Haviland's Chapter 2 focuses mainly on the close connection between culture and

humanity. Culture is experienced by and serves humans by solving problems, meeting

social and individual needs, and having the ability to change in the face of new
circumstances. Culture is learned and passed on to the next generation by humans and
most mammals, such as chimpanzees. Haviland emphasises, however, that not all
learned behaviours are culturally relevant, pigeons, for example, are conditioned
rather than culturally learned. Anthropologists believe that a large universal society is
needed for culture to exist, but there are still different groups in society with different
standards. The culture of these subgroups is subculture, a concept closely related to
culture. Anthropologists argue that there can be no culture without a society,
conversely, there are no known human societies that do not exhibit culture. However,
Haviland argues that this idea does not apply to all animal species, for example, ants
and bees already have most of the information about co-operation stored in their
genomes. But does this mean that the social groups in which ants and bees live do not
exhibit culture?

Waston recorded some of the team's experiences and thoughts in the form of field
notes as they collected documentation of social life in Hong Kong's New Territories,
much of which centred around village life in San Tin and Ha Tsuen. Apart from that,
the whole ethnographic endeavour would not have been possible anywhere else in
mainland China. Colonialism had a profound effect on social life in the New
Territories and confined fieldwork within its framework.

Ortner focuses on the relationship between different theoretical or methodological

schools (both within and across time) and the integration of theory and practice from
the early 1960s onwards.Ortner argues that from the early 1960s onwards,
anthropological theory actually underwent a series of major revolutions. For example
there was a heated debate between cultural ecologists and the symbolic
anthropologist. In contrast to structural Marxism, which focuses primarily on
relatively discrete societies or cultures in the manner of traditional anthropological
studies, political economists have shifted their focus to large-scale regional
political/economic systems.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz and his wife travelled to a Balinese village with the
intention of studying it as anthropologists. He discovered the phenomenon of people
in Balinese villages investing a great deal of time and money into cockfighting. Both
the betting and the cockfighting process involve extremely elaborate rituals, and the
final winner can greatly affect the social, economic, and political status of both the
combatants and the spectators. But Geertz looks at cockfighting through 'class-
conscious' glasses, believing that there should be class in every society, and in Bali he
finds class on display in occasions such as cockfights. The question he asked for this
study was "How is it possible that there is no class consciousness in Bali?" In Bali,
there is also a hierarchical structure of class, except that it is expressed in gambling,
where the higher class bets on cockfighting, and then descends in order and plays
small games. If gambling has become a rule for demonstrating class status in Bali, do
these "rules" exist in every society?