Concept of Culture

Anthropology introduces culture as a means to perpetuate human existence, because without culture, we would not exist. Individuals are created biologically, while persons are created by social society. Anthropologists firmly believe that our existence is dependent on culture, because culture shapes the social roles people fill on a day to day basis. Without these social roles, people would not know how to express emotions or respond to any given circumstance because we understand everything through culture. Examining any culture requires that you have culture, and people are incapable of escaping the bounds of cultural interpretation to view foreign cultures without bias.

Roy Wagner articulates the absolute truth of culture always existing in his novel The Invention of Culture. Humans believe things can be intrinsic to us as a species, however anthropologists argue that most of what is perceived as natural is actually a result of culture. For example, the words used to communicate daily seem natural because people naturally correspond using language, although words and body language must have originated somewhere; they are not inherent to the human race.

Anthropologists study culture in different ways; some are structuralists such as Rad-Cliffe Brown and Leach, some are cultural relativists, and those like Roy Wagner combine structuralism and cultural relativism to attain their own category as ontologists. Describing categories and universal concepts is important to structuralists. Cultural relativists rely on ethical truths to be relative to a specific culture. Existence rather than analysis of being is what ontologists study. Despite the varying approaches, anthropology teaches people that we are all categorized and live in a sort of order. The western world tries to progress forward, aiming to be the most powerful. Ultimately all people share some universals, such as an attachment to tradition or similar emotions (although they may be expressed differently). These universals unite us while anthropology points out how different we really can be.