Unit 10    The Science of Custom
I. Learning objectives
1.Learn to use definition in exposition (e.g. anthropology, custom, culture etc).
2.Know something about anthropology, especially cultural determinism and cultural relativism in anthropological studies.
II  Teaching time: six class periods
III  Teaching Procedure:
  Step 1  Warm-up questions
1.In Para. 1 the author starts exposition by mentioning some false ideas that people have about “custom”. What do people usually think about “custom”?
2.What is the transitional expression to introduce the author’s own concept on “custom”?
3.What expository means that the author uses to explain what he thinks the meaning of “custom”?
4.After a definition of “custom”, the author adds, “Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter.” What does “that” refer” to?
5.How would you comment on the function of the last sentence of the final paragraph? Examine the statement and decide how many aspects that we expect the author would elaborate?
6.What is the difference between customs and language?
7.Sum up the main ides of this paragraph. How is this paragraph related to the thesis statement?
8.The author quotes John Dewey, a famous educator and philosopher, to explain the predominant influences customs exert on a person. Find the analogy and explain it. Does the general language pattern affect personal speech habits or the other way round?
9.Sum up the role of customs discussed in Para. 2.
10.How does the author explain the individual behavior it shaped by customs?
11.The author says in the topic sentence that we have to accept certain “preliminary propositions”. What are “preliminary propositions” in author’s mind?
12.What criticism is implored in Para. 3?
13.What is the normal method when we make research in natural science? In what way does natural science differ from social science? How has the study of man different from the study of less controversial subjects?
14.How would you define “anthropology”?
15.What criterion must be the anthropologist accepts before he can undertake the study of man objectively? How to make a study on custom?
Step 2  Relevant information
1.A discussion of the notion of culture
The concept of culture has long been a hotly contested issue. Duranti (1997: 23-50) in her 1997 work Anthropological Linguistics makes a review of six theories of culture in which language plays a particularly important role. The first view of culture is that of something learned, transmitted, passed down from one generation to the next, through the human actions, either in face-to-face interaction or through linguistic communication. This view of culture as learned is often understood in opposition to the view of human behavior as a product from nature, hence the nature/nurture dichotomy. The second view is to interpret culture in terms of knowledge of the world. This does not only mean that members of a culture must know certain facts or be able to recognize objects, places, and people. It also means that they must share certain patterns of thought, ways of understanding the world, making inferences and predictions. The third view is the semiotic theory of culture that takes culture as communication, i.e., as a system of signs. In its most basic version, this view holds that culture is a representation of the world, a way of making sense of reality by objectifying it in stories, myths, descriptions, theories, proverbs, artistic products and perfor
mances. The fourth theory sees culture as a system of mediation. The common use of a language is believed to take place at the same level as the common use of all of the objects which surround us in the society in which we were born and in which we live. In this view, culture includes material objects such as the umbrella and ideational objects such as belief systems and linguistic codes. Both material and ideational structures are instruments through which humans mediate their relationship with the world. The fifth theory views culture as a system of practices. It emphasizes the fact that the human actor can culturally exist and function only as a participant in a series of habitual activities that are both presupposed and reproduced by his individual actions. Related to culture as a system of practices is the sixth theory, the idea of culture as a system of participation. It is based on the assumption that any action in the world, including verbal communication, has an inherently social, collective, and participatory quality. This notion of culture is particularly useful for looking at how language is used in the real world because to speak a language means to be able to participate in interactions with a world that is always larger than we as individual speakers, and even larger than what we can see and touch in any given situation.
From these different theories of culture we can see that culture is a highly complex notion and a much contested ground. What is of particular relevance to our discussion of language and culture is that the concept of language is either explicitly or implicitly embedded in each of these theories of culture. However, the argument of this dissertation does not depend on affirming any one theory of culture presented here, but needs only to recognize that, whichever cultural theory we adopt, “language always play an important part” (ibid.: 49).
                                  ----Rewritten by Chen Yan
2.Culture relativism
Cultural relativism in anthropology is a key methodological concept which is universally accepted within the discipline. This concept is based on theoretical considerations which are key to the understanding of "scientific" anthropology as they are key to the understanding of the anthropological frame of mind. Cultural relativism is an anthropological approach which posit that all cultures are of equal value and need to be stureaction to a book or an article
died from a neutral point of view. The study of a and/or any culture has to be done with a cold and neutral eye so that a particular culture can be understood at its own merits and not another culture?s. Historically, cultural relativism has had a twin theoretical approach, historical particularism. This is the notion that the proper way to study culture is to study one culture in depth. The implications of cultural relativism and historical particularism have been significant to anthropology and to the social sciences in general.
The roots of cultural relativism go to the rejection of the comparative school of the nineteenth century on the basis of exact and specific ethnological information. This information rejected the comparative school?s methodology and as a result its evolutionary conclusions. Furthermore, as the basis of cultural relativism is a scientific view of culture, it also rejects value judgments on cultures. There is, in this view, no single scale of values which holds true for all cultures and by which all culture can be judged. Beliefs, aesthetics, morals and other cultural items can only be judged through their relevance to a given culture. For example, good and bad in are culture specific and can not be imposed in cultural analysis. The reason for this view is, of course, that what is good in one culture ma
y not be bad in an other. This indicates that every culture determines its own ethical judgments to regulate the proper behavior of its members. A result of this view is that it assumes that most individuals would prefer to live in the culture in which they have been enculturated. It must be added to the discussion above that the cultural in cultural relativism and historical particularism is about specific cultures and not about a more abstract, singular and general concept of culture.

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