LESSON 6

Culture: How It Defines Moral Behavior

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. Articulate what culture, enculturation, inculturation and acculturation mean
2. Attribute facets of personal behavior to culture
3. Explain how culture shapes the moral agent

TIME FRAME: 3 hours

What is Culture?
Culture “is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. This
consists of language, ideas, customs, morals, laws, taboos, institutions, tools, techniques, and
works of art, rituals and other capacities and habits acquired by a person as a member of
society.” (Taylor as quoted by Palispis, 1997).
The Magisterium of the Church explains culture as “the set of means used by mankind to
become more virtuous and reasonable in order to become fully human. In its fullest sense,
culture means opening up to the divine, and ultimately, to a religious dimension.” Based on this
Church definition, it is clear that culture is meant to serve human persons.
Sociologists categorize culture into material and non-material culture. “Nonmaterial
culture consists of language, values, rules, knowledge, and meanings shared by members of
society. Material culture is the physical object that a society produces—tools, streets, homes
and toys, to name a few.” (Brinkerhoff, 1989).
Culture is passed on to the next generation by learning not through genes or heredity.
“Culture” includes all human phenomena which are not purely results of human genetics.
(Kroeber et al., 1952)
The Human Person and Culture
As a moral agent, you are born into a culture, a factual reality you have not chosen. You
are not born anything. It may be said that the Aristotelico-Thomistic tradition is one dominant, if
not the most dominant culture. This Aristotelico-Thomistic culture is a Greco-Roman culture,
which has influenced and shaped the moral life of those who have been exposed to it. Those
who were born into this culture, educated under this culture, are persuaded that there is God,
that a divine order and law keep and govern the world, which includes you. But what happens
when there are different cultures with their own different views of man’s direction and destiny?
For instance, Greek culture introduced the idea of perfection. In terms of numbers, a perfect
thing is 100%; in terms of figures, it is a whole circle. A perfect thing has no privation, no lack,
no absence of being. What if a new culture redefines perfection as any created and present
model, which may be recreated, remolded like clay? Any change in the model may be perceived
as the creation of a new model of perfection, not the actualization of what was lacking. Every
created model is a perfection in its own right.
Enculturation, Inculturation and Acculturation
Cultures change or evolve. There are various ways by which cultures change – by
enculturation, inculturation and by acculturation.
Enculturation, an anthropological term, was coined by J.M. Herskovits Margaret Mead
has, however, was the one who defined the term as “the process of learning a culture in all its
uniqueness and particularity”.
. . .Enculturation is a process of learning from infancy till death, the components of life in
one’s culture. The contents of this learning include both the material and non-material
culture. The latter refers to values while the former refers to tools such as a hoe or
mask. In the said process of learning, a person grows into a culture, acquires
competence in that culture and that culture takes root in that person and becomes the
cognitive map, the term of reference for acting.
For instance, African girls (South of the Sahara) grow up learning that as a woman she
has less rights and privileges as the African man. For instance, a man can marry more than one
woman while she cannot. While the African wife cannot share her love with other men, the man
can share his with other women in the system. It turns women into an appendage, a man's
property — one of the man's laborers. Umoren, U.E. (1992)
Another marriage practice that shows that the African woman is the husband's property
and his family is levirate marriage. Levirate marriage is the marriage between the widow and
the brother of her I deceased husband. Therefore at the husband's death, the woman is
generally expected to stay on (as a property of the family) without any choice in the matter. She
raises children to immortalize the deceased husband's name. Umoren, U.E. 1992.
This is enculturation in concrete terms. The African girl grows up and becomes a woman
through the said process of enculturation. This enculturation process has both cognitive and
emotional elements.
The girl child who later becomes a woman learns and internalizes the idea that she,
because she is a woman, has less privileges than the African man. This learning takes place
through example, direct teaching and in patterns of behavior. What is learned becomes her
cognitive map, her term of reference that directs her behavior.
Another term is inculturation. Inculturation refers to the “missiological process in which
the Gospel is rooted in a particular culture and its introduction transforms the latter to
Christianity.” Umoren, U.E. (1992)
In the Special Assembly of' the Synod in 1985, Pope John Paul Il defined inculturation in
Redemptoris Mission, n. 52, as…
the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values through their integration in
Christianity and the insertion of Christianity in the various human cultures. " This means
that inculturation is characterized by a dual movement, i.e. a dialogic movement towards
cultures via the incarnation of the Gospel and the transmission of its values, and a
movement towards the Church that involves the incorporation of values that come from
the cultures the latter encounters. Therefore, a fruitful cross-fertilization can follow.
(Umoren, U.E., 1992)
In other words, inculturation raises two related problems, that of the evangelization of
cultures (rooting the Gospel in cultures) and that of the cultural understanding of the Gospel. It
was this movement that led Pope John Paul Il to say in 1982, “The synthesis between culture
and faith is not only a requirement of culture, but also of faith.... Faith that does not become
culture is not fully accepted, nor entirely reflected upon, or faithfully experienced”
This means that inculturation is not an action but a process that unfolds over time, one
that is active and based on mutual recogniti0T1 and dialogue, a critical mind and insight,
faithfulness and conversion, transformation and growth, renewal and innovation.
Inculturation is a two-way process: it roots the Gospel in culture and introduces that
transformed culture to Christianity. For example, to root the Gospel in the African culture
is to initiate two events. The first event is to transform the African culture of oppressing
women into a culture where men and women are treated as human persons equal in
dignity, rights and privileges. The second event is to develop the Urican culture's latent
potential towards the human development of the woman, created like her male
counterpart in the image and likeness of God. The other aspect is to introduce the
woman and her transformed culture to Christianity, for example, by allowing the woman
a meaningful place among the agents of inculturation. (cf Umoren, U.E. 1992)
Acculturation is another big term. It is the “cultural modification of an individual, group, or
people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture”. It is also explained as the
merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact”. Immigrants to the United States of
America become acculturated to American life. Refugees and indigenous peoples (IP) likewise
adapt to the culture of the dominant majority.
There are cultural practices that should be stopped because of the painful harm they do.
The practice of human sacrifice has somehow been stopped. But the circumcision of women still
goes on in some parts of the world, like Africa. Some approaches have been successful, like
what one NGO tried to introduce in Africa. It is called buying in. To gradually stop the
circumcision of women, the approach was to buy in, like introducing into the place good health
facilities and other forms of assistance to alleviate their economic hardships in return to their
stopping the practice.
How Culture Shapes the Moral Agent
Culture definitely affects the way we evaluate and judge things. Consider the African
women not as privileged as the African men described in the earlier section of this lesson. Some
societies consider it alright gathering vegetables at the backyard of their neighbor considering
the act as getting a share. In such societies, the act would not be called stealing. In most
societies, the act is stealing. In ancient times, human sacrifice was not wrong. Today it is a
criminal act. In some culture like Islamic culture and African culture (South of Sahara) having
several wives is allowed. In other cultures, it's concubinage or adultery.
Culture has a very long-lasting hold on an individual. A person may have become highly
educated, may have even obtained a doctorate degree, educated with Christian values of
forgiveness, but if he comes from a society with a culture of vengeance (“an eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth”) having the sense of obligation to make an act of revenge when a member of
his tribe has been killed or harmed by another tribe, and when a case arises where a member of
his tribe is harmed by another, he becomes ultimately vindictive and joins his tribe seeking
revenge. No amount of graduate education can prevent him from joining his tribe to seek
revenge. He forgets about his doctorate degree in Values Education.

ACTIVITY 6
I. List eight cultural practice of yours. Is it moral in the sense that it makes you more human?
Why? Explain each in two to five sentences.
REFERENCE:
o Ruben A. Corpuz and Brenda B. Corpuz (2020). Ethics. Cubao, Quezon City, Metro
Manila: Lorimar Publishing, Inc.

Name: __________________________________________ Date: __________________

EXERCISE 6
I. Give what is being asked. Answer each with at least three sentences.
1. Culture affects human behavior. Is this proven in this instance when one spends so
much money for rebonding of her hair or buying an expensive Nike pair of shoes instead
of using the money to pay her tuition in school so can take the final exams (which is
most urgent)?

2. Cite a behavior of yours which is an influence of your culture. Is that behavior morally
right?

3. Enculturation is the learning of first culture. Acculturation is the learning of second

4. Faith that does not become culture is not fully accepted, nor entirely reflected upon, or
faithfully experienced" John Paul Il. Does this explain inculturation? How?
5. Is socialization a process of enculturation?

6. Culture is learned not inherited. Is it within your power to change for the better?

Name: __________________________________________ Date: __________________