Page 45 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Unit 6: Approaches to the Study of Kinship: Cultural

6.1 Characteristics of Culture Notes
The sociologists have not only occupied themselves with defining culture, but also tried to
establish the generalisation regarding the characteristics of culture (through comparative studies).

Ethance and Edance
Crowbar has looked into the two aspect of culture, which he called Ethance and Edance. It’s for-
mal expressive form is Edance which comes from the creative elements of culture. Compared to
the creative element Edance, Ethance is the culture’s that activity which determines its virtues,
themes and its interests. Bateson says every culture can be divided into two parts. There is one
part called Ethance, which is created by a culture’s entire adaptation. In the other part called Ed-
ance, the adaptation produced by the prevalent terminological process is synthesized.

Explicit and Implicit elements

Crakhon says that everything in the lives of people can neither be understood by mere sensitive
survey nor can it be made a part of our knowledge. The realities which can be directly viewed
with the help of eyes and ears, are called the apparent elements of culture. There are some in-
direct elements too, which can be directly viewed after spacial training only. Because these ele-
ments are in the form of emotions and motivators of human behaviour, whose doers are mostly
not aware of it themselves. They can be called inherent elements of the culture. For the entire
representative studies of the behaviour of people of any society, it is essential to synthesize the
apparent and inherent element of the culture in it.

6.2 Theory Related to Growth of Culture
Right from the beginning, the cultural sociologists had a problem in knowing the growth and
the cultural parallels of culture. The fundamental questions they faced were : How are the cul-
tures born? How do similar cultural subjects and characteristics thrive in different cultures.
These two questions were the subject of the primary ideologies related to the studies of culture.

6.3 Evolutionism
As a form of modern science, scholarly studies warekorn in that period when evolutionism was
at its peak. Both Darwin and Spensor were busy deciding that evolutionism is the self elements
of all kinds of factors.

Concepts

Influenced by the contemporary evolutionistic ideology, sociologists like Taylor and Morgan
started studying the ‘Human Society’ and the ‘Evolution of Culture’ with their entire heart and
soul. There were some undivided with supportive attitude too, who helped and motivated their
endeavour. During their time, there was a widely prevalent belief that all humans are the same
when it comes to mental structure. This idea was expressed as ‘Mental Unity of Human World’.

It has been said that in cases of common problems, humans find out similar
solutions. If there is difference in environment, then it is expressed as an institu-
tion’s institutional difference.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 39