Unit Two Culture

Exercise 1. Use the words in the box to discuss the following questions:

a) What culture is for you?

b) Imagine you are a painter and you have to portray a creature that personifies culture. What would you depict?

Art	religion	enlightenment
music	belief	national identity
literature	drawing	theatre performance
architecture	pottery	culture shock
sculpture	tradition	cultural diversity
painting	cultivate	written narrative
custom	social group	moral value

Exercise 2. Give synonyms and antonyms for at least 5 words from the box. Get ready to provide Ukrainian equivalents.

Exercise 3. Explain the following quotations and comment upon them.

1. “Culture is “to know the best that has been said and thought in the world." ”

Matthew Arnold

2. “Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.”

Aime Cesair

3. “The poor have no business with culture and should beware of it. They cannot eat it; they cannot sell it; they can only pass it on to others and that is why the world is full of hungry people ready to teach us anything under the sun.”

Aubrey Menen

4. “Culture, with us, ends in headache.”

Ralph Waldo

5. “Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.”

Gandhi Mahatma

Exercise 4. Read and translate the text.

Culture in Anthropology

Cultures in anthropology are complexes of learned behavior patterns and perceptions. Culture distinguishes one human group from others. It also distinguishes humans from animals. The culture includes beliefs, rules of behaviour, language, rituals, art, and technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, political and economic systems.

Culture is the most important concept in anthropology (the study of all aspects of human life, past and present). Anthropologists commonly use the term culture to refer to a society or group in which many or all people live and think in the same ways. Likewise, any group of people who share a common culture – and in particular, common rules of behaviour and a basic form of social organization – constitutes a society. Thus, the terms culture and society are somewhat interchangeable. However, while many animals live in societies, only humans have a culture.

Culture developed together with the evolution of the human species. Homo sapiens is closely related to human biology. The ability of people to have culture comes in large part from their physical features: having big complex brain; an upright posture; free hands that can grasp and manipulate small objects; and a vocal tract that can produce and articulate a wide range of sounds. These distinctively human physical features began to develop in African ancestors of humans more than four million years ago.

Exercise 5. Are the following sentences true or false? Write T or F in the brackets.

1. ( ) Culture distinguishes one human group from others.

2. ( ) The terms culture and society are opposite.

3. ( ) Culture developed together with the evolution of the human species.

4. ( ) The ability of people to have culture does not depend on their physical features.

5. ( ) Anthropology is a comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development.

Exercise 6. Read the text and explain the meaning of each characteristic. Give your comments.