Culture and Society — UPSC Anthropology Optional Notes

1. Concepts and Definitions

E.B. Tylor (1871): in Primitive Culture he wrote that culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is 'that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'. It is the most quoted definition and it treats culture and civilization as one.

Key words in Tylor: 'complex whole' stresses integration, and 'acquired by man as a member of society' stresses that culture is learned socially, not inherited biologically.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952): in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions they collected about 164 definitions and grouped them as descriptive, historical, normative, psychological, structural and genetic.

Malinowski: saw culture as an instrumental apparatus by which human beings satisfy their basic biological needs (food, shelter, reproduction) and the derived needs that arise from them, which became the basis of his functionalism.

Herskovits: described culture as the man-made part of the environment, and introduced the term enculturation for the process by which a child learns its own culture.

A.L. Kroeber (1917): called culture superorganic, a level of reality above the individual and the organic, which follows its own laws.

Leslie White: in The Science of Culture (1949) he stressed that culture depends on symbolling, the human capacity to give arbitrary meanings to things, such as holy water or a national flag.

Clifford Geertz (1973): treated culture as webs of significance that humans have spun, so its analysis is an interpretive search for meaning rather than an experimental science in search of law.

Different emphasis: Tylor gives a list (enumerative), Malinowski stresses function, White stresses symbols, and Geertz stresses meaning, so a good answer shows how the definition changed with theory.

2. Characteristics of Culture

Learned: culture is acquired through enculturation and socialization, not through genes; a child of any race brought up in a Santal village speaks Santali and follows Santal customs.

Shared: it belongs to a group, so a habit of one person is not culture until others share it.

Symbolic: language, rituals, colours and objects carry meanings fixed by convention, for example the sacred thread or vermilion in Hindu society.

Transmitted: culture passes from generation to generation, mainly through language, which makes it cumulative.

Integrated: its parts are linked, so a change in one part affects others; Malinowski and Ruth Benedict stressed this patterning.

Adaptive: culture helps people cope with their environment, as the igloo and fur clothing of the Inuit or the buffalo economy of the Todas show.

Dynamic: every culture changes through invention, discovery, diffusion and acculturation.

Universal yet unique: all societies have culture and some common elements (Murdock listed cultural universals such as language, family, religion and incest rules), but each culture has its own content.

Units of culture: a culture trait is the smallest unit (a bow), a culture complex is a cluster of linked traits (the cattle complex of East Africa described by Herskovits in 1926), and a culture area is a region of similar cultures (Clark Wissler for North America).

3. Material and Non-material Culture

W.F. Ogburn (1922): in Social Change he divided culture into material culture (tools, houses, machines) and non-material or adaptive culture (beliefs, norms, laws).

Cultural lag: Ogburn argued that material culture changes faster than non-material culture, creating a lag; mobile phones spread in villages faster than norms about privacy or women's use of phones.

Tangible and intangible heritage: UNESCO's idea of intangible cultural heritage (2003 Convention) covers oral traditions, rituals and craft skills, close to non-material culture.

4. Culture and Civilization

Evolutionist view: L.H. Morgan in Ancient Society (1877) placed civilization as the last stage after savagery and barbarism, marked by the phonetic alphabet and writing.

Gordon Childe: described an urban revolution with criteria such as cities, surplus, full-time specialists, monumental buildings, writing and the state; the Harappan civilization fits these.

Alfred Weber and R.M. MacIver: separated civilization (the utilitarian, technical apparatus that is cumulative) from culture (values, religion, art that express what we are); MacIver's line is often summarized as civilization is what we have, culture is what we are.

Robert Redfield: contrasted folk society (small, isolated, homogeneous, sacred) with urban civilization, and spoke of the great tradition of the literate elite and the little tradition of village folk.

Tylor's position: used the two words as synonyms, and many anthropologists today prefer to speak of complex societies rather than ranking cultures as civilized or uncivilized.

5. Ethnographic Examples

Toda of the Nilgiris: their whole culture is integrated around the sacred buffalo, the dairy and the dairyman-priest, as W.H.R. Rivers showed in The Todas (1906), a good example of a culture complex.

Gond and Muria ghotul: the youth dormitory described by Verrier Elwin in The Muria and their Ghotul (1947) shows how culture is transmitted to the young through an institution.

Inuit and San: the Inuit snow-house and the San (Kalahari) water-storing ostrich eggs are classic examples of culture as adaptation.

Harappan civilization: planned cities, script, standard weights and long-distance trade show the features Childe called civilization.

6. Theory and Debates

Evolutionists (Tylor, Morgan): held that all cultures pass through similar stages, so culture can be ranked from lower to higher.

Boas and historical particularism: argued that each culture is a product of its own history and cannot be ranked, which led to cultural relativism.

Culture and personality school: Ruth Benedict (Patterns of Culture, 1934) and Margaret Mead saw each culture as a pattern that shapes personality.

Debate on the superorganic: Kroeber's superorganic view was criticised by Edward Sapir and others for ignoring the role of individuals in culture.

Recent views: postmodern and interpretive scholars question culture as a bounded, fixed thing and stress contested, changing meanings.

7. Diagrams to Draw

Concentric diagram: draw three circles, inner one labelled culture trait (bow), middle one culture complex (hunting complex: bow, arrow, poison, ritual), outer one culture area (central Indian tribal belt).

Table of culture versus civilization: rows for basis, measure, speed of change, transfer and examples, with culture as ends and values, civilization as means and technology.

Flow chart: biological needs leading to institutions leading to culture, to illustrate Malinowski's need theory.

8. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): open with Tylor's definition, add one more definition (Herskovits or White), list five characteristics with one Indian example each, and conclude on culture as the distinctively human mode of adaptation.

15-mark answer (200 words): add the culture versus civilization distinction with MacIver, Redfield and Childe, plus one table.

20-mark answer (250 words): show how definitions changed with theory (evolutionist, functionalist, symbolic, interpretive), use the Toda or ghotul example, draw the trait-complex-area diagram, and end with relevance for tribal policy.

Keywords: complex whole, enculturation, superorganic, symbolling, cultural lag, great and little tradition.

Quotation: Tylor's 'complex whole' definition is safe to quote exactly; for Geertz, write that he saw culture as webs of significance spun by humans.

1. Concepts and Definitions

Ethnocentrism (W.G. Sumner, 1906): in Folkways Sumner described it as the view in which one's own group is the centre of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it; he linked it with in-group loyalty and out-group hostility.

Ethnocentrism in plain terms: judging other cultures by the yardstick of one's own and assuming one's own customs are natural, normal and superior.

Cultural relativism: the principle that beliefs and practices should be understood in terms of the culture in which they occur, not judged by outside standards; Herskovits developed it most fully, building on Boas.

Herskovits: argued that judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation; this is the core logic of relativism.

Xenocentrism: the opposite of ethnocentrism, a preference for foreign ideas and goods over one's own, for example valuing imported brands or foreign degrees above local ones.

Cultural shock: a term associated with Kalervo Oberg (1960) for the disorientation felt when entering an unfamiliar culture, which often triggers ethnocentric reactions.

Emic and etic: Kenneth Pike (1954) coined the terms from phonemic and phonetic; emic is the insider's view and categories, etic is the outsider-analyst's view; Marvin Harris used them widely, and relativism leans towards the emic.

2. Types and Forms

Methodological relativism: suspending judgement while studying a culture so that it can be understood on its own terms; almost all anthropologists accept this.

Moral or ethical relativism: the stronger claim that no practice can be judged right or wrong across cultures; this is debated and widely criticised.

Cognitive relativism: the claim that systems of knowledge and logic differ by culture, linked to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on language and thought (debated).

Forms of ethnocentrism: mild (preferring one's food or language) and extreme (racism, colonialism, genocide, forced assimilation).

3. Ethnographic and Historical Examples

Colonial ethnography: early colonial writers called many Indian tribes savage or criminal; the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 branded whole communities as criminal by birth, a clear case of ethnocentric policy, repealed in 1952 when the communities were denotified.

Evolutionist ranking: Morgan's stages of savagery, barbarism and civilization placed Victorian Europe at the top, which Boas criticised as ethnocentric.

Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934): described the restrained Zuni (Apollonian), the competitive Kwakiutl (Dionysian) and the suspicious Dobu, arguing that what is normal in one culture can be abnormal in another.

Ghotul: missionaries and outsiders condemned the Muria ghotul as immoral; Verrier Elwin (1947) showed it as an institution that trains youth in discipline, service and community life.

Nacirema: Horace Miner's essay 'Body Ritual among the Nacirema' (1956) described American hygiene habits as if they were exotic rituals, to make readers see their own ethnocentrism.

Food and taboo: beef, pork, insects or dog meat are food in some cultures and disgusting in others, a simple everyday illustration.

Jarawa and Sentinelese: India's policy of leaving these Andaman groups largely to themselves (the Jarawa policy of 2004 and protection of the Sentinelese) reflects respect for their choice of isolation.

4. Analysis: Functions and Problems

Positive functions of ethnocentrism: it strengthens group solidarity, loyalty and identity, and helps preserve a culture; Sumner saw it as natural to all groups.

Negative effects: prejudice, stereotypes, conflict, communalism, racism and the destruction of minority cultures through forced assimilation.

Value of relativism: it promotes tolerance, careful fieldwork, respect for minorities and policies that suit local needs, such as Nehru's tribal Panchsheel which said people should develop along the lines of their own genius.

Problems of relativism: if taken as moral relativism it can be used to defend harmful practices such as witch-hunting, sati, child marriage, female genital cutting or caste discrimination.

Universal human rights: the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights claims rights for everyone, which raises the tension between universalism and relativism.

Ethnocentrism in development: projects designed from outside, such as attempts to replace jhum (shifting cultivation) in the North-East with settled farming or to resettle forest-dwellers without consent, often rest on the ethnocentric assumption that the outsider way of life is better.

5. Theory and Debates

Boas: his historical particularism held that each culture must be studied in its own historical context, and he opposed racial and evolutionist rankings; relativism grew from his teaching at Columbia.

American Anthropological Association (1947): a statement drafted by Herskovits warned the United Nations that a declaration of rights must respect cultural differences; it was later criticised, and the AAA adopted a Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights in 1999 supporting universal rights.

Critics: philosophers and anthropologists argue that strong relativism is self-contradictory (it makes tolerance itself a universal value) and can silence the weaker members of a society, such as women.

Middle path: many scholars favour critical relativism, understanding a practice from within first, then judging it with reference to human dignity and the views of those affected inside the culture.

Clifford Geertz (1984, 'Anti anti-relativism'): defended relativism mainly as a warning against parochialism, without endorsing 'anything goes'.

Indian debate: Verrier Elwin's protective approach for tribes was criticised by G.S. Ghurye, who called tribes backward Hindus and favoured integration; Nehru's policy chose a middle course of integration without imposition.

6. Diagrams to Draw

Spectrum line: draw a horizontal line with xenocentrism at the left end, cultural relativism in the middle and ethnocentrism at the right end; mark extreme moral relativism and racism as the dangerous ends.

Two-column table: ethnocentrism versus cultural relativism on basis, scholar, attitude, effect on research, effect on policy and an Indian example.

Emic-etic box: two boxes labelled insider view (Muria explanation of ghotul) and outsider view (missionary view), with the anthropologist's synthesis in between.

7. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): define both with Sumner and Herskovits, give one Indian example (Criminal Tribes Act or ghotul) and one world example (Benedict), and conclude that relativism is a method, not a licence.

15-mark answer (200 words): add types of relativism and the universalism-relativism debate with the AAA statements of 1947 and 1999.

20-mark answer (250 words): add relevance for fieldwork (emic view, participant observation), for tribal policy (Panchsheel, Elwin versus Ghurye) and for a multicultural India, with a table.

Keywords: in-group and out-group, emic and etic, historical particularism, methodological relativism, critical relativism, human rights.

Quotation: paraphrase Sumner, that one's own group is the centre of everything and all others are rated with reference to it.

1. Concept of Society

MacIver and Page: defined society as a web of social relationships which is always changing, stressing relationships rather than people.

Ralph Linton: described a society as any group of people who have lived and worked together long enough to get themselves organised and to think of themselves as a social unit with well-defined limits.

Features of a society: a population, a territory, a shared culture, a degree of self-sufficiency, organised relationships (social structure) and continuity across generations.

Animal and human society: many animals (ants, baboons) live in societies, but only human society is based on culture transmitted through symbols.

Tönnies (1887): contrasted Gemeinschaft (community based on kinship, neighbourhood and sentiment) with Gesellschaft (association based on contract and self-interest).

Durkheim (1893): in The Division of Labour in Society he contrasted mechanical solidarity of simple societies based on likeness with organic solidarity of complex societies based on interdependence.

2. Society and Culture

Raymond Firth: explained that if society is taken to be an aggregate of social relations, culture is the content of those relations; society emphasises the human component, culture the accumulated resources and ways of life.

Radcliffe-Brown: argued that social anthropology should study social structure (the network of actually existing relations) and called culture an abstraction, a British emphasis.

American view: Boas, Kroeber and their students made culture the central concept, so American anthropology came to be called cultural anthropology.

Interdependence: there is no society without culture and no culture without a society to carry it; the distinction is analytical, not real.

Social structure and organisation: Firth distinguished social structure (the enduring framework) from social organisation (the choices people make within it).

3. Social Institutions

Definition: an institution is an established, organised and enduring pattern of behaviour, norms and roles built around a basic social need; Sumner saw institutions as growing out of folkways and mores.

Malinowski's view: each institution has a charter, personnel, norms, material apparatus, activities and a function, and serves biological or derived needs.

Main institutions: marriage and family (reproduction, socialisation), economy (production and exchange), polity (order and decision-making), religion (meaning and integration) and education.

Tribal examples: the youth dormitory (Muria ghotul, Naga morung, Oraon dhumkuria), the Santal village council headed by the manjhi, and the Toda dairy are tribal institutions.

Institution and association: marriage is an institution (a set of rules), while a family or a cooperative society is an association (an organised group of people).

4. Social Groups

Definition: a group is two or more people who interact, share a sense of belonging and have common goals or norms; a crowd or a category (all left-handed people) is not a group.

Primary and secondary groups: C.H. Cooley in Social Organization (1909) described primary groups (family, play group, neighbourhood) marked by face-to-face, intimate cooperation; secondary groups (trade unions, parties) are larger and impersonal, a term developed by later sociologists.

In-group and out-group: W.G. Sumner (1906) distinguished the we-group, to which one feels loyalty, from the they-group, towards which one may feel hostility.

Reference group: H.H. Hyman (1942) coined the term and R.K. Merton developed it; it is a group whose standards one uses to judge oneself, which helps explain Sanskritization.

Kin and non-kin groups in tribes: lineage, clan, phratry and moiety are kin groups; age-sets, dormitories, secret societies and work groups are non-kin groups.

Age-sets: among the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard) and the Maasai of East Africa, males initiated together form an age-set that moves as a body through grades such as warrior and elder.

5. Social Stratification

Definition: the arrangement of people in a hierarchy of layers (strata) with unequal access to wealth, power and prestige, which persists across generations.

Morton Fried (1967): in The Evolution of Political Society he classified egalitarian societies (as many valued positions as people able to fill them, as among hunter-gatherers), rank societies (fewer positions of prestige than people, as in chiefdoms) and stratified societies (unequal access to basic resources).

Bases of stratification: age, sex, kinship, wealth, occupation, caste, class, race and ethnicity; even egalitarian bands recognise age and sex differences.

Caste: a closed, hereditary, endogamous system with ritual ranking by purity and pollution; G.S. Ghurye listed six features, and Louis Dumont in Homo Hierarchicus (1966) saw the opposition of pure and impure as its basis.

Class: an open system based on economic position; Marx defined classes by ownership of the means of production, while Max Weber separated class (market situation), status (honour) and party (power).

Functionalist theory: Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) argued that stratification ensures that the most important positions are filled by the most able; Melvin Tumin (1953) criticised it for ignoring inherited privilege.

Tribal stratification: most Indian tribes are relatively egalitarian, but there are exceptions, such as the hereditary Konyak Naga chiefs (Ang) and the clans of the Khasi syiem, and the Toda divided into Tartharol and Teivaliol.

Chiefdoms and estates: Polynesian societies such as Tonga and Hawaii had ranked chiefs, and feudal Europe had estates of clergy, nobility and commoners.

6. Theory and Debates

Structural-functionalists: Radcliffe-Brown saw institutions as parts that maintain the whole social structure, like organs of a body.

Conflict theorists: Marx and later scholars saw stratification as exploitation, not integration.

Caste and tribe: the tribe-caste continuum of F.G. Bailey and Surajit Sinha shows that the line between egalitarian tribe and hierarchical caste is a matter of degree.

Caste as unique or general: Dumont held caste to be unique to India, while scholars such as Gerald Berreman compared caste with racial stratification in the United States (debated).

7. Diagrams to Draw

Concentric circles: individual, family, lineage, clan, tribe, to show nesting of groups in a tribal society.

Pyramid: stratified society with a small top stratum and a broad base, next to a flat bar for an egalitarian band and a stepped cone for a rank chiefdom.

Table: primary versus secondary group on size, type of contact, duration, goals and examples.

8. Using It in the Exam

10-mark answer (150 words): for 'society and culture', give one definition of each, Firth's distinction, the British and American emphasis, and one example of their interdependence.

15-mark answer (200 words): for social groups or institutions, define, classify (Cooley, Sumner, Merton) and give tribal examples such as the ghotul and age-sets.

20-mark answer (250 words): for stratification, define, give Fried's three types with ethnographic examples, compare caste and class in a table, and add theories (Davis-Moore, Marx, Weber).

Keywords: web of social relationships, social structure, primary group, reference group, egalitarian, rank and stratified.

Quotation: MacIver and Page's 'web of social relationships' is short and safe to quote.

1. Concept and Characteristics of Culture and Civilization

Example 1 (UPSC 2025, 10 marks): Culture and embodiment.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)

Approach: A short note: define embodiment, trace it through Mauss, Bourdieu and Csordas, give Indian and world examples of culture written on the body, and conclude on its value.

Embodiment is the idea that culture is not only in ideas and symbols but is lived and carried in the body: in posture, gesture, skills, perception and health.

Marcel Mauss, in his lecture on techniques of the body (1934, published 1935), showed that walking, swimming, sleeping or giving birth are learned differently in each society; Pierre Bourdieu's habitus (1977) described durable dispositions inscribed in the body by social position.

Thomas Csordas (1990), drawing on Merleau-Ponty, proposed embodiment as a paradigm in which the body is the existential ground of culture; Scheper-Hughes and Lock (1987) separated the individual body, the social body and the body politic.

Examples: squatting, eating with the right hand and touching elders' feet in India; purity and pollution rules that regulate bodily contact under caste; godna tattoos of Baiga and Gond women as marks of identity; disciplined bodies of soldiers and dancers.

Embodiment thus closes the gap between mind and body, and explains why cultural change is slow: habits learned through the body persist even when beliefs change.

Example 2 (UPSC 2025, 15 marks): Critically examine the drawbacks in assuming culture as an 'integrated-closed' system in understanding of contemporary society.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)

Approach: "Critically examine" the integrated-closed model: state where it came from and its merits, then its drawbacks for contemporary society (change, conflict, boundaries, global flows) with ethnographic critiques, and conclude with a better model.

The integrated-closed view treats a culture as a bounded, internally consistent whole, an idea rooted in Malinowski's functionalism, Radcliffe-Brown's equilibrium and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934); it suited intensive fieldwork on small, apparently isolated societies such as the Trobriand Islanders or the Todas.

Neglect of change and conflict: Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) showed Kachin communities oscillating between hierarchical gumsa and egalitarian gumlao forms, so a society need not be in equilibrium.

False boundaries: Fredrik Barth (1969) showed that ethnic groups persist through boundaries maintained amid flows of people; Eric Wolf (1982) criticised treating cultures as separate billiard balls and showed their links through trade and colonialism.

Global flows: Arjun Appadurai (1996) described ethnoscapes, mediascapes and other flows that cross borders; Indian tribal migrants, diasporas and digital media make cultures open and hybrid.

Internal diversity: Lila Abu-Lughod's 'Writing against culture' (1991) argued that the closed concept hides gender, class and individual dissent; in India, Sanskritization and the tribe-caste continuum show constant exchange.

Thus the model is useful as a heuristic for showing interconnections, but contemporary societies are better understood as open, contested and changing networks of meaning.

Example 3 (UPSC 2024, 10 marks): Attributes of culture

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)

Approach: A short note: open with Tylor's definition, then list the main attributes of culture, each with a brief Indian or world example, and conclude.

E.B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as 'that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society'; its attributes follow from this.

Learned and shared: culture is acquired through enculturation (Herskovits), not genes; a child of any origin raised in a Santal village speaks Santali; a habit becomes culture only when a group shares it.

Symbolic and transmitted: Leslie White stressed symbolling, as in vermilion or the sacred thread; language transmits culture across generations, making it cumulative.

Integrated and adaptive: parts are linked, as the Toda buffalo, dairy and priesthood (Rivers, 1906); culture adapts people to environments, like the Inuit igloo.

Dynamic, universal yet unique: cultures change through invention, diffusion and acculturation; all societies share universals such as language and incest rules (Murdock), but each has its own content and pattern.

Example 4 (UPSC 2023, 10 marks): William Ogburn and Cultural lag

Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)

Approach: A short note: Ogburn's distinction of material and non-material culture, the meaning and causes of cultural lag, his own and Indian examples, and a critique.

William F. Ogburn, in Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature (1922), divided culture into material culture (tools, machines, buildings) and non-material or adaptive culture (customs, beliefs, laws, institutions).

Cultural lag: because inventions accumulate and spread quickly while norms and laws adjust slowly, the non-material part lags behind the material part, causing strain; Ogburn's own example was the long gap between rising industrial accidents and workmen's compensation laws.

Indian examples: mobile phones and social media spread faster than norms on privacy, leading only later to data protection law (2023); sex-selection technology spread before the PCPNDT Act (1994) was framed and enforced; forest laws long lagged behind the needs of forest dwellers until the Forest Rights Act (2006).

Critique: the material and non-material cannot be neatly separated; ideas can lead technology; and the theory leans towards technological determinism.

Still, cultural lag remains a useful tool for explaining social problems during rapid change and for designing timely policy.

Example 5 (UPSC 2017, 20 marks): Discuss the development of the concept of culture in Anthropology.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)

Approach: Trace the concept historically: evolutionist, historical-particularist, functionalist, culture-and-personality, ecological and materialist, cognitive and structural, interpretive and postmodern stages, each with its scholar, and close with the present view and Indian relevance.

Culture is the central concept of anthropology, and its meaning has changed with each theoretical school; Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) already counted about 164 definitions.

Evolutionist beginning: E.B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) defined culture as a 'complex whole' acquired by man as a member of society, treating it as one, ranked along stages, as in Morgan's savagery, barbarism and civilization (1877).

Boas and plural cultures: Franz Boas replaced ranking with historical particularism, speaking of many cultures each shaped by its own history; Kroeber (1917) called culture superorganic, and Benedict and Mead saw it as a pattern shaping personality.

Functionalist view: Malinowski treated culture as an instrumental apparatus meeting basic and derived needs, while Radcliffe-Brown shifted attention to social structure and called culture an abstraction.

Material and symbolic turns: Leslie White (1949) linked culture to symbolling and energy capture; Julian Steward's cultural ecology and Marvin Harris's cultural materialism related it to environment and production.

Cognitive, structural and interpretive turns: Ward Goodenough (1957) saw culture as what one must know to behave acceptably; Lévi-Strauss looked for universal mental structures; Clifford Geertz (1973) saw culture as webs of significance to be interpreted through thick description.

Critique and reformulation: Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus, 1986) and Abu-Lughod (1991) questioned bounded, timeless cultures, stressing power, contest and global flows.

In India, Redfield's great and little traditions, Marriott's universalisation and parochialisation (1955) and Vidyarthi's sacred complex show this layered concept in use; today culture is understood as learned, symbolic and adaptive, yet open, contested and changing.

Example 6 (UPSC 2014, 15 marks): Is culture unique to human beings? Critically examine.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)

Approach: "Critically examine" needs both sides: evidence of traditions among primates and other animals, then what makes human culture distinct (symbols, language, cumulative change), and a qualified conclusion.

If culture is defined broadly as behaviour learned socially and shared within a group, some animals have it; if it is defined, with Tylor and Leslie White, as a symbolic, cumulative complex whole, it is distinctively human.

Evidence for animal culture: Jane Goodall (from 1960, Gombe) recorded chimpanzees making and using termite-fishing probes; Japanese macaques on Koshima began washing sweet potatoes in 1953, starting with a young female, Imo, and the habit spread through the troop; Whiten and colleagues (1999) listed 39 behaviours varying across chimpanzee communities, such as nut-cracking with stones in West Africa; similar traditions are reported among orangutans, whales and songbirds.

What is unique to humans: Leslie White argued that only humans give arbitrary meanings to things (symbolling), as in holy water; human language is open and productive; human culture accumulates improvements across generations, a ratchet effect (Michael Tomasello), building on earlier inventions, while animal traditions remain simple and are re-invented.

Institutions and norms: only humans create kinship systems, laws, religion and art that are taught deliberately and enforced by sanctions.

Hence culture in a rudimentary sense, or proto-culture, exists in some animals, but culture as a symbolic, cumulative and normative system is unique to human beings.

2. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Example 7 (UPSC 2022, 15 marks): Discuss the historical and cultural contexts that led to superseding ethnocentrism with cultural relativism in anthropology.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)

Approach: Explain the historical and cultural contexts in sequence: colonial and evolutionist ethnocentrism, Boas and fieldwork, the world wars and racism, decolonisation and human rights debates; conclude with the present critical relativism.

Ethnocentrism, which W.G. Sumner (Folkways, 1906) described as viewing one's own group as the centre of everything and rating all others by it, dominated early anthropology; cultural relativism, understanding each culture in its own terms, replaced it through several contexts.

Colonial and evolutionist context: nineteenth-century evolutionists such as Morgan ranked societies from savagery to civilization with Victorian Europe at the top, and colonial rule used such rankings, as in India's Criminal Tribes Act of 1871.

Boas and fieldwork: Franz Boas, working among the Inuit and the Kwakiutl, argued that each culture is a product of its own history; his immigrant study showed head form changed with environment, undermining racial ranking; Malinowski's long fieldwork in the Trobriands (1915–18) made the native's point of view a method.

War and racism: the misuse of race science by the Nazis, opposed by Boas and Benedict, discredited hierarchy; Herskovits developed relativism and drafted the AAA statement of 1947; UNESCO's statements on race (1950) followed.

Decolonisation: newly independent nations such as India rejected the civilising mission; Nehru's Panchsheel and Verrier Elwin's work favoured development along tribal lines.

Today relativism is accepted as a method, but tempered as critical relativism by universal human rights, as in the AAA declaration of 1999.

Example 8 (UPSC 2020, 10 marks): Human rights and Cultural relativism

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)

Approach: A short note on the tension: define both, show the AAA positions of 1947 and 1999, give examples where they clash, and conclude with a middle path.

Human rights, set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), are claimed for every person regardless of culture; cultural relativism, developed by Boas and Herskovits, holds that practices must be understood in their own cultural context.

Anthropology's shift: the American Anthropological Association's 1947 statement, drafted by Herskovits, warned that a universal declaration could impose Western values; its 1999 Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights instead supported universal rights grounded in the capacity for culture.

Points of clash: female genital cutting, child marriage, sati, honour killing and witch-hunting (outlawed in Jharkhand in 2001) have been defended as tradition, but they harm the weakest members of a society.

Middle path: critical relativism uses relativism as a method to understand a practice, then judges it by human dignity and the voices of those affected inside the culture, as Indian reform from within shows.

Example 9 (UPSC 2019, 10 marks): Cultural Relativism

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)

Approach: A short note: define cultural relativism with Boas and Herskovits, distinguish its methodological and moral forms with examples, and state its limits.

Cultural relativism is the principle that beliefs and practices should be understood in terms of the culture in which they occur, not judged by the standards of another; it grew from Franz Boas's historical particularism and was developed most fully by Melville Herskovits, who argued that judgements rest on experience interpreted through one's own enculturation.

Methodological relativism: suspending judgement during fieldwork to grasp the emic view; Verrier Elwin (1947) showed the Muria ghotul, condemned by outsiders as immoral, to be a disciplined youth institution.

Moral relativism: the stronger claim that no practice can be judged across cultures; Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934), contrasting the Zuni, Kwakiutl and Dobu, is often read this way.

Limits: strong relativism can shield harmful practices such as witch-hunting and child marriage, and is self-contradictory if tolerance becomes a universal value.

Hence relativism is best treated as a method of understanding, not a licence to excuse every practice.

Example 10 (UPSC 2016, 10 marks): Cultural Relativism

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)

Approach: A short note with a different angle from a bare definition: define relativism against ethnocentrism, show its value for fieldwork and Indian tribal policy, and add the critique.

Cultural relativism, the opposite of ethnocentrism (Sumner, 1906), is the view that each culture has its own logic and values and must be understood from within; Boas and Herskovits made it a founding principle of American anthropology.

Value for fieldwork: it underpins participant observation and the emic view (Kenneth Pike's term, 1954); Horace Miner's 'Body Ritual among the Nacirema' (1956), describing American hygiene as exotic ritual, showed readers their own ethnocentrism.

Value for Indian policy: the Criminal Tribes Act (1871) and attempts to stop jhum cultivation reflected ethnocentric judgements; Nehru's Panchsheel, Elwin's protective approach and the hands-off policy towards the Jarawa and Sentinelese reflect respect for tribal ways.

Critique: taken as moral relativism it can excuse caste discrimination or violence against women, so scholars favour critical relativism.

Cultural relativism thus remains anthropology's essential method and ethic of respect, balanced by a commitment to human dignity.

3. Society, Social Institutions, Groups and Stratification

Example 11 (UPSC 2024, 20 marks): Examine critically the concept of social stratification as a basis for sustaining social inequality.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)

Approach: "Examine critically" whether stratification sustains inequality: define it, show the mechanisms that reproduce inequality (ideology, inheritance, closure) with caste and class examples and the conflict theorists, then the functionalist defence and evidence of mobility; conclude with a balanced view.

Social stratification is the ranking of people into layers with unequal access to wealth, power and prestige that persists across generations; it differs from simple differentiation by age or sex found even in egalitarian bands.

Stratification sustains inequality through inheritance: in closed systems status is ascribed; caste fixes occupation and marriage by birth, and Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) showed how the opposition of pure and impure ranks groups; slavery and estates passed status down by law.

Through ideology: Marx argued that the class owning the means of production also produces the ruling ideas, so inequality appears natural; karma and dharma or racial theories have legitimised hierarchy.

Through closure and capital: Max Weber showed that status groups monopolise opportunities; Pierre Bourdieu showed that cultural capital passed through families and schools reproduces class advantage; Gerald Berreman (1960) compared caste with racial stratification in the American South.

Functionalist defence: Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) argued stratification motivates the most able to fill the most important positions; Melvin Tumin (1953) replied that it restricts talent among the poor and is self-perpetuating.

Countervailing evidence: Morton Fried's egalitarian societies, such as hunter-gatherers, show inequality is not universal; Sanskritization (Srinivas), education, Article 17, reservations and the rise of a Dalit middle class show mobility within stratified orders.

Diagram: a flat bar for an egalitarian band, a stepped cone for a rank society and a pyramid for a stratified society, after Fried.

Thus stratification is a major mechanism for sustaining inequality, but it is neither universal nor unchangeable, and democratic institutions and mobility can weaken it.

Example 12 (UPSC 2021, 20 marks): Critically evaluate different types of social stratifications with suitable examples.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)

Approach: "Critically evaluate" the types: define stratification, describe slavery, estate, caste and class (with race, gender and age) with examples, compare open and closed systems, and evaluate the typology.

Social stratification is a durable hierarchy of groups with unequal access to resources, power and prestige; Morton Fried (1967) separated egalitarian, rank and stratified societies, and sociologists classify stratified systems by how open they are.

Slavery: the most extreme closed form, in which some people are owned as property, as in ancient Greece and Rome and the Atlantic plantation economies; it was legally abolished, though bonded labour persisted in India until the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1976.

Estates: legally defined strata of clergy, nobility and commoners in feudal Europe, with limited mobility through the church or royal favour; Polynesian chiefdoms such as Tonga and Hawaii had hereditary ranked chiefs.

Caste: a closed, hereditary and endogamous system ranked by purity and pollution; G.S. Ghurye listed six features, Dumont saw hierarchy as its core, and Srinivas showed mobility through Sanskritization and the dominant caste.

Class: an open system based on economic position; Marx defined it by ownership of the means of production, Weber by market situation, separating status and party; mobility occurs through education and occupation.

Other bases: race (apartheid in South Africa), gender and age; among tribes, hereditary Konyak Naga chiefs (Ang) and Toda divisions show ranking, though most Indian tribes are relatively egalitarian.

Evaluation: the typology is ideal-typical; real societies combine forms, as caste and class overlap in modern India, and the tribe-caste continuum (Bailey, Surajit Sinha) blurs categories; Berreman argued caste-like systems exist beyond India, which Dumont denied.

Hence the types are useful tools for comparison, but stratification is best analysed as a combination of birth, wealth, power and honour that changes over time.

Example 13 (UPSC 2020, 15 marks): Discuss Erving Goffman's concept of total institutions and its relevance in contemporary society.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)

Approach: Two parts: Goffman's concept (definition, features, types, the mortification of self and inmate adaptations) and its relevance today with Indian and global examples, plus a brief critique.

Erving Goffman, in Asylums (1961), based on fieldwork at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, defined a total institution as a place of residence and work where many like-situated people, cut off from wider society, lead an enclosed, formally administered life.

Features and types: all activities occur in one place under one authority, in batches, on a tight schedule serving an official aim; Goffman listed homes for the blind or aged, mental hospitals and leprosaria, prisons and camps, army barracks, ships and boarding schools, and monasteries.

Mortification of self: on entry, inmates are stripped of possessions, names and roles, and a privilege system reshapes them; they adapt by withdrawal, intransigence, colonisation or conversion.

Relevance today: prisons such as Tihar, psychiatric hospitals (reformed under the Mental Healthcare Act 2017), old-age homes, military academies and refugee or detention camps fit the model; residential schools for tribal children, such as Canada's, show how such institutions can erase culture, a lesson for India's ashram and Eklavya schools.

Critique: later work stresses inmate agency and porous boundaries, and Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975) extended the idea of disciplinary power to society at large.

The concept therefore remains a powerful lens for examining power, identity and human rights inside closed institutions.

Example 14 (UPSC 2019, 20 marks): Discuss social stratification according to any three major approaches.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)

Approach: Choose three approaches (functionalist, Marxian, Weberian) and add Dumont's cultural approach briefly for caste; for each give the core argument, an example and a criticism, and end with a synthesis.

Social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of groups with unequal access to wealth, power and prestige; three major approaches explain why it exists and how it works.

Functionalist approach: Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945) argued that every society must fill functionally important positions that need scarce talent and long training, so it attaches greater rewards to them; stratification is thus universal and necessary.

Its critique: Melvin Tumin (1953) showed that importance is hard to measure, that stratification limits the discovery of talent among the poor, and that elites pass advantages to their children regardless of merit.

Marxian approach: Karl Marx held that classes are defined by ownership or non-ownership of the means of production; the bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat by extracting surplus value, and ruling ideas legitimise this; conflict leads to change; the critique is that it reduces all inequality to economics and failed to predict a growing middle class.

Weberian approach: Max Weber separated three dimensions: class (life chances in the market), status (social honour and lifestyle, as in status groups such as castes) and party (power); they can diverge, as when a poor Brahmin has high status but little wealth; this multi-dimensional view suits India, where caste, class and power overlap but do not coincide.

Dumont's addition: for caste, Louis Dumont (1966) argued that the religious opposition of pure and impure, not power or wealth, is the basis of hierarchy, though critics such as Berreman stress power and dissent from below.

A synthesis is best: functionalism explains integration, Marx explains exploitation and conflict, and Weber explains the many dimensions of rank; together they show stratification as both an order and a field of struggle.

Example 15 (UPSC 2015, 10 marks): Society and Culture.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)

Approach: A short note: define society and culture, give Firth's distinction and the British and American emphases, show their interdependence with an example, and conclude.

Society is, in MacIver and Page's words, a 'web of social relationships', or for Ralph Linton a group that has lived and worked together long enough to see itself as a unit; culture is Tylor's complex whole of knowledge, belief, art, morals, law and custom acquired as a member of society.

Firth's distinction: Raymond Firth explained that if society is an aggregate of social relations, culture is the content of those relations; society stresses the people and their relations, culture the shared ways and resources they use.

Two emphases: British social anthropology (Radcliffe-Brown) studied social structure and called culture an abstraction, while American cultural anthropology (Boas, Kroeber) made culture central.

Interdependence: among the Toda, the social organisation of clans and dairies cannot be separated from the buffalo cult that gives it meaning (Rivers, 1906); animal societies such as ants lack symbolic culture, and culture cannot exist without a society to carry it.

The distinction is analytical: society and culture are two sides of the same human reality.

Example 16 (UPSC 2014, 15 marks): Define Status and Role. Distinguish between Ascribed and Achieved Status.

Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)

Approach: Two parts: define status and role with Linton (and role set, role conflict), then distinguish ascribed and achieved status with Indian tribal and world examples, ideally in a short comparison.

Ralph Linton, in The Study of Man (1936), defined a status as a position in a social system carrying a collection of rights and duties, and a role as the dynamic aspect of status, the behaviour expected of its occupant; one occupies a status and performs a role.

Related ideas: Robert Merton (1957) noted that each status has a role set, such as a teacher's relations with students, colleagues and parents; role conflict arises between roles of different statuses, and William Goode (1960) called the difficulty of meeting role demands role strain.

Ascribed status: assigned at birth or by unchosen traits such as sex, age, kinship and caste; examples are caste membership, the hereditary Konyak Naga chief (Ang) and the Khasi youngest daughter (khadduh) who inherits ancestral property.

Achieved status: gained through effort and choice, such as an IAS officer, a sports champion or a shaman who proves his powers; Marshall Sahlins (1963) contrasted the Melanesian big-man, who achieves influence by generosity, with the Polynesian chief, who inherits office.

Distinction: ascribed status dominates in small, closed and traditional societies, achieved status in open, modern and mobile ones; yet they mix, since a Panchayat seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes is ascribed in eligibility but achieved by election.

Status and role thus link the individual to social structure, and the balance between ascription and achievement indicates how open a society is.