Encyclopedia Of Society And Culture In The Anci...
Ancient Chinese society was divided by classes. The emperor, who was believed to have descended from the gods, was at the top of society. He, or sometimes she, was surrounded by wealthy kings, warriors, and priests. Most of the other people were farmers and were fairly poor. As is true with most ancient societies, almost all of what we know about culture and dress comes from the wealthy classes.
Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Anci...
A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group.Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change.[2]Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict. In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group.
Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.[5]
When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. "bro culture"), or a counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture.
Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society.[16]
Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.[18]
In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition."[52] The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom.[citation needed] The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded.[citation needed] Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures, such as culture.[53] Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al.),[54] which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.[55]
Another important issue today is the impact of tourism on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society.[71][72][73]
Oklahoma's archaeological record has played a significant role in helping answer at least some of the questions about Early Arrivals and pre-Clovis settlement. In two locations credible evidence for pre-Clovis settlement exists: the eighteen-thousand-year-old Cooperton mammoth remains in Kiowa County, and the Burnham site in Woods County with a suite of relevant radiocarbon dates ranging from 28,000 to 32,000 years ago. Both locations hold material associated with extinct Ice Age animals. What the sites lack, however, is the clear continuity and unquestionable context found with Clovis culture sites. Because the context is uncertain and the comparable sites are absent in Oklahoma and the surrounding region, archaeologists have difficulty characterizing these peoples' ways of life. The Early Arrivals were explorers at the edge of new frontiers, and their motivations, the nature of their society, and the full implications of their actions may never be fully comprehended. Debate about the peopling of the New World will undoubtedly carry forth, each school with its ardent supporters. Resolution of the question may come in the near future as dating technology becomes more precise and methodology improves.
Some 10,000 years ago the environment of eastern Oklahoma was much like that of today, and prehistoric peoples' ways of life differed considerably from those of their bison-hunting Folsom neighbors to the west. Termed Dalton culture, these woodlands inhabitants lived in larger groups/bands, had a more expansive hunting and collecting economy, and may also have had a somewhat more complex society. Like Folsom and Clovis, much of the evidence of their presence comes from surface material. However, evidence from the Packard site in Mayes County, the Quince site in Atoka County, and Billy Ross site in Haskell County point to greater use of local lithic (stone) resources, suggesting reduced mobility and a greater range of tools, including those for plant processing.
Ironically, the best evidence for people living during this time in Oklahoma's past also occurs during the period of greatest climatic hardship, the Altithermal. Although a multitude of groups/cultures existed during this five-thousand-year span, material representations of the "Calf Creek culture" have been more thoroughly studied than other cultural complexes, perhaps due to the distinctive spear points and the people's adaptation to hot, arid landscapes. Calf Creek people subsisted during the height of an extremely arid and seasonally warm time (circa 5,000 years ago). Their presence across Oklahoma at this time is well documented despite harsh environmental conditions. They used large spear points, made with craftsmanship reminiscent of Folsom hunters, as well as a tool kit geared to hunting plains-adapted animals such as bison and antelope. Archaeologists have found Calf Creek cultural materials in many places around Oklahoma, including the Kubik site in Kay County, the Anthony site in Caddo County, and the Arrowhead Ditch site in Muskogee County. Calf Creek people favored high places with broad vistas, but there was also considerable diversity in the placement of settlements. Some represent temporarily occupied camps and possible bison kill locations, and others are places where lithic raw material is cached. Some seem to have been rendezvous sites for the meeting of different bands of Calf Creek people. Still, all evidence points to a highly nomadic, loosely organized society.
The political, social, and religious systems of Native peoples likewise became more complex and were manifested in physical symbols such as mounds and special structures, especially in eastern Oklahoma. Population expansion and dramatically increased reliance on agriculture brought greater need for more strategically organized society. In general, dependence on agriculture also caused more involvement with religious practitioners to support and maintain a system. However, it must be noted that an absence of a visual evidence of religious complexity does not necessarily mean that groups were not complex; it may mean that the people did not demonstrate religious belief in a visible way. 041b061a72