The Differences between the Explicit and Implicit Characteristics of Culture - Essay Example

The Differences Between the Explicit and Implicit Characteristics of Culture

The modern culture is associated with the modern interpretation of explicit and implicit characteristics of reality that contribute to the features of intelligence and predetermined behaviors of people. The differences between the explicit and implicit characteristics of culture are observable within the qualities and values of an individual and are the subject of the study of modern anthropology.

Nothing characterizes modern anthropologists more than the variable of the belief that the customs that they study are connected, and they are understandable for an individual only as part of an extensive structure - beliefs, norms, values, ​​and intelligent social actions, says Levin. There is a variable controversy regarding the level of connectedness of cultural elements and their nature. Still, even the most skeptics do not consider individual customs as separate autonomous intelligent characteristics, because when they study communications with people of different cultural habits, they discover not only the order of communicative conventions but also the version of "common sense," the cultural framework through which the bearers of another culture see and act in the outside world is different from their own cultural framework and their own notions of common sense. This framework does not look like a formal syllogism, but it is far from a random set of discrete variable elements. The cultural environment must be an organized system of context from which beliefs, behaviors, and practices derive their significance. Many metaphors were used in the conceptualization of cultural patterns – the intelligent culture was understood as a law, as a drama, as a language, as a philosophical doctrine, etc. But from an anthropological point of view, each of these interpretations has its own limitations. One aspect of this problem is the question of explicitness, which several years ago led anthropologists from the primary focus on an "open" culture to the attention of a "closed" culture, from an explicit to an implicit one. Each culture has rules, beliefs, and symbols that are explicit in the sense that an informant can easily explain them to an anthropologist. If the intelligent anthropologist lives in the society he studies, he can find many other behavioral regulators that informants cannot explain so easily and which they regard as self-evident behavior, as well as what should be. Many anthropologists conclude that behavior is difficult to verbalize; it is in culture the most important, the most fundamental. They argue that the most general ideas of intelligence - the basic principles - are less verbally articulated because the social consensus in society protects them from doubt and changes the focus of the discourse of intelligence when it comes to those issues that question the paradigms that define the traditional way of social life. The intelligent anthropologist wants to know these paradigms, but he cannot deduce them only from current research. His position is similar to that of a linguist who studies the grammar of a language. The intelligent informant cannot explain the rule based on behaviors of which he builds sentences. However, he uses them constantly and says that his speech can be explained through these rules of particular intelligent behavior. An anthropologist needs a method of intelligence similar to the one that helps the linguist formulate his rules, concepts, and statements that generate observable features. The cultural framework cannot be reduced to either implicit or explicit dimensions. It would be a mistake to take what people give based on their variable behavior ​​and to assert that all other models of behavior and beliefs are not cultural. It is also a mistake to discount intelligent characteristics, beliefs, symbols, and pay attention only to implicit cultural aspects. Simply, in culture, as in an organized structure of meanings, some meanings are more explicit than others for reasons related to the practice of the intelligent social life and the history of a given society.

The multifaceted nature of culture is manifested in the integration of rational and irrational characteristics in symbolic formulas. Many tend to link, as Geertz says, the "model of reality," that is, descriptive statement of the behavior of what is, with "models for reality," that is, with normative statements about what should be. This combination of normative and disruptive forms of intelligence is particularly pronounced in cultural models of childcare behavior. On the one hand, such intelligent models express deeply rooted characteristics ​​such as obedience or independence. Still, they are often formulated as beliefs regarding the nature of children and the nature of their development of behaviors.

On the other hand, such models are an adaptive strategy for maximizing survival and optimizing the future economic adjustment of children. However, their intelligent behavior is usually formed in moral imperatives. Cultural values ​​in folk concepts of children's education are not independent elements of behavior, and along with other cultural elements, they are mutually supportive variable components of a single formula in which normative components motivate the adaptive behavior of parents and other people. Discriminatory variable elements in parents support the intelligent belief that their educational methods are meaningful to the outside world that they believe their child will have to face. This is a fusion in the minds of people of what is and what should be present in all cultural systems of intelligence; people see the world as they think it should be. But even within the framework of the same culture, this vision is somewhat different among different carriers of the intelligent culture. In another (earlier) work, Robert Levin writes. In anthropology, the concept of the intelligence variable of culture means both various forms of human adaptation, behavior, and the various ways in which a human population organizes its life of intelligence on earth. Intelligent people have a system of adaptive variable goals, many of which have animals. Still, people have a unique ability to achieve them through well-acquired behavioral characteristics (cultural models of behaviors) that can vary widely from one population to another on account of intelligence. At this level of discourse, intelligent culture is often defined concerning the basis of the physical and biological environment of intelligence to which the human population must adapt to survive. Also, culture can be defined as creating an environment for intelligent members of the population. Intelligent individuals in the human population do not adapt directly to the physical and biological variable environment, but to the cultural (or sociocultural) environment, which contains the means of their individual survival and leads them to adaptation through already established channels and behaviors or an organized complex of rules, based on which individuals in a population should contact each other, think about themselves and their environment of intelligence and behave towards other people and objects of their environment. These rules of behavior are not universal and not always obeyed, but they are recognized by all, and they usually limit the number of variations in communication variable models, beliefs, values, and social behavior within a single culture. The sociocultural environment is complex and variable on the matter of intelligence; its most stable traits can be called institutions. When a model of behavior, belief, or communication acquires such legitimacy in a population that it receives the status of a rule recognized by all, they are institutionalized for the sake of intelligence. Following these rules is recognized as correct (receiving positive approval from society), while deviations from them are recognized as incorrect and can cause negative social sanctions. The institutionalization of intelligence in such rules or norms leads to pressure on members of the population, forcing them to standardize their social manifestations and relevant behavior. The norms relating to the individual's reaction in a specific type of situation are guided by a broad institutionalized program of collective actions of intelligence (institutions) directing to adaptive goals, for example, economic institutions, religious institutions, political institutions. These programs are implemented through institutional structures, stabilized complexes of the interaction of individuals according to regulatory requirements, in which each individual meets the requirements determined by his institutional role. From the point of view of the individual, his environment consists of situations, roles, and institutions that put pressure on him, normatively inducing the right manifestations, but also provide an opportunity for the realization of their personality.