Culture
Culture includes beliefs, rules of behavior, language, custom, rituals, art, technology, and ways of producing, cooking food, religion, political and economic systems of people. Culture, in anthropology, the patterns of behavior and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create, and share. Culture distinguishes one human group from others. It also distinguishes humans from other animals.
Culture is the most important concept in anthropology (the study of all aspects of human life, past and present). Anthropologists commonly use the term culture to refer to a society or group in which many or all people live and think in the same ways.
Culture developed together with the evolution of the human species, Homo sapiens, is closely related to human biology. The ability of people to have culture comes in large part from their physical features: having big, complex brains; an upright posture; free hands that can grasp and manages small objects; and a vocal tract that can produce and a wide range of sounds. These distinctive human physical features began to develop in African ancestors of humans more than four million years ago. The earliest physical evidence of culture is crude stone tools produced in East Africa over two million years ago.
The Characteristics of Culture
Culture has several distinguishing characteristics. (1) It is based on symbols—abstract ways of referring to and understanding ideas, objects, feelings, or behaviors—and the ability to communicate with symbols using language. (2) Culture is shared. People in the same society share common behaviors and ways of thinking through culture. (3) Culture is learned. While people biologically inherit many physical traits and behavioral instincts, culture is socially inherited. A person must learn culture from other people in a society. (4) Culture is adaptive. People use culture to flexibly and quickly adjust to changes in the world around them.
a. Culture Is Symbolic
People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts and to exchange those thoughts with others. Language and other forms of symbolic communication, such as art, enable people to create, explain, and record new ideas and information.
A symbol has either an indirect connection or no connection at all with the object, idea, feeling, or behavior to which it refers. For instance, most people find some meaning in the combination of the colors red, white, and blue. But those colors themselves have nothing to do with.
To convey new ideas, people constantly invent new symbols, such as for mathematical formulas. In addition, people may use one symbol, such as a single word, to represent many different ideas, feelings, or values. Thus, symbols provide a flexible way for people to communicate even very complex thoughts with each other. For example, only through symbols can architects, engineers, and construction workers communicate the information necessary to construct a skyscraper or bridge.
People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language. Research has shown, for example, that infants have a basic structure of language, a sort of universal grammar built into their minds. Infants are thus willing to learn the languages spoken by the people around them.
b. Culture Is Learned
People are not born with culture; they have to learn it. For instance, people must learn to speak and understand a language and to comply with the rules of a society. In many societies, all people must learn to produce and prepare food and to construct shelters. In other societies, people must learn a skill to earn money, which they then use to provide for themselves. In all human societies, children learn culture from adults. Anthropologists call this process enculturation, or cultural transmission.
Families commonly protect and acculturated children in the households of their birth for 15 years or more. Only at this point can children leave and establish their own households. People also continue to learn throughout their lifetimes. Thus, most societies respect their elders, who have learned for an entire lifetime.
c. Culture Is Shared
People living together in a society share culture. For example, almost all people living in the United States share the English language, dress in similar styles, eat many of the same foods, and celebrate many of the same holidays.
All the people of a society collectively create and maintain culture. Societies preserve culture for much longer than the life of any person. They preserve it in the form of knowledge, such as scientific discoveries; objects, such as works of art; and traditions.
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
Self-identity usually depends on culture. Sometimes multicultural societies can cause a feeling of confusion and disorientation. Anthropologists refer to this phenomenon as culture shock. In multicultural societies—societies such as the United States into which people come from a diversity of cultures-unshared forms of culture can lead to a big tension.
Members of a society who share culture often also share some feelings of ethnocentrism, the notion that one’s culture is more sensible or superior than the other societies. Ethnocentrism contributes to the integrity of culture because it asserts people’s shared beliefs and values in the face of other, often contradictory, beliefs and values held by people of other cultures. At its worst, ethnocentrism has led people to commit ethnocide (the destruction of cultures), and genocide (the destruction of entire populations). This happened, for example, to Jews living in Nazi Germany in the 1940s.
Unlike ethnocentrism, cultural relativism leads the people into another concept. Someone observing cultural relativism tries to respect all cultures equally. Although only someone living within a group that shares culture can fully understand that culture, cultural relativists believe that outsiders can learn to respect beliefs and practices that they do not share.
Sharing Culture across Societies
Since no human society exists in compete isolation, different societies also exchange and share culture. In fact, all societies have some interactions with others, and thus even highly self-sufficient societies sometimes need assistance from their neighbors. Today, for instance, many people around the world use similar kinds of technology, such as cars, telephones, and televisions. Commercial trade and communication technologies, such as computer networks, have created a form of global culture. Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult to find culture that is shared within only a single society.
Cultural exchange can provide many benefits for all societies. Different societies can exchange ideas, people, manufactured goods, and natural resources.
Cross-cultural exchange often results in what anthropologists call acculturation, when the members of one culture adopt features of another. This has happened, for example, when native peoples in the western hemisphere adopted the language and many of the customs of Spain, which colonized South and Central America beginning in the 1500s.
Subcultures
Some groups of people share a different set of cultural traits within a larger society. Such groups are often referred to as subcultures. For instance, the members of a subculture may share a distinct language such as Pashto, Dari, spoken by similar cultural peoples. Thus, these societies have the characteristics of subcultures.
Culture Is Adaptive
Culture helps human societies survive in changing natural environments. For example, the end of the last Ice Age, beginning about 15,000 years ago, created an enormous challenge to which humans had to adapt. Before this time, large portions of the northern hemisphere were covered in great sheets of ice that contained much of the earth’s water. In North America, large animals that roamed the vast regions and provided people with food and materials for clothing and simple shelters. When the earth warmed, large Ice Age animals disappeared, and many land areas were submerged by rising sea levels from melting ice. But people survived. They developed new technologies and learned how to subsist on new plant.
Cultural adaptation has made humans one of the most successful species on the planet. Through history, major developments in technology, medicine, and nutrition have allowed people to reproduce and survive in ever-increasing numbers. The global population has risen from 8 million during the Ice Age to almost 6 billion today.
However, the successes of culture can also create problems in the long run of time. Over the last 200 years, people have begun to use large quantities of natural resources and energy and to produce a great amount of material and chemical wastes. The global population now consumes some crucial natural resources, such as petroleum, wood, and mineral ores faster than nature can produce them. Many scientists believe that in the process of burning fuels and producing wastes, people may be altering the global climate in unpredictable and possibly harmful ways. Thus, the adaptive success of the present-day global culture of production may be temporary.
Categories of Culture
Anthropologists have described a number of different categories of culture. Through out the past and after several categorizations lately anthropologists came up with simpler categorizations of culture. A common practice is to divide all of culture into four broad categories: material, social, ideological, and artistic.
Material culture includes products of human manufacture, such as technology. Social culture pertains to people’s forms of social groups, how people interact and organize themselves in groups. Ideological culture relates to what people think, value, believe, and hold as morals. The arts include such activities and areas of interest as music, sculpture, painting, pottery, theater, cooking, writing, and fashion. Anthropologists often study how these categories of culture differ across different types of societies.
Anthropologists have identified several distinct types of societies by scale. The smallest societies are known as bands. Bands consist of nomadic (not settled) groups of fewer than a hundred, mostly related people. A tribe, the next largest type of society, generally consists of a few hundred people living in settled villages. A larger form of society, called chiefdom, includes together two or more villages or tribes under a leader who is born into the position of rule. The largest societies, known as civilizations, contain from several thousand to millions of mostly unrelated people, many of whom live in large cities. Some anthropologists characterize the world today as a single global culture, in which people are linked together by industrial technology and markets of commercial exchange.
In the above categories arts influentially becomes a major category that contains several cultural treasures remaining from ancestors to up-coming generations.
Art
Art is a distinctly human production, and many people consider it the vital form of culture because it can have the quality of pure expression. Two types of arts first; the material arts include painting, pottery, sculpture, textiles or clothing, and cookery. Second nonmaterial arts include music, dance, drama and dramatic arts, storytelling, and written narratives.
People had begun making art by at least 30,000 years ago, painting stylized animal figures and abstract symbols on caves or walls. For thousands of years people have also adorned their bodies with ornamentation, such as jewelry, colors, and stylized scars.
In most societies people establish their personal and group identity through such forms of artistic expression as patterns of dress and body adornment, ceremonial costumes and dances, or group symbols. For example, many native Afghan groups wear long, colorful, and unique-stylized dresses in a folkdance that represents the purity, identity, and history of their culture.
Many people also use art as a vehicle for spiritual expression or to ask for help from the spiritual world. For instance, some archaeologists believe that one of the earliest known sculptures—a voluptuously shaped female figure made in Willendorf, Austria, over 24,000 years ago and known as the Venus of Willendorf might have been used to invoke supernatural powers to bring its makers reproductive fertility.
In large societies, governments may hire artisans to produce works that will support the political structure. For example, in the Inca Empire, which dominated the Andean region of Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina in the 15th and 16th centuries—the leaders hired metalworkers and textile makers to make exclusive gold and silver jewelry or create special clothing and adornments for them. These royal items displayed symbol that indicated high status. But in contrary, ordinary clothing reflects their low status.
In present-day large societies, many people produce art for commercial and political purposes, in addition to social, personal, and spiritual reasons. A great number of artists make a living by working for businesses that use art to advertise commercial products.
Most large societies today have laws that protect the content and riches of artworks such as books, films, songs, dances, and paintings as intellectual property, which people own and can sell.
History of the Culture
People have long been aware of cultural differences among societies. Some of the earliest anthropologists who explored distinctive features of culture were from Greek before 400bc.
The ancient cultures were distinctly limited to individual groups of people; the diversities of cultures were based upon racial or religious beliefs, thus, the people living in separate areas had no regard toward others’ culture.
Culture has greatly evolved through the long run of time. For example, the ancient people had a simple style of culture, after that, as the time elapsed, with evolution of human beings, creation of technology and change of the world, culture dramatically changed and became more complex in all features and meanings. The industrial revolution, great inventions and common deals brought the people more together and unlike the past, cultures became shared among societies.
The Development of the global Culture
Rapid changes in technology in the last several decades have changed the nature of culture and cultural exchange. People around the world can make economic transactions and transmit information to each other almost instantaneously through the use of computers and satellite communications. Governments and corporations have gained vast amounts of political power through military might and economic influence. Corporations have also created a form of global culture based on worldwide commercial markets.
Early anthropologists thought of societies and their cultures as fully independent systems. But today, many nations are multicultural societies, composed of numerous smaller subcultures. Cultures also cross national boundaries, For instance, people around the world now know a variety of English words and have contact with American cultural exports such as, technological products, films, music, and massive products of foods.
Today, many anthropologists openly oppose efforts by dominant world powers, such as the U.S. government and large corporations, to make unique smaller societies adopt Western culture.
Culture of Afghanistan
Literature
The ancient art of storytelling continues to flourish in Afghanistan, partly in response to widespread illiteracy. This age-old practice of telling folktales, through music and the spoken word is a highly developed and much appreciated art form. Folktales concern all parts of Afghan life and often teach traditional values, beliefs, and behaviors. They are also a major form of entertainment in Afghanistan.
Literature in both the Dari and Pashto languages originated in the early Muslim centuries, when Arabic was also used. The classical literature of Afghanistan has a widespread reputation. For example, the poems of Abdul Rahman Baba (pashton poet), Ahmad Shah Baba, Khuashal Khan, are known to be literally valuable. The ancient leaders inspired poetic personalities to create poems that could present their triumphs and victory in front of others. But modern life has attempted to bring another face of literature to Afghans. The new writings mostly focus on understanding the changes associated with the modern world, and especially to knowing the destruction of their country by war.
Art and Architecture
Great Buddha of Bamian The Great Buddha of Bamian was the world’s largest statue of Buddha, standing 55 m (180 ft) tall in Afghanistan’s Bamian Valley, before Taliban militants destroyed it with explosives in March 2001. The huge statue and a smaller one of a seated Buddha nearby, also destroyed, were carved in about the 6th century by Buddhist believers. The statue had survived centuries of erosion, although some of its features had been diminished by windstorms.
Afghanistan contains striking architectural remnants of all ages, including Greek and Buddhist shrines, monuments, arches, complex Islamic minarets, temples, and many more. Among the most famous sites are the great mosques of Herat and Mazar-e Sharif; the minaret of a mosque at Jam in the west central region; the 1,000-year-old Great Arch of Qal‘eh-ye Bost; the Chel Zina (Forty Steps) and rock inscriptions made by Mughal emperor Babur in Kandahar; the Great Buddha of Bamīan, destroyed by Taliban militants in March 2001; the “Towers of Victory” in Ghaznī; and Emperor Babur’s tomb and the great Bala Hissar of Kābul.
Afghan cultural life is characterized by traditional arts and pastimes; gold and silver jewelry, marvelous decorative embroidery, and various leather goods are still made in homes. By far the greatest art forms known widely from Afghanistan are the Persian-style woven carpets.
Libraries and Museums
The few major libraries are located in Kabul. However, most of the materials in the Kabul University Library (founded in 1931) were dispersed during the war with the Soviets and the subsequent civil war; the National Archives was also looted and its collections removed. Taliban militants burned many thousands of library and museum books in their zealous mission to enforce their strict interpretation of Islam. The Kabul National Museum (1922), the largest in the country, was once known for its collection of early Buddhist relics. Some of the more valuable of these were reported to have been removed to the USSR during the years of the Soviet invasion; their present location is unknown. Ancient gold coins and jewelry were reported to have been taken as well. In 1993 the National Museum was blown open by rockets and subsequently looted by soldiers. The majority of the enormously rich collection was taken out through Pakistan and sold to wealthy collectors in other countries. The trade in Afghan antiquities was reported to be one of the largest producers of illicit revenues after illegal drugs. More than 2,700 works of art in the museum’s remaining collection, including many ancient cultural treasures, were destroyed in 2000 by Taliban religious police. In the regime’s interpretation of Islam, the works were considered to be harmful to both dignity and history of the country.
Recreation
The Taliban restricts many forms of recreation. Varieties of sports are banned, as well as kite flying and playing music in public. Traditionally, however, Afghans enjoy soccer, volleyball, and wrestling. Oral traditions such as storytelling and singing have flourished. Music, played on drums, and a clarinet-like instrument called a Surnai, has traditionally been very popular. Most leisure activities occur in the evening and center around the family.
In Buzkashi, a sport played by ethnic groups in northern Afghanistan, two teams of horsemen (Chapandoz) compete using the headless carcass of a calf or goat. The player in possession of the carcass will suffer all manners of abuse to make him drop it sometimes even from his own teammates, who may want the game prolonged. It is a highly demanding and sometimes dangerous game that requires superb horsemanship.
Music
Music is represented chiefly by traditional folk songs, and dances. Several stringed and stick instruments are being used in playing music. The Attan dance originated from Pashtun areas is the national dance. It is performed in a large circle with the dancers clapping their hands and quickening the movements of their feet to the tone of the music. On vacation, holidays, or weekends Afghans often gather to play music and sing at a picnic on a river side or in gardens. The Taliban government forbade singing, clapping, playing musical instruments and recorded music, and all forms of dance. Many of these activities continued illicitly during Taliban rule, and once the regime fell in late 2001 many Afghans publicly rejoiced by singing and dancing.
Holidays and Celebrations
The typical holidays of Afghanistan include Victory of the Muslim Nation (28 April), Remembrance Day (4 May), and Independence Day (Jashn; 18 August). Jashn, which celebrates liberation from British control in 1919, lasts for a week. Festivities have generally included parades, music and dancing, games, and speeches by leaders. In the past there have been special ceremonies in Kābul, and the Jashn holiday was often an occasion for leaders to announce major policy decisions. The celebration of holidays is likely to be affected by Taliban rule.
Islamic holidays, which are more important, are scheduled according to the lunar calendar, and thus vary from year to year. Ramadan is a month long fast. From sunrise to sundown, people do not eat, drink, or smoke. In the evening, after the sun has set, families and friends gather to eat and visit. The first day of Ramadan is a holiday, and at the end of Ramadan a three-day feast called Eid-e-fitr takes place.
Nauroz, the Islamic New Year, begins on the first day of spring (around 21 March). In Afghanistan it is also Farmers’ Day, with farmers decorating their cows in preparation for agricultural fairs at which they may win prizes.
Buzkashi is played at this time, with hundreds of horsemen on each team. Special foods eaten in honor of the New Year include Samanak, a dessert made of wheat, sugar, nuts and fruits.
Other Islamic holidays include Eid-e-ada, honoring Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son at Allah’s command; Ashura, a Shiite day to mark the martyrdom of Imam Husayn; and Roze-Maulud, the birthday of the prophet Muhammad.
Marriage and Family
Teenage girls adopt pardah—a system in certain Muslim societies involving the seclusion or screening of women from men who are not close family members—and have no contact with men outside the immediate family. Since the Taliban came to power, a woman found in the company of an unrelated man is subject to severe punishment.
Marriages for both male and female are normally arranged, the senior women of the families playing a prominent role in the decision. Among urban or more Westernized families, it was sometimes permissible for a prospective bride and groom to meet with or view each other and approve of or reject the union, but this may not be the case under the rule of the Taliban. Marriages between cousins are common and often preferred, as they strengthen family ties. Matchmakers engage in lengthy negotiations over the bride-price and dowry.
Marriage and engagement rituals are numerous, varied, and complex. Traditionally, the ceremony itself occurs over a three-day period, with some of the festivities at the bride’s family home and some at the groom’s. Most activities occur with the sexes segregated, but all gather for the signing of the marriage contract and recitation of the Qur’an. Divorce is simple, the man need only announce it in public three times, but rare. A man may have up to four wives, but he must provide for each equally; this limits most men to one wife. Premarital and extramarital sex is strictly forbidden and can be grounds for severe punishment (including death) in some areas.
Life in Afghanistan is centered on the extended family. Families in rural areas are often large, with several generations living together in the same compound or close by. The most common dwelling is a mud-brick structure of several rooms, surrounded by high mud walls that provide security from enemies and seclusion for women. Within the compound, the family is led by the senior male (father or grandfather).
Afghans identify primarily with their family, kin group, clan, or tribe. Afghans in rural areas tend to define wealth as land ownership or a large family. Urban residents are more likely to view wealth in terms of money or possessions, and education is highly valued. Nomadic people define wealth by the size of their herds. Jewelry is regarded as a portable form of wealth women's clothing and veils keep valuables largely hidden.
Eating
Afghan cooking is influenced by the foods of South and Central Asia, China, and Iran. Among common foods are the many types of palau (rice mixed with meat and/or vegetables), qorma (vegetable sauce), kebab (skewered meat), aashak (leek-filled pasta) or mantu (meat-filled pasta), and nan (bread). Tomatoes, spinach, potatoes, peas, carrots, cucumbers, and eggplant are also popular. Yogurt and other dairy products are nutritional foods. Sugarcane, a variety of fruits (fresh and dried), and nuts are eaten as desserts and snacks. Chai (tea), either green or black, is the most popular drink. Most Afghans cannot regularly afford meat, but they enjoy beef, mutton, and chicken. An urban diet is usually more varied than a rural one, but food shortages have been severe at times. Poor people may live on Chai and Nan. Islamic law forbids the consumption of alcohol and pork.
Afghans in rural areas commonly eat only breakfast and dinner, but some may have a light lunch. Most have snacks between meals. At meals, Afghans usually sit on the floor around a mat on which food is served in a communal dish. To eat, one uses the fingers of the right hand or a piece of Nan. The left hand is never used to serve oneself, as it is traditionally reserved for personal hygiene. One eats until satisfied and leftover food is saved for later or for the next day’s breakfast. Families normally eat together, but if a male guest is present, females eat separately. Most Afghans do not eat at restaurants, which sometimes have a separate dining area or booths for families.
Socializing
A handshake is a common greeting among men, who tend to be expressive when greeting friends and may pat one another on the back during an embrace or lightly kiss their friends on alternate cheeks. Formal verbal greetings are often accompanied by placing the right hand over the heart. Women friends embrace each other and kiss three times on alternate cheeks. Women might also shake hands. A man does not shake hands with or otherwise touch a woman in public, although he may greet her verbally in an indirect way.
Greetings vary by region and ethnic group, but Arabic greetings are used and universally accepted. Assalaam alaikum (“Peace be upon you”) is replied to with Waalaikum assalaam (“And peace also upon you”). A common Dari greeting is Khubasti? (“Are you well?”), and the Pashto equivalent is Singa ye? “Goodbye” is Khoda hafiz.
In formal situations, an academic or professional title is always used. Hajji (“Pilgrim”) is reserved for those who have made a pilgrimage to Mecca (Makkah) in Saudi Arabia. Socioeconomic status can also determine which title should be used (such as Khan, meaning “Sir”). Some people are respectfully referred to by a title only (for example, Hajji Khan, or “Pilgrim Sir”). Usually, however, titles are combined with names.
Visiting between family, friends, and neighbors is the main social activity in Afghanistan. It is mostly segregated by gender. Homes often have a special room (hujra) where male guests are received by the male host. Females socialize elsewhere in the compound. Guests are served tea and, depending on the time of day, perhaps something to eat. Guests are expected to have at least three cups of tea. Any business discussions occur after refreshments. The ability of an Afghan to generously entertain guests is a sign of social status.
After all I should say that Afghans are very traditional, they have great respect to their culture and, thus, they respect the people who regard their culture.
The End
