新编英语教程5 Unit 12 Text 2 - Customs(习俗)

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

CustomsClyde Kluckhohn

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

OutlineStructure Para 1~5 Para 6~9

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

StructureⅠ. Para (1~2) Introduction of ―culture‖: culture constitutes a blueprint of life’s activities. Ⅱ. Para (3) Knowing a people’s design for living is helpful in predicting human behavior. Ⅲ. Para (4~8) A few examples of culture influence on human behavior Ⅳ. Para (9) At bottom all human beings are much alike.

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

Para 1~5

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

Why do the Chinese dislike milk and milk products? Why would the Japanese die willingly in a Banzai charge that seemed senseless to Americans? Why do some nations trace descent through the father, others through the mother, still others through both parents? Not because different peoples have different instincts, not because they were destined by God or Fate to different habits, not because the weather is different in China and Japan and the United States. Sometimes shrewd common sense has an answer that is close to that of the anthropologist: ―because they were brought up that way.‖ By ―culture‖ anthropology means the total life way of a people, the social legacy the individual acquires from his group. Or culture can be regarded as that part of the environment that is the creation of man.

万岁！

having or showing good judgment and common sense; astute

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

This technical term has a wider meaning than the ―culture‖ of history and literature. A humble cooking pot is as much a cultural product as is a Beethoven sonata. In ordinary speech a man of culture is a man who can speak languages other than his own, who is familiar with history, literature, philosophy, or the fine arts. In some cliques that definition is still narrower. The cultured person is one who can talk about James Joyce, Scarlatti, and Picasso. To the anthropologist, however, to be human is to be cultured. There is culture in general, and then there are the specific cultures such as Russian, American, British, Hottentot, Inca. The general abstract notion services to remind us that we cannot explain acts solely in terms of the biological properties of the people concerned, their individual past experience, and the immediate situation. The past experience of other men in the form of culture enters into almost every event. Each specific culture constitutes a kind of blueprint for all of life’s activities.

sonata [s 'nɑ:t ] n. 奏鸣曲

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

One of the interesting things about human beings is that they try to understand themselves and their own behavior. While this has been particularly true of Europeans in recent times, there is no group which has not developed a scheme or schemes to explain man’s actions. To the insistent human query ―why?‖ the most exciting illumination anthropology has to offer is that of the concept of culture. Its explanatory importance is comparable to categories such as evolution in biology, gravity in physics, disease in medicine. A good deal of human behavior can be understood, and indeed predicted, if we know a people’s design for li

ving. Many acts are neither accidental nor due to personal peculiarities nor caused by supernatural forces nor simply mysterious. Even those of us who pride ourselves on our individualism follow most of the time a pattern not of our own making. We brush our teeth on arising. We put on pants—not a loincloth or a grass skirt. We eat three meals a day—not four or five or two. We sleep in a bed—not in a hammock or on a sheep pelt. I do not have to know the individual and his life history to be able to predict these and countless other regularities, including many in the thinking process, of all Americans who are not incarcerated in jails or hospitals for the insane.

a clear explanation or understanding of a particular subject

以 为豪 缠腰布 Hammock:吊床； sheep pelt:羊皮 be kept in prison

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

To the American woman a system of plural wives seems ―instinctively‖ abhorrent. She cannot understand how any woman can fail to be jealous and uncomfortable if she must share her husband with other women. She feels it ―unnatural‖ to accept such a situation. On the other hand, a Koryak woman of Siberia, for example, would find it hard to understand how a woman could be so selfish and so undesirous of feminine companionship in the home as to wish to restrict her husband to one mate.

unacceptable and morally wrong

对 不存念 想的

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

盘点世界上一夫多妻制(polygamy) 的国家 一夫四妻制——信奉伊斯兰教的国家沙特阿拉伯 (Saudi Arabia ) 阿联酋 (UAE: United Arab Emirates) 卡塔尔 (Qatar ) 利比亚 (Libya ) 伊拉克 (Iraq) 埃及 (Egypt /Arab Republic of Egypt) 苏丹 (Sudan)

新编英语教程5 (上海外语教育出版社)Unit 12 Text 2 Customs

真主在《古兰经》中说：“你们可以 择娶你们爱悦的女子，各娶两妻、三 妻、四妻；如果你们恐怕不能公平待 遇她们，那么，你们只可以各娶一妻， 或以你们的女奴为满足。这是更近与 公平的。” 阿拉伯国家信奉伊斯兰教，实行一夫 多妻制，但最多只能是四个。

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