UNIT 6

CULTURE: HOW IT DEFINES MORAL BEHAVIOR

Intended Leaning Outcome

 Articulate what culture, enculturation, inculturation, and acculturation mean

 Attribute facets of personal behavior to culture
 Explain how culture shapes the moral agent

Introduction

 The “absolute freedom” that the existentialist and phenomenologist are talking about does not
exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world with all its spatio-temporal conditions, its “facticity”.
 Facticity refers to the “givens” of our situations such as our language, our environment.
 Our previous choices and our very selves in their functions – in itself constitute our facticity
(Sartre, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). That includes culture.

Activity

1. When you hear the word “culture”, what comes into you mind at once? List them down.
2. Marriage Practices – Give different marriage practices which is a result of culture.

Analysis

For Activity No. 1

1. Go back to your list on culture. Are those items acquired by heredity or by leaning and practice?
2. If there is one word that would embrace all of these in your list for question #1 of the activity,
what would that be?

For Activity No. 2

1. Explain the “why“ behind these different marriage practices. Are they morally acceptable?

Lesson Proper

Culture Defined

 “Culture” is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors.

 According to Taylor as quoted by Palispis, 1997, culture consists of:
a. Language
b. Ideas
c. Customs
d. Morals
e. Laws
f. Taboos
g. Institutions
h. Tools
i. Techniques
 j. Works of art
k. Rituals
l. Other capacities and habits acquired by a person as a member of society.
 These include the list of items you made in the Activity 1 phase of this Lesson. Culture is the
word expected of Question No. 2 in Analysis.

 The Magisterium of the Church explains culture as “the set of means used by mankind to
become more virtuous and reasonable in order to become fully human. In its fullest sense,
culture means opening up to the divine, and ultimately, to a religious dimension”.
 Based on this Church definition, it is clear that culture is meant to serve human persons.

 Categories of culture according to Sociologist

1. Material culture
 Material culture is the physical object that a society produces – tools, streets,
homes and toys, to name a few (Brinkerhoff, 1989).
2. Nonmaterial culture
 Nonmaterial culture consists of language, values, rules, knowledge, and meanings
shared by members of society.

 Culture is passed on to the next generation by learning not through the genes or heredity.
 “Culture” includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human genetics
(Kroeber et al, 1952).

The Human Person and Culture

 As a moral agent, we are born into a culture, a factual reality we have not chosen. We ae not
born nothing.
 It may be said that the Aristotelico-Thomistic tradition is one dominant, if not the most
dominant culture.
 The Aristotelico-Thomistic culture is a Greco-Roman culture which has influenced and shaped
the moral life of those who have been exposed to it.
 Those who were born into this culture, educated under this culture, are persuaded that there is
God, that a divine order and law keep and govern the world, which includes us.
 But what happens when there are different cultures with their own different views of man’s
direction and destiny?

Enculturation, Inculturation, and Acculturation

Cultures change or evolve. Ways by which culture change are by enculturation, inculturation, and by
acculturation.

1. Enculturation
 Enculturation, an anthropological term, was coined by J.M. Herskovits.
 However, Margaret Mead was the one who defined the term as “the process of
learning a culture in all its uniqueness and particularity”.
…Enculturation is a process of leaning from infancy till death the components of
life in one’s culture. The contents of this leaning include both the material and
the non-material culture. The latter refers to values while the former refers to
 tools such as a hoe or mask. In the said process of learning, a person grows into
a culture, acquires competence in that culture, and that culture takes root in
that person and becomes the cognitive map, the term of reference for acting.
 Example:
African girls in South of the Sahara grow up learning that as a woman, she has less
rights and privileges as the African man. Aman can marry more than one woman
while she cannot. While African wife cannot share her love with other men, the man
can share his with other women in the system. This turns women into an
appendage, a property of the man – one of the man’s laborers. (Umoren, U.E. 1992)
 This is enculturation in concrete terms. The African girl grows up and become a
woman through the said process of enculturation. This enculturation process has
both cognitive and emotional elements. The girl child who becomes a woman,
learns and internalizes the idea that she, because she is a woman, has less privileges
than the African man. The learning takes place though example, direct teaching, and
in patterns of behavior. What is learned becomes her cognitive map, her term of
reference that directs her behavior.

2. Inculturation
 Inculturation refer to the “missiological process in which the Gospel is rooted in a
particular culture and the latter is transformed by its introduction to Christianity”
(Umoren, U.E. 1992)
 In Redemptoris Missio, no. 52, Pope John Paul II defined inculturation as…
“the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values though their
integration in Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human
cultures”. This means that inculturation is characterized by a dual movement,
i.e., a dialogue movement towards culture via the incarnation of the Gospel and
the transmission of its values, and a movement towards the Church that involves
the incorporation of values that come from the cultures the latter encounters.
Therefore, a fruitful cross-fertilization can follow (Umoren. U.E., 1992).
 In other words, inculturation raises two related problems, that of the evangelization
of cultures *rooting the Gospel in cultures) and that of the cultural understanding of
the Gospel.
Inculturation is a two-way process: it roots the Gospel in a culture and
introduces that transformed culture to Christianity. For example, to root the
Gospel in the African culture is to initiate two events. The first event is to
transform the African culture of oppressing women into a culture where men
and women are treated as human persons equal in dignity, rights, and
privileges. The second event is to develop the African culture’s latent potential
towards the human development of the woman, created like her male
counterpart in the image and likeness of God. The other aspect is to introduce
the woman and her transformed culture to Christianity, for example, by allowing
the woman a meaningful place among the agents of evangelization. (cf.
Umoren, U.E., 1992)

3. Acculturation
 Acculturation is the “cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by
adapting to, or borrowing traits from another culture”.
  It is also explained as “the merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact”.
 Immigrants to the United States of America become acculturated to American life.
 Refugees and indigenous peoples (IP) likewise adapt to the culture of the dominant
majority.
 There are cultural practices that should be stopped because of the painful harm
they do.
 The practice of human sacrifice has somehow been stopped.
 But the circumcision of women still goes on in some parts of the world like Africa.
 Some approaches have been successful like the one called buying in.
 To gradually stop the circumcision of women, the approach was to buy in, like
introducing into the place good health facilities and other forms of assistance to
alleviate their economic hardships, in return to their stopping the practice.

How Culture Shapes the Moral Agent

 Culture definitely affects the way we evaluate and judge things.

 Some societies consider it alright gathering vegetables at the backyard of their neighbor,
considering the act as getting a share. In such societies, the act would not be called stealing.
 In ancient times, human sacrifice was not wrong. Today, it is a criminal act.
 In some cultures, like the Islamic culture and African cultures, having several wives are allowed.
In other cultures, it is concubinage or adultery.
 Culture has a very long-lasting hold on an individual. A person may have become highly
educated, may have even obtained a doctorate degree, educated with Christian values of
forgiveness, but if he comes from a society with a culture of vengeance *”an eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth”) having the sense of obligation to make an act of revenge when a member
of his tribe is harmed by another, he becomes ultimately vindictive and joins the tribe seek in
revenge. No amount of graduate education can prevent him from joining his tribe in seeking
revenge. He can forget his doctorate degree in Values Education.

Key Points

 Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. It is people’s way
of life.
 Culture consists of non-material and material culture. Non-material culture includes language,
values, rules, knowledge, and meanings shared by members of society. Material culture refers to
the physical objects that a society produces such as tools and works of art.
 Culture is learned, not inherited. It is acquired through enculturation, inculturation, and
acculturation.
 Enculturation is the process of learning the component of life- material as well as non-material –
in one’s culture.
 Inculturation is making the Gospel take roots in a culture and introducing that transformed
culture to Christianity.
 Acculturation is the process by which people learn and adapt a new culture.
 Culture influences the human person, who is the moral agent.
 Culture affects human behavior. Not all cultural practices are morally acceptable. Examples are
the culture of vengeance and low regard for the Afican women in comparison to African men.
Guide Questions

1. Culture affects human behavior. Is this proven in this instance when one spends so much money
for rebonding of her hair or buying an expensive Nike pair of shoes instead of using the money
to pay her tuition in school so she can take the final exams (which is more urgent)?
2. Cite two more proof that culture influences human behavior.
3. Cite a behavior of yours which is an influence of your culture. Is that behavior morally right?
4. Enculturation is the learning of first culture. Acculturation is the learning of second culture. Are
these statements correct?
5. “Faith that does not become cultured is not fully accepted, nor entirely reflected upon, or
faithfully experienced.” – John Paul II. Does this explain inculturation? How?
6. Is socialization a process of enculturation?
7. Culture is learned, not inherited.is it within you power to change for the better?
8. Does culture limit human person’s freedom?
9. Discuss: Culture makes absolute freedom impossible.

Reflection

Reflect on one cultural practice of yours. Is it moral in the sense that it makes you more human?