In The Church and Cultures, Louis J. Luzbetak points out that culture is so inter-related that we can never fully understand it by looking at its individual parts. Culture is actually the product of the various parts interacting with one another. For example, we can only understand the political organization of the Yanomamo as it is relates to all other parts of that culture. Yet because we encounter such diverse ways of living in tribal groups, we Westerners need an organized method of dissecting a culture to better understand how the whole works. In an attempt to provide a resource for the tribal culture learner, we have compiled the following notes on the universals of culture. A brief description of each of the eight universal parts of culture is followed by illustrations from other cultures of each universal. These illustrations will broaden the perspective of the missionary as to the wide variety that God built into cultures, allowing them to survive and propagate over the years. We encourage further study of these eight universals through reading, watching video tapes and any other means of expanding our understanding of how people live.

Several books are excellent and would be useful tools... Cultural Anthropology: a Christian Perspective by Grunlan and Mayers; The Church and Cultures, by Louis J. Luzbetak; Notes and Queries on Anthropology by A Committee of the Royal Anthropological Institution of Great Britain and Ireland, (no longer in print, but should be in the field library or available for use through a consultant); Culture and Human Values by Jacob Loewen; and especially monographs (books written about one culture).

MATERIAL CULTURE

Since Adam and Eve first fashioned fig leaves into clothing, man has taken materials from his environment and made for himself a secondary environment. Material culture has the special distinction of linking the behavior of the individual with external man-made things... artifacts. These artifacts are created from raw materials by means of some system of production significant to the culture and have both function and form. The economy of the culture may exchange them along social and political lines, or they may remain solely in the possession of the one who made them.

Form refers to the real material object and its utilitarian use. An arrow from the plains Indians of the United States could be recognized by the way it was made and used, yet no two were very much alike. The more valued an item was, the more likely it was to include refinements of craft and design, expressive of interest and effort beyond its basic use.

These items of material culture or artifacts also have function. Function refers to the actions, ideas, values, significance of anything (living, material or constructed), the use the item serves, and the work it is intended to perform. In material culture function would have to do with the ideas, and values a group has toward the elements of their material culture. Is a watch worn by a tribal man because his culture demands time consciousness, or is it mere decoration? When the Anasasi of the south west United States disappeared, the form of their material culture, (pots, grinding boards, clothing, and houses with all their embellishments) remained to be discovered hundreds of years later. But their function was left to be guessed at by archaeologists. As a matter of fact, one of the problems museums face is to try, through diagrams, dioramas, and other means, to give the spectator an idea of what the artifacts mean in the behavioral setting of the culture concerned.

Material Culture is what we are often busily taking slides of when we first visit a tribe. Unfortunately, we soon grow numb to their significance as the "props" for the "drama" of the culture that we are investigating. An investigation into the process of the creation, use, and disposal of significant items of material culture will often serve a dual purpose. This serves as a springboard into the abstract areas of social and political organization, and world view.

Here are a few significant examples of material culture from various areas in the world. Read through these and through the Expanded Universal Outline to try to expand your understanding of material culture.