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Cultural

Cultural

:For other uses of Culture or Cultures, see Culture (disambiguation) The word culture, from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical orientations for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is a defining feature of the genus Homo.

Defining culture

Different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding - or criteria for valuing - human activity. Sir Edward B. Tylor wrote in 1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society", while a 2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO states that culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO, 2002 While these two definitions range widely, they do not exhaust the many uses of this concept - in 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions [Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952].

Culture as civilization

Many people today use a conception of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This idea of culture then reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with "nature". According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Thus some cultural theorists have actually tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists like Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavises regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, 1960: 6), thus labeling anything that doesn't fit into this category as chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world". http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_all.html Arnold, 1882 In practice, culture referred to élite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used 'culture' in the sense of 'cultivation' might argue that classical music "is" more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock or than the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples of Australia. People who use "culture" in this way tend not to use it in the plural as "cultures". They do not believe that distinct cultures exist, each with their own internal logic and values; but rather that only a single standard of refinement suffices, against which one can measure all groups. Thus, according to this worldview, people with different customs from those who regard themselves as cultured do not usually count as "having a different culture"; but class as "uncultured". People lacking "culture" often seemed more "natural", and observers often defended (or criticized) elements of high culture for repressing "human nature". From the 18th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between cultured and uncultured, but have stressed the interpretation of refinement and of sophistication as corrupting and unnatural developments which obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays non-Western people as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West. Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) - simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way. Thus social observers contrast the "high" culture of élites to "popular" or pop culture, meaning goods and activities produced for, and consumed by, non-élite people or the masses. (Note that some classifications relegate both high and low cultures to the status of subcultures.)

Culture as worldview

During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements - such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire - developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview". In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures - an approach that either exemplified a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism. They believed that biological evolution would produce a most inclusive notion of culture, a concept that anthropologists could apply equally to non-literate and to literate societies, or to nomadic and to sedentary societies. They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. Since human individuals learned and taught these symbolic systems, the systems began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if the two humans do not share a biological relationship). That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning stems from human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture. Thus Clifford Geertz (1973: 33 ff.) has argued that human physiology and neurology developed in conjunction with the first cultural activities, and Middleton (1990: 17 n.27) concluded that human "'instincts' were culturally formed". People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another. Culture changes dynamically and people can (must?) teach and learn culture, making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical conditions. Anthropologists view culture as not only as a product of biological evolution but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation to the world. This view of culture as a symbolic system with adaptive functions, and one which varies from place to place, led anthropologists to conceive of different cultures as defined by distinct patterns (or structures) of enduring, arbitrary, conventional sets of meaning, which took concrete form in a variety of artifacts such as myths and rituals, tools, the design of housing, and the planning of villages. Anthropologists thus distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies. This view of culture, which came to dominate between World War I and World War II, implied that each culture had bounds and demanded interpretation as a whole, on its own terms. There resulted a belief in cultural relativism; the belief that one had to understand an individual's actions in terms of his or her culture; that one had to understand a specific cultural artifact (a ritual, for example) in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it forms a part. Nevertheless, the belief that culture comprises symbolical codes and can thus pass via teaching from one person to another meant that cultures, although bounded, would change. Cultural change could result from invention and innovation, but it could also result from contact between two cultures. Under peaceful conditions, contact between two cultures can lead to people "borrowing" (really, learning) from one another (diffusion or transculturation). Under conditions of violence or political inequality, however, people of one society can "steal" cultural artifacts from another, or impose cultural artifacts on another (acculturation). Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model for how, when and why people adopt new ideas. All human societies have participated in these processes of diffusion, transculturation, and acculturation, and few anthropologists today see cultures as bounded. Modern anthropologists argue that instead of understanding a cultural artifact in terms of its own culture, one needs to understand it in terms of a broader history involving contact and relations with other cultures. In addition to the aforementioned processes, migration on a major scale has characterized the world, particularly since the days of Columbus. Phenomena such as colonial expansion and forced migration through slavery became prominent. As a result, many societies have become culturally heterogeneous. Some anthropologists have argued nevertheless that some unifying cultural system bound heterogeneous societies, and that it offers advantages to understand heterogenous elements as subcultures. Others have argued that no unifying or coordinating cultural system exists, and that one must understand heterogeneous elements together as forming a multicultural society. The spread of the doctrine of multiculturalism has coincided with a resurgence of identity politics, which involve demands for the recognition of social subgroups' cultural uniqueness. Sociobiologists argue that observers can best understand many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists generally reject it.

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Another common way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements: # values # norms # artifacts. (See Dictionary of Modern Sociology, 1969, 93, cited at [http://www.info.gov.hk/coy/eng/report/doc/Youth_Statistical/2002/app/Chp6_Cultural_Capital.pdf]) Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. Artifacts — things, or material culture — derive from the culture's values and norms. Julian Huxley gives a slightly different division, into inter-related "mentifacts", "socifacts" and "artifacts", for ideological, sociological, and technological subsystems respectively. Socialization, in Huxley's view, depends on the belief subsystem. The sociological subsystem governs interaction between people. Material objects and their use make up the technological subsystem. [http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~aforsber/ccsf/culture_defined.html] As a rule, archeologists focus on material culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationships between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded.

Culture as patterns of products and activities

In the early 20th century, anthropologists understood culture to refer not to a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic) but rather to underlying patterns of products and activities. Moreover, they assumed that such patterns had clear bounds (thus, some people confuse "culture" with the society that has a particular culture). In the case of smaller societies, in which people merely fell into categories of age, gender, household and descent group, anthropologists believed that people more-or-less shared the same set of values and conventions. In the case of larger societies, in which people undergo further categorization by region, race, ethnicity, and class, anthropologists came to believe that members of the same society often had highly contrasting values and conventions. They thus used the term subculture to identify the cultures of parts of larger societies. Since subcultures reflect the position of a segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture - distinct and malleable within the context of an employing organization or of a workplace.

Culture as Symbols

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings. Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group...".

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Steven Wolfram "A new kind of science" on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the concept of culture as an operating mechanism can be developed, and Richard Dawkins "The extended phenotype" for discussion of genetic and memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms, such as Wikipedia.

Cultural change

Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change dependence of culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures. One sex might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century in western cultures. Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions (and other internal influences), and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations. In diffusion, the form of something moves from one culture to another, but not its meaning. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another. Diffusions of innovations theory presents a research-based model for why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. "Acculturation" has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.

Propagating culture

Insofar as culture grows and changes naturally within human society, it requires little or no formal propagation. Families or age-based peer-groups will instinctively foster (and develop) their own cultural norms. But few cultures act in such a laissez faire manner. Most societies develop some sort of religion or similar basis for inculcating and preserving established or "correct" cultural behavior. And many societies take the task of education out of the hands of priests and shamans and place it on a wider footing, so that the young (at least) gain a practical and emotional identification with a standardised version of their nurturing culture. Groups of immigrants, exiles, or minorities often form cultural associations or clubs to preserve their own cultural roots in the face of a surrounding (generally more locally-dominant) culture. Thus the world has acquired many Garibaldi Clubs, Pushkin Societies, and underground schools. On a broader scale, many countries market their cultural heritage internationally. This occurs not only in the promotion of tourism (importing money), but also in cultural development abroad (exporting ideas). Note the roles of cultural attachés in embassies and the function of specific organizations devoted to propagating the mother-culture, its language and its ideologies abroad, for example the work of:
- the Alliance française
- the British Council
- the Fulbright Program
- the Goethe-Institut
- the Instituto Cervantes

Cultural studies

Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture". Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Main article: List of national culture articles.

- Albania
- Angola
- Australia
- Belgium
- Bhutan
- Brazil
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Canada
- Quebec
- Political culture of Canada
- Chile
- China
- Hong Kong
- Denmark
- Egypt
- Finland

- France
- Georgia
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Jersey
- Korea
- North Korea
- South Korea
- Kuwait
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Mexico

- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Maori culture
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Portugal
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- United Kingdom
- England
- Northern Ireland
- Scotland
- Wales
- United States

Contemporary local cultures

- Culture of New York City
- Culture of Stockholm
- Culture of Sydney

Other contemporary cultures

- Cassette culture
- Deaf culture
- Drug culture
- Esperanto culture
- Hacker culture
- Queer culture
- Underground culture
- Working-class culture
- Youth culture

Historic cultures

- Assyro-Babylonian culture
- Clovis culture — pre-historic in North America and Central America from about 13,500 years ago
- Indus Valley Culture
- Cemetery H culture
- La Tene culture — from the Iron Age in parts of Europe
- Natufian culture — in the Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago
- Paideia — Classical Greek culture
- Romanitas — Roman Imperial culture
- Weimar culture
- Western culture

References

- Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy, 1882. Macmillan and Co., New York. Online at [http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_titlepage.html].
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. 1977.
- Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Routledge: New York, 1995 (1985).
- Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York. ISBN 0465097197.
- Hoult, Thomas Ford, ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey, United States: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
- Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
- [http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cultural.htm Cultural Anthropology Tutorials], Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California, United States, as of December 12, 2004.
- UNESCO, "[http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity]", issued on International Mother Language Day, February 21, 2002.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-72 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Cultural Development" in Antiquity
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-73 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Culture" and "Civilization" in Modern Times
- [http://samvak.tripod.com/class.html Classificatory system for cultures and civilizations], by Dr. Sam Vaknin zh-min-nan:Bûn-hoà ja:文化 simple:Culture

Culture (disambiguation)

Culture or Cultures can mean:
- The process of civilization: Culture
- "The Culture" in the novels of Iain M. Banks
- In sociology: "Cultural Creatives"
- The Jamaican reggae group Culture (band)
- Cell cultures, Tissue cultures and organ cultures for growing biological materials for study
- In microbiology: microbiological culture used in medicine
- bacterial culture: used in medicine or in food manufacturing (such as in making cheese or yogurt)
- In archaeology an archaeological culture is a term attributed to human activity and also to a consistently recurring assemblage
- Cultures is a commune of the Lozère département, in France

Symbol

:For the Romanian choir, see Symbol (choir) A symbol, in its basic sense, is a conventional representation of a concept or quantity; i.e., an idea, object, concept, quality, etc. In more psychological and philosophical terms, all concepts are symbolic in nature, and representations for these concepts are simply token artifacts that are allegorical to (but do not directly codify) a symbolic meaning, or symbolism. Spoken language, for example, consists of distinct auditory tokens for representing symbolic concepts (words), arranged in an order which further suggests their meaning.

Nature of symbols

word]A symbol can be a material object whose shape or origin is related, by nature or convention, to the thing it represents: for instance, the cross is the main symbol of Christianity, and the scepter is a traditional symbol of royal power. A symbol can also be a more or less conventional image (i.e. an icon), or a detail of an image, or even a pattern or color: for example, the olive branch in heraldry represents peace, the halo is a conventional symbol of sainthood in Christian imagery, tartans are symbols of Scottish clans, and the color red is often used as a symbol for socialist movements, especially communism. More often, a symbol is a conventional written or printed sign (specifically, a glyph), usually standing for anything other than a sound (symbols for sounds are usually called graphemes, letters, logograms, diacritics, etc.). Thus mathematical symbols such as π and + represent quantities and operations, currency symbols represent monetary units, chemical symbols represent elements, and so forth. Symbols can also be immaterial entities like sounds, words and gestures. The ringing of gongs and bells, and the banging of a judge's gavel, often have conventional meanings in certain contexts; and bowing is a common way to indicate respect. In fact, every word in a natural language is a symbol for some concept or relationship between concepts. A symbol is usually recognized only within some specific culture, religion, or discipline, but a few hundred symbols are now recognized internationally. See list of common symbols and List of symbols.

Use of symbols

Human beings' ability to manipulate symbols allows them to explore the relationships between ideas, things, concepts, and qualities - far beyond the explorations of which any other species on earth is capable. The discipline of semiotics studies symbols and symbol systems in general; semantics is specifically concerned with the main meaning of words or other linguistic units. Literary works are often admired for their artful use of symbolism, i.e. the use of words, phrases and situations to evoke ideas and feelings beyond their plain interpretations; these uses are the subject of literary semiotics. Religious and metaphysical writings are also known for their use of esoteric symbolism. Alchemical writings made extensive use of symbols for spiritual and chemical processes (which they also saw as symbols of each other). The interpretation of dreams as symbols of one's experiences is a main feature of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology.

Etymology

The word "symbol" came to the English language, by way of Middle English, Old French, and Latin, from the Greek σύμβολον súmbolon from the root words σύμ- (sym-) meaning "together" and βολή bolḗ "a throw", having the approximate meaning of "to throw together", so "sign, ticket, or contract".

External links

- [http://www.symbols.com Symbol search engine]
- [http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/blsymbols.htm Religious and Cultural Symbols]
- ja:シンボル simple:Symbol

Homo (genus)

Homo sapiens
See text for extinct species. Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and their close relatives. The genus is estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.5 million years old. All species except Homo sapiens are extinct; the last surviving relative, Homo neanderthalensis, died out 30,000 years ago, although recent evidence suggests that Homo floresiensis lived as recently as 12,000 years ago. A minority of zoologists consider that the two species of chimpanzees (usually treated in the genus Pan), and maybe the gorillas (usually treated in the genus Gorilla) should also be included in the genus based on genetic similarities. Most scientists argue that chimpanzees and gorillas have too many anatomical differences between themselves and humans to be part of Homo. The genus Homo is most closely related to Kenyanthropus platyops, which is likely to be an ancestral species. Through that species, Homo is next most closely related to the group of extinct species in the genera Paranthropus and Australopithecus, whose evolutionary branch split off from the proto-Homo line some 5 million years ago. The word homo is Latin for "man", in the original sense of "human being". The word "human" itself is from Latin humanus, an adjective cognate to homo, both derived from PIE "Earth".

Species

- Homo habilis (Handy Man)
- Homo rudolfensis (Rudolf Man)
- Homo ergaster (Working Man)
- Homo erectus (Upright Man)
- Homo floresiensis (Flores Man — discovered 2003)
- Homo antecessor (Explorer Man)
- Homo heidelbergensis (Heidelberg Man)
- Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal Man)
- Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesia Man)
- Homo cepranensis (Ceprano Man)
- Homo georgicus (Georgia Man)
- Homo sapiens (Wise Man; modern humans) H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis are closely related to each other and have been considered to be subspecies of Homo sapiens, but analysis of mitochondrial DNA from H. neanderthalensis fossils suggests that the difference is great enough to count as a separate species. H. rhodesiensis and H. cepranensis are also more closely related to each other than to the other species.

References

- Serre et al. (2004) — No evidence of Neandertal mtDNA contribution to early modern humans. PLoS Biology 2:313–7.

External links

- [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html Hominid species]
- [http://www.modernhumanorigins.com/ For more details, including photos of fossil hominids + modern apes' skulls]
- [http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/Metazoa/Deuterostoma/Chordata/Synapsida/Eutheria/Primates/Hominoidea/Hominidae.htm Mikko's Phylogeny archive] Category:Apes

1871

1871 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

January - April

- January 2 - Amadeus I becomes King of Spain.
- January 10 - France surrenders to end the Franco-Prussian War
- January 18 - The member-states of the North German Confederation unite into a single nation-state known as the German Empire. The King of Prussia is declared the first German Emperor as Wilhelm I of Germany.
- January 21 - Giuseppe Garibaldi's troops win in Dijon
- March 21 - Marriage of Princess Louise to John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne, whose father, the 8th Duke of Argyll, is the serving Secretary of State for India.
- March 22 - In North Carolina, William Holden becomes the first governor of a U.S. state to be removed from office by impeachment.
- March 26 - The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris.
- March 29 - The Royal Albert Hall is opened by Queen Victoria.
- April - Stockholms Handelsbank is founded.
- April 20 - President Ulysses Grant signs the Ku Klux Klan Act.

May - August

- May 11 - First trial of the case of Tichborne Claimant begins in the London Court of Common Pleas.
- May 21-30 - French Third Republic.government troops invade Paris Commune and crush the rebellion.
- July 20 - British Columbia joins the confederation of Canada.
- July 20 - C. W. Alcock proposes that 'a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association', giving birth to the FA Cup.
- August 31 - Adolphe Thiers becomes President of the French Republic.

September - December

- October 8 - Three major fires break out on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois, Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and Holland, Michigan
- The Great Chicago Fire is the most famous of these, burning 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) in one day, eventually destroying about 17,450 buildings, and killing about 250 people while leaving another 90,000 homeless.
- The Peshtigo Fire burns 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km²) across six counties in one day and kills 1,200 to 2,500 people, making it the deadliest in United States history.
- The Holland Fire destroys at least two towns.
- October 20 - The Royal Regiment of Artillery formed the first regular Canadian army units when they created two batteries of garrison artillery which eventually became The Royal Canadian Artillery.
- October 27 - The Comte de Chambord refuses to be crowned 'King Henry V of France' until France abandons its tricolour and returns to the old bourbon flag.
- October 27 - New York mayor Boss Tweed arrested
- October 27 - British occupy the Klipdrift in South Africa, ending the Klipdrift Republic
- November 10 - Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, and greets him saying "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
- November 17 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York.
- December 10 - The German chancellor Otto von Bismarck tries to ban Catholics from the political stage by introducing harsh laws concerning the separation of church and state.

Unknown date

- University Tests Act removes religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge.
- Trade Union Act - British trade unions legalized.
- Heinrich Schliemann begins the excavation of Troy.
- Japan forms its own police force based on French model.
- George Biddell Airy discovers astronomical aberration is independent of the local medium.
- Abolition of the han system in Japan.
- William Marcy Tweed serves his last year as the "Boss" of Tammany Hall.
- Neath RFC founded
- Cary, North Carolina named in honor of Samuel Fenton Cary

Births

- January 7 - Félix Édouard Justin Émile Borel, French mathematician and politician (d. 1956)
- January 30 - Wilfred Lucas, Canadian-born actor (d. 1940)
- February 4 - Friedrich Ebert, President of Germany (d. 1925)
- February 18 - Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948)
- March 1 - Ben Harney, American composer and pianist (d. 1938)
- March 5 - Rosa Luxemburg, German politician (d. 1919)
- March 19 - Schofield Haigh, English cricketer (d. 1921)
- March 27 - Heinrich Mann, German writer (d. 1950)
- March 31 - Arthur Griffith, President of Ireland (d. 1922)
- May 3 - Walter Robinson Parr, English-born pastor (d. 1922)
- May 6 - Victor Grignard, French chemist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate (d. 1935)
- May 6 - Christian Morgenstern, German author (d. 1914)
- May 27 - Georges Rouault, French painter and graphic artist (d. 1958)
- July 10 - Marcel Proust, French writer (d. 1922)
- July 17 - Lyonel Feininger, German painter (d. 1956)
- July 25 - Richard Ernest Turner, Canadian soldier (d. 1961)
- August 14 - Guangxu Emperor of China (d. 1908)
- August 19 - Orville Wright, American aviation pioneer (d. 1948)
- August 25 - Ross Winn, American anarchist writer and publisher (d. 1912)
- August 27 - Theodore Dreiser, American writer (d. 1945)
- August 29 - Albert Lebrun, French politician (d. 1950)
- August 30 - Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (d. 1937)
- September 24 - Lottie Dod, English athlete (d. 1960)
- September 26 - Winsor McCay, American cartoonist and animator (d. 1934)
- September 27 - Grazia Deledda, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
- October 2 - Cordell Hull, United States Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1955)
- October 30 - Paul Valéry, French poet (d. 1945)
- November 1 - Stephen Crane, American writer (d. 1900)
- December 9 - Joe Kelley, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1943)
- December 13 - Emily Carr, Canadian artist (d. 1945)

Deaths

- January 15 - Edward C. Delevan, American temperance movement leader (b. 1793)
- February 11 - Gaspard Théodore Ignace de la Fontaine, Luxembourg politician
- February 20 - Paul Kane, Irish-born painter (b. 1810)
- May 11 - John Herschel, English astronomer (b. 1792)
- September 20 - John Coleridge Patteson, Anglican bishop and missionary (martyred) (b. 1827)
- September 23 - Louis-Joseph Papineau, Canadian politician (b. 1786)
- October 18 - Charles Babbage, English mathematician and inventor (b. 1791)
- December 28 - John Henry Pratt, English clergyman and mathematician (b. 1809)
- March 18 - Augustus De Morgan, Professor of mathematics and mathematician (b. 1806) Category:1871 ko:1871년 simple:1871

Civilization

The word civilization (or civilisation) has a variety of meanings related to human society. The term comes from the Latin civis, meaning "citizen" or "townsman". Latin Latin civilization.]]

Senses of the word

1: Literal and technical definitions

By the most minimal, literal definition, a civilization is a complex society. Technically, anthropologists distinguish civilizations in which many of the people live in cities and get their food from agriculture, from band and tribal societies in which people live in small settlements or nomadic groups and subsist by foraging, hunting, or working small horticultural gardens. When used in this sense, civilization is an exclusive term, applied to some human groups and not others.

2: Broader sense

In a broader sense, civilization often can refer to any distinct society, whether complex and city dwelling, or simple and tribal. This sense is often perceived as less exclusive and ethnocentric than the first. In this sense, civilization is nearly synonymous with culture.

3: Human society as a whole

"Civilization" can sometimes refer to human society as a whole, as in "A nuclear war would wipe out Civilization" or "I'm glad to be safely back in Civilization after being lost in the wilderness for 3 weeks". Additionally, it is used in this sense to refer to the potential global civilization.

4: A standard of behavior

Civilization can also mean the standard of behavior, similar to etiquette. "Civilized" behavior is contrasted with "barbaric" or crude behavior. In this sense, civilization implies sophistication and refinement.

5: Superior vs. less complex societies

Another use of civilization combines the first and fourth meanings of the word, implying that a complex society is naturally superior to less complex societies. This point of view has been used to justify racism and imperialism; powerful societies have often believed it was their right to "civilize," or culturally dominate, weaker ones ("barbarians"). This act of civilizing weaker peoples was sometimes called the "White Man's Burden". This article will mainly treat civilizations in the first, narrow, sense. See culture, society, etiquette, and ethnocentrism and for topics related to the broader senses of the term. See also Problems with the term.

What characterizes civilization

Problems with the term Literally, a civilization is a complex society, as distinguished from a simpler society. Everyone lives in a society and a culture, but not everyone lives in a civilization. Historically, civilizations have shared some or all of the following traits:
- Intensive agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power, crop rotation, and irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food that is not necessary for their own subsistence.
- A significant portion of the population that does not devote most of its time to producing food. This permits a division of labor. Those who do not occupy their time in producing food may obtain their food through trade as in modern capitalism or may have the food provided to them by the state as in ancient Egypt. This is possible because of the food surplus described above.
- The gathering of some of these non-food producers into permanent settlements, called cities.
- A social hierarchy. This can be a chiefdom, in which the chieftain of one noble family or clan rules the people; or a state society, in which the ruling class is supported by a government or bureaucracy. Political power is concentrated in the cities.
- The institutionalized control of food by the ruling class, government or bureaucracy
- The establishment of complex, formal social institutions such as organized religion and education, as opposed to the less formal traditions of other societies.
- Development of complex forms of economic exchange. This includes the expansion of trade and may lead to the creation of money and markets.
- The accumulation of more material possessions than in simpler societies.
- Development of new technologies by people who are not busy producing food. In many early civilizations, metallurgy was an important advancement.
- Advanced development of the arts, including writing. By this definition, some societies, like Greece, are clearly civilizations, whereas others like the Bushmen clearly are not. However, the distinction is not always clear. In the Pacific Northwest of the US, for example, an abundant supply of fish guaranteed that the people had a surplus of food without any agriculture. The people established permanent settlements, a social hierarchy, material wealth, and advanced artwork (most famously totem poles), all without the development of intensive agriculture. Meanwhile, the Pueblo culture of southwestern North America developed advanced agriculture, irrigation, and permanent, communal settlements such as Taos. However, the Pueblo never developed any of the complex institutions associated with civilizations. Today, many tribal societies live inside states and under their laws. The political structures of civilization have been superimposed on their way of life, so they too occupy a middle ground between tribal and civilized.

Civilization as a cultural identity

"Civilization" can also describe the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts, that make it unique. Civilizations have even more intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite. Civilization is such in nature that it seeks to spread, to have more, to expand, and it has the means by which to do this. Nevertheless, some tribes or peoples remained uncivilized even to this day (2005). These cultures are called primitive. They do not have hierarchical governments, organized religion, writing systems or controlled economy exchange for that matter. The little hierarchy that exists, for example respect for the elderly, is mutual and not instituted by force, rather by a sort of mutual agreement. Government does not exist, or at least the civilized version of government which most of us are all familiar with. The civilized world is spread by introducing agriculture, writing system, and religion to primitive tribes. The un-civilized people adapt to the civilized behavior. Civilization is also spread by force, if a tribe does not wish to use agriculture or accept a certain religion it is forced to do so by the civilized people, and they usually succeed due to their more advanced technology. Civilization often uses religion to justify its actions, claiming for example that the un-civilized are savages, barbarians or the like, which, for their own good, should subjugate to the civilization, or their God(s). It is difficult for the un-civilized world to mount any such assault on civilization since that would mean complying to civilizations standards and concepts of advanced violence (war). They would need to become civilized in order to engage in any sort of war. Thus, the intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being Indian civilization and its influence on China, Xanadu, Korea, Japan, Tibet, Southeast Asia and so forth). Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity. A female of African descent living in the United States has many roles that she identifies with. However, she is above all a member of "Western civilization". In the same way, a male of Kurdish ancestry living in Iran is above all a member of "Persian civilization". Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as single units. One example is early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler, even though he uses the German word "Kultur", "culture", for what we here call a "civilization". He said that a civilization's coherence is based around a single primary cultural symbol. Civilizations experience cycles of birth, life, decline and death, often supplanted by a new civilization with a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of moral or religious decline, rather than economic or environmental causes. Samuel P. Huntington similarly defines a civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species." Besides giving a definition of a civilization, Huntington has also proposed several theories about civilizations, discussed below.

Civilizations as complex systems

Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, look at civilizations as complex systems or networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures, and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, and cultural interactions between them. For example, urbanist Jane Jacobs defines cities as the economic engines that work to create large networks of people. The main process that creates these city networks, she says, is "import replacement". Import replacement is the process by which peripheral cities begin to replace goods and services that were formerly imported from more advanced cities. Successful import replacement creates economic growth in these peripheral cities, and allows these cities to then export their goods to less developed cities in their own hinterlands, creating new economic networks. So Jacobs explores economic development across wide networks instead of treating each society as an isolated cultural sphere. Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges, and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the silk road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, India, and China, were well established 2000 years ago, when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system," a process known as globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration - cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic - is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or relatively homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.

The future of civilizations

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. Currently, world civilization is in a stage that has created what may be characterized as an industrial society, superseding the agrarian society that preceded it. Some futurists believe that civilization is undergoing another transformation, and that world society will become an informational society. The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist.

Negative views of civilization

Religious ascetics in many times and places have attempted to curb the influence of civilization over their lives in order to concentrate on spiritual matters. Over the years many members of civilizations have shunned them, believing that civilization restricts people from living in their natural state. Monasteries represent an effort by these ascetics to create a life somewhat apart from their mainstream civilizations. In the 19th century, Transcendentalists believed civilization was shallow and materialistic, so they wanted to build a completely agrarian society, free from the oppression of the city. Karl Marx "believed that the beginning of civilization was the beginning of oppression". As more food was produced and the society's material possessions increased, wealth became concentrated in the hands of the powerful. The communal way of life among tribal people gave way to aristocracy and hierarchy. As hierarchies are able to generate sufficient resources and food surpluses capable of supplying standing armies, civilizations were capable of conquering neighboring cultures that made their livings in different ways. In this manner, civilizations began to spread outward from Eurasia across the world some 10,000 years ago - and are finishing the job today in the remote jungles of the Amazon and New Guinea. In addition, some feminists believe that civilization is the source of men's domination over women. Together, these ideas make up modern conflict theory in the social sciences. Many environmentalists criticize civilizations for their exploitation of the environment. Through intensive agriculture and urban growth, civilizations tend to destroy natural settings and habitats. This is sometimes referred to as "dominator culture". Proponents of this view believe that traditional societies live in greater harmony with nature than civilizations; people work with nature rather than try to subdue it. The sustainable living movement is a push from some members of civilization to regain that harmony with nature. Primitivism is a modern philosophy totally opposed to civilization for all of the above reasons: they accuse civilizations of restricting humans, oppressing the weak, and damaging the environment. A leading proponent is John Zerzan. Published October 21, 2002.

Problems with the term "civilization"

As discussed above, "civilization" has a number of meanings, and its use can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. However, "civilization" can be a highly connotative word. It might bring to mind qualities such as superiority, humaneness, and refinement. Indeed, many members of civilized societies have seen themselves as superior to the "barbarians" outside their civilization. Many 19th-century anthropologists backed a theory called cultural evolution. They believed that people naturally progress from a simple state to a superior, civilized state. John Wesley Powell, for example, classified all societies as Savage, Barbarian, and Civilized; the first two of his terms would shock most anthropologists today. The early 20th century saw the first cracks in this worldview within Western Civilization: Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel "Heart of Darkness", for example, told a story set in the Congo Free State, in which the most savage and uncivilized behavior was initiated by a white European. This hierarchical worldview was dealt further serious blows by the atrocities of World War I and World War II and so on. Today most social scientists believe at least to some extent in cultural relativism, the view that complex societies are not by nature superior, more humane, or more sophisticated than less complex or technologically advanced groups. This view has its roots in the writings of Franz Boas. A minority of scholars reject the relativism of Boas and mainstream social science. English biologist John Baker, in his 1974 book Race, gives about 20 criteria that make civilizations superior to non-civilizations. Baker tries to show a relation between the cultures of civilizations and the biological disposition of their creators. Many postmodernists, and a considerable proportion of the wider public, argue that the division of societies into 'civilized' and 'uncivilized' is arbitrary and meaningless. On a fundamental level, they say there is no difference between civilizations and tribal societies; that each simply does what it can with the resources it has. In this view, the concept of "civilization" has merely been the justification for colonialism, imperialism, genocide, and coercive acculturation. For all of the above reasons, many scholars today avoid using the term "civilization" as a stand-alone term; they prefer to use urban society or intensive agricultural society, which are much less ambiguous, more neutral-sounding terms. "Civilization" however remains in common academic use when describing specific societies, such as "Mayan Civilization".

Early civilizations

The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense) arose in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Nile valley of Egypt, the Indus Valley region of modern-day Pakistan, the Huang He (Yellow River) valley of China, and on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea. The inhabitants of these areas built cities, created writing systems, learned to make pottery and use metals, domesticated animals, and created complex social structures with class systems.

Mesopotamia

The earliest settlement in Jericho (9th millennium BC) in modern-day Palestine, was a PPNA culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later, which included in one early settlement (8th millennium BC) mud-brick houses surrounded by a stone wall, having a stone tower built into the wall. In this time there is evidence of domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses and hunting of wild animals. However, there are no indications of attempts to form communities (early civilizations) with surrounding peoples. Nevertheless, by the 6th millennium BC we find what appears to be an ancient shrine and cult, which would likely indicate intercommunal religious practices in this era. Findings include a collective burial (with not all the skeletons completely articulated, jaws removed, faces covered with plaster, cowries used for eyes). Other finds from this era include stone and bone tools, clay figurines and shell and malachite beads. Around 1500 to 1200 BC Jericho and other cities of Canaan had become vassals of the Egyptian empire. Several miles southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of early temple-cities, in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, with the earliest of these settlements carbon dating to around 5000 BC. The Sialk ziggurat of Kashan, Iran, also dates to this era. By the 4th millennium BC, in Nippur we find, in connection with a sort of ziggurat and shrine, a conduit built of bricks, in the form of an arch. Sumerian inscriptions written on clay also appear in Nippur. By 4000 BC an ancient city of Susa, in Mesopotamia, seems to emerge from earlier villages. Sumerian cuneiform script dates to no later than about 3500 BCE. Sumer, which was Mesopotamia's first civilization in what is now Iraq, is recognized as the world's earliest civilization. Other villages begin to spring up around this time in the Ancient Near East (Middle East) as well.

Egypt

Anthropological and archaeological evidence both indicate a grain-grinding culture farming along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC using sickle blades. But another culture of hunters, fishers and gathering peoples using stone tools replaced them. Evidence also indicates human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the Sudan border, before 8000 BC. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Egypt, eventually forming the Sahara (c.2500 BC), and early tribes naturally migrated to the Nile river where they developed a settled agricultural economy and more centralized society. Domesticated animals had already been imported from Asia between 7500 BC and 4000 BC (see Sahara: History, Cattle period), and there is evidence of pastoralism and cultivation of cereals in the East Sahara in the 7th millennium BC. The earliest known artwork of ships in ancient Egypt dates to 6000 BCE. By 6000 BC predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Symbols on Gerzean pottery, c.4000 BC, resemble traditional hieroglyph writing [http://www.touregypt.net/ebph5.htm]. In ancient Egypt mortar (masonry) was in use by 4000 BC, and ancient Egyptians were producing ceramic faience as early as 3500 BC. There is evidence that ancient Egyptian explorers may have originally cleared and protected some branches of the Silk Road. Medical institutions are known to have been established in Egypt since as early as circa 3000 BC. Ancient Egypt gains credit for the tallest ancient pyramids and early forms of surgery, mathematics, and barge transport (see Ancient Egypt: Ancient Achievements).

India

The earliest known farming cultures in South Asia emerged in the hills of Balochistan, Pakistan, which included Mehrgarh in the 7th millennium BC. These semi-nomadic peoples domesticated wheat, barley, sheep, goat and cattle. Pottery was in use by the 6th millennium BC. Their settlement consisted of mud buildings that housed four internal subdivisions. Burials included elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants and occasionally animal sacrifices. Figurines and ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sandstone and polished copper have been found. By the 4th millennium BC we find much evidence of manufacturing. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. Button seals included geometric designs. By 4000 BC a pre-Harappan culture emerged, with trade networks including lapis lazuli and other raw materials. Villagers domesticated numerous other crops, including peas, sesame seed, dates, and cotton, plus a wide range of domestic animals, including the water buffalo which still remains essential to intensive agricultural production throughout Asia today. There is also evidence of sea-going craft. Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal and docking facility at the coastal city of Lothal, India, perhaps the world's oldest sea-faring harbor. Judging from the dispersal of artifacts the trade networks integrated portions of Afghanistan, the Persian coast, northern and central India, Mesopotamia (see Meluhha) and Ancient Egypt (see Silk Road). Archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, discovered that these peoples in the Indus Valley Civilization had knowledge of medicine and dentistry as early as circa 3300 BC. The Indus Valley Civilization gains credit for the earliest known use of decimal fractions in a uniform system of ancient weights and measures, as well as negative numbers (see Timeline of mathematics). Ancient Indus Valley artifacts include beautiful, glazed stone faïence beads. The Indus Valley Civilization boasts the earliest known accounts of urban planning. As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and (recently discovered) Rakhigarhi, their urban planning included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Evidence suggests efficient municipal governments. Streets were laid out in perfect grid patterns comparable to modern New York. Houses were protected from noise, odors and thieves. The sewage and drainage systems developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Valley were far more advanced than that of contemporary urban sites in Mesopotamia and Egypt and also more advanced than that of any other Bronze Age or even Iron Age civilization.

China

Developed agriculture appears in the 7th millennium BC in the Peiligang culture (discovered in 1977) of Henan, China, including storing and redistributing crops, millet farming and animal husbandry (pigs). Evidence also indicates specialized craftsmenship and administrators (see History of China: Prehistoric times). This culture is one of the oldest in ancient China to show evidence of pottery-making. China's first historical dynasty, the Xia Dynasty, emerged in 2033 BC and may have been a late Neolithic or early Bronze Age culture. Attributed to a later Chinese culture, in the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), are bronze artifacts and oracle bones, which were turtle shells or cattle scapula on which are written the first recorded Chinese characters and found in the Huang He valley, Yinxu (a capital of the Shang Dynasty).

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, commonly known as UNESCO, is a specialized agency of the United Nations system established in 1945. Its main objective is to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms (Article 1 of the UNESCO Constitution). 191 nations belong to UNESCO. The Organization is headquartered in Paris, France, with over 50 field offices and several institutes and centres throughout the world. UNESCO pursues its action through five major programmes: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture and communication and information. Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programmes; international science programmes; regional and cultural history projects, the promotion of cultural diversity; international cooperation agreements to secure the world cultural and natural heritage and to preserve human rights; and attempts to ameliorate the worldwide digital divide. UNESCO has at times been highly controversial. During the 1970s and 1980s, Western countries, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, believed it was being used as a forum for Communist and Third World countries to attack the West. UNESCO developed a plan called the "New World Information Order", to stop alleged lies and misinformation being spread about developing countries. The West rejected it as an attempt by Third World and Communist states to destroy freedom of the press; the United States withdrew from the organization in protest in 1984, and the United Kingdom withdrew in 1985. (The UK rejoined in 1997, and the US rejoined in 2003.) UNESCO has also been criticized by some for its large and ponderous bureaucracy. The organization's reforms included the following measures: the number of divisions in UNESCO was cut in half, allowing a corresponding halving of the number of Directors -- from 200 to under 100, out of a total staff of approximately 2,000 worldwide. At the same time, the number of field units was cut from a 1999 high of 79 to 52 today. Parallel management structures, including 35 Cabinet-level special advisor positions, were abolished. 209 negotiated staff departures and buy-outs took place from 1999-2003, causing the inherited $10 million staff cost deficit to disappear. The staff pyramid, which was the most top-heavy in the UN system, was cut back as the number of high-level posts was halved and the “inflation” of posts was reversed through down-grading many positions. Open competitive recruitment, results-based appraisal of staff, training of all managers and field rotation were instituted, as well as SAP systems for transparency in results-based programming and budgeting. One of UNESCO's missions is to maintain a list of World Heritage Sites. These sites are important natural or historical sites whose preservation and safe keeping are deemed important for the world community. However UNESCO does not get involved with the p

Cultural

Defining culture

Culture as civilization

Culture as worldview

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Culture as patterns of products and activities

Culture as Symbols

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Cultural change

Propagating culture

Cultural studies

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Contemporary local cultures

Other contemporary cultures

Historic cultures

See also

References

External links

Culture (disambiguation)

Symbol

Nature of symbols

Use of symbols

Etymology

See also

External links

Homo (genus)

Species

References

External links

1871

Events

January - April

May - August

September - December

Unknown date

Births

Deaths

Civilization

Senses of the word

1: Literal and technical definitions

2: Broader sense

3: Human society as a whole

4: A standard of behavior

5: Superior vs. less complex societies

What characterizes civilization

Civilization as a cultural identity

Civilizations as complex systems

The future of civilizations

See also

Negative views of civilization

Problems with the term "civilization"

Early civilizations

Mesopotamia

Egypt

India

China

See also

Further reading

UNESCO