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:: So should we remove this until it has some decent citation? -- [[User:Jmabel|Jmabel]] | [[User talk:Jmabel|Talk]] 18:01, September 10, 2005 (UTC)
IDENTITY
Nice insights in article.
CHARACTERISTICS
An old encyclopedia article said there are four elements common to all cultures: language, technology, art and social institutions. What are the characteristics common to all cultures? In an encyclopedia, articles about various countries will list many common elements: flag, political boundaries, exports, history, etc. A person could study each of these elements, using several examples. For example, one could study foreign foods, and pick the foods of Spain, France and Japan as samples. Or a person could start with one country or political unit and study all the characteristics of that country. For example, one could choose Germany and study their clothes, music, paintings, etc. What is the defining characteristic of a culture? Political boundaries? Language? Ethnic origins?
ORGANIZATION
How are cultures organized? What are the parts? What is the structure of the parts? What is the function of each part? In other words, what are the spatial characteristics? Should we start with the organization of people or geographical considerations? Does the human group define the culture or does geography define it? If language defines a culture, and everybody now has a language, when did new languages stop originating? How do new languages begin? Can we ever have a completely new language to originate in the future?
DYNAMICS
What are the energy characteristics of cultures?
How do cultures originate? How do they change? How do new ones develop? Does the process of colonization reveal most of the dynamics involve in the creation of new cultures? How is stability created? What can we learn by researching the kinds of languages spoken in a particular country? Do villages evolve into cities, or are they planned before being founded, as evidenced by their layouts?
APPLICATION
Can people change their cultural heritages. If so, to what extent? To what extent does public policy control the characteristics of a culture? For example, how many countries have a government agency which determines the official way to spell words in a language?
[[User:Seventhpower|Seventhpower]] 02:40, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
:Seventhpower, your comments are thoughtful but make a number of assumptions. NPOV is a core policy at Wikipedia. Different anthropologists and others have viewed culture differently and we cannot take sides. A few examples, responding to your comment. (1) Characteristics. In part, this is an empirical question and I do not think anyone has done enough systematic research comparing all cultures to determine what all have in common. If some have ''claimed'' that all cultures have four elements, we can ''quote'' that claim, or cite it, ''as just one claim.'' But I know many who would take issue with the claim you provide as an example. Two areas of disagreement: what we in the West call art may not, by the local definitions of a particular culture, be "art," that is, what people mean by art is culturally constructed and this construction is not present in all cultures. Also, there is a long tradition in British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology that does not include social institutions as a part of culture. (2) Only specific schools of thought described or analyzed cultures in terms of their structure (e.g. students of Durkheim, like Radcliffe-Brown and Levi-Strauss) and the functions of its elements (Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski). Many scholars have actively opposed these ways of describing cultures. (3) dymanics. I think most scholars today agree culture is dynamic. But the statements and questions you present reflect the views of specific anthropologists, like Leslie White and Richard Newbold Adams (energetics) and Lewis Henry Morgan and Julian Steward (evolution) — again, many anthropologists reject the validity of viewing culture these ways. To be clear: I am '''not''' opposed to introducing these topics int the article. But I '''would''' object to introducing them as if these are universal elements of culture or universally shared ways of talking about culture. That would violate NPOV. We need to be very specific about who has held these views and in what context, and invite other editors to add other views. SR
== Article Organization - Personal note ==
I had home-school for my children and in our situation I was able to create my own curriculum. I had to take large amounts of information gathered from research, process it quickly and condense it into something meaningful to me so I could set up an activity for the children on a particular subject. For resources, I had textbooks, library, and encyclopedia. The encyclopedia was especially useful because it would condense massive amounts of information into a few manageable categories which could easily be remembered. Then I could start with 5-10 key elements and branch out from the top down. After looking up very broad categories over and over, I started to have a basis of comparison.
I especially remember the article on Culture from the 1962 World Book Encyclopedia. It said that there were four elements common to all cultures: language, technology, art and social institutions. This was something simple that I could visualize and work with. It also said that there are three elements common to all languages: sound, vocabulary and grammar. The article on Language itself was not as good as the Culture section on Language. The elements of language explanation was very inspiring. After reading it, I felt that I could go out and learn any language. First, just listen to the sounds, without worrying about pronouncing words. Then try to pronounce the words. Then go on to vocabulary. Then grammar. What a contrast to high school Latin, where the first day is grammar!
The article on The World gave a very nice definition of Science. It said that Science is an organized body of knowledge about nature, or something to that effect. The article on Science itself did not give a nice definition like that.
Once I saw a list of the elements of physics, without the formulas, using simple abbreviations. It may have been in a book called Nature's Electricity. The list started out with M for mass, L for distance, T for time, L/T for speed, etc. for acceleration, momentum, force, pressure, work, energy, power, etc. I tried to take some of those elements and ask what are the elements common to studying ANY subject. I came up with a list that has worked well over a long period of time:
Identity: definition, characteristics, examples
Organization: (spatial characteristic)
structure, parts, function
Processes: time characteristics
Dynamics: (energy characteristics)
cause & effect, cycles, relationships
Applications: (directional characteristics)
Many encyclopedia articles incorporate these categories into their articles, which makes for uniformity.
The first subject we studied using this "method" was boats. First we found examples of boats. Then we studied the parts of boats. Then we went through the process of building a boat, etc. It was all very thrilling. We launched the boats down in the creek which empties into the river. The children have pictures of this in their portfolios.
Make this article on Culture as inspiring to others as the 1962 article was to me.
[[User:Seventhpower|Seventhpower]] 04:38, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
:Seventhpower, this is indeed a worthy goal. However, the study of cultures has developed a good deal since the early 1960s (just as has the study of human evolution) and we must make sure our article is up-to-date. If you want to help with this, and I hope you do, one place you might want to start research is Eric Wolf´s ''Europe and the People Without History'' which was written in the 1980s, addresses many of the isues you raise, and was an attempt to synthasize a good deal of research on culture done in the 1960s and 1970s. It sounds like you would also find many of the essays in ''Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts'' by Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing very, very useful. But I am afraid that your boat analogy breaks down because whereas the word "boat" refers to real (material) things, the word "culture" refers to ''a way of talking about'' real things — and there are many different ways people have for talking about such things, and thus very different understandings of the word "culture." SR
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