What do you think?
Rate this book
Understanding Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theory
Are cows sacred to Indian Hindus because they stand for nature and life, as symbolic analysts explain, or because they pull plows and fertilize the land, providing people with food, as cultural materialists argue? Do Muslim Sufi Orders incorporate the lower classes and stabilize the cultural status quo, as functionalists would assert, or are they dynamic forces reshaping society and culture, as processualists claim to illustrate? Are witchcraft accusations a scapegoating of the powerless by the elite to maintain their ascendancy, as materialist class theorists argue, or are they social expressions of psychological tensions arising from conflicts in relationships, as functionalist psychological anthropologists have argued? Understanding culture means understanding and appreciating the diverse theories that offer different perspectives on culture. Salzman's text explores six major streams of anthropological interdependence in human life (functionalism); agency in human action (processualism and transactionalism); determining factors (materialism and political economy); coherence in culture (configurationalism and structuralism); transformation through time (history and evolution); and critical advocacy (feminism and postmodernism). Each theoretical approach is initially presented in its own terms, to show its assumptions, aims, and accomplishments. Each approach is elucidated and illustrated through the arguments and ethnographic examples offered by original theorists and astute practitioners. The introductory and concluding chapters of Understanding Culture frame the diverse theoretical positions and the debates among them within the broader philosophical opposition between explanation and explication. A caution is offered about presentism, the reflex acceptance of currently popular theories and easy dismissal of earlier theories, because an informed appreciation of a wide range of theoretical approaches is beneficial for understanding cultures. Includes glossary of major terms, brief biographies of major culture theorists, and suggestions for further reading. Also by Philip Carl Salzman and available from Waveland Classic Comparative Studies from the Tradition (ISBN 9781577667100). Title of related interest also available from Waveland Garbarino, Sociocultural Theory in A Short History (ISBN 9780881330564).
173 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
6 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 23, 2024
The book describes (summarizes) the major schools of anthropological (study of human culture) thought. Major thinkers have their favored approaches, with each having their followers (e.g. Parsonian), and each has its share of theoretical subsets. It is tedious for the reader to sort out all the “isms” and “ists” and “ionisms” and “ologies,” with outliers thrown in for good measure (my favorite: “Henry Jamesian”). This gives you the flavor of the book.
The widely divergent approaches reflect a problem with the theoretical framework that underlie these schools of thought: they all focus on cultural practices that are of course highly variable. In the now classic nature-versus-nurture division, anthropological theory relies heavily on the nurture side. It looks at variable content, which is the nurture part, but it largely ignores the biological universals, which is the nature part.
An alternative approach is that nature gives form to cultural content. It’s this form that is universal whereas the content that fills the form is not. Universal form begins with pain. Per Schopenhauer, pain is what is needed to maintain an equilibrium state, and pain is also a threat and harm to that equilibrium state. Pain motivates behavior to get what a life form needs to survive and reproduce. Motivated behavior is desire (as Spinoza argued). Pain also motivates behavior to defend the self by resisting what a life form doesn’t want. Fear and anger are the primary emotion states that lead to defending-resisting (and anger- and fear-based) behavior. When there’s success, there is pleasure (biologically, an equilibrium state). When there’s failure, pain (biologically, a disequilibrium state) remains.
These universal human forms are shared with all of life. But the behavior of other life forms is fixed within instinctive (automatic) structures that combine the motive (reason for) acting and reacting, with relevant objects that are substantially built into the instinctive structures, and the behavior that links relevant objects to desire (need) and resisting (via fear and anger). Whereas, with humans, the motive force (need-desire; threats and harm) remains fixed and invariant, that which serves need and that which threatens or harms is variable (e.g. we need to move to get food is invariable; the way we move changes over time).* Before we walked. Now we drive cars. Previously, the threat or harm were wild animals; today it is car accidents.
Evolutionary theory, with the concept of adaptation, explains the distinction between the invariant biological forms (need, fear-anger) and the specific content that fills these forms. Species change the way these forms are filled over time. Humans change the way they satisfy need at any point in time; that which constitutes a threat or harm also change at any point in time, and causes new types of reaction that fit the nature of a threat or harm. Species and individuals, in other words, change how they get what they need and change the way they defend against threats and harm (offensive and defensive arms race for example).
Adaptation is built into our biological structure and the variability that the anthropological schools emphasize fill those underlying forms with cultural content. This can be seen when we look at the basic categories of need. Our need for nurture is universal; how that need is met varies by culture. Our need for security within a group is invariant (tribalism). How that need is met leads to a vast array of cultural practices. Our need for sexual mates is invariant, but the courtship and marriage rituals vary. It’s the same for threats and harms that stimulate fear and anger, which are universal phenomena that center around something other, the non-group, the outsider group, that is regarded with suspicion or hostility.
The expressions of universal forms are also variable by individual. To say that human nature is one thing is incomplete. It is only at the highest levels (we are not elephants or dogs) that we are all the same. But beyond that, human nature, reflecting Darwinian variability, is individualized. This distinction between what is universal and what is individualized can be seen in the concept of human freedom. Humans, like all of life, need to be free to seek and free to defend, and they need to have power (capacity) to seek and defend, but these needs can be satisfied at the expense of others or by working with them (via cooperation, reciprocity, and compassion). Some individuals and cultures that condone the former express a survival of the fittest mentality. Others -individuals and cultures - see survival and well being coming from group solidarity. Such variability is mainly expressed along a continuum between these twin poles.
Religious expression also shows this difference between what is universal and how that universal is filled with specific cultural expressions. Reflecting the self’s impelling drive to survive, the self needs to live and live well forever. The flip side of that need is the fear of that not being so. This motive force explains the why of religion. Culture then fills in the details with specific content - all the rules, belief systems, rituals, etc. that are directed toward living well and forever, and that ward off threats and harm, such as physical pain and death.
This is an outlined way to show how evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology are but two ways of seeing the same thing - how individuals and cultures behave in the world. Nature and nurture are not opposed to each other, but they are also not equal in their significance. Nature, the biological part, explains the why of cultural practices. Nurture, the cultural part, explains how the nature part is accomplished.
*An argument can be made that are also universally disposed toward Jungian type archetypal (thus, universal at the species level) objects (mother, father, the group/tribe, sexual) that relate to need, and danger figures (demon) such as the devil and the suspect, non-group other.
The widely divergent approaches reflect a problem with the theoretical framework that underlie these schools of thought: they all focus on cultural practices that are of course highly variable. In the now classic nature-versus-nurture division, anthropological theory relies heavily on the nurture side. It looks at variable content, which is the nurture part, but it largely ignores the biological universals, which is the nature part.
An alternative approach is that nature gives form to cultural content. It’s this form that is universal whereas the content that fills the form is not. Universal form begins with pain. Per Schopenhauer, pain is what is needed to maintain an equilibrium state, and pain is also a threat and harm to that equilibrium state. Pain motivates behavior to get what a life form needs to survive and reproduce. Motivated behavior is desire (as Spinoza argued). Pain also motivates behavior to defend the self by resisting what a life form doesn’t want. Fear and anger are the primary emotion states that lead to defending-resisting (and anger- and fear-based) behavior. When there’s success, there is pleasure (biologically, an equilibrium state). When there’s failure, pain (biologically, a disequilibrium state) remains.
These universal human forms are shared with all of life. But the behavior of other life forms is fixed within instinctive (automatic) structures that combine the motive (reason for) acting and reacting, with relevant objects that are substantially built into the instinctive structures, and the behavior that links relevant objects to desire (need) and resisting (via fear and anger). Whereas, with humans, the motive force (need-desire; threats and harm) remains fixed and invariant, that which serves need and that which threatens or harms is variable (e.g. we need to move to get food is invariable; the way we move changes over time).* Before we walked. Now we drive cars. Previously, the threat or harm were wild animals; today it is car accidents.
Evolutionary theory, with the concept of adaptation, explains the distinction between the invariant biological forms (need, fear-anger) and the specific content that fills these forms. Species change the way these forms are filled over time. Humans change the way they satisfy need at any point in time; that which constitutes a threat or harm also change at any point in time, and causes new types of reaction that fit the nature of a threat or harm. Species and individuals, in other words, change how they get what they need and change the way they defend against threats and harm (offensive and defensive arms race for example).
Adaptation is built into our biological structure and the variability that the anthropological schools emphasize fill those underlying forms with cultural content. This can be seen when we look at the basic categories of need. Our need for nurture is universal; how that need is met varies by culture. Our need for security within a group is invariant (tribalism). How that need is met leads to a vast array of cultural practices. Our need for sexual mates is invariant, but the courtship and marriage rituals vary. It’s the same for threats and harms that stimulate fear and anger, which are universal phenomena that center around something other, the non-group, the outsider group, that is regarded with suspicion or hostility.
The expressions of universal forms are also variable by individual. To say that human nature is one thing is incomplete. It is only at the highest levels (we are not elephants or dogs) that we are all the same. But beyond that, human nature, reflecting Darwinian variability, is individualized. This distinction between what is universal and what is individualized can be seen in the concept of human freedom. Humans, like all of life, need to be free to seek and free to defend, and they need to have power (capacity) to seek and defend, but these needs can be satisfied at the expense of others or by working with them (via cooperation, reciprocity, and compassion). Some individuals and cultures that condone the former express a survival of the fittest mentality. Others -individuals and cultures - see survival and well being coming from group solidarity. Such variability is mainly expressed along a continuum between these twin poles.
Religious expression also shows this difference between what is universal and how that universal is filled with specific cultural expressions. Reflecting the self’s impelling drive to survive, the self needs to live and live well forever. The flip side of that need is the fear of that not being so. This motive force explains the why of religion. Culture then fills in the details with specific content - all the rules, belief systems, rituals, etc. that are directed toward living well and forever, and that ward off threats and harm, such as physical pain and death.
This is an outlined way to show how evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology are but two ways of seeing the same thing - how individuals and cultures behave in the world. Nature and nurture are not opposed to each other, but they are also not equal in their significance. Nature, the biological part, explains the why of cultural practices. Nurture, the cultural part, explains how the nature part is accomplished.
*An argument can be made that are also universally disposed toward Jungian type archetypal (thus, universal at the species level) objects (mother, father, the group/tribe, sexual) that relate to need, and danger figures (demon) such as the devil and the suspect, non-group other.
January 6, 2017
I regularly use this book as part of the IB Social Anthropology course. Whilst it contains useful information, it is hideously dry and full of academese. My students find great difficulty sometimes understanding certain concepts and theories as the writing is unnecessarily complex.
I am going to look for alternative books to use.
I am going to look for alternative books to use.
Want to read
November 22, 2009Read parts of this for a theory of anthropology calss a few years back.
June 9, 2015
A textbook covering the major theorists in anthropology. Interesting but dry.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews