Faces of Culture

The Nature of Culture

This episode focuses on culture in societies. It defines culture as a unique set of values, beliefs and practices those enables us together to reap the benefits from the locality in which we live. The program begins to answer such questions as: How does culture develop? How does it change and adapt to the world around it? The program delves deeper into the meaning of concepts such as ethnocentrism and cultural relativism to emphasize their importance in the field of anthropology. The need to understand how differing values and beliefs meet the needs of specific cultures is seen in contrasting examples from other cultures. The Txukarrame Indians and the Boran tribes of Kenya are examined to illustrate the degree of variety, as well as the parallels between and among cultures. The program concludes by showing the devastating results of one culture's inability to adapt, demonstrating that the loss affects us all.