All About Characteristics of Culture, UPSC 2026 Anthropology Optional by Sourabh Mishra Sir, KGS IAS

[00:00:07]Hello everyone. My name is Saurabh Mishra, faculty of Anthropology optional at KGS IAS. In today's video, we are going to talk about characteristics of culture. Very specific, very simple topic in the first chapter in in in unit two. Generally, we start with studying culture in socio-cultural part. So, we come across definitions of culture and characteristics of culture.

[00:00:32]And it is something UPSC asks directly also, attributes of culture or characteristics of culture. So, you need to prepare certain points related to the characteristics, right? So, a lot of you who have studied it, you know that there are 10, 12, 15 characteristics available for culture. Generally, you try to memorize them and use in a 10 marker or 15 marker, whatever be the question is, right? So, let us see how can you do value addition in these kind of direct questions, right? Because it is all about how you are writing your answer will fetch you different marks. Because these points are more or less similar for everyone, right? So, how to be little more specific in addressing these kind of question? How to make your argument anthropology specific and do not sound generic in your argument? So, we'll try to see how we can do this, right? So, whenever you are reading culture, there are various thinkers who have given definitions of culture like E.B. Taylor, Franz Boas, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner.

[00:01:38]So, all of them have defined culture according to their theory or their field work, right? So, they might have seen culture from a different lens.

[00:01:49]But when you read about their definition, you get to know these lenses, right? So, by understanding their definitions, you can extract various characteristics.

[00:02:02]So, when you are listing characteristics, that characteristics is somewhere coming from the work of a particular thinker.

[00:02:10]If you think about this, right? It is not randomly we are generating it.

[00:02:15]Someone might have spoken about this in their studies.

[00:02:19]If we are able to quote that person while writing these characteristics, our answers become specific. Right? I know in the initial phases you may feel difficulty while quoting them, but eventually when you get comfortable with the subject, uh that interlinkages becomes easier. Someone who have studied the subject will understand what I'm saying.

[00:02:45]That there are thinkers which you already know. You know their work. It is just about using them as a passing reference when you are writing something very specific. Okay? So, one by one, let us value add in these characteristics.

[00:03:01]Uh these are 10 12 characteristics I have already written. Like culture is learned, it is not innate. That means biology biologically it is not transmitted. We learn as a member of society, right? It is shared among the members together. It is a social concept. It is transmitted across generation from one generation teaches the culture to the other generation. It is cumulative and superorganic. It is going It goes beyond the individual uh capacity. Uh that means even if the individual creates it, if individual vanishes, that culture remains.

[00:03:35]So, from generation after generation we are protecting it and it is cumulative.

[00:03:41]It is dynamic. Uh it changes. It is variable from one culture to other culture. The same things may vary. Uh marriage in a matrilineal society also have variations, right? Marriage in a patrilineal society may have also have variations.

[00:03:57]It is integrated whole more components of culture. They exist together.

[00:04:04]Changes in one will impact the other.

[00:04:07]Then it fulfill needs.

[00:04:09]It is adaptive symbolic. It has material and non-material aspects, right? So, you understand each and every point what it's trying to say. We'll talk about that also. You just don't know which thinker to quote here. So, let us value add in this particular answer.

[00:04:29]How we can quote thinkers. First, it is learned. It is not innate. So, two thinkers you can quote here. One, E.B. Tylor.

[00:04:43]And one, E.B. Tylor in his work, Primitive Culture, talks about the definition of culture where he says that any other So, culture is a complex whole combining knowledge, moral values, law, etc. And any other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society. So, it is he has used the word acquired. Acquired means something which you learn. You have not born with it. You have to learn it as a member of society. By staying in the society, you need to learn it. So, E.B. Tylor you can quote or you can quote Ralph Linton.

[00:05:29]In his work, Culture and Personality School, Ralph Linton talks about the cultural background of personality where he says that in a particular culture people learn those aspect being part of it and it impacts their personality.

[00:05:50]Okay. So, there he is saying that culture is learned. So, you can quote Ralph Linton also.

[00:05:56]Then, the next characteristic is shared.

[00:05:59]So, you can directly quote the work of Herskovits.

[00:06:06]You can quote Franz Boas, historical particularist, where Herskovits talk rocks about that in his work man and his works, uh he explains that it is not individual culture is not individual, it is shared with the member of the society. Right?

[00:06:30]So, uh that that means it is shared among the people. Then comes culture is social. Here, you can quote sociologist Emile Durkheim.

[00:06:44]Emile Durkheim.

[00:06:47]In his work, uh the elementary forms of religious life, Durkheim says that uh it is a collective life. So, the culture which you are practicing is part of the society. Without society, you will not be practicing it. Okay? So, uh it is exist only through It is existing only through group life.

[00:07:14]Individual, if you are existing isolated in an island, you may not have culture.

[00:07:20]You may have instincted instinctive uh responses to the climatic situation, but you may not have a uh comprehensive culture existing. It is only existing because you are living in a group setup. That That is what Emile Durkheim is saying. So, you can quote uh this as culture is social. It is transmitted across generation. So, this is the concept of enculturation.

[00:07:47]Enculturation.

[00:07:49]You can quote thinker like Franz Boas here.

[00:07:54]Enculturation is what? Teaching the cultural practices or values to the next generation. This is the primary role of a family when one generation is teaching their cultural practices to the next generation.

[00:08:08]Okay. It is cumulative and superorganic.

[00:08:12]Cumulative means what?

[00:08:15]It is building up generation after generation. For example, if you have built some material culture, it will stay here. And the next generation will build upon it. They will not go back and invent it. For example, if wheel is invented, now we are using the wheel in the next generation to create much more complex vehicles.

[00:08:38]But [snorts] we are not going back and inventing wheels again. So, the culture is cumulative. We are taking the previous generations work and we are building on top of that.

[00:08:50]We are not going back and inventing it again.

[00:08:53]So, this is what cumulative means. And this cumulative nature is making it superorganic. What do we mean by superorganic? That it is beyond organic.

[00:09:05]Beyond organic Suppose you have invented something, even if you die, your invention will be there.

[00:09:13]Or even if you have created an institution, you are the creator, but the institution will own you.

[00:09:21]The institution will control you.

[00:09:24]Marriage as an institution created by human beings, right? For our suitability, our stable way of life. But now, the rules of marriage is controlling us.

[00:09:39]This is super organic. That something which is beyond the organic nature of human beings, even if you don't exist, the system will exist.

[00:09:50]So, culture becomes super organic. In his work, direct work, uh A.L. Kroeber, uh in his study the super organic says that So, you can quote here A.L.

[00:10:06]Kroeber, American anthropologist, student of Franz Boas. In his work, The Super Organics talks about the cumulative nature and the super organic nature of culture.

[00:10:23]Again, directly you can quote here A.L.

[00:10:26]Kroeber here.

[00:10:28]How culture is dynamic, you can quote Edward Sapir.

[00:10:36]Edward Sapir, that culture is dynamic in in nature. It is constantly changing. It is never static. Okay. Uh so, it may change because of environmental change, it may change because of a social change, it may change because of a revolution, it may change because of uh any kind of internal conflict, right?

[00:11:00]So, but it will change. It will never remain static. So, that is what Edward Sapir is saying while saying that culture is uh dynamic.

[00:11:10]Culture is variable even within the societies uh culture may vary. For example, if you look at uh Toda polyandry, a matrilineal society, Toda polyandry existing in Nilgiri Hills, and Khasi matriliney existing in Meghalaya. So, same kind of family setup and kinship varying from one society to another. As an example, you can say compare Toda versus Khasi.

[00:11:46]This will give you an idea that how culture is variable from one culture to another culture. You can take various examples here.

[00:11:55]Nothing specific that it it's not specific to these two only. You can take any two communities and compare their culture, right? Integrated whole. Here, you can take work of E.B. Tylor.

[00:12:10]Why?

[00:12:12]In his definition in Primitive Culture, what E.B. Tylor said? That culture is a complex whole which has XYZ, right? So, the term complex whole was used by E.B.

[00:12:24]Tylor, which is nothing but it is a integrated whole. Also, you can quote Ruth Benedict.

[00:12:34]Benedict in her work Patterns of Culture.

[00:12:44]What do we mean by integrated whole?

[00:12:46]That its part interlocks into one pattern.

[00:12:52]So, any changes in those parts will have an impact on the entire functioning of the society.

[00:13:00]So, culture is not isolated grouping of various elements.

[00:13:07]Those elements are interlinked with each other to give a purpose to the society.

[00:13:12]That is what integrated whole means.

[00:13:15]Culture fulfills needs. Functionalism.

[00:13:20]That anything Functionalism says that culture exists because it is fulfilling basic human needs. Who is the thinker? You can quote Malinowski here.

[00:13:32]Malinowski.

[00:13:34]Culture is adaptive.

[00:13:36]So, dynamic and adaptive, again similar, but dynamic means it will change constantly. Adaptive means it will change according to the requirement of the society. For example, environment.

[00:13:49]So, here you can quote Julian Steward.

[00:13:54]Julian Steward and his concept of culture ecology, where he says that environment there there is a culture core in a society. That culture core is mostly related to the most basic types or basic forms of that culture, like subsistence, which is dependent on the environment. And the moment there is a change in the environment, it will directly impact the elements of the culture core, which is the subsistence.

[00:14:29]And this subsistence change will change the way people live.

[00:14:34]So, the change in environment will change the culture core and eventually change the culture itself.

[00:14:42]So, culture and ecology says that environment and culture are correlated to each other. Changes in one may lead to changes in another. Okay? Then, we have symbolic culture is symbolic.

[00:14:55]Culture can be understood through symbols.

[00:14:58]Uh who has given uh that or who has done studies related to it? You can quote Clifford Geertz.

[00:15:10]Clifford Geertz has talked about thick description, various layers of meanings in culture. He also calls culture as web of significance.

[00:15:22]Right? So, he has studied culture through understanding the meaning or interpreting the meaning of various layers existing in a symbol and decoding the culture from that.

[00:15:36]So, Clifford Geertz you can quote. You can also quote his case study of Balinese cockfight.

[00:15:43]You can also quote Victor Turner and how he understands rituals.

[00:15:50]Victor Turner. How he understands ritual as symbol to understand the culture. Okay?

[00:15:59]These two thinkers you can quote when you are saying that culture is symbolic in nature.

[00:16:04]The last feature is culture is material and non-material both. So, here this is a generic argument. You can quote Robert Redfield saying that non-material aspects will create civilizational aspect. E.B. Tylor in his listing he talks. E.B. Tylor in his listing he talks about material and non-material aspect as a part of culture and as a part of the complex whole which is existing. So, culture basically has both material and non-material aspect. When you talk about material aspect you can further quote Marvin Harris cultural materialism that how material determines culture, material determinism, technological determinism, environmental determinism.

[00:17:01]So, neo-evolutionist and cultural materialist ideas are related to this aspect only that culture has material and non-material aspects. Okay? So, the point of this video was because the content you all know, right? Whoever has studied culture, they know that these things you need to memorize to write a 10 marker or a 15 marker on characteristics of culture, right? But the idea of this video was to tell you how to interlink the work of a thinker related to this characteristics. Now each and every argument, 12 points are here. All the 12 points are now substantiated. So if you are writing this, examiner will have so much difficulty in cutting your marks, right?

[00:17:44]Because each and every argument is justified by a thinker's work.

[00:17:49]So you have not left any scope of cutting marks there. No generic point.

[00:17:53]So this is what we needed to adopt when we are preparing those topics because some topics are very recurring. And if you don't have a high-quality answer on that, that is our fault, right? So some topics you need to prepare in such a way that there is no loophole of cutting marks there. Okay. One further addition you can do here. For each of these cases, you can identify examples. Now first, in first iteration we have interlinked the thinkers, right?

[00:18:25]Second iteration you can do, interlink example also. Suppose the same question if they ask on a 15-20 marker, then you have a much more scope to expand. And when you are expanding that, incorporate thinker plus example, their case studies. So a lot of things can be done. You just need to understand how to utilize your knowledge and present it in a better way. That is the mantra of getting a good score in mains, specifically in optional, right?

[00:18:53]You just need to show to the examiner that you have subject-specific knowledge. You are not talking about random generic things. Okay. So I hope this video helps you in your preparation and uh uh if anyone of you are looking for a foundation course, we are launch at KGS IAS, we are launching our foundation batch from 21st of July at a very affordable price and it will be the most comprehensive course which you are looking for, right? Everything will be covered with in-depth conceptual clarity of the subject. So, if you take the course, you don't need to explore any other sources or any other videos, right? So, this will be the one-stop solution for you to prepare anthropology optional. So, thank you so much for listening to this video. I hope this kind of videos are helping you. Also, those people who are looking for a foundation course, you can scan the QR code here or go to our website, explore about the course and register yourself.

[00:19:59]See you all in the class. Thank you so much.

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