: “WahineTane” by Kahuroa is licensed under

    Public Domain 1.0

    Image 13: “Cornelis Cornelisz. Van Haarlem – The Fall of

    the Titans” by Cornelis Van haarlem is licensed under

    Public Domain 1.0

    Image 14: “Huitzilopochtli telleriano” is licensed under

    Public Domain-US

    Image 15: “Kampf der untergehenden Götter” by F.W.

    Heine is licensed under Public Domain 1.0

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 8 7

    4

    Chapter 4: Material Culture

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This chapter is more impressionistic than the preceding ones. Don’t

    expect to Tnd answers to the following questions in the text. The

    best way to get something from the chapter is to read yourself into

    the text.

    1. In your own words, explain the point that Henry Glassie

    is making in the quote that kicks off the chapter. Take it

    apart and explain phrase by phrase with concrete

    examples that might illustrate Glassie’s meaning.

    2. This chapter discusses the differences (rather than the

    similarities) in material culture from one region to

    another in the U.S. What are some factors that seem to

    affect material culture?

    3. How is material culture a reflection of the life of

    8 8 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    particular places?

    The things we make

    “Material culture records human intrusion in the

    environment,” says Henry Glassie (1999: 1) in his book

    Material Culture. “It is the way we imagine a distinction

    between nature and culture, and then rebuild nature to

    our desire, shaping, reshaping, and arranging things

    during life. We live in material culture, depend upon it,

    take it for granted, and realize through it our grandest

    aspirations.”

    In many ways, material culture is the most obvious

    element of culture. Of particular interest to the cross-

    cultural explorer is the way that material culture changes

    as one crosses otherwise invisible cultural boundaries. In

    traveling from one place to another, it is often the visible

    change in the manmade environment that <rst alerts the

    traveler to the fact that she has crossed from one cultural

    environment to another. This is not to ignore differences

    one might notice in spoken (or written) language, or the

    behavioral routines of people. There may be those too, of

    course.

    Taking to the road

    Reflecting on Glassie’s characterization of culture as a

    record of “human intrusion in the environment,” I am

    reminded of my encounters with these intrusions in my

    many travels–east, west, north, and south–across the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 8 9

    United States. Traveling by car in 1985 from my hometown

    of Toledo, Ohio on the west end of Lake Erie through

    Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Vermont, and New

    Hampshire to the coast of Maine, I heard English

    everywhere, of course. But when I arrived in Maine, the

    accent of the natives was obviously different from my

    northern Ohio, mid-Western accent. It amused me, for I

    had previously traveled in the Deep South and was

    familiar with the many accents of Southerners, but I had

    never spoken with a native resident of Maine. However,

    what impressed me more were the differences in cultural

    landscapes.

    In many respects, Maine was strangely familiar to me

    although the geography is hardly the same as Ohio’s. Let

    me explain. Northern Ohio is situated in a region of Ohio

    known as the Lake Plains. Largely flat, much of northern

    Ohio lies on the southern shores of Lake Erie, claiming

    about 312 miles (502 km) of Lake Erie’s shoreline. On the

    other hand, Maine, the northeastern most state of the U.S.,

    is on the Atlantic coast and has a rugged, rocky coastline.

    Both states have river systems that flow into large bodies

    of water. The rivers of northern Ohio flow into Lake Erie.

    The rivers of Maine flow to the Atlantic. Both states have

    flourishing marine cultures. But it is not the geography I

    want to focus on.

    What struck me just as much as the differences in geography

    were the differences in the marine cultures of Ohio and Maine. Of

    course, whether traveling the shoreline of Lake Erie or the Atlantic

    coast of Maine, one sees many boats. But my impression as a

    traveler was that the proportion of boats of different types seemed

    quite different.

    On Lake Erie one sees huge lake freighters, especially near big

    industrial cities like Toledo and Cleveland.

    9 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    “As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most, with a crew and good captain well seasoned” (song lyric from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

    I am old enough to remember when the Edmund Fitzgerald

    went down in a ferocious storm on Lake Superior on November 9,

    1975. It was subsequently immortalized by Canadian folk-rock

    singer Gordon Lightfoot in a song called The Wreck of the Edmund

    Fitzgerald.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9 1

    Powerboats docked in Skyway Marina, Toledo, Ohio

    Commercial <shing boats are also sometimes spotted in the

    Great Lakes too. Otherwise, the Great Lakes seascape is

    dominated by recreational craft. Powerboats seem most popular

    although sailboats can be seen as well. Marinas in Ohio are

    generally laid out in a series of piers. Since there are no

    appreciable tides in the Great Lakes, Lake Erie boaters can

    tie their boats at docks near shore and walk right to them.

    9 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Marinas lining the shore of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio

    The impression is quite different along the Maine coast. Large

    ships, while sometimes spotted, are more often seen only on the

    distant horizon. On the other hand, commercial <shing is the

    lifeblood of coastal Maine, and the lobster boat is an especially

    common sight. I saw them everywhere.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9 3

    Lobster boat on Maine coast

    There are many recreational boats too, and these certainly

    include powerboats, but somehow powerboats do not dominate

    my recollections of the Maine coast as they do that of Lake Erie.

    Instead Sailboats seem somewhat more prevalent. And because

    there are substantial tides along the Atlantic coast, boats are

    anchored to the sea floor at some distance from shore rather than

    tied to docks on the edge of the shoreline. A boat owner typically

    needs to use a small rowboat (or dinghy) to get to the boat (unless

    she wants to swim). One is also much more likely to encounter a

    sea kayak in the waters off the Maine coast than in Lake Erie.

    9 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Northeast Harbor, Mt. Desert Island, Maine

    Sea kayaking is popular along the Maine coast

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9 5

    Heading Inland

    Leaving the shores of Lake Erie and the coast of Maine and

    traveling inland, both states quickly undergo a cultural

    metamorphosis. We leave the vehicles and implements of

    the sea behind and encounter those of the farm and small

    town. In this sense, whether in Ohio or in Maine, one

    moves from one cultural setting to another by traveling

    just a few miles inland. But as we did with coastal Ohio

    and coastal Maine, let’s compare a couple of material

    features found in abundance in both rural Ohio and rural

    Maine.

    Whether traveling across Ohio or Maine one cannot go

    far without seeing a barn. Barns in both Ohio and Maine

    are generally of two basic types. There are barns with

    simple gabled roofs and gambrel style barns. Other shapes

    are sometimes found as well, but the simple gable and the

    gambrel are typical. Perhaps gambrel barns are more

    numerous in Ohio than in Maine although I cannot prove

    it. Barns are often painted red and sometimes white, or

    maybe not painted at all. But whether red, white, or

    unpainted, what is notable is that the siding on the barns

    in Maine is sometimes nailed horizontally, while in Ohio,

    the boards are often wider, and they are nailed vertically. If

    there is a reason for these differences other than simple

    local custom, I do not know. But it does not really matter,

    for what concerns us here is the raw visual encounter.

    9 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Red barn with simple gabled roof

    Barn with gambrel-style roof

    Another obvious example of “human intrusion in the

    environment” is the existence of houses (and other buildings:

    churches, stores, government buildings, etc.) Houses in both

    states come in many styles. The ways of building in both states have

    been influenced by other regions, of course, and by historical

    developments in architecture. This makes it hard to summarize

    similarities and differences in the ways of building.

    But crossing Maine, the traveler will surely see an

    abundance of variations on the simple, classic, cuboid

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9 7

    Cape Cod style house

    designs found throughout New England, including the

    Cape Cod and the Saltbox.

    Saltbox style house

    Moreover, it would not be hard to <nd houses sided with

    cedar shakes.

    9 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    Cedar siding is common on traditional New England houses.

    Nevertheless, except for differences in geography, it

    might be hard for the traveler to tell from a casual

    observation of houses whether she is in Ohio or in Maine.

    And frankly, as an Ohioan, I would be hard pressed to

    name the typical architectural style in Ohio. According to

    Zillow, an online real estate database company, the most

    prevalent architectural style in Maine is the Cape Cod

    design, whereas in Ohio, it is Colonial. In this respect,

    Ohio resembles Massachusetts or Connecticut more than

    Maine does. Indeed, architectural preferences in Ohio are

    somewhat more similar to those of New England

    generally, than to those of other Midwestern states, such

    as Minnesota or Nebraska (Home architecture, 2017).

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 9 9

    Historic Moss-Foster house, Colonial Revival style home in Sandusky, Ohio

    From one end of the country to another

    For a more obvious contrast in American architectural

    styles, the traveler can head south and west from Ohio,

    down the Mississippi River to New Orleans where the

    dominant building style is French.

    1 0 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    French Quarters in New Orleans

    Continuing west into Texas, the traveler begins to

    encounter Spanish architecture. Further west still, in New

    Mexico, the cultural landscape features an abundance of

    buildings in the Native American Pueblo style. Perhaps

    nothing captures the differences between Texas and New Mexico

    better than touring the campuses of the University of Texas, in

    Austin and the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 0 1

    Battle Hall, University of Texas, Austin

    Zimmerman Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

    While the Zimmerman Library at the University of New

    Mexico was built in 1938, one <nds examples of the

    indigenous architecture that inspired it 60 miles west of

    Albuquerque atop a 365-foot high mesa in the village of Sky

    City in Ácoma Pueblo, home to the Ácoma people.

    According to legend, the Ácoma people have lived there

    1 0 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    since before the time of Christ. Archaeologists cannot be

    certain of that but have con<rmed that the site has been

    inhabited since at least 1200 CE, making it perhaps the

    oldest continuously inhabited community in the United

    States (Minge, 2002).

    Ácoma Pueblo, village of Sky City, New Mexico

    Final reflection

    So far, we have barely scratched the surface in pointing

    out some architectural differences across broad regions of

    the United States. Our purpose, however, is not to make an

    exhaustive study of American architectural styles. It is only

    to illustrate Glassie’s characterization of material culture

    as “human intrusion in the environment” and to call

    attention to the ways in which that intrusion differs

    according to local customs, heritage, needs, and tastes.

    Buildings are obviously large intrusions in the natural

    environment, and we have not even begun to look at all the

    various kinds of structures that comprise the built

    environment from churches, synagogues, and mosques to

    government buildings, storefronts, and stadiums. Of

    course, material culture also includes the associated

    furnishings, appliances, tools, implements, and personal

    possessions within buildings.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 0 3

    We are surrounded by material culture. As Boivin (2008:

    225) reminds us: “From the moment we are born, we

    engage in an ongoing and increasingly intensive

    interaction with environments that are to varying degrees

    natural and human-made.” They are environments that we

    have shaped and that in turn have shaped us, “and yet,”

    notes Boivin, “in many ways, we have barely begun to

    study its role in our lives.”

    References

    Boivin, N. (2008). Material cultures, material minds: The

    impact of things on human thought, society, and evolution.

    New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Celebrating Zimmerman@75. UNM University Libraries.

    Retrieved December 28, 2017 from

    https://library.unm.edu/zimmerman75/

    Glassie, H. (1999). Material culture. Bloomington, IN:

    Indiana University Press.

    Home architecture style: Regional or not? Zillow.

    Retrieved August 2, 2017 from https://www.zillow.com/

    research/home-architecture-style-regional-or-not-4388/

    Minge, W. A. (2002). Ácoma: Pueblo in the sky, (Revised

    edition). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    Image Attributions

    Image 1: “Edmund Fitzgerald, 1971” by Greenmars is

    licensed under CC 3.0

    Image 2: “Skyway Marina (Formerly Glass City Marina) –

    Toledo, Ohio, Ohio DNR” by USFWSmidwest is licensed

    under CC 2.0

    1 0 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Image 3: “Sandusky Ohio aerial view.jpg” by Ken Winters,

    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is licensed under Public

    Domain

    Image 4: “ The Lobster Boat“ by DelberM is licensed under

    CC0

    Image 5: “Northeast Harbor Autumn – Mt. Desert Island,

    Maine (29773118253).jpg” by Tony Webster licensed by CC

    2.0

    Image 6: “Sea Kayak” by Thruxton licensed by CC 3.0 “Wood

    Shingles” by “Malcolm Jacobson” licensed by CC 2.0

    Image 7: “Red Barn” by Daniel Case licensed by CC 3.0

    Image 8: “Gambrel-Style Barn” by Nicholas Tonelli

    licensed by CC 2.0

    Image 9: “William and Jane Phinney House, 1730” by

    Kenneth C. Zirkel licensed by CC 3.0

    Image 10:“Nehemiah Royce House, Wallingford,

    Connecticut” by Daderot licensed by CC 3.0

    Image 11: “Wood Shingles” by “Malcolm Jacobson” licensed

    by CC 2.0

    Image 12: “Moss-Foster House” by Nyttend licensed by

    Public Domain

    Image 13: “French Quarter in New Orleans” by llambrano

    licensed by CC0

    Image 14: “Battle Hall” by Larry D. Moore licensed by CC

    3.0

    Image 15: “Public Library” by PerryPlanet licensed by

    Public Domain

    Image 16: “Pueblo Sky City” by Scott Catron licensed by CC

    2.0

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 0 5

    5

    Chapter 5: Culture as

    Thought and Action

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    The following task will help you gain a better grasp of some

    commonly mentioned elements of culture. DeTne the following

    terms. For each term provide the information indicated.

    1. Belief: basic deTnition – three types – characteristics of

    each type – unique examples from your own experience

    2. Value: basic deTnition – examples from the reading –

    unique examples from your own experience

    3. Norm: basic deTnition – two types – deTnition of each

    type – difference between each type – example of each

    from text – unique example of each

    1 0 6 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    4. Custom: basic deTnition – several characteristics

    5. Tradition: basic deTnition – several characteristics –

    difference between custom and tradition

    6. Ritual: basic deTnition – six genres of ritual – unique

    example from your own experience of each genre

    Non-material aspects of culture

    Social scientists have long distinguished material from

    non-material culture despite the fact that they are closely

    intertwined. Material culture consists of tangible objects

    that people create: tools, toys, buildings, furniture, images,

    and even print and digital media—a seemingly endless list

    of items. As we saw in Chapter 3, material culture can tell

    us a lot about the activities of people as remote in time as

    the Upper Paleolithic (and earlier). In fact, material culture

    is almost all we have to inform us about human culture in

    the deep past before the existence of written records.

    While material culture provides clues about the lives of the

    people who create and use it, material culture alone is

    silent about many other details, for much of human

    culture is non-material.

    Non-material culture includes such things as: beliefs,

    values, norms, customs, traditions, and rituals, to give just

    a few examples. In this chapter, we will discuss these

    typical categories of thought and action often associated

    with the concept of culture.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 0 7

    Beliefs

    A belief is a propositional attitude, a settled way of

    thinking. Beliefs when publicly expressed generally take

    the form of declarative statements. As Schwitzgebel (2015)

    has pointed out, the vast majority of our beliefs are

    actually quite mundane. We rarely bother to express them

    at all, and we certainly never question them. Here are a

    couple of examples of some pretty mundane beliefs:

    • All people have heads.

    • The hand on the end of my arm is my hand (not

    someone else’s).

    Mundane beliefs are, for the most part, universally

    shared by all normally functioning people. Of course, not

    all beliefs are universally shared. Some beliefs are purely

    personal. Mary may believe, with good reason, that eggs

    give her indigestion. George may believe, without very

    good evidence, that the best way to guarantee rain is to

    wash his car. Personal beliefs may be well founded or not

    so well founded. At any rate, mundane beliefs and purely

    personal beliefs are of no particular cross-cultural interest.

    Of greater interest for students of culture are the beliefs

    (and systems of beliefs) that are widely shared among

    members of particular communities of people. While

    mundane beliefs may be universally shared across most

    cultures, culturally shared beliefs tend to have boundaries.

    The members of one group may consider their own,

    shared cultural beliefs as self-evidently true, while

    members of other groups might consider the same beliefs

    as questionable, if not strange and arbitrary. Culturally

    relevant beliefs govern every conceivable aspect of social

    1 0 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    life: religious, political, economic, and domestic to

    mention only a few.

    Values

    Cultural values are closely associated with both the beliefs

    and norms of a cultural community. Values can be de<ned

    as the abstract concepts or standards that represent the

    ideals of a group. They point to what the group most

    regards as right, good, beautiful, desirable, etc. Values are

    often identi<ed in discourse by means of words or

    phrases, e.g., “freedom,” “equality,” “<lial piety,” “respect

    for elders.” Values, though, go hand in hand with beliefs.

    Think of a value, when articulated, as a short hand way of

    referring to a belief. But of course, a value is hardly a value

    unless it is acted upon. In other words, we generally think

    of a value as a guide to conduct.

    What purpose do values serve? – we might want to ask.

    For one thing, shared cultural values may help promote

    group cohesion. They encourage group members to behave

    in ways that the group considers appropriate, proper,

    honorable, praiseworthy, and the like. As is true also with

    beliefs and norms though, not everyone necessarily

    adheres to the widely shared values of a culture to the

    same degree, and sometimes not at all. In fact, some

    cultural values may even be in conflict with other values.

    Cross-cultural comparisons of values using

    questionnaires have been particularly popular with social

    scientists for well over a half-century. Later in our

    explorations, we will examine several different

    frameworks that social scientists have proposed for

    studying differences in values across cultures.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 0 9

    Norms

    Norms are the expectations or rules, formal or informal,

    about how one should behave in a particular social

    situation. Sociologists since the time of William Graham

    Sumner (1906) have generally distinguished two different

    types of norms: folkways and mores. Folkways are a loose

    collection of usual or customary ways in which the

    members of a particular cultural community behave.

    Examples include: how people greet one another, how they

    dress, what they eat, how they prepare it, and how they eat

    it, how they handle inter-personal conflict, etc. Mores

    (pronounced “more-rays”) are stricter than folkways. They

    are the standards of moral conduct and ethical behavior

    that the people in a cultural community expect of one

    another. They include such things as rules against killing,

    rules about who can or cannot have sex with whom, and so

    on.

    The mores of a society are enforced in various ways. The

    most important mores are upheld by means of laws, which

    are explicitly stated rules. People who violate laws may

    have to pay a penalty, for example, going to jail, or paying a

    monetary <ne. Other mores may not be strictly against the

    law but are nevertheless strongly endorsed by a society.

    Such mores may be upheld mainly by means of social

    sanctions, which are ways of communicating disapproval

    or putting pressure on people who violate a community’s

    mores. For example, people who violate mores for which

    there are no formal laws may <nd that the people of a

    community make life uncomfortable for them. The

    community may publically condemn the person

    (“shaming”) or avoid interacting with the person

    (“shunning”).

    1 1 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    One way to look at the difference between folkways and

    mores is to say that folkways reflect what a cultural

    community regards as appropriate or inappropriate, polite

    or rude. Mores, however, reflect what a community

    considers as morally or ethically right or wrong.

    Customs and Traditions

    Customs and traditions are two more terms often

    employed in discussing culture. A custom is a widely

    accepted way of doing something, speci<c to a particular

    society, place or time, and that has developed through

    repetition over a long period of time. So de<ned, it is hard

    to see how customs differ from folkways as discussed

    above. I am not sure they do. Whether a practice is called a

    folkway or custom might revolve around whether the

    practice is being discussed by a sociologist or a social

    historian.

    But what is a tradition? David Gross (1992: 8) de<nes

    tradition as “a set of practices, a constellation of beliefs, or

    mode of thinking that exists in the present, but was

    inherited from the past.” Gross further elaborates, writing

    that a tradition “can be a set of observances, a collection of

    doctrines or teachings, a particular type of behavior, a way

    of thinking about the world or oneself, a way of regarding

    others or interpreting reality.”

    Gross (1992: 12) acknowledges that customs and

    traditions have much in common and that therefore the

    differences between them are easily blurred. He insists,

    however, that from the perspective of society as a whole,

    customs are less important than traditions. Compared

    with traditions, Gross claims, customs involve “mostly

    super<cial modes of behavior” that “are not as heavily

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1 1

    invested with value.” For example, says Gross, long

    standing forms of greeting, like bowing in Japan, or

    shaking hands in the U.S. are “relatively insigni<cant

    social habits,” better characterized as customs than as

    traditions. Still, Gross admits, “the boundary separating

    custom from tradition is not always easy to discern.”

    To call any practice a tradition, however, is often taken

    to imply that the practice is not just of great value but also

    ancient, something that has been passed down through

    many generations unchanged. Scholarly studies of

    tradition, however, contradict this widely held

    assumption. Although some traditions may have ancient

    roots, rarely, if ever, does any practice remain <xed for all

    time. Times change, and traditions disappear or are

    signi<cantly transformed.

    Even more startling, traditions are often invented and

    passed off as ancient, when in fact they are fully modern.

    As Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) have argued, the

    invention of tradition is a hallmark of that “recent

    historical innovation, the ‘nation,’ with its associated

    phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national

    symbols, histories and the rest.” Although today’s nation-

    states are modern inventions, they “generally claim to be

    the opposite … namely rooted in the remotest antiquity,”

    representing human communities that are entirely

    ‘natural’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983: 13-14).

    Rituals

    Rituals are sequences of actions involving gestures,

    objects, and sometimes the utterance of words performed

    in prescribed ways and carried out at speci<c times and

    1 1 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    places. When I ask American students to identify rituals,

    they sometimes give examples such as:

    • gathering to watch <reworks on the 4th of July

    • “trick or treating” on Halloween

    • gathering around the TV on Thanksgiving to watch

    parades and football

    • enjoying Thanksgiving dinner, including turkey and

    other dishes typical of the occasion

    But these not good examples of ritual as most

    anthropologists would de<ne it.

    True, some activities that are not clearly rituals, may

    seem to have some ritual-like characteristics, an

    observation that prompted Catherine Bell in her

    book, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, to propose a

    distinction between ritual and ritual-like activities.

    According to Bell, ritual-like activities have some

    characteristics of ritual. Routines of greeting and parting,

    and table manners, for instance, are performative and

    exhibit formality both of which are characteristic of ritual.

    On the other hand, the American celebration of

    Thanksgiving is ritual-like because of its appeal to

    tradition.

    As for full-fledged rituals, scholars have found it

    convenient for the purpose of study to group them into

    categories according to shared characteristics. Religious

    studies scholar, Catherine Bell, has identi<ed six basic

    categories of ritual.

    Rites of passage (or life-cycle rites) are ceremonies that call attention to major events in the social life of

    individuals, such as birth, the transition from childhood to

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1 3

    adulthood, marriage, and death. Rites of passage can also

    mark initiation into religious communities, for example,

    baptism in Christian communities. Clubs, fraternities, and

    secret societies often put new initiates through ritual

    ordeals before accepting them into the new community.

    In some societies, rites of passage may be short and

    simple while in others they may be lengthy and complex.

    In rural China, says Bell (2009: 96), birth rituals are often

    still observed in all their traditional complexity. When a

    young woman marries, she is brought to live with the

    husband’s family, and she may be considered an outsider

    of little importance until she bears a son to carry on the

    family name. Her mother-in-law may engage in rituals

    involving presentation of offerings to special maternal

    deities. Pregnancy and childbirth are also surrounded by a

    seemingly endless series of ritual observances. (This is not

    generally the case, however, in modern, urban China.)

    Calendrical rites fall into two subcategories. Seasonal celebrations are associated with cycles of planting and harvesting among agriculturalists and with grazing and

    moving the herd among pastoralists. In many societies,

    sowing seeds is accompanied by offerings to ancestors or

    deities, and harvesting often involves giving the <rst yield

    to the gods or ancestors. Communal feasting is also

    common, accompanied by music, dance, and a relaxing of

    social restraint. Commemorative celebrations revolve around remembrance or re-enactment of events with

    religious signi<cance, or importance for national heritage.

    The rite of Holy Communion in the Catholic Church, for

    instance, is performed in remembrance of the Last

    Supper.

    Rites of exchange and communion involve the making of offerings to a god or gods, sometimes with the

    1 1 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    expectation of getting something in return, like a good

    harvest. Offerings may also be made to praise or please or

    appease a god or deity. In some cultures, the offering

    consisted of the sacri<ce of an animal (e.g., the ancient

    Hebrews), and some cultures have even practiced human

    sacri<ce (e.g., the Aztecs).

    Rituals of affliction involve actions taken to diagnose and deal with the unseen causes of misfortune or to

    alleviate physical or mental illnesses. Many pre-modern

    cultures believe such problems are caused by things like

    evil spirits, spirits of the dead, magic or witchcraft. Rituals

    of affliction often involve not just the afflicted but entire

    communities and have as their objective the idea of

    puri<cation or exorcism.

    Rituals of feasting, fasting, and festivals are focused on public displays of cultural and religious commitment and

    sentiment. A good example of ritual fasting is the

    worldwide Muslim communal fasting during the month of

    Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar.

    During Ramadan, Muslims do not eat or drink anything

    from the time the sun rises until it sets. (Exceptions are

    made for the elderly, the sick, and for pregnant women, as

    well as for people traveling.) After Ramadan, Muslims

    celebrate Eid al Fitr, literally the “feast of breaking the

    fast.” Well known festivals include Carnival in places like

    New Orleans and Brazil and water festivals that take place

    in many countries in East and Southeast Asia (e.g., China,

    Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand).

    Political rites are ceremonial practices that display and promote the power of political institutions. The

    coronation of the Queen of England would be an example.

    National salutes might also count as political rites, e.g., the

    American pledge of allegiance, or to give a more sinister

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1 5

    example, the “Heil Hitler” salute in pre-World War II

    Germany. Revolutionary or anti-establishment gestures

    could also be counted as political rites, for instance, cross-

    burning by the KKK.

    Most of us living in modern secular societies are not

    generally surrounded by rituals to the same extent as

    people in traditional societies often are or were. In the

    United States, for example, except for people who may

    belong to a religious tradition in which ritual is important,

    we tend to observe just a few rites to mark major life

    transitions such as birth, marriage, and death (Bell, 2009).

    Final reflection

    The terms covered in this chapter are among the most

    common terms used in enumerating what we have called

    non-material aspects of culture. But to reiterate a point

    made at the beginning of the chapter, it is not always

    possible to separate material and non-material culture. For

    instance, while we have de<ned a custom as a widely

    accepted way of doing something, that doing may very

    well include a material object. For instance, it might be

    customary to send a friend or relative a birthday

    greeting—an action, but that greeting may take material

    form—a birthday card. Or let’s take ritual as an example.

    Although a ritual is an action, ritual actions often employ

    ritual objects: incense, candles, chalices, prayer beads,

    bells, gongs, drums, and so on.

    Not only can it be dif<cult to separate material and non-

    material culture, it is also not always easy to distinguish

    between some categories of non-material culture

    discussed in this chapter. For instance, we have already

    discussed the dif<culty of distinguishing between a

    1 1 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    custom and a tradition. Is there a difference between a

    custom and a norm? If there is, it is surely subtle and

    unimportant for our purposes. On the other hand, there

    clearly is a difference between a law (at least in the modern

    sense of the term) and a more.

    At this point, I would invite you, dear reader, to go

    through the list of terms introduced in the chapter and

    provide original examples of beliefs, values, norms,

    customs, traditions, and rituals that you consider to be

    elements of a cultural community that you are familiar

    with.

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    1. Identify at least three beliefs that are important in a

    cultural community that you identify with. Try to

    discover beliefs that govern different aspects of life,

    e.g., political, economic, social, or some other. Can you

    name an associated value for each belief ?

    2. See if you can discover a cultural belief that is at odds

    with one of your own deeply held personal beliefs.

    3. We often belong to more than one cultural community.

    Sometimes the beliefs of one community are in conflict

    with the beliefs of another community. Can you

    identify any such situation in your own experience?

    For Further Research

    1. Culture is not something Txed. Cultures can change

    over time. Can you discover a custom that has changed

    in the lifetime of someone that you know (e.g., a parent

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1 7

    or grandparent)?

    2. Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) have argued that what

    we regard as ancient traditions are sometimes more

    recent than we think. Can you discover any tradition

    that is actually more recent than people commonly

    believe?

    References

    Bell, C. (2009). Ritual: Perspectives and dimensions (Revised

    Edition), Oxford University Press. ProQuest Ebook

    Central.

    Gross, D. (1992). The past in ruins. Amherst, MA: University

    of Massachusetts Press.

    Hobsbawm, E. & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of

    tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Schwitzgebel, E. (2015). “Belief.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of

    Philosophy (Summer 2015 Edition), Edward N.

    Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/

    archives/sum2015/entries/belief/

    Stephenson, B. (2015). Ritual: A very short introduction.

    Oxford University Press. Ebook.

    Sumner, W. G. (1906/1940). Folkways: A study of the

    sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores,

    and morals. Boston: Ginn and Company.

    1 1 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    6

    Chapter 6: Beliefs, Values,

    and Cultural Universals

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This chapter delves into two theories of cultural values in more

    detail. The following tasks invite you not only to restate ideas from

    the chapter but also to apply the theories to communities of your

    own choosing.

    1. What are the Tve questions that every society must

    answer, according to Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck?

    Identify the three potential responses to each question.

    2. List and deTne Hofstede’s six dimensions of culture.

    Choose two national cultures that interest you.

    Compare and contrast them using Hofstede’s model.

    3. Identify four problems that critics have identiTed with

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 1 9

    Hofstede’s theory.

    4. Do you think it is possible to identify national values, or

    do you think values differ signiTcantly from person to

    person and place to place? Explain.

    Value Orientations Theory

    The Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Value Orientations theory

    represents one of the earliest efforts to develop a cross-

    cultural theory of values. According to Kluckhohn and

    Strodtbeck (1961), every culture faces the same basic

    survival needs and must answer the same universal

    questions. It is out of this need that cultural values arise.

    The basic questions faced by people everywhere fall into

    <ve categories and reflect concerns about: 1) human

    nature, 2) the relationship between human beings and the

    natural world, 3) time, 4) human activity, and 5) social

    relations. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck hypothesized three

    possible responses or orientations to each of the concerns.

    Table 6.1 – Summary of Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Values

    Orientation Theory

    Basic Concerns Orientations

    Human nature Evil Mixed Good

    Relationship to natural world Subordinate Harmony Dominant

    Time Past Present Future

    Activity Being Becoming Doing

    Social relations Hierarchical Collateral Individual

    1 2 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    What is the inherent nature of human beings?

    This is a question, say Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, that all

    societies ask, and there are generally three different

    responses. The people in some societies are inclined to

    believe that people are inherently evil and that the society

    must exercise strong measures to keep the evil impulses of

    people in check. On the other hand, other societies are

    more likely to see human beings as born basically good

    and possessing an inherent tendency towards goodness.

    Between these two poles are societies that see human

    beings as possessing the potential to be either good or evil

    depending upon the influences that surround them.

    Societies also differ on whether human nature is

    immutable (unchangeable) or mutable (changeable).

    What is the relationship between human beings and the natural world?

    Some societies believe nature is a powerful force in the

    face of which human beings are essentially helpless. We

    could describe this as “nature over humans.” Other

    societies are more likely to believe that through

    intelligence and the application of knowledge, humans can

    control nature. In other words, they embrace a “humans

    over nature” position. Between these two extremes are the

    societies who believe humans are wise to strive to live in

    “harmony with nature.”

    What is the best way to think about time?

    Some societies are rooted in the past, believing that people

    should learn from history and strive to preserve the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 2 1

    traditions of the past. Other societies place more value on

    the here and now, believing people should live fully in the

    present. Then there are societies that place the greatest

    value on the future, believing people should always delay

    immediate satisfactions while they plan and work hard to

    make a better future.

    What is the proper mode of human activity?

    In some societies, “being” is the most valued orientation.

    Striving for great things is not necessary or important. In

    other societies, “becoming” is what is most valued. Life is

    regarded as a process of continual unfolding. Our purpose

    on earth, the people might say, is to become fully human.

    Finally, there are societies that are primarily oriented to

    “doing.” In such societies, people are likely to think of the

    inactive life as a wasted life. People are more likely to

    express the view that we are here to work hard and that

    human worth is measured by the sum of

    accomplishments.

    What is the ideal relationship between the individual and society?

    Expressed another way, we can say the concern is about

    how a society is best organized. People in some societies

    think it most natural that a society be organized

    hierarchically. They hold to the view that some people are

    born to lead and others to follow. Leaders, they feel, should

    make all the important decisions. Other societies are best

    described as valuing collateral relationships. In such

    societies, everyone has an important role to play in society;

    therefore, important decisions should be made by

    1 2 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    consensus. In still other societies, the individual is the

    primary unit of society. In societies that place great value

    on individualism, people are likely to believe that each

    person should have control over his/her own destiny.

    When groups convene to make decisions, they should

    follow the principle of “one person, one vote.”

    In an early application of the theory, Kluckhohn and

    Strodtbeck interviewed members of <ve cultural groups in

    the American Southwest: 1) Navajo people traveling

    around the Southwest seeking work, 2) white

    homesteaders in Texas, 3) Mexican-Americans, 4) Mormon

    villagers, and 5) Zuni pueblo dwellers. Researchers have

    found the framework useful in making sense of diverse

    cultures around the world.

    As Hill (2002) has observed, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck

    did not consider the theory to be complete. In fact, they

    originally proposed a sixth value orientation—Space: here,

    there, or far away, which they could not quite <gure out

    how to investigate at the time. And Hill has proposed a

    number of additional questions that one might expect

    cultural groups to grapple with:

    • Space – Should space belong to individuals, to groups

    (especially the family) or to everybody?

    • Work – What should be the basic motivation for work?

    To make a contribution to society, to have a sense of

    personal achievement, or to attain <nancial security?

    • Gender – How should society distribute roles, power

    and responsibility between the sexes? Should

    decision-making be done primarily by men, by

    women, or by both?

    • The Relationship between State and Individual –

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 2 3

    Should rights and responsibilities be granted to the

    nation or the individual?

    Today, the Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck framework is just

    one among many attempts to study universal human

    values. Others include those of Hofstede (1997), Rokeach

    (1979), and Schwartz (2006).

    Hofstede’s dimensions of culture theory

    Geert Hofstede articulated a Dimensions of Culture theory

    in the 1980s, and has updated and revised it over the years.

    Hofstede’s theory currently gets a lot of attention in basic

    texts that include discussion of cultural values. Based on

    survey data collected from IBM employees, Hofstede has

    argued that his theory is particularly useful for

    highlighting similarities and differences between national

    cultures. Hofstede initially identi<ed four dimensions.

    Power Distance

    Power distance is a measure of the degree to which less

    powerful members of society expect and accept an unequal

    distribution of power. There is a certain degree of

    inequality in all societies, notes Hofstede; however, there

    is relatively more equality in some societies than in others.

    Countries vary along a continuum from countries where

    power distance is very low to countries where power

    distance is very high. Measured on a scale of 1-100 for

    instance, Denmark scores very low and Mexico scores

    quite high. The U.S. falls somewhere in between.

    Countries with lower PDI values tend to be more

    egalitarian. For instance, there is more equality between

    1 2 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    parents and children with parents more likely to accept it

    if children argue with them, or “talk back” to use a

    common expression. In the work place, bosses are more

    likely to ask employees for input, and in fact, subordinates

    expect to be consulted. On the other hand, in countries

    with high power distance, parents expect children to obey

    without questioning. People of higher status may expect

    conspicuous displays of respect from subordinates. In the

    workplace, superiors and subordinates are not likely to see

    each other as equals, and it is assumed that bosses will

    make decisions without consulting employees. In general,

    status is more important in high power distance countries.

    Table 6.2 – Power distance index (PDI) for 50 countries

    and 3 regions (Hofstede, 1997: 26)

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 2 5

    Country/ Region PDI

    Country/ Region PDI

    Country/ Region PDI

    Country/ Region PDI

    Malaysia *104 France 68 South Korea 60 Australia 36

    Guatemala 95 Hong Kong 68 Iran 58 Costa Rica 35

    Panama 95 Colombia 67 Taiwan 58 Germany 35

    Philippines 94 Salvador 66 Spain 57 Great Britain 35

    Mexico 81 Turkey 66 Pakistan 55 Switzerland 34

    Venezuela 81 Belgium 65 Japan 54 Finland 33

    Arab countries 80

    East Africa 64 Italy 50 Norway 31

    Ecuador 78 Peru 64 Argentina 49 Sweden 31

    Indonesia 78 Thailand 64 South Africa 49 Ireland 28

    India 77 Chile 63 Jamaica 45 New Zealand 22

    West Africa 77 Portugal 63 USA 40 Denmark 18

    Yugoslavia 76 Uruguay 61 Canada 39 Israel 13

    Singapore 74 Greece 60 Netherlands 38 Austria 11

    Brazil 69

    * A country may score above 100 if it was added after a

    formula for the scale had already been <xed.

    Table 6.3 – Individualism index (IDV) for 50 countries

    and 3 regions (Hofstede, 1997: 53)

    1 2 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Country/ Region IDV

    Country/ Region IDV

    Country/ Region IDV

    Country/ Region IDV

    USA 91 Germany 67 Turkey 37 Thailand 20

    Australia 90 South Africa 65 Uruguay 36 Salvador 19

    Great Britain 89 Finland 63 Greece 35

    South Korea 18

    Canada 80 Austria 55 Philippines 32 Taiwan 17

    Netherlands 80 Israel 54 Mexico 30 Peru 16

    New Zealand 79 Spain 51 Yugoslavia 27 Costa Rica 15

    Italy 76 India 48 East Africa 27 Indonesia 14

    Belgium 75 Japan 46 Portugal 27 Pakistan 14

    Denmark 74 Argentina 46 Malaysia 26 Colombia 13

    France 71 Iran 41 Hong Kong 25 Venezuela 12

    Sweden 71 Jamaica 39 Chile 23 Panama 11

    Ireland 70 Arab countries 38 West Africa 20 Ecuador 8

    Norway 69 Brazil 38 Singapore 20 Guatemala 6

    Switzerland 68

    Individualism vs. collectivism

    Individualism vs. collectivism anchor opposite ends of a

    continuum that describes how people de<ne themselves

    and their relationships with others. Countries that score

    higher on individualism measure are considered by

    de<nition less collectivistic than countries that score

    lower. In more highly individualistic societies, the

    interests of individuals receive more emphasis than those

    of the group (e.g., the family, the company, etc.).

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 2 7

    Individualistic societies put more value on self-striving

    and personal accomplishment, while more collectivistic

    societies put more emphasis on the importance of

    relationships and loyalty. People are de<ned more by what

    they do in individualistic societies while in collectivistic

    societies, they are de<ned more by their membership in

    particular groups. Communication is more direct in

    individualistic societies but more indirect in collectivistic

    societies. The U.S. ranks very high in individualism, and

    South Korea ranks quite low. Japan falls close to the

    middle.

    Masculinity vs. femininity

    Masculinity vs. femininity refers to a dimension that

    describes the extent to which strong distinctions exist

    between men’s and women’s roles in society. Societies that

    score higher on the masculinity scale tend to value

    assertiveness, competition, and material success.

    Countries that score lower in masculinity tend to embrace

    values more widely thought of as feminine values, e.g.,

    modesty, quality of life, interpersonal relationships, and

    greater concern for the disadvantaged of society. Societies

    high in masculinity are also more likely to have strong

    opinions about what constitutes men’s work vs. women’s

    work while societies low in masculinity permit much

    greater overlapping in the social roles of men and women.

    Table 6.4 – Masculinity index (MAS) for 50 countries and

    3 regions (Hofstede, 1997: 84)

    1 2 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    Country/ Region MAS

    Country/ Region MAS

    Country/ Region MAS

    Country/ Region MAS

    Japan 95 USA 62 Singapore 48 South Korea 39

    Austria 79 Australia 61 Israel 47 Uruguay 38

    Venezuela 73 New Zealand 58 Indonesia 46 Guatemala 37

    Italy 70 Hong Kong 57 West Africa 46 Thailand 34

    Switzerland 70 Greece 57 Turkey 45 Portugal 31

    Mexico 69 India 56 Taiwan 45 Chile 28

    Ireland 69 Argentina 56 Panama 44 Finland 26

    Jamaica 68 Belgium 54 France 43 Yugoslavia 21

    Germany 66 Arab countries 53 Iran 43 Costa Rica 21

    Great Britain 66 Canada 52 Peru 42 Denmark 16

    Philippines 64 Malaysia 50 Spain 42 Netherlands 14

    Colombia 64 Pakistan 50 East Africa 41 Norway 8

    Ecuador 63 Brazil 49 Salvador 40 Sweden 5

    South Africa 63

    Uncertainty avoidance

    Uncertainty avoidance measures the extent to which people

    value predictability and view uncertainty or the unknown

    as threatening. People in societies that measure high in

    uncertainty avoidance prefer to know exactly what to

    expect in any given situation. They want <rm rules and

    strict codes of behavior. They dislike ambiguity. People

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 2 9

    from countries that score low on uncertainty avoidance

    generally have a higher tolerance for ambiguity. They are

    happy to have few rules and prefer less structured rather

    than more tightly structured contexts. In educational

    settings, people from countries high in uncertainty

    avoidance expect their teachers to be experts with all of the

    answers. People from countries low in uncertainty

    avoidance don’t mind it when a teacher says, “I don’t

    know.”

    Table 6.5 – Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI)/ 50

    countries and 3 regions (Hofstede, 1997: 113)

    Country/ Region UAI

    Country/ Region UAI

    Country/ Region UAI

    Country/ Region UAI

    Greece 112 Costa Rica 86 Ecuador 67 Indonesia 48

    Portugal 104 Turkey 85 Germany 65 Canada 48

    Guatemala 101 South Korea 85 Thailand 64 USA 46

    Uruguay 100 Mexico 82 Iran 59 Philippines 44

    Salvador 94 Israel 81 Finland 59 India 40

    Belgium 94 Colombia 80 Switzerland 58 Malaysia 36

    Japan 92 Venezuela 76 West Africa 54 Great Britain 35

    Yugoslavia 88 Brazil 76 Netherlands 53 Ireland 35

    Peru 87 Italy 75 East Africa 52 Hong Kong 29

    Panama 86 Pakistan 70 Australia 51 Sweden 29

    France 86 Austria 70 Norway 50 Denmark 23

    Chile 86 Taiwan 69 South Africa 49 Jamaica 13

    Spain 86 Arab countries 68 New Zealand 49 Singapore 8

    Argentina 86

    1 3 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Long-term vs. short-term orientation

    Long-term vs. short-term orientation is a 5th dimension

    developed some years after the initial four. It emerged as a

    result of an effort by a research group (The Chinese

    Culture Connection, 1987) to develop a universal values

    framework with a non-Western bias. According to

    Hofstede (1997: 161), the resulting Chinese Values Survey

    overlapped with three of Hofstede’s dimensions: power

    distance, individualism, and masculinity although not

    with the uncertainty avoidance dimension. In addition,

    the group found a unique factor not reflected in Hofstede’s

    work, which they called Confucian dynamism. Hofstede

    has since incorporated Confucian dynamism into his own

    theory as long-term vs. short-term orientation. Long-term

    orientation is associated with thrift, savings, persistence

    toward results, and the willingness to subordinate oneself

    for a purpose. Short-term orientation is associated with

    less saving, a preference for quick results, and

    unrestrained spending in response to social pressure

    (often referred to in English as “keeping up with the

    Joneses”).

    Table 6.6 – Long-term orientation (LTO) for 23 countries

    (Hofstede, 1997: 166)

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3 1

    Country LTO Country LTO Country LTO Country LTO

    China 118 India 61 Poland 32 Zimbabwe 25

    Hong Kong 96 Thailand 56 Germany 31 Canada 23

    Taiwan 87 Singapore 48 Australia 31 Philippines 19

    Japan 80 Netherlands 44 New Zealand 30 Nigeria 16

    South Korea 75 Bangladesh 40 USA 29 Pakistan 0

    Brazil 65 Sweden 33 Great Britain 25

    Indulgence vs. self-restraint

    Indulgence vs. self-restraint represents another new

    dimension. People living in countries that score high on

    indulgence are more likely to value the free grati<cation of

    human desires. Enjoying life and having fun are important

    to them. On the other hand, people in countries high on

    restraint are more likely to believe that grati<cation

    should be curbed and that it should be regulated by strict

    social norms (Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010: 281).

    Table 6.7 – Indulgence vs. Restraint. Ranking of 40

    countries from most to least indulgent (reproduced from

    Jandt, 2016: 175)

    1 3 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    High-Indulgence Countries High-Restraint Countries

    1 Venezuela 11 Australia 74 Morocco 83 Iraq

    2 Mexico 12 Cyprus 75 China 85 Estonia

    3 Puerto Rico 12 Denmark 76 Azerbaijan 85 Bulgaria

    4 El Salvador 14 Great Britain 77 Russia 85 Lithuania

    5 Nigeria 15 Canada 77 Montenegro 88 Belarus

    6 Colombia 15 Netherlands 77 Romania 88 Albania

    7 Trinidad 15 USA 77 Bangladesh 90 Ukraine

    8 Sweden 18 Iceland 81 Moldova 91 Latvia

    9 New Zealand 19 Switzerland 82 Burkina Faso 92 Egypt

    10 Ghana 19 Malta 83 Hong Kong 93 Pakistan

    Critique of Hofstede’s theory

    Among the various attempts by social scientists to study

    human values from a cultural perspective, Hofstede’s is

    certainly popular. In fact, it would be a rare culture text

    that did not pay special attention to Hofstede’s theory. The

    current text is a case in point. However, Hofstede’s theory

    has also been seriously questioned, and we will summarize

    some of the most common criticisms below.

    First, Hofstede’s methodology has been criticized. To

    begin with, the way in which the questionnaire was

    developed has been described as haphazard (Orr &

    Hauser, 2008). Indeed, the questionnaire was not even

    originally developed to explore cultural values but instead

    to assess job satisfaction within IBM. It is hard to believe

    that questions framed to explore workplace attitudes are

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3 3

    relevant to broader cultural attitudes outside of the work

    place.

    Critics also point out that Hofstede’s conclusions are

    based on insuf<cient samples McSweeney, 2002).

    Although 117,000 questionnaires were administered, only

    the results from 40 countries were used. Furthermore,

    only 6 countries had more than 1000 respondents, and in

    15 countries, there were fewer than 200 respondents.

    Surely it is not appropriate for 200 people to speak on

    behalf of a country of millions.

    Critics have also been skeptical about the assumption

    that IBM employees are representative of national cultures

    as a whole. And even within IBM, the surveys were

    administered only to certain categories of workers, i.e.,

    “marketing-plus-sales,” leaving out many other employee

    categories, including blue-collar workers, full-time

    students, retired employees, etc. (McSweeney, 2002).

    Hofstede has suggested that restricting the sample in this

    way effectively controls for the effects of occupational

    category and class, insuring that the relevant variable of

    comparison is nationality. However, it seems hard to

    escape the conclusion that since the study consisted solely

    of IBM employees, the results may have more to say about

    IBM corporate culture than about anything broader.

    Moreover, we should not forget that when Hofstede’s

    research was <rst conducted, IBM employed mostly men,

    so women’s perspectives are also largely missing (Orr &

    Hauser, 2008).

    Hofstede’s theory has also been faulted for promoting a

    largely static view of culture (Hamden-Turner &

    Trompenaars, 1997). As Orr and Hauser (2008) have

    suggested, the world has changed in dramatic ways since

    Hofstede’s research began. The world map has changed,

    1 3 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    cultures themselves may have changed, and the original

    data is likely to be out of date. In fact, it is somewhat of a

    puzzle why Hofstede’s theory continues to enjoy the

    popularity that it does. Indeed, over the years, attempts by

    many researchers to replicate Hofstede’s <ndings have not

    been very successful (Orr & Hauser, 2008).

    Final reflection

    In this chapter, we have surveyed two approaches to the

    study of cultural values: that of Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck,

    that of Hofstede. The study of values will no doubt remain

    a vibrant subject for cross-cultural researchers.

    However, implicit in Hofstede’s work, in particular, is

    the idea that there exists such a thing as a national culture.

    In discussing cultural values, we have temporarily gone

    along with this suggestion. However, in closing, let us

    raise the question of whether the idea of national culture

    actually makes any sense. McSweeney (2002: 110), echoing

    the sentiments of many other scholars insists that, “the

    pre<xing of the name of a country to something to imply

    national uniformity is grossly over-used.” In his view,

    Hofstede’s dimensions are little more than statistical

    myths.

    In the chapters to come, we will suggest that culture is a

    term better applied to small collectivities and explain why

    the idea that there is any such thing as national culture

    may be a mere illusion.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3 5

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    1. Choose a community that you know well and decide

    where you think most members of the community

    would place themselves within Table 6.1—the

    Kluckhohn-Strodtbeck Value Orientations framework.

    Explain your reasoning. Are your views the same or

    different from those of your primary community?

    2. Is your primary cultural community a “high-indulgence”

    or a “high-restraint” community? How does this cultural

    orientation align with your own personal orientation?

    Are you a “high-indulgence” or a “high-restraint”

    person?

    References

    Hamden-Turner, C. & Trompenaars, F. (1997), “Response

    to Geert Hofstede,” International Journal of Intercultural

    Relations, 21(1) 149-159.

    Hill, M. D. (2002). Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s Values

    Orientation Theory. Online Readings in Psychology and

    Culture, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1040

    Hofstede, G. (1997). Cultures and organizations: Software of the

    mind. New York: McGraw Hill.

    Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J. & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures

    and organizations: Software of the mind. (3rd ed.). New

    York: McGraw Hill.

    Jandt, F. E. (2016). An introduction to intercultural

    communication: Identities in a global community, (8th ed.)

    Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

    1 3 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Kluckhohn, F. R. & Strodtbeck, F. L. (1961). Variations in

    value orientations. Evanston, IL: Row Peterson.

    McSweeney, B. (2002). Hofstede’s model of national

    cultural differences and their consequences: A triumph

    of faith – a failure of analysis. Human Relations, 55(1),

    89–118.

    Orr, L. M. & Hauser, W. J. (2008). A re-inquiry of

    Hofstede’s cultural dimensions: A call for 21st century

    cross-cultural research. The Marketing Management

    Journal, 18(2), 1-19.

    Rokeach, M. (1979) Understanding human values: Individual

    and societal. New York: The Free Press.

    Schwartz, S. H. (2006). A theory of cultural value

    orientations: Explication and applications. Comparative

    Sociology, 5(2-3), 137-182.

    The Chinese Culture Connection. (1987). Chinese culture

    and the search for culture-free dimensions of culture.

    Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 18(2), 143-164.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3 7

    7

    Chapter 7: Group

    Membership and Identity

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This chapter deals with a complex topic that has generated much

    scholarly debate. The following questions and tasks will get you

    started on the road to understanding the issues.

    1. Give a one-sentence deTnition of ethnicity. List some

    features often associated with ethnicity. Identify some

    other terms that also might suggest ethnicity?

    2. Why do many scholars now think it is incorrect to

    deTne ethnicity in terms of shared culture? How do

    they now prefer to deTne it?

    3. If race is not a biological category, and it is not a cultural

    category, what is it? How does Appiah prove that racial

    1 3 8 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    identiTcation is not necessarily a cultural affair?

    4. In what way do social classes seem to exhibit cultural

    differences?

    5. What is the difference between a country, a nation, and

    a nation-state? How is a nation like an ethnic group,

    and how is it different?

    6. Identify two forms of nationalism. How are they similar

    and how are they different? What does the work of

    Theiss-Morse teach us about American national

    identity?

    Preliminary remarks

    In this chapter, we will examine the theme of culture as

    group membership. One of the most common ways that

    we use the term culture in everyday English is to refer to

    people who share the same nationality. We think of people

    from Korea, for instance, as exemplifying “Korean

    culture,” or people from Saudi Arabia as exemplifying

    “Saudi culture.”

    However, if we are interested in arriving at a coherent

    understanding of the concept of culture, I believe this

    usage leads us astray. The idea that culture is a product of

    human activity and that it includes everything that people

    make and everything they think and do (together) … that

    idea of culture seems fairly clear and useful. However, to

    turn around and call a whole nationality a culture, as we

    are often tempted to do, is an invitation to confusion.

    Perhaps it made sense for anthropologists in the 19th

    and early 20th centuries who focused on traditional

    societies to think of the small geographically isolated

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 3 9

    groups they studied as cultures. Such groups were small

    enough that for the most part they did share all aspects of

    culture: language, beliefs, kinship patterns, technologies,

    etc.

    But the large collectives of the modern world that we call

    nation-states are not culturally homogenous. In other

    words, we will expect to <nd different cultures in different

    places, or even different cultures intermingling with one

    another in the same places. We say that the society in

    question is multicultural. What this means for the idea of

    culture as group membership is that we will need a

    strategy for identifying the various groups that are

    presumably the repositories of the many cultures of a

    multicultural society. One way that sociologists have tried

    to conceptualize the parts that together make up the whole

    of a society is by means of the distinction between culture

    and subculture. On the other hand, historians and political

    scientists have been more interested in a macroscopic

    view, inquiring into the origins of nationality and the

    relationships between such things as nationality and

    ethnicity.

    Cultures and subcultures

    According to many sociologists, the dominant culture of a

    society is the one exempli<ed by the most powerful group

    in the society. Taking the United States as an example,

    Andersen, Taylor and Logio (2015: 36-37) suggest that while

    it is hard to isolate a dominant culture, there seems to be a

    “widely acknowledged ‘American’ culture,” epitomized by

    “middle class values, habits, and economic resources,

    strongly influenced by . . . television, the fashion industry,

    and Anglo-European traditions,” and readily thought of as

    1 4 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    “including diverse elements such as fast food, Christmas

    shopping, and professional sports.” Philosopher and

    cultural theorist Kwame Appiah (1994: 116) is more pointed,

    emphasizing America’s historically Christian beginnings,

    its Englishness in terms both of language and traditions,

    and the mark left on it by the dominant classes, including

    government, business, and cultural elites.

    In contrast to the dominant culture of a society, say

    sociologists, are the various subcultures, conceived as

    groups that are part of the dominant culture but that differ

    from it in important ways. Many sociology textbooks are

    quick to propose race and ethnicity as important bases for

    the formation of subcultures. Other commonly mentioned

    bases include geographic region, occupation, social or

    economic class, and religion (Dowd & Dowd, 2003: 25).

    Although this way of thinking about the connections

    between culture and groups has now fallen somewhat out

    of favor among cultural theorists, it is still common in

    basic sociology texts. Therefore, we will outline it here

    along with the caveat that there is an alternative way of

    looking at group membership, one grounded in the

    concept of identity rather than of culture.

    Ethnicity

    The term ethnicity has to do with the study of ethnic

    groups and ethnic relations. But what is an ethnic group?

    Let’s start by making clear what it is not. It is not a

    biological category. Therefore, it is not possible to

    establish a person’s ethnicity by genetic testing. Instead,

    an ethnic group is one whose members share a common

    ancestry, or at least believe that they do, and that also

    share one or more other features, possibly including

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 4 1

    language, collective memory, culture, ritual, dress, and

    religion (Meer, 2014; Zenner, 1996). According to Meer (p.

    37), the shared features may be real or imagined. Although

    sociologists once treated ethnic groups as if they were

    categories that could be objectively established, at least in

    principle, many scholars today see ethnicity primarily as a

    form of self-identi<cation (Banton, 2015; Meer, 2014). In

    other words, an individual’s ethnicity is not something

    that can be tested for by checking off a list of de<ning

    features that serve to establish that individual’s ethnicity.

    If you ask an American about his/her ethnicity, you

    might get a variety of different answers. Some people will

    emphasize their American-ness, by which they mean they

    do not think of themselves as belonging to any particular

    ethnic group. Others may point to national origins,

    emphasizing the fact that they are children of immigrants

    (or even perhaps themselves immigrants). If they identify

    strongly with their immigrant heritage, they might use a

    term, such as Italian American, Cuban American, or

    Mexican American. Americans of African ancestry are

    likely to identify (or be automatically identi<ed by others)

    as African American. Americans of various Asian

    backgrounds, may specify that they are Chinese American,

    Japanese American, Korean American, etc. (although if

    they think they are speaking to someone that wouldn’t

    know the difference, they might just say, Asian American.

    1 4 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Many U.S. cities abound in ethnic neighborhoods. (Dragon Gate to Chinatown in San Francisco)

    A common

    phenomenon in the

    United States is the

    presence of

    neighborhoods, popularly

    characterized as ethnic,

    especially in large

    cosmopolitan cities. Such

    neighborhoods result from

    the fact that the U.S. has

    historically been a country

    open to immigration, and immigrants are often likely to

    settle where their fellow countrymen have previously

    settled. Many American cities, for instance, have their

    Little Italy(s), China Towns, Korea Towns, and so on. The

    residents of these ethnic enclaves might be more or less

    integrated into the larger society depending upon such

    factors as how long they have lived in the U.S., or how well

    they speak English.

    A Native American (i.e., an American Indian) might

    interpret an inquiry about ethnicity as a question about

    tribal identity. He or she might say—Ute, Shoshoni,

    Navaho, Lakota, etc. On the other hand, since not all of

    these tribal names are names that the tribes claim as their

    own, they may refer to themselves in their native

    language. For instance, the Navajo call themselves Diné.

    Tribal af<liations would also be salient in Africa, the

    Middle East and Central Asia. For instance, two major

    tribes in Afghanistan are the Tajiks and Pashtuns.

    In China, the term minzu (民族) is used to refer to what,

    in English, we would call ethnic groups. Of<cially, the

    Chinese government recognizes 56 minzu. Just how the

    government decided on 56 as the de<nitive number of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 4 3

    Hui people, third largest ethnic group in China

    minzu in China, however, is an interesting story. More

    about that at another time though.

    It may be tempting to

    think that people who

    share an ethnic identity

    also share a common

    culture. Indeed, that is

    what is implied in calling

    an ethnic group a

    subculture. Sometimes it

    is the case that people who

    share an ethnic identity

    are also culturally similar.

    But it is shared identity and not shared culture that makes

    a group ethnic. In fact, scholars specializing in ethnic

    studies have discovered many examples of different

    groups claiming a common ethnic identity but not sharing

    a common language, nor even common beliefs, values,

    customs or traditions. This shows that the connections

    between culture, group membership, and identity are

    loose at best.

    It is also important to note that ethnic identi<cation is

    not an irreversible decision. Sometimes people change

    ethnicity as easily as they might change clothes by simply

    deciding to no longer identify as, for example, Han 汉族

    (the largest minzu in China) but to identify instead as Hui

    回族 (one of the largest “national minorities” in China).

    Racial identity

    Since the demise of the idea that race is grounded in biology—race, like ethnicity, has come to be regarded

    primarily as a matter of social identity. Also like ethnicity,

    1 4 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    it is often presumed, incorrectly, that individuals who

    share a racial identity must share a common culture. As

    Appiah (1994: 117) has noted, “it is perfectly possible for a

    black and a white American to grow up together in a

    shared adoptive family—with the same knowledge 
and values—and still grow into separate racial identities, in

    part because their experience outside the family, in public

    space, is bound to be racially differentiated.” In other

    words, it is a mistake, not only to assume that race and

    ethnicity represent biological categories; it is also a

    mistake to assume them to be cultural categories.

    As we mentioned in the previous section, ethnic

    identi<cation is typically (although not always) self-

    determined. On the other hand, racial identities are more

    likely to be imposed on an individual by others. For

    example, “white” Americans are likely to presume certain

    individuals to be “black” or African American based on

    perceived physical characteristics, including skin color,

    hair texture and various facial features alleged to be

    characteristically African. Long before “African American”

    children have ever had time to reflect on matters of

    identity, that identity has been decided for them. As with

    any identity, individuals have it within their power to

    resist ethnic or racial identi<cation. Ironically, the best,

    and perhaps only way to effectively resist an ascribed

    identity is to proudly embrace it.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 4 5

    Barack Obama and family in the Whitehouse Green Room

    No doubt, one the most

    well-known Americans to

    reflect publicly on the

    perplexities of racial

    identi<cation in America

    is Barack Obama, the 44th

    president of the United

    States and the <rst black

    president. In his memoir,

    Dreams from My Father,

    Obama (1995), writes eloquently of the confusion he

    experienced growing up the son of a white woman born in

    Kansas and a black man from Kenya. How did Barack

    Obama come to embrace a black, or African-American

    identity?

    Born in Hawaii, a cauldron of ethnic diversity, peopled

    by groups from all across Asia and the Paci<c Islands,

    Obama tells a story of race and identity that is nuanced

    and reflective. Barack’s father was somewhat of a mystery

    to him since his mother and father divorced and his father

    returned to Kenya shortly before Barack turned 3 years old.

    Throughout his childhood, Obama recounts, his white

    family nurtured in him a sense of respect and pride in his

    African heritage, anticipating that his appearance would

    eventually require him to face questions of racial identity.

    These questions surfaced gradually during adolescence,

    when he began to experience a tug of war between his

    white and his black identities.

    Inspired by a nationally ranked University of Hawaii

    basketball team with an all-black starting lineup, Barack

    joined his high school basketball team. There, he says, he

    made his closest white friends, and he met Ray (not his

    real name), a biracial young man who introduced Barack

    1 4 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    to a number of African Americans from the Mainland.

    Barack’s experiences in multiracial Hawaii caused him to

    reflect deeply on the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle,

    indignities frequently faced by blacks. Increasingly

    confronted by the perspectives of his black friends and his

    own experiences with discrimination, Obama writes:

    I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white

    worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language

    and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with

    a little translation on my part the two worlds would cohere.

    Still, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right stayed with

    me (p. 82).

    Amid growing confusion, Obama writes that he turned

    for counsel to black writers: James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison,

    Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, W. E. B. DuBois, and

    Malcolm X. After high school, Barack’s quest continued

    throughout two years of study at Occidental University in

    LA before he transferred to Colombia University in New

    York. Gradually, he constructed a provisional black

    identity, while never really disavowing his white one.

    But it seems to have been in Chicago that Barack Obama

    <nally put the <nishing touches on the African American

    identity that he would eventually embrace when he ran for

    president in 2008. After years of working as a community

    organizer in the black neighborhoods of Chicago, he had

    become well known in the black community. He joined an

    African American church. And he married Michelle

    Robinson, herself African American and a lifelong

    Chicagoan.

    President Obama’s story illustrates some of the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 4 7

    dynamics involved in racial identi<cation. Obama faced

    questions of racial identity initially because his

    appearance prompted people to label him as black. In the

    end, after years of reflection and self-exploration,

    including a pilgrimage to Kenya after the death of his

    father to acquaint himself with his Kenyan heritage,

    Obama eventually publicly embraced an African American

    identity.

    Social class and culture

    Social class refers to the hierarchical ranking of people in

    society based on presumably identi<able factors.

    American sociologists, in trying to de<ne these relevant

    factors more precisely have tended to use the term

    socioeconomic status (SES) which is measured by

    combining indices of family wealth and/or income,

    educational attainment, and occupational prestige (Oakes

    and Rossi, 2003). While Americans are sometimes

    reluctant to acknowledge the existence of social class as a

    determinant of social life in the U.S., scholars have long

    argued that social class is a culturally marked category.

    Clearly social class is reflected in the material lives of

    people. For instance, lower class and upper class people

    typically live in different neighborhoods, belong to

    different social clubs, and attend different educational

    institutions (Domhoff, 1998).

    Sociologists argue that different social classes seem to

    embrace a different system of values and that this is

    reflected in childrearing. For instance, Kohn (1977) showed

    that middle-class parents tended to value self-direction

    while working class parents valued conformity to external

    authority. Middle class parents aimed to instill in children

    1 4 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    qualities of intellectual curiosity, dependability,

    consideration for others, and self-control, whereas

    working class parents tended to emphasize obedience,

    neatness, and good manners.

    More recent research (e.g., Lareau, 2011) con<rms

    Kohn’s <ndings, further emphasizing the advantages that

    middle-class parenting tends to confer on middle-class

    children. For example, in observational studies of families,

    Lareau found “more talking in middle-class homes than in

    working class and poor homes, leading to the

    development,” among middle class children, of “greater

    verbal agility, larger vocabularies, more comfort with

    authority <gures, and more familiarity with abstract

    concepts” (p. 5).

    According to Kraus, Piff and Keltner (2011), social class

    is also signaled behaviorally. For instance, in videotaped

    interactions between people (in the U.S.) from different

    social classes, lower-class individuals tended to show

    greater social engagement as evidenced by non-verbal

    signs such as eye contact, head nods, and laughs compared

    to higher-class individuals who were less engaged (as

    evidenced by less responsive head nodding and less eye

    contact) and who were more likely to disengage by means

    of actions such as checking their cell phones or doodling

    (Kraus & Keltner, 2009).

    Lower-class and upper class individuals also exhibit

    different belief systems, with lower-class people more

    likely to attribute social circumstances such as income

    inequality to contextual forces (e.g., educational

    opportunity). On the other hand, upper-class people are

    more likely to explain inequality in dispositional terms

    (e.g., as a result of differences in talent) Kluegel & Smith,

    1986.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 4 9

    In short, different social classes seem to be

    distinguished from one another by many of the

    characteristics that we have previously identi<ed as

    elements of culture, e.g., patterns of beliefs, values,

    collective habits, social behavior, material possessions, etc.

    Nationality

    In this section, we will discuss group membership and

    identity as historians and political scientists are more

    likely to view them. Although their interests overlap

    somewhat with those of sociologists, the main focus of

    historians and political scientists is somewhat different.

    Rather than taking the “microscopic” view that seeks to

    divide a larger culture into constituent subcultures,

    political scientists tend to take a more “macroscopic” view.

    Political scientists, in other words, are more interested in

    exploring how the various subgroups of society relate to

    the larger political units of the world. Rather than dwelling

    on subcultural identities, they are more likely to inquire

    into national identities and the implications this may have

    for international relations. Let’s shift our focus then from

    ethnicity to nationality.

    Our everyday understanding of nationality is that it

    refers to the particular country whose passport we carry.

    But this is a loose way of speaking. According to

    International Law, nationality refers to membership in a

    nation or sovereign state (“Nationality” 2013). Before

    elaborating further, it will be useful to clarify some terms

    that are often wrongly taken to be synonymous: country,

    nation, and state. These are terms that have more precise

    meanings in the disciplines of history, political science,

    and international relations than they do in everyday

    1 5 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    discourse. The non-expert uses terms like country and

    nation with little reflection, but feels perhaps a bit

    uncertain about the term state. Let’s de<ne these terms as

    the political scientist uses them.

    First, what is a country? A country is simply a geographic

    area with relatively well-de<ned borders. Sometimes these

    borders are natural, e.g., a river or mountain range. But

    often they are best thought of more abstractly as lines on a

    map.

    A nation is something entirely different. A nation is not a

    geographical entity. Instead, it is a group of people with a

    shared identity. Drawing on the opinions of various

    scholars, Barrington (1997: 713) has suggested that many

    de<nitions seem to converge on the idea that nations are

    united by shared cultural features, which often include

    myths, religious beliefs, language, political ideologies,

    etc.). Unfortunately, this de<nition of nation has much in

    common with the de<nition of an ethnic group. What is

    the difference? Some scholars believe the difference is only

    a matter of scale, e.g., that an ethnic group is simply a

    smaller unit than a nation but not otherwise different in

    kind. Others insist that because nations imply a

    relationship to a state, in a way that that of an ethnic

    group usually does not, it is important to make a clear

    distinction between ethnic groups and nations (Eriksen,

    2002: 97). In other words, as Barrington further

    emphasizes, in addition to shared cultural features,

    nations are united in a belief in the right to territorial

    control over a national homeland.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5 1

    The stateless Kurds occupy the border regions of Sve countries

    What then is a state?

    First, let’s note that by the

    term state, as we are using it here, we do not mean

    the subdivisions of a

    country, as in “Utah is one

    of the 50 states of the

    United States.” Instead,

    we mean the main

    political unit that provides

    the means by which

    authority is exercised over a territory and its people. In

    other words, the state, as we are de<ning it here, refers to

    the instruments of government, including things like a

    military to counter external threats, a police force to

    maintain internal order, and various administrative and

    legal institutions.

    Finally, one sometimes encounters the term nation-state.

    This refers to an ideal wherein a country, nation, and state

    align perfectly. However, as Walby (2003: 531) has pointed

    out, perfect examples of the nation-state are rarely found

    in the real world where “there are far more nations than

    states.” In fact, nations sometimes spill over the territorial

    boundaries of multiple states. For example, the Kurds, who

    can be found in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and

    Armenia, can be seen as a nation without a state. Because

    they involve territorial claims, efforts on the part of some

    Kurds to establish an autonomous state are resisted by the

    governments of Turkey and others, sometimes leading to

    violent conflict.

    1 5 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Also stateless are the Palestinians in Israel

    Another example of a

    stateless nation involves

    the case of the Palestinian

    people currently living in

    the state of Israel. Prior to

    1948, the land in question

    had been occupied by

    Palestinian Arabs. But in

    1948, the state of Israel was

    established, the result of a

    complicated set of post-

    World War II

    arrangements negotiated

    principally by old

    European colonial

    administrators, in

    particular for Palestine,

    Great Britain. These

    arrangements made it possible for many Jews returning

    from war torn Europe to have a Jewish homeland for the

    <rst time in 2000 years. At the same time, many

    Palestinian people found themselves pushed by the

    newcomers from homes where their families had lived for

    generations.

    Indeed, the conditions under which Israel was

    established in 1948 sowed the seeds of perpetual conflict,

    the details of which are too complicated to summarize

    here. However, the result has been that Israel has become

    an economically prosperous modern nation-state, and

    Israelis on the average have thrived. Palestinians, on the

    other hand, have found themselves dispossessed,

    oppressed, and robbed of the possibility of national self-

    determination. For decades, many Palestinians, and

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5 3

    indeed most international observers have called for an

    independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, a “two

    state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such a

    solution, however, would require anti-Israel partisans to

    acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and guarantee her

    security, and it would require Israel to hand over some

    coveted territories.

    As the above discussion suggests, one reason that issues

    of national identity are complicated is because the

    relationships between nationhood, ethnicity, country,

    territory and state are extraordinarily complex.

    The origin of nations

    Recall that a nation is a group of people who see

    themselves as united by various shared cultural features,

    including myths, religious beliefs, language, political

    ideologies, etc. Some scholars see nations as having deep

    roots extending back to ancient times. Smith (1986), for

    instance, claims that most nations are rooted in ethnic

    communities and that there is a sense in which nations

    have existed in various forms throughout recorded history.

    On the other hand, Gellner (1983) and Anderson (1991)

    argue that nations merely imagine themselves as old,

    when in fact they are really recent historical developments,

    having only emerged in 19th century Europe with the rise

    of sophisticated high cultures and literate populations.

    Gellner and Anderson are counted among a group of

    scholars often referred to as modernists who argue that

    while there may have been elites in pre-modern societies

    with visions of nationhood, national consciousness is a

    mass phenomenon. According to this view, nations, as we

    understand them today, only came into being when elites

    1 5 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Two different historical processes of nationalism

    acquired tools for conveying a feeling of national unity to

    the masses. At <rst this occurred by means such as print

    and the spread of universal schooling and later by means

    of radio, <lm and television. What Gellner suggests, in

    fact, is that nations are a product of nationalism, which is

    not merely “the awakening of nations to self-

    consciousness,” as nationalists often proclaim, but instead

    “invents nations where they do not exist” (cited in Erikson,

    2002: 96).

    It is perhaps also useful

    to point out that not all

    nations came to be nations

    in the same way, nor are

    all nations constituted in

    exactly the same way.

    Looking at nations in

    historical perspective, for

    instance, a distinction is often made between ethnic nations

    and civic nations. The difference turns on the question of

    whether the members of a population developed a feeling of

    national identity before or after the emergence of a

    modern state. As an illustration, historians often point to

    Britain and France as the <rst European nation-states to

    emerge through a process often described as civic

    nationalism. In other words, in Britain and France, the

    rational, civic, and political units of modernity came <rst,

    and the development of a national consciousness came

    later. On the other hand, Germany and Russia followed a

    path of ethnic nationalism in which the emergence of a

    national consciousness came <rst, followed by the

    development of a fully modern state (Nikolas, 1999).

    Where does the United States <t into this scheme?

    Opinions vary. As Erikson (2002: 138) has pointed out, the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5 5

    U.S. differs in important ways from Europe. For one thing,

    it has no myths pointing to some supposed ancient

    origins. In fact, it was founded barely before the beginning

    of the modern era. This is not to say, however, that the U.S.

    lacks a national myth; only that it is not a myth lost in the

    mists of memory.

    The American myth is instead a historical narrative

    stretching back only about 400 years when English settlers

    began arriving on the continent. The most important

    chapter perhaps (from the perspective of American

    national identity) revolves around the dif<cult and

    contentious negotiation of a set of founding ideals and

    principles, articulated in two rather brief documents: The

    Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Thereafter,

    the myth continues with an account of the rapid

    population of the continent by successive waves of

    immigration from four other continents, Europe, Africa,

    Asia, and South America. However, in our telling of the

    national myth, we often omit the shameful history of

    injustice dealt to the indigenous First Nations (as they are

    called in Canada) or make of these details only footnotes.

    On the other hand, we usually do confront the history of

    slavery that nearly tore the nation apart in a civil war. We

    usually also recount the story of the more than 100-year

    struggle of African Americans to secure the full rights of

    citizenship, with its major 20th century victories, as these

    reinforce a narrative of American striving to live up to its

    ideals.

    Today the United States is often described as

    multiethnic in the sense that many of its people can trace

    their ancestry to one or more geographic regions around

    the world. Indeed, while most Americans speak English, at

    least 350 different languages are spoken in U.S. homes,

    1 5 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    including languages from every (inhabited) continent, as

    well as 150 Native American languages (U. S. Bureau, 2015).

    But is the U.S. an ethnic nation or a civic nation? Or to

    put it in historical terms, is the U.S. a product of ethnic

    nationalism or civic nationalism? Social scientists have

    often regarded the U.S. as a civic nation but not in the

    same way as Britain or France. American national identity

    is presumably based on shared cultural features rather

    than on shared ethnic heritage. However, American

    identity is complicated, and current public discourse

    suggests a sharp divide among American people.

    One sees among many American conservatives, for

    instance, a tendency to stress the nation’s Colonial Era

    origins (1629-1763) with its Protestant (Christian) roots and

    its Revolutionary Era (1764-1800), featuring the Founding

    Fathers, who were mostly, white (male) and English.

    Theiss-Morse (2009: 15-16) sees this as at the root of an

    ethnocultural view of American identity. While many

    Americans may see this as only part of the story, there are

    some who see it as the most important part. Some

    Americans have embraced this particular narrative at

    various points throughout American history, promoting

    nativist political agendas and restrictive immigration

    policies. White supremacists often seize upon it in their

    efforts to marginalize, not only immigrants, but anyone

    not perceived to be ethnically “white,” Christian, and of

    European ancestry.

    The liberal left, on the other hand, is more inclined to

    emphasize a view, which Theiss-Morse has called

    “American identity as a set of principles” (p. 18-20).

    Liberals tend to acknowledge the revolutionary

    achievements of the Founding Fathers in establishing the

    noble ideals and liberal political principles of liberty,

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5 7

    equality, democracy, and constitutionalism. However, they

    do not hesitate to recognize that the Founding Fathers

    were flawed men, some of whom even defended the

    institution of slavery, while others continued to own slaves

    even after they saw that it contradicted the founding

    ideals. Moreover, liberals give equal weight to the story of

    American immigration, recognizing that the nation’s

    founding principles made room for newcomers who could

    come from anywhere and become American simply by

    embracing those principles. Identity as a set of principles

    seems more closely aligned to a multicultural, rather than

    an ethnocultural view of the nation.

    While the above contrast somewhat over simpli<es the

    complexities of American national identity, it does

    illustrate the fact that the question of American identity is

    a highly contested one. Kaufmann (2000) has claimed that

    the view of the U.S. as a civic nation is supported only if we

    restrict our attention to developments that have occurred

    since the 1960’s. According to Kaufmann, for almost its

    entire history, the political and cultural elite de<ned the

    U.S. in ethnic terms as white, Anglo-Saxon, and

    Protestant. During periods of high immigration, this elite

    expended great effort to assimilate immigrants to their

    own ethnic ideal, and when the growth of immigrant

    populations posed a challenge, defensive responses arose,

    including restrictions to immigration. In fact, from

    1920-1960, this defensive response was institutionalized.

    After this long period in which national quotas kept a tight

    lid on immigration, the U.S. only became more open to

    immigration again in 1965 with the passage of the

    Immigration and Nationality Act.

    The tendency, then, to see the U.S. as a civic nation of

    immigrants is a recent historical development. Nor is the

    1 5 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    U.S. exceptional in this respect. Rather, the U.S. is merely

    part of a broader trend among “Western” nations to

    rede<ne themselves in civic terms. In fact, Kaufmann

    (2000: 31) cites research showing that contrary to popular

    perceptions of the U.S. as a land of immigration, “Western

    Europe … has had a higher immigrant population than the

    United States since the 1970’s and by 1990 had

    proportionately two to three times the number of foreign-

    born” as the United States.

    Whether the post-1960’s immigration trends will

    continue is currently an open question across much of

    Western Europe and the United States as evidenced by

    such events as Great Britain’s decision in 2016 to withdraw

    from the European Union, the rise of far-right challenges

    to liberal European democracies, not to mention the 2016

    U.S. election, which has brought in a president that

    apparently seeks to recreate immigration policies

    reminiscent of the exclusionary pre-1965 era.

    National identity

    Earlier we suggested that anthropologists and sociologists

    have moved from trying to establish the cultural features

    that de<ne groups to studying how the members of groups

    self-identify. Political scientists have made similar moves

    in their studies of nationalism. Rather than focusing

    wholly on ethnocultural roots or civic transformations, the

    recent trend among many scholars is to focus on the social

    and psychological dynamics of national identity.

    Let’s consider the issue of national identity in the

    United States. Now the criteria of American citizenship

    are quite clear. Anyone born in the United States or a U.S.

    territory (e.g., Puerto Rico) is a citizen, regardless of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 5 9

    whether one’s parents are citizens or not. Anyone born

    outside of the United States is a citizen as long as at least

    one parent is a citizen. And anyone who goes through the

    naturalization process becomes a U.S. citizen by virtue of

    established law. Nevertheless, many Americans, despite

    clearly being citizens (by either birth or naturalization) are

    sometimes regarded by other Americans as somehow less

    American. Some Americans, for instance, view themselves

    as more American if they are white and of English descent,

    or at least if their non-English ancestors immigrated

    several generations ago instead of more recently. We refer

    to this phenomenon as nativism, the belief that the longer

    one’s ancestors have been here, the greater one’s claim on

    an American identity. And we can call a person who

    espouses such a belief, a nativist.

    To what extent then do individual Americans differ in

    the degree to which they embrace an American national

    identity? Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (2009) has studied this

    question and suggests that Americans can be

    distinguished from one another according to whether they

    are strong, medium, or weak identi<ers. Furthermore, the

    strength of national identity appears to be tied to other

    social characteristics.

    For example, compared with weak identi<ers, strong

    identi<ers are more likely to be: older, Christian, less

    educated, more trusting of others, and more likely to

    identify with other social groups in general. On the other

    hand, black Americans and Americans with extremely

    liberal political views are less likely to claim a strong

    American identity. Strong identi<ers are also more likely

    to describe themselves as “typical Americans.” People who

    espouse a strong national identity are also more likely to

    set exclusionary group boundaries on the national

    1 6 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    group—to claim, for instance, that a “true American” is

    white, or Christian, or native-born. In contrast, weak

    identi<ers are less likely to believe that their fellow

    Americans must possess any particular qualities to be

    counted as American.

    While Theiss-Morse has utilized social identity theory to

    describe American social identity, she has also noted that,

    of course, the same kind of analysis can be made of any

    national identity, German, Japanese, Brazilian, etc.

    Final reflection

    The relationship between culture and group membership

    is complicated. Whereas scholars once de<ned certain

    types of groups, e.g. ethnic and racial groups, or national

    groups, on the basis of shared culture, group membership

    is now more likely to be seen as a matter of social

    identi<cation. Moreover, social identities are fluid rather

    than <xed and are established by means of processes

    whereby group members negotiate the boundaries of the

    group as well as the degree to which they identify with

    valued groups.

    Application

    For Further Thought and Discussion

    1. Do you belong to a dominant culture in your country, or

    are you a member of a minority community?

    2. Do you identify with any particular ethnic group or

    groups? For each group with which you identify, explain

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 6 1

    how members of the group deTne themselves.

    3. Do you think of yourself in terms of any racial identity?

    Explain.

    4. To what extent do you think you exhibit any signs of

    social class afTliation?

    5. How would you describe your national identity? How

    typical are you of other people from your country? …

    a) very typical, b) somewhat typical, or c) not very

    typical. … What makes you typical or atypical?

    6. Some people have more than one identity, or feel they

    have different identities in different social contexts. We

    refer to this as hybridity. Do you have a hybrid identity?

    If so, what is that like?

    References

    Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the

    origin and spread of nationalism, 2nd ed. London, Verso.

    Anderson, M. L., Taylor, H. F. & Logio, K. A. (2015).

    Sociology: The essentials, 8th ed. Belmont, Stamford, CT:

    Cengage.

    Appiah, K. A. (1994). Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood

    connections. Retrieved from

    https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/a/

    Appiah96.pdf

    Banton, M. (2015). Superseding race in sociology: The

    perspective of critical rationalism. In K. Murji & J. Solomos

    Balwin, (Eds.), Theories of race and ethnicity: Contemporary

    debates and perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

    University Press.

    Barrington, L. W. (1997). “Nation” and “nationalism”: The

    1 6 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    misuse of key concepts in political science. Political

    Science and Politics, 30(4), 712-716.

    Domhoff, G.W. (1998). Who rules America. Mountain View,

    CA: May<eld Publishing.

    Eriksen, T. H. (2002). Ethnicity and Nationalism:

    Anthropological Perspectives, (2nd ed.). London: Pluto Press.

    Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Oxford:

    Blackwell.

    Kaufmann, E. P. (2000) Ethnic or civic nation: Theorizing

    the American case. Canadian Review of Studies in

    Nationalism 27, 133-154.

    Kluegel, J.R., & Smith, E.R. (1986). Beliefs about inequality:

    Americans’ views of what is and what ought to be.

    Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Kohn, M. (1977). Class and conformity: A study in values, (2nd

    ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K. & Keltner, D. (2011). Social class as

    culture: The convergence of resources and rank in the

    social realm. Current Directions in Psychological Science,

    20(4), 246-250. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/

    10.1177/0963721411414654

    Kraus, M. W. & Keltner, D. (2009). Signs of socioeconomic

    status: A thin-slicing approach. Psychological Science,

    20(1), 99-106.

    Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family

    life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com.dist.lib.usu.edu

    Meer, N. (2014). Key concepts in race and ethnicity. Thousand

    Oaks, CA: SAGE.

    Oakes and Rossi, (2003). The measurement of SES in

    health research: Current practice and steps toward a

    new approach. Social Science & Medicine, 56(4), 769-784.

    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00073-4

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 6 3

    Obama, B. (1995). Dreams from my father. New York: Three

    Rivers Press.

    “Nationality” (2013). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved

    November 23, 2017 from https://www.britannica.com/

    topics/nationality-international-law

    Nikolas, M. M. (1999). False opposites in nationalism: An

    examination of the dichotomy of civic nationalism and ethnic

    nationalism in modern Europe. The Nationalism Project,

    Madison, WI. Retrieved Nov 23, 2017 from

    https://tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/nation/

    civic_ethno/Nikolas.pdf

    Smith, A. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Oxford:

    Blackwell.

    Theiss-Morse, E. (2009). Who counts as an American?: The

    boundaries of national identity. New York: Cambridge.

    U.S. Census Bureau. (2015, Nov 3). Census Bureau reports at

    least 350 languages spoken in U.S. homes. (Release Number:

    CB15-185). Retrieved from

    https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USCENSUS/

    bulletins/

    122dd88#:~:text=Census%20Bureau%20Reports%20at%

    20Least%20350%20Languages%20Spoken%20in%20U.S.

    %20Homes,-

    Most%20Comprehensive%20Language&text=NOV.,avai

    lable%20for%20only%2039%20languages

    Walby, S. (2003). The myth of the nation-state: Theorizing

    society and polities in a global era. Sociology, 37(3),

    529-546.

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    (Eds.), Encyclopedia of cultural anthropology. New York:

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    1 6 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Image Attribution

    Image 1: San Francisco Dragon Gate to Chinatown by Alice

    Wiegand is licensed under CC 4.0

    Image 2: Chinese Muslims by Hijau is licensed under

    Public Domain

    Image 3: Obama Family by Annie Leibovitz is licensed

    under Public Domain

    Image 4: Kurdish-Inhabited Area by U.S. Central

    Intelligence Agency is licensed under Public Domain

    Image 5: Israel and Surrounding Area by Chris O is

    licensed under Public Domain

    Image 6: Nationalism Diagram by Nolan Weil is

    licensed under CC BY 4.0

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 6 5

    8

    Chapter 8: Religion and

    Culture

    Eliza Rosenberg

    BY SPECIAL GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

    ELIZA ROSENBERG

    Lecturer in Religious Studies at USU

    Suggested Focus

    Keep the following questions in mind as you read the chapter.

    1. What is the origin of the word religion? How do the

    words “religion” and “culture” seem to overlap in

    meaning?

    2. What are some words in other languages that seem to

    correspond to the word religion?

    1 6 6 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    Boys praying at the Western Wall, a holy site in Judaism

    3. What is religion NOT?

    4. What are some important questions that religions

    often seek to answer?

    5. What are some different aspects of daily living that are

    often regulated by religious rules?

    What is religion?

    What do we mean when

    we say “religion”? In some

    ways, the answer seems

    obvious. Most people can

    tell you that they are

    atheist, Buddhist,

    Christian, Daoist, Hindu,

    Jewish, Muslim, etc. In

    other ways, the answer is

    more complicated. The

    English word “religion” comes from the Latin word religio.

    Ancient Roman philosophers actually disagreed about

    where the word came from, and modern scholars are not

    sure either. Still, most ancient Romans knew what religio

    meant. They used the word for their rituals, holidays,

    beliefs, myths, and rules. They also applied it to those of

    non-Romans around them, such as Greeks, Jews, and

    Egyptians. But for hundreds of years, Greeks, Jews, and

    Egyptians did not adopt the Latin word religio or come up

    with their own words to express the concept. To everyone

    except the Romans, the things that made up religio–

    rituals, myths, holidays, rules, etc. – were just part of “the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 6 7

    way things were.” They did not need a separate category or

    term.

    Eventually, Christianity became widespread in Rome’s

    empire, which included Greece, Egypt, and many other

    places. When the Roman emperor became Christian,

    Christians – including non-Roman Christians – started to

    think of Christianity as their religio. The idea of “religion”

    remained important even after the Roman empire fell. It

    influenced Judaism and Islam, as well as other religions.

    Today, many languages have words that were invented or

    re-interpreted to translate religio. In western Europe,

    many languages borrowed the Latin religio. In southern

    Asia today, the ancient Sanskrit word dharma can be used

    to mean about the same thing as “religion.” (It also has

    many other meanings.) In Eastern Asia, the Chinese word

    dao and loan words in neighboring languages works in a

    similar way.

    The term “religion” is useful, but like many words, it is

    complicated. The concept of “religion” makes sense

    because there are many elements that you can <nd in

    many different religions. But no religion has every single

    one of these elements, and there is probably no one

    element that every religion has. In addition, the same

    element may “mean” different things or “work” in different

    ways in different religions. For example, Buddhism and

    Islam both have beliefs about what happens to us when we

    die. But they have very different ideas about what that is,

    about what should happen, and even about who “we” are.

    For at least the last hundred years, scholars have tried to

    <nd a de<nition of religion that would always be useful

    and accurate. Although their hard work did not succeed, it

    has taught scholars today a valuable lesson: There is no

    perfect de<nition of religion. Most people more or less

    1 6 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    understand what they mean when they use the term

    “religion,” even if they cannot de<ne it perfectly. In this

    chapter, we will not try to explain what religion “really

    is.” Instead, we will explore some of the things that

    different religions are. By doing so, we will understand all

    of them better. There are many shared features and many

    differences – not only between different religions, but

    within the same religion.

    Religion and culture are parts of each other. Culture

    affects religion, and religion affects culture. The same

    religion can have different forms in different cultures.

    Within one culture, different religions can take similar

    forms. And, of course, religion is practiced by people, who

    are all different.

    What religion is not

    While religion is many different things, it is also

    important to know what it (usually) is not. First, religion is

    not (usually) a way to explain things that people did not

    understand before modern science. In ancient China,

    most people did not think that the flesh of the giant Pangu

    had literally turned into the earth at some exact time. In

    ancient Israel, most people knew perfectly well that the

    whole universe was not formed in six days. How could it

    have been, when there was no sun or moon until the

    fourth “day”? Every religion has at least one example of

    this. In ancient times, people did not know the scienti<c

    history of the world, and they did not think their religions told

    them. Stories of the cosmic tortoise, the <rst human, etc.

    were (and are) important because people connected with

    them emotionally and poetically. They allow people to

    connect personally to the scope of the universe. But they

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 6 9

    have rarely been pre-scienti<c answers to complicated

    questions. In fact, religion has often been the cause of

    science. We owe modern mathematics to Jain

    contemplation of the nature of existence; modern

    chemistry to Muslim ideas about the spiritual virtue of

    observing nature; some branches of physics to the

    Christian scholastic movement of the middle ages; and

    many scienti<c ideas to various Daoist practices.

    Second, religion is not “really about” any one simple

    aspect of life. People who like religion sometimes say that

    it expresses the highest human ideals; that it makes

    communities strong; that it inspires goodness; that it

    inspires people; and so on. People who dislike religion

    sometimes say that it is used to control people; that it is

    connected with ignorance; that it supports corrupt power;

    that it provides false reassurances; etc. All of these things

    can be true. Religion can and does promote good order and

    oppress people; promote knowledge and ignorance; inspire

    peace and violence; etc. It is not possible to reduce religion

    to a single, simple factor. Religion is dynamic and

    complex, just like the cultures that influence it (and that it

    influences) – and just like the people who practice it (or

    don’t practice it).

    The world’s religions

    There are probably more religious identities in the world

    than there are religions!

    1 7 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    Yin and Yang, a Daoist symbol for the harmonious flow of the universe

    That is because it can be

    possible to be part of more

    than one religion at a

    time. For example, many

    European Christians feel

    that you cannot be a

    Christian and any other

    religion, but many Native

    American Christians feel

    that it is possible to

    practice Christianity

    without abandoning their

    ancestral religions. In

    Japan, most people practice both Buddhism and Shinto

    and identify themselves accordingly. In traditional China,

    Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism were known as the

    “three great teachings,” and it was assumed that people

    should learn from all of them. To be a Christian is to

    commit to a religion that relies on Judaism for its very

    existence. To be a Buddhist is to be an heir to the de<ning

    concepts of Hinduism. To be an atheist is sometimes to

    choose a speci<c system of thought as a reaction to a

    particular religion. And so on.

    Some common religious questions

    Where do human beings St into the universe?

    Religion, like culture, is something that humans do. This

    may seem obvious, but it is not a statement that all

    religions would <nd meaningful. In traditional Native

    American religions, for example, there is no part of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7 1

    existence that is separated from the sacred. Of course,

    humans play a unique, human role in this – just as bears

    play a unique, ursine role in it; rivers a unique river role;

    etc. And Daoism teaches that “alone among the ten

    thousand things, humans must be taught to follow the

    dao.” That is, everything else that exists is naturally part of

    the harmonious flow of the dao. The fact that human

    beings need philosophy, religion, etc., shows that there is

    something wrong with us!

    An ancient painting of the “medicine wheel,” a Native American symbol of unity and holiness

    Most Native American religions see human beings as

    one kind of being among many. Just as human beings have

    their own communities, social rules, life histories, and

    individual personalities, so do all other animals. If human

    beings are different from all other animals, according to

    these religions, it is usually because we are worse! Until

    recently, most Native Americans were hunter-gathers, and

    many today hunt and gather as well as buying farmed food

    at grocery stores. In Native American thought, hunted

    1 7 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    A painting of the Buddhist realms of rebirth. Buddhists hope to escape the endless cycle of death.

    animals voluntarily give up their lives to let humans eat.

    But human beings are not as generous, – no animal native

    to North or South America normally preys on human

    beings. (Only a handful – polar bears; grizzly bears;

    mountain lions; and alligators – prey on humans at all, and

    even then, it is rare.) Human beings are seen as more

    sel<sh than animals, whereas animals are altruistic.

    Judaism and Christianity both teach that God allows

    human beings to rule over the rest of nature. Today, many

    Jews and Christians interpret this as meaning that human

    beings have a responsibility to care for nature. But some

    today, like many in earlier times, interpret this as

    permission to use nature however they want. Islam’s

    concept has a subtle but critical difference. Muslims

    believe that God entrusted human beings with the

    responsibility to administer the natural world, but that,

    rather than being worthy of God’s trust, humanity all too

    often “has proved [to be] a sinner and a fool.”

    Many religions that

    believe in reincarnation

    also place human beings

    in a special category. In

    Buddhism, the human

    realm is one of six realms

    in which it is possible to be

    born (the other <ve are

    divine; heavenly; animal;

    hungry-ghost; and hell). In

    Jainism, it is one of four

    (the other three are

    heavenly; animal; and

    hell). Both Jainism and

    Buddhism teach that you

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7 3

    The Christian Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ)

    can only gain enlightenment during a human birth. If you

    are born into another realm, you can proceed toward

    enlightenment, but you can only actually reach it as a

    human. Hinduism tends to think that being human is

    helpful for reaching spiritual liberation, but not actually

    necessary. Although it is less likely, a soul certainly can

    attain liberation while existing as a flower, a butterfly, or

    whatever else. In addition, all these religions teach that the

    human realm is a high-risk birth. Human beings can think

    abstractly and make moral choices, which is bene<cial for

    true understanding. But by the same token, we can choose

    ignorance, embrace delusion, and practice cruelty in a way

    that no other creature can, and all too often, we in fact do

    these things. This earns us (bad) karma and moves us away

    from liberation instead of toward it.

    What happens when we die?

    It is easy to become

    curious about death.

    When someone we love

    dies, are they gone

    forever? Will we ever see

    them again? Different

    religions have different

    ideas answers to these

    questions, and different

    members of the same

    religion may also give different answers. In general,

    though, most Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that

    each human being comes into existence either when they

    are born or in the mother’s uterus, lives out one lifetime,

    and then dies. They did not live before this and they will

    1 7 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    not be born again after this. Instead, these religions teach,

    God will judge them for how they lived. They believe that

    God is kind and forgives people for making mistakes, and

    that because of God’s kindness, “good enough” people exist

    at peace with God after they die. This existence may be

    called Heaven or Paradise. Most Jews, Christians, and

    Muslims say that it is impossible to understand it fully in

    this life.Instead, they use metaphors and comparisons. For

    example, Muslims may say that Paradise is like a beautiful

    garden of fruit trees, or Christians that Heaven is like a

    beautiful city <lled with fruit trees. In Judaism, it is more

    common to say that we will know “in God’s own time” but

    not before. As long as we live in this world, we should focus

    on doing what it is right. All of these religions teach that

    people who insist on choosing evil will be punished. For

    example, a murderer who refuses even to admit their

    actions were wrong might be punished in Hell, kept out of

    Paradise, or just be completely “gone” when they die.

    In contrast, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs believe

    in reincarnation (literally, “being put back in flesh”). This

    is the idea that after death, the soul – the essence of the

    person – is born again in another form. How you are born

    depends on how well you lived in your previous life. If you

    live wrongly, your soul earns karma (or bad karma,

    according to Buddhists) that you must burn away through

    suffering (punishment) and then living rightly. Right now,

    you are a human being, but you might previously have

    been a tree or a deer, and that you could be a tree or a deer

    or a different human in a future life. The goal is to stop

    being reincarnated, which is possible when you no longer

    have any karma (or only have good karma, according to

    Buddhism) and have reached spiritual enlightenment.

    Hindus call this moksha and believe that it means being

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7 5

    fully aware that the individual soul is not truly separate

    from the universal soul. After that, it is no longer

    necessary to exist any one individual (who, after all, exists

    only by being separate from every other individual).

    Buddhists call it nirvana and believe that it means

    understanding that the soul is only an illusion. Jains

    believe that the enlightened individual remains an

    individual but no longer needs a body, instead existing

    forever as a being of pure light. Sikhism envisions

    something more similar to the Muslim idea of jinnah,

    Paradise.

    Other religions do not have single, obvious ideas about

    what happens after we die. Traditional Native American

    religions, for example, did not see the soul or personality

    as being completely different from the body, and they did

    not believe that humans were somehow apart from the

    rest of the world. Human beings were part of the world

    before they lived, a part of the world while they lived, and a

    part of the world after they died – just not the same part at

    each time. Similarly, Daoism has never had a speci<c

    teaching about death that all members of the religion

    would agree on. Instead, it has ideas about timeless flow of

    the dao and the harmonious cycle of yin and yang. This

    allows Daoists to have different ideas about reincarnation,

    heavenly existence, long life on earth, etc. And Confucius

    taught that we should worry about the afterlife when we

    get to it! If we spend too much time thinking about what

    happens after death, it will distract us from how we should

    behave during life. Many Jews would agree with

    Confucius.

    1 7 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    The Qur’ān is the holy book of Islam.

    Where do we look for answers?

    Many religions in the

    world today have a holy

    book. For most of human

    history, though, most

    people learned sacred

    teachings, stories, and

    songs by hearing them

    and repeating them. This

    is an example of oral

    tradition, and people could remember many stories, rules,

    etc., very accurately. (Many societies had a few

    professional singers and story-tellers, which helped.)

    Actually, this is a “cost” of universal literacy – when

    everyone in a society reads regularly from childhood,

    people’s memories are not as good! In some religions

    today, such as Native American religions, it is important to

    many people to keep this oral tradition alive in the

    religion. Hymns, rituals, and prayers are often the only

    things that are notwritten down by people who practice

    these religions. (All other kinds of literature are very

    important.) And today, even in religions that have ancient

    books and members who can all read them, non-written

    aspects are very important! Here is one example: If you

    have ever seen a painting or a display showing the birth of

    Jesus, you will have seen an ox and a donkey with the baby

    Jesus. The ox and the donkey are nowhere in the Bible! But

    Christians, even those who read the Bible often, cannot

    imagine the scene without the animals there. For highly

    educated Buddhists and Muslims, it is still important to

    learn mantras and parts of the Qur’ān by heart, and to

    recite them from memory.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7 7

    But books are very important in many religions. Most

    religions with written books have more than one! All

    schools of Buddhism share the Palī canon, but different

    Mahayana traditions also have different texts in addition.

    Hinduism has a vast number of texts in many languages,

    including ancient hymns and rituals like the Vedas;

    philosophical texts like the Upanishads; mythological texts

    called the Puranas; heroic epics such as the Mahabharata

    and the Ramayana; devotional hymns; etc. No one Hindu

    community uses all or even most of these texts. Instead,

    most Hindus see this variety of texts as offering limitless

    avenues to truth and goodness. Daoism’s central text is the

    Daodejing, but the Zhuangzi is also extremely important,

    and so are many of the more than 1,500 books that are

    included in the Daozhong(“Daoist canon” or “Daoist list”).

    Today, many Christians and Jews think of the Bible as a

    book, but this is a mistake. The world “Bible” comes from

    the Greek biblia, “books” – plural! The Bible is actually a

    collection of different books, all of which can be printed in

    a single volume. But until 1500 or so, it was not possible to

    print all the books in one volume. Earlier Jews and

    Christians understood that they had “scriptures”

    (writings) rather than one single book. The Qur’ān in

    Islam may be an exception to this rule. It is a single book (a

    book with “chapters”). The Daodejing is also a single book,

    but the Qur’ān has a unique status in Islam. While Islam

    has other important religious writings, there is nothing

    comparable to the Zhuangzi, for example.

    There are subtle but important differences in how

    religions view their books. Many Hindus view the Vedas as

    divinely revealed in a speci<c way, but believe that humans

    have been divinely guided to produce many other texts in

    different ways. Speaking very generally, Daoists and

    1 7 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    Buddhists usually emphasize that their texts contain the

    wisdom of enlightened teachers but consider the “how” of

    these texts much less important than the “what.” Jews and

    Christians generally believe that God inspired various

    human authors to write the books of the Bible. Muslims

    believe that the Qur’ān always existed and was simply

    revealed to Muhammad (pbuh). The physical text obviously

    had scribes (the prophet’s (pbuh) companions, may God be

    well pleased with them), but they do not believe that the

    contents have an author.

    Religion and right behavior

    Religions often have rules that their members are

    supposed to follow. Within most religions, members may

    disagree about some of what the rules are and about which

    rules are most important. In addition, few people (if any!)

    follow all the rules of their religion perfectly all the time.

    Nevertheless, rules can be an important part of many

    people’s religious experience.

    There are some basic rules that most religions share.

    Most of these are very basic rules that non-religious

    systems also have. For example, no religion allows its

    members to murder or steal, just as no government allows

    its citizens to murder or steal. (Of course, murder and

    stealing unfortunately still occur.) Many religions also

    have some version of the “Golden Rule”: Treat others the

    way you want others to treat you; do not do to others what

    you would not want done to you. This, too, is a rule that

    every child must be told at some point!

    Religious rules apply to many kinds of behavior:

    Worship; occupation; <nance; social structure; marriage;

    clothing; and countless others. Instead of including all of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 7 9

    these, let’s discuss one type of rule – rules about food – as

    an example.

    Example: Rules about food

    Native American religions rarely forbid any speci<c kind

    of food. However, they usually limit how much people are

    allowed to hunt and gather. Hunting too much is

    disrespectful to animals that give up their lives to feed

    humans. If animal communities feel disrespected, they

    will go away and not allow hunters to get them. Wasting

    any part of the animal’s body is also unacceptable, and

    there are often strict rules about using every part

    respectfully. For example, among some of the Cree nations

    (formerly called “tribes”), it is forbidden to speak while

    eating fresh hunted meat.

    One of the most famous religious rules about food is

    that Jews and Muslims do not eat pork. The Bible states

    that pigs are unclean and that Jews may not eat them.

    Most Christians (although not all!) interpret the New

    Testament to mean that Christians do not need to obey

    Jewish laws about food. But the Qur’ān also states that pigs

    are unclean, so Muslims do not eat pork either. The Qur’ān

    lists several other animals whose meat is forbidden to

    Muslims, and the Bible has entire categories of land

    animals, birds, and sea animals whose meat is forbidden

    to Jews. The reason is always stated to be that these

    animals are unclean – but in scienti<c terms, most of them

    are no dirtier than the animals whose meat is permitted.

    Judaism also has other food rules – for example, meat

    products and dairy products must be eaten separately –

    that are unrelated to cleanliness or health. Jews and

    Muslims often say that these rules are really about obeying

    1 8 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    God. Having to think about whether a given food is okay is

    a reminder to pay attention to God’s will at all times. (It is

    easy to say that people should not need this reminder, but

    much harder to apply the principle!) In a similar way, the

    rule is a daily reminder to Jews and Muslims that they

    cannot just do whatever they want. There is no obvious

    practical reason not to eat pork if you want to – but

    sometimes there seems to be no obvious practical reason to

    ful<ll other desires that, if you think more carefully, might

    be harmful to others or to you. Obeying food laws (called

    kosher for Judaism and halal for Islam) is good practice.

    (Kosher and halal also regulate slaughter to try to limit the

    suffering of animals as much as possible, but the reason

    for this is obvious.)

    A vegetarian thali, sampler plate. Vegetarianism is important for many Hindus.

    Another widely known religious food rule is that Hindus

    are strongly encouraged to be vegetarian and strictly

    forbidden to eat the meat of cows. The reason for

    encouraging vegetarianism is straightforward: the duty of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 8 1

    ahimsa, “not harming.” Eating meat obviously harms

    animals, so people should not do it. Some schools of

    Mahayana Buddhism have similar teaching. Of course it is

    natural for tigers to eat deer and for hawks to eat mice, but

    for most Hindus (like all Jains and some Mahayana

    Buddhists), this is not important. Tigers and hawks do not

    have a choice, but humans do. Or – perhaps it is “natural”

    for humans to eat meat. But, many Hindus (and others)

    might counter, it is also “natural” for the human life

    expectancy to be thirty-<ve years and for the child

    mortality rate to be 50% or even higher. We do not accept

    these things because they are “natural.”

    The special prohibition of cows’ meat can seem more

    complicated to non-Hindus. After all, dairy products (such

    as milk, yogurt, ghee butter, paneer cheese) are an

    important part of the diet in many regions of southern

    Asia, the homeland of Hinduism. If Hindus are willing to

    drink cows’ milk, why not eat their meat too?

    Actually, Hindus do not eat cows’ meat because they

    drink their milk. Humans take milk as sustenance from

    dairy cows just as they take milk as sustenance from their

    mothers. Therefore, a cow is a mother to people as well as

    calves, and people have a duty to take care of cows just as

    grown-up children have a duty to take care of their

    parents. One of the duties of a Hindu son is to provide an

    appropriate funeral for his parents when they die. For

    Hindus, eating beef is equivalent to cutting up and eating

    the dead body of your own mother. As such, it is one of the

    most serious sins a Hindu could commit, far worse than

    eating pork would be for a Jew or a Muslim. In fact,

    Muslims are permitted to eat pork if it is the only way to

    avoid starvation, and Jews are actually required to do so.

    1 8 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    But for many Hindus, the (bad) karma that would result

    from cow-killing is far, far worse than death.

    Not every religion has such speci<c rules about food.

    Daoist practice, for example, is less likely to forbid speci<c

    foods than to have a system of which foods are good to eat

    (or to avoid) under which circumstances, and why.

    Christianity also tends not to forbid speci<c foods, but

    many Christians would feel that it was sinful to eat the

    meat of an animal that is considered “special” in their

    culture. An amusing example: My American Christian

    auntie, visiting Sweden, was offered a common Swedish

    food – reindeer meat – by a fellow Christian. She did not

    want to eat one of Santa Claus’ helpers! Santa’s reindeer

    are not “of<cially” Christian, and my auntie had not

    believed in Santa since she was a small child. But in this

    case, emotion was more important than “of<cial” religion!

    Conclusion

    Religion is a complex part of culture, and the two influence

    each other in many ways. It is impossible to identify one

    thing that religion is “really” or “always” about. However,

    there are some questions that are often useful to ask.

    Indeed, asking questions can be the most important part

    of understanding religions! It is best to think about

    different possibilities, rather than try to <nd the one “right

    answer” to any of these questions. Thinking about the

    possibilities can enrich our understanding of religions, the

    people who practice them, and the communities in which

    they live.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 8 3

    Application

    1. Do you identify with any particular religion? Why or

    why not?

    2. What do you believe happens to a person when they

    die?

    3. Do people in your home community observe any

    religiously prescribed rules?

    4. Do you think it is possible to adhere to more than one

    religion? Why or why not?

    For Further Reading

    Ambalu, Shulamit, et al., editors. The Religions Book: Big

    Ideas Simply Explained. DK Publishing, 2013.

    Bowker, John. World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored &

    Explained. DK Publishing, 2006.

    Hinnells, John R. The Penguin Handbook of World Religions.

    Penguin Books, 2010.

    Mooney, Carla, and Lena Chandhok. Comparative Religion:

    Investigate the World through Religious Tradition. 2015.

    Shouler, Kenneth A., and Robert Pollock. The Everything

    World’s Religions Book: Discover the Beliefs, Traditions, and

    Cultures of Ancient and Modern Religions. Adams Media,

    2010.

    Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions. HarperOne, 2009.

    Image Attribution

    Image 1: “Jerusalem_Western Wall_4_Noam Chen_IMOT”

    byIsrael_photo_gallery is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

    1 8 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Image 2: Klem, Public domain, via Wikimedia

    Commons

    Image 3: Medicine Wheel, Palatki Heritage Site and

    Ruins, Coconino National Forest, AZ. Pixabay License.

    Image 4: Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Life. Pixabay

    License.

    Image 5: The Christian Eucharist. Pixabay License.

    Image 6: Person reading the Qur’an. Pixabay License.

    Image 7: Indian vegetarian thali sampler plate. Pixabay

    License.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 8 5

    9

    Chapter 9: Roots of

    American National Culture

    Nolan Weil

    Suggested Focus

    This chapter is a crash course in American history from the

    perspective of social history and cultural geography. If you can

    grasp the argument of this chapter, you might begin to see

    American culture in a completely new light.

    1. Name from memory as many as you can of the

    American beliefs and values discussed at the beginning

    of the chapter.

    2. What does Woodard mean when he says there are 11

    nations in North America? (What is a nation?)

    3. Besides the English, which three other European

    powers established a major presence in North America?

    1 8 6 | S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E

    4. What makes New York the unique city that it is?

    5. To which colonies does Albion’s Seed refer? From where did these colonists come exactly? How was the

    understanding of “freedom” different in each of those

    colonies?

    6. From where did the founders of the Deep South come?

    7. What happened during the Westward Expansion?

    Preliminary remarks

    The title of this chapter, The Roots of American Culture, may

    require a bit of explaining; otherwise perhaps it may not

    be apparent how the two parts of the chapter <t together.

    Where does one look for the roots of a national culture?

    This chapter suggests looking in two places. On one hand,

    we might suppose those roots might be exposed if we

    simply examine the beliefs and values that seem to

    animate the culture as it lies before us in the present. This

    then is how we begin this chapter on American national

    culture, with a snapshot of American beliefs and values

    that have been repeatedly identi<ed by observers of the

    American scene.

    On the other hand, we suggest, perhaps this view is too

    super<cial, painting American culture in an overly

    generalized, stereotypical way. We point out that there is

    too much strife and political division in the United States

    to suppose that the national culture can be so easily

    captured. In fact, we question whether there is a “national

    culture” at all and suggest that if we look at the founding

    and settlement of the United States in historical

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 8 7

    perspective, as we do throughout the remainder of the

    chapter, we see not one national culture but many regional

    cultures. And while an overwhelming majority of

    Americans may say they hold dearly the value of

    “freedom,” if we look closely, we begin to see that not all

    Americans understand freedom in the same way. Once we

    realize this, we may be better able to understand the

    obvious divisions in contemporary American society.

    American beliefs and values

    As pointed out in the last chapter, it is a mistake to

    automatically assume that everyone in a large

    multicultural country like the U.S. shares a common

    culture. But this hasn’t stopped many writers from

    suggesting that they do. Among the most recent popular

    essays to address the question of American beliefs and

    values is Gary Althen’s “American Values and

    Assumptions.” Here is a list of the beliefs and values that

    Althen (2003) identi<es as typically American:

    • individualism, freedom, competitiveness and privacy

    • equality

    • informality

    • the future, change and progress

    • the goodness of humanity

    • time

    • achievement, action, work and materialism

    • directness and assertiveness

    In what follows, I summarize Althen’s description of

    1 8 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    typical American values and assumptions, sometimes

    extending his examples with my own.

    Individualism

    According to Althen (2003), “the most important thing to

    understand about Americans is probably their devotion to

    individualism. They are trained from very early in their

    lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who

    are responsible for their own situations . . . and . . .

    destinies. They’re not trained to see themselves as

    members of a close-knit interdependent family, religious

    group, tribe, nation, or any other collectivity.”

    Althen illustrates the above point by describing an

    interaction he observed between a three-year-old boy and

    his mother. They are at the mall, and the boy wants to

    know if he can have an Orange Julius, (a kind of cold drink

    made from orange juice and ice). The mother explains to

    him that he doesn’t have enough money for an Orange

    Julius because he bought a cookie earlier. He has enough

    for a hot dog. Either he can have a hot dog now, she says,

    or he can save his money and come back another day to

    buy an Orange Julius.

    Althen says that people from other countries often have

    a hard time believing the story. They wonder, not just why

    such a young child would have his own money, but how

    anyone could reasonably expect a three-year-old to make

    the kind of decision his mother has suggested. But

    Americans, he says, understand perfectly. They know that

    such decisions are beyond the abilities of three-year-olds,

    but they see the mother as simply introducing the boy to

    an American cultural ideal—that of making one’s own

    decisions and being responsible for the consequences.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 8 9

    Freedom

    Americans feel strongly about their freedom as

    individuals. They don’t want the government or other

    authorities meddling in their personal affairs or telling

    them what they can and cannot do. One consequence of

    this respect for the individuality of persons, Althen claims

    is that Americans tend not to show the kind of deference

    to parents that people in more family-oriented societies

    do. For example, Americans think that parents should not

    interfere in their children’s choices regarding such things

    as marriage partners or careers. This doesn’t mean that

    children do not consider the advice of parents; quite the

    contrary, psychologists <nd that American children

    generally embrace the same general values as their parents

    and respect their opinions. It is just that Americans

    strongly believe everyone should be free to choose the life

    he/she wishes to live.

    Competitiveness

    The strong emphasis on individualism pushes Americans

    to be highly competitive. Althen sees this reflected not only

    in the American enthusiasm for athletic events and sports

    heroes, who are praised for being “real competitors,” but

    also in the competitiveness that pervades schools and

    extracurricular activities. According to Althen, Americans

    are continually making social comparison aimed at

    determining:

    . . . who is faster, smarter, richer, better looking; whose

    children are the most successful; whose husband is the best

    1 9 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    provider or the best cook or the best lover; which salesperson

    sold the most during the past quarter; who earned his Trst

    million dollars at the earliest age; and so on.

    Privacy

    Americans assign great value to personal privacy, says

    Althen, assuming that everyone needs time alone to reflect

    or replenish his or her psychic energy. Althen claims that

    Americans don’t understand people who think they always

    have to be in the company of others. He thinks foreigners

    are often puzzled by the invisible boundaries that seem to

    surround American homes, yards, and of<ces, which seem

    open and inviting but in fact are not. Privacy in the home

    is facilitated by the tendency of American houses to be

    quite large. Even young children may have bedrooms of

    their own over which they are given exclusive control.

    Equality

    The American Declaration of Independence asserted

    (among other things) that “all men are created equal.”

    Perhaps most Americans are aware that equality is an ideal

    rather than a fully realized state of affairs; nevertheless,

    says Althen, most Americans “have a deep faith that in

    some fundamental way all people . . . are of equal value,

    that no one is born superior to anyone else.”

    Informality

    American social behavior is marked by extraordinary

    informality. Althen sees this reflected in the tendency of

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9 1

    Americans to move quickly, after introductions, to the use

    of <rst names rather than titles (like Mr. or Mrs.) with

    family names. Americans, says Althen, typically interact in

    casual and friendly ways. Informality is also reflected in

    speech; formal speech is generally reserved for public

    events and only the most ceremonious of occasions.

    Similarly, Americans are fond of casual dress. Even in the

    business world, where formal attire is the rule, certain

    meetings or days of the week may be designated as

    “business casual,” when it is acceptable to shed ties, suit

    coats, skirts and blazers. Foreigners encountering

    American informality for the <rst time may decide that

    Americans are crude, rude, and disrespectful.

    The Future, Change, and Progress

    The United States is a relatively young country. Although

    the <rst European colonies appeared in North America

    nearly 400 years ago, the United States is only 240 years

    old as I write these words. Perhaps this is why the U.S.

    tends to seem less tied to the past and more oriented

    towards the future. Moreover, the country has changed

    dramatically since the time of its founding, becoming a

    major world power only in the last 75 years.

    To most Americans, science, technology and innovation

    are more salient than history and tradition, says Althen.

    Americans tend to regard change as good, and the new as

    an improvement over the old. In other words, change is an

    indication of progress. Americans also tend to believe that

    every problem has a solution, and they are, according to

    Althen, “impatient with people they see as passively

    accepting conditions that are less than desirable.”

    1 9 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    The Goodness of Humanity

    Although some Americans belong to religious groups that

    emphasize the inherent sinfulness of man, Althen claims

    that the basic American attitude is more optimistic. For

    one thing, the American belief in progress and a better

    future, Althen argues, would not be possible if Americans

    did not believe human nature was basically good, or at

    least that people have it within their power to improve

    themselves. The robust commercial literature of self-help

    or self-improvement is another source of evidence for this

    conviction.

    Time

    Americans regard time as a precious resource, says Althen.

    They believe time should always be used wisely and never

    wasted. Americans are obsessed with ef<ciency, or getting

    the best possible results with the least expenditure of

    resources, including time.

    Achievement, Action, Work, and Materialism

    American society is action oriented. Contemplation and

    reflection are not valued much unless they contribute to

    improved performance. Americans admire hard work, but

    especially hard work that results in substantial

    achievement. “Americans tend to de<ne and evaluate

    people,” says Althen, “by the jobs they have.” On the other

    hand, “family backgrounds, educational attainments, and

    other characteristics are considered less important.”

    Americans have also been thought of as particularly

    materialistic people, and there is no denying that

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9 3

    American society is driven by a kind of consumer mania.

    Material consumption is widely seen as the legitimate

    reward for hard work.

    Directness and Assertiveness

    Americans have a reputation for being direct in their

    communication. They feel people should express their

    opinions explicitly and frankly. As Althen expresses it,

    “Americans usually assume that conflicts or disagreements

    are best settled by means of forthright discussions among

    the people involved. If I dislike something you are doing, I

    should tell you about it directly so you will know, clearly

    and from me personally, how I feel about it.”

    Assertiveness extends the idea of directness in the

    expression of opinion to the realm of action. Many

    Americans are raised to insist upon their rights, especially

    if they feel they have been treated unfairly, or cheated, e.g.,

    in a business transaction. There is a strong tradition, for

    example, of returning merchandise to retail stores, not

    only if it is defective but even if it just does not live up to

    an individual’s expectation as a customer. The retailer who

    refuses to satisfy a customer’s demand to refund the cost

    of an unacceptable product is likely to face a stiff

    argument from an assertive or even angry customer. The

    customer service personnel of major retailers tend,

    therefore, to be quite deferential to customer demands.

    Conclusion

    In his discussions of American values and assumptions,

    Althen is careful to point out that generalizations can be

    risky—that it would be a mistake to think that all

    1 9 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Americans hold exactly the same beliefs, or even that when

    Americans do agree, that they do so with the same degree

    of conviction. He is also careful to note that the

    generalizations represent the predominant views of white,

    middle class people who have for a long time held a

    majority of the country’s positions in business, education,

    science and industry, politics, journalism, and literature.

    He acknowledges that the attitudes of many of the nation’s

    various ethnic minorities might differ from the values of

    the “dominant” culture but insists that as long as we

    recognize these limitations, it is reasonable to regard the

    observations he offers as true on the average.

    There may be a good deal of truth to Althen’s claim;

    however, a closer look into American history reveals

    considerable regional variation in Americans’

    understanding of even the most fundamental ideals, e.g.,

    ideas about the freedom of the individual. In Part 2, we

    will see that a closer look at the American political scene,

    may force us to conclude that even when Americans

    endorse the same values, they may actually have different

    things in mind.

    A closer look at American cultural diversity

    In this section, I want to show why the idea of a dominant

    American culture is more complicated than it is often

    taken to be. Listen to any serious political commentary on

    American TV and sooner or later you will hear about the

    radical polarization of American culture and politics.

    Commentators may differ on whether we have always

    been this way, or whether it is worse than ever, but

    journalists and scholars alike are nearly unanimous in

    insisting that the country is anything but uni<ed. Every

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9 5

    U.S. President at the annual State of the Union Address

    says we are uni<ed, but that is something the President

    must say. “The state of our Union is strong,” are the words

    traditionally uttered. But does anyone believe it?

    Figure 8.1. Woodard (2011) argues that there are 11 American nations occupying the continental U.S.

    And just when many of us think we have <nally put the

    American Civil War and the shameful legacy of slavery

    behind us once and for all by electing the <rst black

    president, the nation turns around and elects a successor

    that surely has Abraham Lincoln turning over in his grave.

    How is it possible? Essays like Althen’s certainly do not

    give us any clue.

    What could possibly explain it?

    Perhaps we can <nd a clue in the work of cultural

    geographers, historians, and journalists. Back to the

    original question: Is there really a dominant American

    culture? Depending upon whom you read, there is not one

    uni<ed American culture. Rather, at least four cultures

    1 9 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    Table 8.1 Studies identifying U.S. regional cultures

    sprang from British roots, and altogether there may be as

    many as eleven national cultures in the U.S. today. (See

    Figure 8.1)

    Understanding U.S. Cultural Landscapes

    In 1831, 26-year old French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville

    toured the United States. Four years later, he published the

    <rst of two volumes of Democracy in America. At that time,

    Tocqueville saw the United States as composed of almost

    separate nations (Jandt, 2016). Since then, cultural

    geographers have produced evidence to support many of

    Tocqueville’s observations, noting that as various cultural

    groups arrived in North America, they tended to settle

    where their own people had already settled. As a result,

    different regions of the U.S. came to exhibit distinctive

    regional cultures. Zelinsky (1973) identi<ed <ve distinctive

    cultural regions while Bigelow (1980) identi<ed no fewer

    than nine. (See Table 8.1)

    Joel Garreau (1981),

    while an editor for the

    Washington Post, also

    wrote a book proclaiming

    that the North American

    continent is actually home

    to nine nations. Based on

    the observations of hundreds of observers of the American

    scene, Garreau begins The Nine Nations of North America by

    urging his readers to forget everything they learned in

    sixth-grade geography about the borders separating the

    U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as well as all the state and

    provincial boundaries within. Says Garreau:

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9 7

    Consider, instead, the way North America really works.

    It is Nine Nations. Each has its capital and its distinctive

    web of power and influence. A few are allies, but many

    are adversaries. Some are close to being raw frontiers;

    others have four centuries of history. Each has a peculiar

    economy; each commands a certain emotional

    allegiance from its citizens. These nations look different,

    feel different, and sound different from each other, and

    few of their boundaries match the political lines drawn

    on current maps. Some are clearly divided

    topographically by mountains, deserts, and rivers.

    Others are separated by architecture, music, language,

    and ways of making a living. Each nation has its own list

    of desires. Each nation knows how it plans to get what

    it needs from whoever’s got it. …Most important, each

    nation has a distinct prism through which it views the

    world. (Garreau, 1981: 1-2)

    Historian David Hackett Fischer (1989) has argued that

    U.S. culture is best understood as an uneasy coexistence of

    just four original core cultures derived from four British

    folkways, each hailing from a different region of 17th

    century England. Most recently, journalist Colin Woodard

    (2011) drawing on the work of Fischer and others has

    identi<ed eleven North American nations. In the sections

    that follow, I hope to show why essays like Althen’s may

    not be helpful for understanding American culture. In the

    process, I will briefly recount the story of the settling of

    North America for those who may not be entirely aware of

    that history.

    Of<cially, of course, only three countries, Canada, the

    United States, and Mexico, occupy the entirety of North

    America, and each country began as a European project.

    1 9 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    The principal powers driving the settlement of the

    continent were England, France, and Spain. All three

    powers had a major presence in parts of what is now the

    United States before the U.S. assumed its present shape.

    Spanish influence

    Spain was the <rst European power to insert itself into the

    Americas, starting in the Caribbean islands after the

    arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Spain would

    eventually dominate most of South America and Mexico

    and even gain a temporary foothold in present day Florida

    as well as much of the American Southwest and California.

    By the time the Trst Englishmen stepped off the boat at

    Jamestown . . . Spanish explorers had already trekked through

    the plains of Kansas, beheld the Great Smoky Mountains of

    Tennessee, and stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon. They

    had mapped the coast of Oregon . . . [and] established short-

    lived colonies on the shores of Georgia and Virginia. In 1565,

    they founded St. Augustine, Florida, now the oldest European

    city in the United States. By the end of the sixteenth century,

    Spaniards had been living in the deserts of Sonora and

    Chihuahua for decades, and their colony of New Mexico was

    marking its Tfth birthday. (Woodard, 2011: 23)

    The descendants of the <rst Spanish settlers in the

    Southwest (many of whom intermarried with the

    indigenous peoples) thought of this region as el Norte (the

    north), and while Spanish influence on the West would

    eventually be eclipsed by English folkways, Spanish

    influences persist to this day.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 1 9 9

    French influence

    While the Spanish spread out across the South and laid

    claim to the West, the French dropped in from the North.

    Frenchmen explored the coasts of Newfoundland and

    sailed up the Saint Lawrence River in 1534. They sailed the

    coasts of New Brunswick and Maine and established the

    <rst successful French settlement in Nova Scotia in 1605,

    followed by Quebec City in 1608 and Montreal in 1642.

    From Montreal, the St. Lawrence River carried them to the

    Great Lakes and from there by way of an extensive

    network of rivers into the vast interior of the continent,

    the so-called Louisiana territory. Following the great

    Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico, the French

    founded New Orleans in 1718.

    Moreover, the French established a more sympathetic

    and human relationship with the native peoples than

    either the Spanish or the English had. As Woodard (2011)

    has observed, the Spanish enslaved the Indians; the

    English drove them out; but the French settled near them,

    learned their customs and established trading alliances

    “based on honesty, fair dealing, and mutual respect” (p. 35)

    The legacy of New France, as it was called, can still be

    felt in isolated pockets of the U.S., like southern Louisiana

    and the city of New Orleans, and also near the northern

    boundaries of eastern states like Vermont and Maine.

    Otherwise, it has a stronger pull on Canada where it

    continues to resist domination by the English-speaking

    regions of Canada. On the other hand, Spanish influences

    are more widely felt in the United States, particularly in

    South Florida and throughout the southwestern U.S. and

    California. However, the dominant culture of the United

    2 0 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    States—or as Fischer (1989) has argued—the four

    dominant cultures are British.

    Dutch influence

    Another European power to establish a presence in North

    America was the Netherlands. In 1624, the Dutch

    established a fur trading post on what is today the Island

    of Manhattan in New York City. In fact, Woodard (2011: 65)

    reminds us, the character of New York City is due very

    much to the cultural imprint of the <rst Dutch settlers of

    New York. Of course, it was not called New York back then

    but New Amsterdam.

    Unlike the Puritans who would come <ve years later, the

    Dutch had no interest in creating a model society. Nor

    were they interested in establishing democratic

    government. During the <rst few decades of its existence,

    New Amsterdam was formally governed by the Dutch

    West India Company, one of the <rst global corporations.

    The Dutch were interested in North America primarily for

    commercial purposes.

    To understand how the Dutch influenced New York, it is

    important to understand the culture and social history of

    the Netherlands. By the end of the 1500’s, the Dutch had

    waged a successful war of independence against a huge

    monarchical empire (the kingdom of Spain). They had

    asserted the inborn human right to rebel against an

    oppressive government, and they had established a

    kingless republic nearly two centuries before the American

    Revolution, which established American independence

    from the British Empire.

    “In the early 1600s, the Netherlands was the most

    modern and sophisticated country on Earth,” says

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 0 1

    Woodard (2011: 66-67). They were committed to free

    inquiry. Their universities were among the best in the

    world. Scientists and intellectuals from countries where

    free inquiry was suppressed flocked to the Netherlands

    and produced revolutionary scienti<c and philosophical

    texts. Dutch acceptance of freedom of the press resulted in

    the wide distribution of texts that were banned elsewhere

    in Europe. The Dutch asserted the right of freedom from

    persecution for the free exercise of religion. They

    produced magni<cent works of art and established laws

    and business practices that set the standard for the

    Western world. They invented modern banking,

    establishing the <rst clearinghouse at the Bank of

    Amsterdam for the exchange of the world’s currencies.

    The Dutch had also virtually invented the global

    corporation with the establishment of the Dutch East

    India Company in 1602. With 10,000 ships of advanced

    design, shareholders from all social classes, thousands of

    workers, and global operations, the Netherlands

    dominated shipping in northern Europe in the early 1600s.

    By the time the Dutch West India Company founded New

    Amsterdam, the Netherlands had assumed a role in the world

    economy equivalent to that of the United States in the late

    20th century, setting the standards for international business,

    Tnance, and law. (Woodard, 2011: 67)

    The Dutch effectively transplanted all of these cultural

    achievements to New Amsterdam. Dutch openness and

    tolerance consequently attracted a remarkable diversity of

    people. The ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, says

    Woodard, shocked early visitors. The streets of New

    2 0 2 | N O L A N W E I L

    Amsterdam teamed with people from everywhere, just as

    New York does today.

    By the mid 1600’s, there were “French-speaking Walloons;

    Lutherans from Poland, Finland; and Sweden; Catholics from

    Ireland and Portugal; and Anglicans, Puritans, and Quakers

    from New England. . . [D]ozens of Ashkenazim [eastern

    European Jews] and Spanish-speaking Sephardim [Jews from

    Spain] settled in New Amsterdam in the 1650s, forming the

    nucleus of what would eventually become the largest Jewish

    community in the world. Indians roamed the streets, and

    Africans—slave, free and half-free—already formed a Tfth of

    the population. A Muslim from Morocco had been farming

    outside the city walls for three decades. (Woodard, 2011: 66)

    When the Duke of York, future King James II of

    England, arrived with a naval fleet in 1664, the Dutch were

    forced to cede political control of New Amsterdam to

    England. New Amsterdam became New York. However,

    the Dutch managed to negotiate terms, which enabled

    them to maintain a presence and preserve Dutch norms

    and values. Thus, diversity, tolerance, upward mobility,

    and the emphasis on private enterprise, characteristics

    historically associated with the United States in general

    and New York in particular, began in New Amsterdam and

    represent the Dutch legacy in America.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 0 3

    Geographic origins of four English groups that colonized different regions of North America

    New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it “New York”.

    Albion’s Seed

    Of the three major

    European powers, the

    English were latecomers.

    But when they <nally

    came, they washed over

    the continent like a

    tsunami. Today English

    cultural influences prevail

    over vast areas of both

    Canada and the United

    States.

    In his book, Albion’s

    Seed, David Fischer argues

    that the foundations of U.S. culture were laid between

    1629-1775 by four great waves of English-speaking

    2 0 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    immigrants. Each wave brought a group of people from a

    different region of England, and each group settled in a

    different region of British America.

    • The <rst wave (1629-1640) brought Puritans from the

    East of England to Massachusetts.

    • The second wave (1642-1675) brought a small Royalist

    elite and large numbers of indentured servants from

    the South of England to Virginia.

    • The third wave (1675-1725) consisted of people from

    the North Midlands of England and Wales. This

    group settled primarily in the Delaware Valley.

    • Finally, multiple waves of people arrived between

    1718-1775 from the borders of North Britain and

    Ireland. Most of these people settled in the mountains

    of the Appalachian backcountry.

    According to Fischer, despite all being English-speaking

    Protestants living under British laws and enjoying certain

    British “liberties,” each group came from a different

    geographical region, and each region had its own

    particular social, political, and economic circumstances.

    As a result, the basic attitudes, behaviors, and values of

    each group were profoundly different.

    Massachusetts (Yankeedom)

    The Puritans who founded Massachusetts Bay Colony

    were not the <rst English settlers in New England; the so-

    called Pilgrims beat them by about 10 years. But the

    Massachusetts Bay Puritans left a more lasting legacy. The

    Puritans came in greater numbers over an eleven-year

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 0 5

    period (1629-1640), primarily from East Anglia. In the 17th

    century, East Anglia was the most economically developed

    area of Britain. East Anglians were artisans, farmers, and

    skilled craftsmen; they were well educated and literate.

    They had little respect for royal or aristocratic privilege. In

    East Anglia, they had practiced local self-government by

    means of elected representatives (selectmen) whom they

    trusted to carry out the affairs of the community. They

    were middle class and roughly all equal in material wealth.

    When they migrated to Massachusetts, they brought

    with them their own particular folkways. These included

    many of the customs and values they had been accustomed

    to in East Anglia. They were also deeply religious and

    brought a utopian vision of a society that would bring

    about God’s kingdom on earth, governed by a particular

    Puritan interpretation of the Bible. They only accepted

    people into their communities that were willing to

    conform to their Puritan brand of Calvinism; dissenters

    were punished or exiled.

    On the other hand, according to Boorstin (1958), the

    Puritans were completely non- utopian and practical in the

    way they lived their daily lives. Because they considered

    their theological questions answered, says Boorstin, they

    could focus less on the ends of society and more on the

    practical means for making society work effectively.

    Eventually, historical circumstances would even sweep the

    religious authoritarianism away, leaving behind a legacy

    self-government, local control, and direct democracy.

    As Woodard (2011) has observed, “Yankees would come

    to have faith in government to a degree incomprehensible

    to people of the other American nations.” New Englanders

    trusted government to defend the public good against the

    sel<sh schemes of moneyed interests. They were in favor

    2 0 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    of promoting morality by prohibiting and regulating

    undesirable activities. They believed in the value of public

    spending on infrastructure and schools as a means for

    creating a better society. Today, notes Woodard, “More

    than any other group in America, Yankees conceive of

    government as being run by and for themselves.” They

    believe everyone should participate, and nothing makes

    them angrier than the manipulation of the political

    process for private gain (p. 60).

    Virginia (Tidewater)

    According to Fischer (1989) as the Puritan migrations were

    coming to an end in 1641, a new migration was just about

    to begin. This migration was from the south of England,

    and these newcomers settled in what is today southeast

    Virginia, in the area known as the Tidewater. The founders

    of Virginia were about as different from the New England

    Puritans as any group could be.

    While the Puritans were artisans, farmers, and

    craftsmen from the east of England, the Tidewater

    Virginians had been English “gentlemen” in south

    England. The economy of south England in 17th century

    was organized mainly around the production of grain and

    wool. While the Puritans enjoyed a fairly egalitarian life in

    East Anglia, the south of England was marked by severe

    economic inequality. Those who didn’t own land were

    tenants. The region had also suffered greatly during the

    English Civil War, a conflict that pitted the King of

    England against the Parliament over the manner in which

    England was to be governed. The landed gentry of south

    England were Royalists; they supported the King.

    However, they found themselves on the losing side of the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 0 7

    conflict. Unlike the Puritans who migrated to New

    England for religious reasons, the Royalists hoped to

    escape their deteriorating situation by seeking their

    fortunes in the New World. To the extent that religion was

    important to them, they embraced the Anglican Church of

    England, the same church as the King of England.

    Like the Puritans, the Royalists were not the <rst

    English settlers in their respective region. The earliest

    Virginians had founded the Jamestown Colony in 1607.

    Also, like the Puritans, the Royalists turned out to be more

    successful administrators than the settlers who had come

    before. But while the Jamestown settlers had been

    incompetent in many ways, they had set the stage for a

    successful agricultural export industry based on tobacco

    (Woodard, 2011).

    Tobacco was a very lucrative crop and Virginia was

    perfect for growing it, but it was very labor-intensive. The

    Virginians solved their labor problem by recruiting a large

    workforce of desperate people from London, Bristol, and

    Liverpool. In fact, poor newcomers greatly outnumbered

    the Royalist elites; more than 75 percent of immigrants to

    Virginia came as indentured servants. Two thirds were

    unskilled laborers and most could not read or write. The

    Royalists, in fact, succeeded in reproducing the conditions

    that had existed in the south of England where they had

    been the lords and masters of large estates, exploiting a

    vast and permanent underclass of poor, uneducated

    Englishmen. Even worse, when the Virginians began

    losing their workforce because the servants completed

    their indentures, they turned to slave labor, which would

    eventually spread across the entire southern United States.

    Before the abolition of slavery in 1865, millions of Africans

    would be kidnapped and shipped to the New World (and

    2 0 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    later bred In America) as permanent property (Woodard,

    2011).

    As Fischer (1989) has pointed out, people everywhere in

    British America embraced the ideal of liberty (freedom) in

    one form or another; however, it would be a mistake to

    think that liberty had the same meaning to New

    Englanders as it did to Virginians. New Englanders

    believed in ordered liberty, which meant that liberty

    belonged not just to an individual but to an entire

    community. In other words, an individual’s liberties or

    rights were not absolute but had to be balanced against the

    public good. New Englanders voluntarily agreed to accept

    constraints upon their liberties as long as they were

    consistent with written laws and as long as it was they

    themselves that collectively determined the laws. It is also

    true though that because the original Puritan founders

    saw themselves as God’s chosen people, they did not at

    <rst feel compelled to extend freedom to anyone outside of

    their Puritan communities.

    The Virginians, in contrast, embraced a form of liberty

    that Fischer has described as hegemonic or hierarchical

    liberty. According to Fischer (1989) freedom for the

    Virginian was conceived as “the power to rule, and not to

    be overruled by others. . . . It never occurred to most

    Virginia gentlemen that liberty belonged to everyone” (pp.

    411-412). Moreover, the higher one’s status, the greater

    one’s liberties. While New Englanders governed

    themselves by mutual agreement arrived at in town hall

    meetings, Virginian society was ruled from the top by a

    small group of wealthy plantation owners who completely

    dominated the economic and political affairs of the colony.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 0 9

    Delaware Valley (The Midlands)

    The third major wave of English immigration took place

    between 1675-1725 and originated from many different

    parts of England, but one region in particular stood

    out—the North Midlands, a rocky and sparsely settled

    region inhabited by farmers and shepherds. The people

    had descended from Viking invaders who had colonized

    the region in the Middle Ages. They favored the Norse

    customs of individual ownership of houses and <elds and

    resented the imposition of the Norman system of feudal

    manors, which the southern Royalists had embraced

    (p.446). The most peculiar thing about the people was their

    religion. They were neither Puritans like the people of

    eastern England, nor Anglican like the Royalists of the

    south, but Quaker, or as they called themselves Friends.

    The Quakers began arriving in great numbers in 1675,

    settling in the Delaware Valley, spreading out into what is

    today western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

    Sandwiched between Puritan Massachusetts and Royalist

    Virginia, Woodward (2011) refers to this region as the

    Midlands.

    By 1750, the Quakers had become the third largest

    religious group in the British colonies (Fischer, p. 422).

    Like the Puritans and unlike the Royalists, the Quakers

    sought to establish a model society based on deeply held

    religious beliefs. But whereas the Puritans tended restrict

    the liberties of outsiders, even persecuting them, the

    Quakers (under the leadership of William Penn)

    “envisioned a country where people of different creeds and

    ethnic backgrounds could live together in harmony”

    (Woodard, p. 94). The Quakers would not impose their

    religion on anyone but would invite everyone into the

    2 1 0 | N O L A N W E I L

    community who accepted their worldview. They extended

    the right to vote to almost anyone and provided land on

    cheap terms. They maintained peace with the local

    Indians, paid them for their land, and respected their

    interests.

    Quakers held government to be an absolute necessity

    and were intensely committed to public debate. At the

    same time, they developed a tradition of minimal

    government interference in the lives of people. The Quaker

    view of liberty was different from that of both the Puritans

    and the Royalists. While the Puritans embraced ordered or

    bounded liberty for God’s chosen few, and the Royalists

    embraced a hierarchical view of liberty for the privileged

    elite (and who saw no contradiction in the keeping of

    slaves), the Quakers believed in reciprocal liberty, a liberty

    that they believed should embrace all of humanity. The

    Quakers were the most egalitarian of the three colonies

    discussed so far, and they would be among the most

    outspoken opponents of slavery.

    Appalachia

    The last great waves of folk migration came between

    1718-1775 from the so-called borderlands of the British

    Empire, Ireland, Scotland, and the northern counties of

    England. They were a clan-based warrior people whose

    ancestors had endured 800 years of almost constant

    warfare with England (Woodard, p. 101). Unlike the

    Puritans or the Quakers who dreamed of establishing

    model societies based upon their religious beliefs, or the

    Royalists who wished to regain their aristocratic wealth

    and privilege, the Borderlanders sought to escape from

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1 1

    economic privation: high rents, low wages, heavy taxation,

    famine and starvation.

    These new immigrants landed on American shores

    primarily by means of Philadelphia and New Castle in the

    Quaker Midlands, mainly because of the Quaker policy of

    welcoming immigrants. Unfortunately, the Borderlanders,

    proved too belligerent and violent for the peace-loving

    Quakers, who tried to get them out of their towns and into

    the Appalachian backcountry as quickly as possible. The

    Appalachian Mountains extend for 800 miles from

    Pennsylvania to Georgia and several hundred miles east to

    west from the Piedmont Plateau to the Mississippi. The

    Borderlanders would end up spreading their folkways

    throughout this vast region.

    While the other three colonial regions established

    commercial enterprises revolving around cash groups and

    manufactured goods, the Borderlanders lived primarily by

    hunting, <shing, and farming. In Britain, they had never

    been accustomed to investing in <xed property because it

    was too easily lost in war. In the American backcountry,

    they carried on in the same way; whatever wealth they had

    was largely mobile, consisting of herds of pigs, cattle, and

    sheep. They practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, moving

    to new lands every few years when they had depleted the

    soil in one place. In time, some individuals managed to

    acquire large tracts of land, while others remained

    landless. The result was to reproduce the pervasive

    inequality that had existed in the northern English

    borderlands.

    Early on, Appalachia acquired a reputation as a violent

    and lawless place. In the earliest years of settlement, there

    was little in the way of government. To the extent that

    there was any order or justice, it was according to the

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    principle lex talionis, which held that “a good man must

    seek to do right in the world, but when wrong was done to

    him, he must punish the wrongdoer himself by an act of

    retribution. . .” (Fischer, p. 765).

    The people that settled Appalachia held to an ideal of

    liberty that Fischer has called “natural liberty,”

    characterized by a <erce resistance to any form of external

    restraint and “strenuously hostile to ordering institutions”

    (Fischer, p. 777). This included hostility to organized

    churches and established clergy. The Appalachian

    backcountry was a place of mixed religious

    denominations, just as the borders of North Britain had

    been. However, if there was a dominant denomination, it

    may have been Scottish Presbyterianism.

    In essence, the Borderlanders reproduced many aspects

    of the society they had left behind in the British

    borderlands, a society marked by economic inequality, a

    culture of violence and retributive justice, jealous

    protection of individual liberty, and distrust of

    government. A more different culture from that of New

    England or the Midlands is hard to imagine. Except

    perhaps for the Deep South.

    Englanders from Barbados

    The Deep South

    Fischer does not deal with the founders of the Deep South

    in Albion’s Seed for the simple reason that none of them

    came directly from England as the Puritans, Virginians,

    Quakers, and Borderlanders had. Instead, they were in

    Woodard’s words “the sons and grandsons of the founders

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1 3

    of an older English colony: Barbados, the richest and most

    horrifying society in the English-speaking world” (p. 82).

    The colonizers of Barbados had established a wealthy and

    powerful plantation economy based on sugar cane, grown

    entirely by means of a brutal system of slave labor. Having

    run out of land on Barbados, it became necessary for

    Barbadians to <nd new lands, which they did by migrating

    to other islands in the Caribbean and to the east coast of

    North America.

    The Barbadians arrived near present day Charleston,

    South Carolina in 1670 and set to work replicating a slave

    state almost identical to the one they had left behind in

    Barbados. They bought enslaved Africans by the boatloads

    and put them to work growing rice and indigo for export

    to England. They often worked them to death just as they

    had in Barbados. They built a tremendous amount of

    wealth from this slave labor, and most of it was

    concentrated in the hands of a few ruling families who

    comprised only about one quarter of the white population.

    They governed the territory solely to serve their own

    interests, ignoring the bottom three-quarters of the white

    population, and of course the black majority who actually

    made up 80 percent of the population. The brutality of the

    system is certainly shocking to modern sensibilities, and it

    was even shocking to the Barbadian’s contemporaries.

    While slavery was initially tolerated in all of the colonies, it

    was an organizing economic principle only in the

    Tidewater region and the Deep South. However, there

    were important differences. Initially, the Tidewater

    leaders had imported labor in the form of indentured

    servants both white and black. Indentured servants could

    earn their freedom, and many blacks did. In the Tidewater,

    2 1 4 | N O L A N W E I L

    Popularly regarded as the cultural boundary separating North and South (Dixie)

    slaves outnumbered whites by only 1.7 to 1, and the slave

    population grew naturally after 1740, eliminating the need

    to import slaves. And because there were few newcomers,

    the black population of the Tidewater was “relatively

    homogenous and strongly influenced by the English

    culture it was embedded within” (Woodard, p. 87). Having

    African heritage did not necessarily make someone a slave

    in the Tidewater. People in the Tidewater found it harder

    to deny the humanity of black people.

    In the Deep South,

    however, the black

    population outnumbered

    the white population by

    about 5 to 1, and blacks

    lived largely apart from

    whites. Moreover, the

    separation of whites and

    blacks was strictly

    enforced, and the white

    minority thought of blacks

    as inherently inferior. Because they were so greatly

    outnumbered, Southern plantation owners also feared the

    possibility of a violent rebellion, and they organized

    militias and conducted training exercises in case they

    might need to respond to an uprising. “Deep Southern

    society,” says Woodard, “was not only militarized, caste-

    structured, and deferential to authority, it was also

    aggressively expansionist” (p. 90). Unfortunately, the

    slaveholding practices of the Deep South eventually caught

    hold in the Tidewater too. By the middle of the 18th

    century, permanent slavery came to be the norm

    everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1 5

    The Westward Expansion

    After the American Revolution, four of the nations that we

    have just surveyed headed west: New England, the

    Midlands, Appalachia, and the Deep South all raced

    towards the interior of the continent apparently with little

    mixing. Figure 8.1 shows the territories that each nation

    settled. Woodard’s argument and the work of cultural

    geographers suggests that these four nations carried their

    particular folkways and cultural attitudes with them and

    that the states they settled still bear those same cultural

    markings.

    The Far West

    The cultural migrations were halted for a time by the sheer

    extremity of the West, which was not well suited to

    farming. Only two groups braved the arid West. The

    Mormons hailed from Yankee roots. Like the New England

    Puritans, two centuries earlier, they set out on a utopian

    religious mission, and began arriving in the 1840s on the

    shores the Great Salt Lake in present day Utah. “With a

    communal mind-set and intense group cohesion,” notes

    Woodard, “the Mormons were able to build and maintain

    irrigation projects that enabled small farmers in the region

    to survive in far Western conditions.” Interestingly, the

    Mormon values of communitarianism, morality, and good

    works are all Yankee values. One wonders sometimes why

    Utah politicians seem to align themselves so often with

    politicians espousing values more typical of Appalachia

    and the Deep South rather than with New England.

    The other hardy souls to venture into the Far West were

    the Forty-niners, so named after the year 1849 which

    2 1 6 | N O L A N W E I L

    brought a flood of frontiersmen to California seeking gold.

    Otherwise, the West was successfully settled only after the

    arrival of corporations and the federal government, the

    only two forces capable of providing an infrastructure that

    would eventually permit widespread settlement.

    Westerners would come to resent both the corporations

    and the federal government as unwelcome intrusions in

    their lives.

    The Left Coast

    “Why is it,” asks Woodard, “that the coastal zone of northern California, Oregon and Washington seems to

    have so much more in common with New England than

    with the other parts of those states?” The explanation,

    according to Woodard, is that the <rst Americans to

    colonize it were New England Yankees who arrived by

    ship. New Englanders were well positioned to colonize the

    area having become familiar with the region as New

    France’s main competitor in the fur trade.

    The <rst Yankee settlers were merchants, missionaries,

    and woodsmen. They arrived determined to create a “New

    England on the Paci<c.” The other group to settle the

    region consisted of farmers, prospectors and fur traders

    from Greater Appalachia. They arrived overland by wagon,

    and took control of the countryside, leaving the coastal

    towns and government to the Yankees. The Yankee desire

    to reproduce New England was ultimately unsuccessful

    because as ever more migrants arrived from the

    Appalachian Midwest and elsewhere, the Yankees were

    outnumbered <fteen to one. They did manage, however, to

    maintain control over most civic institutions.

    Today the region shares with coastal New England the

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1 7

    same Yankee idealism and faith in good government and

    social reform blended with Appalachian self-suf<cient

    individualism.

    Final reflection

    While these various European founders of the United

    States were working out their destinies, the U.S. was also a

    destination for immigrants from all over the world.

    Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century, the

    majority of immigrants were from Europe, <rst from

    northern and western Europe, then from southern and

    eastern Europe, and then once again from western

    Europe. From the 1960s on, the majority of immigrants

    have come from Asia and Latin America.

    Given the passage of time and the huge influx of

    immigrants, it might not seem believable that these

    founding nations would have maintained their distinct

    cultural identities. Haven’t they surely been diluted and

    transformed, asks Woodard, by the tens of millions of

    immigrants moving into the various regions? It might

    seem, says Woodard, that by now these original cultures

    must have “melted into one another, creating a rich,

    pluralistic stew.”

    However, cultural geographers such as Zelinsky (1973)

    have found reasons to believe that once the settlers of a

    region leave their cultural mark, newcomers are more

    likely to assimilate the dominant culture of the region. The

    newcomers surely bring with them their own cultural

    legacies, foods, religions, fashions, and ideas, suggests

    Woodard, but they do not replace the established ethos.

    In American Nations, Woodard argues that the divisions

    in American politics can be understood in large part by

    2 1 8 | N O L A N W E I L

    understanding the cultural divisions that have been part of

    the United States since its founding. These divisions can

    help us understand regional differences in basic

    sentiments such trust vs. distrust of government. They can

    also help us understand why certain regions of the country

    are for or against gun control, environmental regulation,

    or the regulation of <nancial institutions, and so on, or for

    or against particular Congressional legislation.

    Application

    1. Whether you are an American citizen, U.S. resident, or

    international student … which, if any, of the American

    national values discussed in the chapter are important

    where you come from? Which, if any, are unimportant?

    2. Based on this history of the United States, what

    adjustments are necessary to the idea of a dominant

    American culture?

    3. If you are not an American citizen or U.S. resident, how

    might the lessons of this chapter apply to your own

    country?

    References

    Althen, G. (2003). American ways: A guide for foreigners in the

    United States. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

    Bigelow, B. (1980). Roots and regions: A summary

    de<nition of the cultural geography of America. Journal

    of Geography, 79(6), 218-229.

    Boorstin, D. J. (1958). The Americans: The colonial experience.

    New York: Random House.

    S P E A K I N G O F C U LT U R E | 2 1 9

    Fischer, D. H. (1989). Albion’s seed: Four British Folkways in

    America. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Garreau, J. (1981). The nine nations of North America. Boston:

    Houghton Mifflin.

    Woodard, C. (2011). American nations: A history of the eleven

    rival regional cultures of North America. New York: Viking.

    Zelinsky, W. (1973). The cultural geography of the United

    States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Image Attribution

    Image 1: “The American Nations Today” by Colin

    Woodward is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

    Image 2: Table by Nolan Weil is licensed under CC BY

    4.0

    Image 3: “GezichtOpNieuwAmsterdam” by Johannes

    Vingboons is licensed under Public Domain

    Image 4: (not creative commons)

    Image 5: Mason-Dixon Line by National Atlas of United

    States is licensed under Public Domain

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