Introducing Society 4 · Section 5

Do you notice anything in Malinowski’s definition that is missing in Tylor’s? Apart from his mention of art, all the things listed by Tylor are non-material. This is not because Tylor himself never looked at material culture. He was in fact a museum curator, and most of his anthropological writing was based on the examination of artifacts and tools from societies across the world, which he had never visited.

We can now see his definition of culture as an attempt to take into account its intangible and abstract dimensions, so as to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the societies he was studying. Malinowski happened to be stranded on an island in the Western Pacific during the First World War, and discovered thereby the value of remaining for an extended period with the society one was studying. This led to the establishment of the tradition of “field work” you will read about it in Chapter . The multiple definitions of culture in anthropological studies led Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn (anthropologists from the United States) to publish a comprehensive survey entitled Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions in .

A sample of the various definitions is presented below. Try comparing these definitions to see which of these or which combination of these you find most satisfactory. You may first find yourself noticing words which recur–‘way’, ‘learn’ and ‘behaviour’. However, if you then look at how each is used, you may be struck by the shifts in emphasis.

The first phrase refers to mental ways but the second to the total way of life. Definitions (d), (e) and (f) lay stress on culture as what is shared and passed on among a group and down the generations. The last two phrases are the first to refer to culture as a means of directing behaviour. Culture is… (a) a way of thinking, feeling, believing.

(b) the total way of life of a people. (c) an abstraction from behaviour. (d) learned behaviour. (e) a storehouse of pooled learning.

(f) the social legacy the individual acquires from his group. (g) a set of standardised orientations to recurrent problems. (h) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behaviour.