Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each item into material or nonmaterial culture.
Groups: Material culture · Nonmaterial culture
- A Berber wedding carpet
- The belief that elders speak first
- The doctrine preached inside it
- The rule that the sword is worn on the left
- A samurai sword
- A cathedral
Hints
- Ask whether you could physically hold it.
- Beliefs and rules attached to an object are not the object.
Show the answer
Material culture: A Berber wedding carpet, A samurai sword, A cathedral
Nonmaterial culture: The belief that elders speak first, The rule that the sword is worn on the left, The doctrine preached inside it
Why
Objects are material culture; the beliefs, rules, and meanings wrapped around them are nonmaterial. Each side is unreadable without the other.
Practise Culture and Cultural Relativism
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Culture and Cultural Relativism
- Cultural relativism is a method, not a moral position. What is the difference, and why does it matter for a…
- Order the classic stages of culture shock.
- A fieldworker suspends judgement on a practice she finds abhorrent so that she can understand it. Why is that…
- By 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn had catalogued how many competing definitions of "culture"? Set the slider.
- Match each grade of norm to its example.
- Cultural relativism is a method for understanding a practice, and it leaves the anthropologist free to…