CULTURAL

ANTHROPOLOGY

JOEMAR P. PRADO
MaEd - English
 OBJECTIVES
• To understand the role of the environment and human
biology that played in shaping human behaviour
• To appreciate cultural forms – from rituals to class
relations to one’s self-understanding ­– are socially or
culturally constructed and enacted by symbolic process
• To demonstrate an ability to respect other cultures
without abandoning their own points of view
 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

This is the study of

human ways of life in the
broadest possible
comparative perspective.

  https://anthropology.dartmouth.edu/undergraduate/courses/
cultural-anthropology
The Universal Pattern
Clark Wissler
(September 18, 1870 – August 25, 1947)
was an American Anthropologist.
– one of the earliest anthropologists to deal
explicitly with the so-called universal
pattern in the culture namely: speech,
technology, art, mythology, science,
political, religion, medicine, family and
society, property system, and warfare.
 Universal Cultural Pattern
This is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is
common to all human cultures worldwide.
Example:
• Communicating with a verbal language
• Using age and gender to classify people
• Classifying people based on marriage and descent
relationships
• Raising children in some sort of family setting
The Study of Early Culture
Language/Speech
• Language is “a distinctly human
system of behaviour based on
oral symbols.” Sound and
symbol may differ markedly
from one group and area to area.
Men speak and this is a universal
pattern.
 The Study of Early Culture
Technology
• When we speak of the
technologies of a people, we
are referring to manmade
elements in culture that have
physical existence of their
own.
The Study of Early Culture
Arts
• The primary function of art,
especially primitive art, is to
communicate the value
scheme of the culture.
 The Study of Early Culture
Mythology
• Myths are ways in which the
institutions and expectations of
the society are emphasized and
made dramatic and persuasive
in narrative form.
 The Study of Early Culture
Religion
• There is no evidence for any theory
of an origin of religion in time or
place, and most anthropologist have
ceased to take their bearings in the
study of religions from any religion
practiced in their own society.
 The Study of Early Culture
Supernatural Beliefs and Practices
• Religion is manifested not only through symbolism
and tribal ceremonies. It also permeates the thought
and feelings of individuals; it expresses itself through
spells an incantations; it blends into magic and
sorcery; it is manages by specialist – the shaman and
the priest; and maybe organized into cults.
 The Study of Early Culture
Supernatural Beliefs and Practices
• Animism – belief in spirit beings, is the most basic and
universal component of religious ideology. Sir Edward
Tylor, an English anthropologist, saw the origin of
animism in the phenomena of dreams, of life and
death. The attribution of spirit qualities to plants and
objects then produced what we call “nature worship.”
 The Study of Early Culture
Supernatural Beliefs and Practices
• Mana – the belief in the supernatural attributes of person and
things which are not ascribed to the presence of spirit beings. It
is the exceptional power to do things that are unusual.
• All religions involve taboo, an expression of constraints
designed to protect the sacred. It consists of prohibitions: “thou
shall not’ s” violation of taboo, is sin; and the sanctions of sin
are various forms of supernatural punishment.
 The Study of Early Culture
Medicine
• Disease is understood as being caused by the
violation of some taboo, or any attack by ghost or a
witch. The process of curing must be prefaced by a
ceremony of divination. This is the means of
finding the cause of the difficulty. Following this is
the precise ceremonial cure.
 The Study of Early Culture
Family
• The universal functions of the family are: (1) the
institutionalization of mating and the establishment of
legal parents for a woman’s children; (2) nurture and
enculturation of the young; (3) organization of a
complementary division of labor between spouses; (4)
the establishment of relationships of descent and
affinity.
 The Study of Early Culture
Property System
• Property operates to keep use and enjoyment and
disposal in expected channels; it contributes to the
working of society in wide and far-reaching ways;
to confer and to limit power and the basis for
getting more power; to serve as a criterion for
status; to provide motives for effort.
 The Study of Early Culture
Political System
• Political institutions clearly appear, however, in
many tribal societies; there is a chief who has the
power to decide issues or to lead in the making of
decisions; there may be a council; there may be a
group to police the people.
 The Study of Early Culture
Warfare
• Of many forms of organized violence, warfare is that
one which has political consequences. The rivalry
between closely related groups that are an aspect of the
in – group sentiments just referred to, often leads, to
organized violence. Usually such violence, which is not
war, follows the commission by some individual of an
act which in a modern society would be called a crime.
 SUMMARY
• Clark Wissler conceived nine universal patterns,
namely speech, technology, art, mythology, and
science, religions, and medicine, family and
society, property system and warfare. These
approaches on universal pattern dominate most
cultures particularly in the Philippines.
 SUMMARY
Puberty Phenomenon – The attitude of young
people to the authority of the community and its
social behaviour, is considered by an almost
unanimous scientific opinion to depend on
social and cultural influences.
- Wilheim Sjostrand
 REFERENCES
• https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropol
ogy/Introduction
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal
• https://
anthropology.dartmouth.edu/undergraduate/cours
es/cultural-anthropology