Understanding Nature, Culture, and Human Development
Two Ideas: Nature and Culture
- Nature: The first philosophers viewed nature as a dynamic whole. Aristotle saw beings moving with purpose.
- Culture:
Strong Culture
- Subjective Culture: Knowledge acquired through learning in a social context.
- Objective Culture: Objective expressions of culture in human productions within a social context.
History of Relations Between Nature and Culture
For a long time, nature was seen as the opposite of culture. Cartesian dualism distinguished between body (natural functions) and mind (symbolic ability). Rousseau argued that cultural development distances us from nature. Heredia considered culture a second human nature. Freud viewed culture as repressing nature.
The Link Between Humankind, Nature, and Culture
- Learning: Instinctive behaviors limit responses; learning allows free action and the construction of culture.
Mechanisms of Cultural Learning:
- Education: Acquiring new behaviors through consequences.
- Imitation: Learning by imitating others, requiring significant brain development.
- Assimilating Information: A uniquely human capacity requiring a range of abilities.
Instincts, Language, and Symbols:
Biological evolution has gradually replaced instincts. Language is learned and serves as a repository of knowledge, allowing information to be transmitted and accumulated across generations. This opens the way for humanization and the construction of a world based on culture.
Culture as a Social Product:
The fundamental difference between animal and human culture lies in the complexity of human cultural productions. Culture encompasses knowledge, sciences, art, morals, law, customs, and habits acquired by humankind.
- Culture is a set of elements distinct from nature.
- Humankind expands its capabilities through culture.
- Culture emerges within a network of social relations, encompassing everything an individual learns and everything generated in that context.
Human Cultural Diversity
- Multiculturalism: A society with diverse cultures, attitudes, and practices.
Attitudes Toward Diversity:
- Cultural Relativism: Customs and practices are part of a culture and cannot be understood outside of it.
- Ethnocentrism: The tendency to consider one’s own culture superior and a universal model, judging other practices as incorrect if they differ.
- Relationalism: Recognizes the limited validity of each culture and acknowledges multiple decision criteria. Cultural exchange is considered positive.
- Solution: Finding universal values valid for all cultures to establish a basis for multicultural coexistence.
Cultural Identity:
The set of common features that a human group identifies with:
- Shared material elements
- Social behaviors and subjective nature
- Conceptions
Notions of Cultural Identity:
- Essentialist: Defines identity elements statically, seeking to preserve customs and institutions.
- Historical: Considers cultures as products of historical changes, viewing cultural identity as a project.
Key Terms:
Hominization: The evolutionary process leading to the emergence of humans.
Lineage: Relationship between a group from which a line of affiliation can be drawn.
Acculturation: Assimilation of other customs.
Xenophobia: Rejection and contempt for what is strange or different from one’s own culture.
Essentialism: Assumes things have a set of defining features.