Republic of the Philippines

BICOL STATE COLLEGE OF APPLIED SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY

City of Naga

Module 1, Lesson 6 Culture: How It Defines Moral Behaviour

Intended Learning 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
of course exist in vacuum. It exists in a world with all its spatio-temporal conditions, its “facticity”. Facticity
refers to the “givens” of our situation such as our language, our environment. Our previous choices and
our very selves in their function as in itself constitute our facticity. That includes culture. In this topic, we
shall discuss culture and how it affects our definition of moral behavior.

Discussion:

What is culture?

Culture is the “integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs and behaviors. This consists of
language, ideas, customs, morals, laws, taboos, institutions, tools, techniques, and works of art, rituals
and other capacities and habits acquired by a person as a member of society.” (Taylor as quoted by
Palispis, 1997).

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing

language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.

The Center for Advance Research on Language Acquisition goes a step further, defining culture as
shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding that are learned
by socialization. Thus, it can be seen as the growth of a group identity fostered by social patterns unique
to the group.
"Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage,
music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave
with loved ones, and a million other things,"( Cristina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate
College in London).
The word "culture" derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin "colere,"
which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture. "It shares its etymology with a
number of other words related to actively fostering growth.”

The Human Person and Culture

As a moral agent you are born you are born into a culture, a factual reality you have not chosen.
You are not born nothing. It may be said that the Aristotelico-Thomistic tradition is one dominant, if not
the most dominant culture. This 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 these is God, that a divine order and law keep and govern this world,
which includes you. But what happens when there are different cultures with their own different views
of man’s direction and destiny?

Enculturation, Inculturation and Acculturation

Enculturation refers to the process of learning our own (native) culture, whereas, acculturation is
the process of learning and adopting host cultural norms, values and beliefs. Learning native cultural
norms and values of a particular society are essential for an individual, to function in a society.
Enculturation is anthropological term used for socialization, both terms refer to, the process of learning
through social interaction. However, the term enculturation is only confined to culture. Whereas,
socialization refer to each and every social interaction of an individual with other people of a society.
Since conception, baby starts interacting with his family members most of all with mother. Parents
teach their children how to eat, drink, walk, play, and behave in different situations. However, parents
teach all those things according to their own culture.
For instance, Middle Eastern families eat food with
their bare hands whereas, American families use
fork and knife to eat food. So, children born and
raised in Middle Eastern families are enculturate to
eat food with bare hands. Whereas, American
children are enculturate to eat food with fork and
knife. Culture can be transmitted from one
generation to another. During the process of cultural
transmission, learning a culture by a new generation
is called enculturation.
 Acculturation, on the other hand, is adopting foreign culture or other cultural norms and values.
In this new technological era people can interact with other people living thousands mile away from them.
Due to social interaction through technology and with mass media people learn new values. And if people
adopt those learned values of other culture and modify their own culture, it will come under the category
of acculturation. Mostly, group of people acculturate
because they are influenced by the dominant culture in
a given society. For instance, A Pakistani boy SHAHID
immigrates to America, during his first year, he wears,
kurta shalwar; which is his native cultural costume but
after a year, he starts wearing, t-shirts jeans, suits and
tuxedos, so SHAHID acculturated; for the reason that, he
adopted foreign culture.

Inculturation, in Christianity, is the adaptation of

the way Church teachings are presented to other, mostly non-Christian, cultures and, in turn, the influence
of those cultures on the evolution of these teachings. This is a term that is generally used by Catholics,
the World Council of Churches and some Protestants.

Inculturation raises two related problems, that of the evangelization of culture (rooting the Gospel
in culture) and that of the cultural understanding of the Gospel. It was this movement that led Pope John
Paul II to say in 1982 that: “The synthesis between culture and faith is not only a requirement of culture,
but also of faith. Faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, nor entirely reflected upon, or
faithfully experienced”. This means that inculturation is not an action but a process that unfolds over time,
one that is active and based on mutual recognition and dialogue, a critical mind and insight, faithfulness
and conversion, transformation and growth, renewal and innovation.

How Culture Shapes the Moral Agent

Culture definitely affects the way we evaluate and judge things. There are some societies which
consider gathering vegetables at the backyard of their neighbor as alright because it is an act of getting
his/her share. In other societies, the act would not be called stealing. In most societies, the act is stealing.
In ancient times, human sacrifice was not wrong. Today it is a criminal act.

Culture has a very long-lasting hold on an individual. A person may have become highly educated,
may have obtained a doctorate degree, educated with Christian values of forgiveness, but if he comes
from a society with culture of vengeance (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth), having the sense of
obligation to make an act of revenge when a member of his tribe has been killed or harmed by another
tribe, and when case arises where a member of his tribe has been killed or harmed by another, he
becomes ultimately vindictive and joins his tribe in seeking revenge. No amount of graduate education
can prevent him from joining his tribe to seek revenge. He forgets about his doctorate degree in Values
Education.
Key Concepts:
1. As a moral agent, the human person is born into a culture.
2. Enculturation is a process of learning from infancy till death, the components of life in one’s
culture; it is the process of learning your own culture
3. Inculturation refers to the “missiological process in which the Gospel is rooted in a particular
culture and the latter is transformed by its introduction to Christianity”.
4. Acculturation is the “cultural modification of an individual group, or people by adapting to or
borrowing traits from another culture”; it is the process of learning another culture.
5. Culture definitely affects the way we evaluate and judge things.

Reflection:

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

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References:

Corpuz, Ruben, Corpuz, Brenda. 2020. Ethics. Lorimar Publishing Inc.

Bulaong, Calano, Lagliva, Mariano, Principe. 2018. Ethics: Foundations of Moral Valuation

Thank you, cmf