“…Almost anything human could be, and at some point has been used as the basis for a definition of culture. (Bohannan 1973, p. 358)Culture has become the plaything of journalists and historians, the Barbie doll of sociologists, the Toys ‘R’ Us of the cultural anthropologists. It is an idiot's delight.…”
Section: The Concept Of ‘Culture’ and Its Measurementmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Almost anything human could be, and at some point has been used as the basis for a definition of culture. (Bohannan 1973, p. 358)…”
Section: The Concept Of ‘Culture’ and Its Measurementmentioning
Culture is a key concept in contemporary cultural and economic geography, but geographical research on culture is thus far mainly limited to case studies. To supplement this qualitative approach with a quantitative analysis of cultural causes and effects of geographic phenomena a data set is needed that somehow measures culture. This paper presents an attempt at such a measurement at the spatial scale of Dutch municipalities. Culture as a 'map for behaviour' is measured here indirectly, by means of factor analysis. Five dimensions of Dutch regional culture were found in this way: (1) post-materialism; (2) Protestant conservatism; (3) classical individualism; (4) egalitarian anti-conservatism; and (5) dissatisfaction. Although the regional differences in these dimensions are to a considerable extent related to differences in urbanisation, income and education rather than to some historical cultural geography, the measurement is shown to be empirically relevant and can be used in further research on culture in geography. Copyright (c) 2006 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd..
“…Almost anything human could be, and at some point has been used as the basis for a definition of culture. (Bohannan 1973, p. 358)Culture has become the plaything of journalists and historians, the Barbie doll of sociologists, the Toys ‘R’ Us of the cultural anthropologists. It is an idiot's delight.…”
Section: The Concept Of ‘Culture’ and Its Measurementmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Almost anything human could be, and at some point has been used as the basis for a definition of culture. (Bohannan 1973, p. 358)…”
Section: The Concept Of ‘Culture’ and Its Measurementmentioning
Culture is a key concept in contemporary cultural and economic geography, but geographical research on culture is thus far mainly limited to case studies. To supplement this qualitative approach with a quantitative analysis of cultural causes and effects of geographic phenomena a data set is needed that somehow measures culture. This paper presents an attempt at such a measurement at the spatial scale of Dutch municipalities. Culture as a 'map for behaviour' is measured here indirectly, by means of factor analysis. Five dimensions of Dutch regional culture were found in this way: (1) post-materialism; (2) Protestant conservatism; (3) classical individualism; (4) egalitarian anti-conservatism; and (5) dissatisfaction. Although the regional differences in these dimensions are to a considerable extent related to differences in urbanisation, income and education rather than to some historical cultural geography, the measurement is shown to be empirically relevant and can be used in further research on culture in geography. Copyright (c) 2006 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd..
“…Earlier, Holloway (1969) wrote a long piece in which he defended the idea that only humans have cultures. Another anthropologist, Bohannan (1973), argued, on the contrary, that it was time anthropologists took an interest in animal cultures, but his essay did not obtain the readership that his bold ideas deserved. And when sociologists set out to…”
Section: Is the Idea Of Animal Cultures Coherent?mentioning
The question of animal cultures has once again become a subject of debate in ethology, and is now one of its most active and problematic areas. One surprising feature of this research, however, is the lack of attention paid to the communications that go on in these complex animal societies, with the exception of mechanisms of social learning. This neglect of communications is all the more troubling because many ethologists are unwilling to acknowledge that animals have cultures precisely because they do not possess language, a refusal therefore on semiotic grounds. In the present article, I show that the biosemiotic approach to animal cultures is, on the contrary, essential to their understanding, even if the complexity of animal communications is far from being well enough understood. I consider that some of the consequences of this approach are very important, in particular the question of whether we can talk about subjects in the case of animals. Alternatively, I suggest that the semiotic approach to animal cultures leads to a discussion of some of the most serious limitations of biosemiotics, particularly when it comes to investigating the status of the interlocutors in a social community, or to taking into account interspeci®c communications and the social dimension of any biosemiotic interaction ± which biosemiotics has for the moment failed to do. Finally I call attention to the importance of animals living in human communities and suggest that this be studied so as to better apprehend the capacities for culture in non-human living organisms.
“…I should point out here, that I took the liberty of summing up the definition of culture in an improvised 'undocumentary' way because I needed it to place my problem. Some more works on the subject: Baumann (1968), Bohannan (1973), Henle (1958), Hymes (1964), Kaplan (1972), Sapii (1957), Smith (1966), Steward (1972), and Zolkiewski (1968). 3…”
Culture means a way of life following rules and patterns accepted and ratified by the community and society. It means forms of praxis connected in space and time, kinds of praxis objectivated in practice. This praxis has, naturally, a great many consequences on the environment and the individual. Many definitions of culture approach the problem from this pragmatic side as, for example, when civilization is considered to be personal culture -even the so-called objective culture.This obviously includes the possibility that culture values or, more exactly, prefers certain elements of the mass of behaviour possible in theory. We can consider culture as value only in this respect. In other words, behaviour is regulated, settled, 'civilized'.A further important element of culture is its inheritability, for it can be transferred by objectivation in the different supports of culture (in media), in other words, in sign systems. In point of fact, literature, language, music, film, etc., are all supports of culture. Speaking about audio-visual culture we mean nothing else but information objectivated, 'composed' in serhiotic systems operating with visible and audible sign-vehicles at the same time (e.g., worker's behaviour models in present-day Hungarian films). Culture is also a system of information in this sense and it can be rightfully comprehended as a code or semiotic system which, according to Lotman,?· directs, leads or generates the praxis of being a text (Lotman calls this the culture of grammars). We can consider culture a text, or a collection of texts, if we do not think of rules but of patterns similar to those formed by practice (this would be the culture of texts). Thus our interest is attracted by the typological characteristics of single concrete cultures. I quote here Baläzs: "The silent forms of expressions of film have developed gradually but very quickly and they have developed the ability of the public to understand this new form language at the same time. Not only a new art has taken shape before our eyes but a man with new sensibility, new ability and new culre"T his passage points to two things. A sign system is not only the composer
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