Culture

A

4

Effects on the Environment

Hunting and gathering, horticultural, and pastoral ways of life generally make small demands on the natural environment, because people tend to gather or grow only enough food and other materials for their basic needs. These nomadic or seminomadic societies can also move away from depleted areas, allowing plants to regrow and animals to repopulate.

Agricultural societies can heavily burden the environment, sometimes endangering their own survival. For example, early Mediterranean civilizations deforested and overgrazed large areas of land. These damages to the land prompted soil erosion, which made food production increasingly costly over time.

Industrial societies put even larger demands on the environment, and they may someday exhaust important supplies of natural resources. The mass production of goods is often wasteful and polluting. Thus, large societies must also put great effort into disposing of their wastes and developing new sources of energy and material resources.

B

Social Culture

People in all types of societies organize themselves in relation to each other for work and other duties, and to structure their interactions. People commonly organize themselves according to (1) bonds by kinship and marriage, (2) work duties and economic position, and (3) political position. Important factors in family, work, and political relations include age and gender (behaviors and roles associated with men and women).

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B

1

Kinship and Family

In smaller societies people organize themselves primarily according to ties of kinship (blood relation) and marriage. Kin generally give each other preferential treatment over nonkin. People who share ties by blood and marriage commonly live together in families. See also Kinship and Descent.

Small societies categorize kin in many different ways and define appropriate types of behavior between kin, including who can marry. In band societies, people know their relationships to others in their band, which usually includes only a few families. People do not marry within their immediate family, but often take spouses from other bands to create ties that bond them together in times of need.

All people in bands generally respect each other as equals, though children must show increased respect for their elders. The eldest group members often earn special recognition for their knowledge. Men and women in bands also commonly regard each other as equals.

People living in tribes belong to lineages or clans, which are large kin groups that trace their descent to a common ancestor. Clans are somewhat larger than lineages and usually cover more generations. Clans trace their descent to a fictitious ancestor (ancestor whose true identity is not known), often identified as an animal spirit or clan totem (see Totemism).

For instance, many Native American societies (see Native Americans of North America: Social and Political Organization), in both North and South America, live or once lived in tribes. One Native American group, the Navajo, who have long lived primarily in what is now Arizona, organized themselves in the past as matrilineal (descent traced through women) clan-based tribes. Status and property passed to people through their mother’s line.

Kinship and family relations are both important in agricultural societies, as well as for many people in industrial and commerce-based societies. But for many people today living in large societies, kinship and family relations have become less important. Many people live alone or in small families and also depend on organizations, workplaces, and government institutions to provide support available in smaller societies from family and kin.

B

2

Work Life

Anthropologists call the smallest unit of economic production in any society a household. A household consists of a group of people, usually a family, who work collectively to support each other and often to raise children.

In small, independent band and tribal societies, individual households produce their own food, clothing, and shelter. Men and women commonly divide work duties; men hunting and building shelters and women gardening, cooking, and caring for children. People in small societies often live in extended families, in which several generations of kin and relatives by marriage live in the same household. Sometimes, however, men and women live in separate places, especially if they also often work and participate in ceremonies apart from members of the opposite sex.

In chiefdoms and civilizations, households have to produce enough to support themselves and their leaders. All households do not always have equal access to needed materials, such as tools or draft animals, or land. Thus, some families have higher status than others do. On the whole, men in these societies have higher status than women and perform fewer menial tasks.

In civilizations, many people specialize in offering a variety of services and producing a variety of goods. Each occupation is commonly associated with a different level of status, usually referred to as an economic class. Hindus in India, by comparison, live according to the caste system, in which a person’s status is fixed at birth and closely tied to his or her occupation.

In industrial societies, few households are self-sufficient. For instance, most people could not build their own houses, grow and cook all of their own food, and make all of their clothes. Most people also depend on technologies that no one could produce alone from raw materials, such as cars, refrigerators, and computers.

In addition, most households in industrial societies consist of nuclear families, which contain only parents and their children. Nuclear families lack the support network and productive capabilities of extended families. Fathers in nuclear families commonly work to earn income, while mothers manage the household and care for children—often in addition to working for income. These gender role patterns have changed somewhat since the 1960s to more equal roles for men and women. People in most modern industrial and commerce-based societies also identify strongly with groups of people united by work, such as professional organizations and labor unions. These groups are entirely separate from family and kinship ties.

B

3

Leadership and Political Power

Groups of people living in bands have no formal leadership, and all people have input in making group decisions. Most decision-making in tribes occurs within households. Occasionally, most or all members of lineages or clans convene to make important village decisions, such as about dealing with neighboring tribes. Descent groups may also regulate access to crucial resources, such as favored hunting areas, and choose where people will live.

Within most tribes, all groups commonly have about equal status. Since every person belongs to a descent group, no one person ranks too far above or below another. In some tribes, however, people known as big men might earn a degree of higher status and respect than others by demonstrating bravery or bravado.

Chiefdoms, larger than most tribes, consist of at least two very large descent groups organized under rulers known as chiefs, who are born into their positions of leadership. Chiefs must prove that they are closest in descent to the founding ancestor of the highest ranked clans within chiefdoms. They live as full-time rulers who may not have to work at productive duties. Chiefs have the power to collect some of the goods people produce, such as food, and redistribute them in times of need or use them in ceremony.

In the past, chiefdoms existed in a great number of Polynesian societies on Pacific Ocean islands, such as those that make up what is now Hawaii. Chiefdoms were the first societies to have positions of defined, permanent leadership. Chiefdoms still exist in some places under national governments. For instance, chiefs of the Kpelle of Liberia are political leaders for the country’s national districts.

Civilizations have powerful autonomous bodies of authority managed by formal bureaucracies. This political structure is formally known as a state. Some of the first major state societies existed in the area known as Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, and in ancient Egypt (see Egypt: History).

A state may claim ownership of all its territory and resources and may wage wars against other nations. Important families may rule states for several generations, though this happened more commonly in the past. But all states have distinct social and economic classes, and higher classes have greater political influence or power than do lower classes.

Families still rule some states, sometimes as royalty and sometimes as elected aristocracies (small groups, often families, deemed by citizens as qualified to rule). But many states today have elected governments not based on family lines. The citizens of these states share a common identity based on language, ideals, shared rituals, and other cultural bonds. This form of state is known as a nation.

Many national governments serve the interests of business and commerce as much as they do individuals and families. In many cases commercial corporations (businesses created through legal means) have a great deal of political influence. Corporations and large economic market exchanges control the production and distribution of goods and services, as well as transfers of money. Access to employment, not family, often determines where people live. People who cannot earn sufficient income may live in poverty, and many of the poor depend on government welfare for economic support.

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