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。

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

娶妻无节制的国家 喀麦隆 (Cameroon )–喀麦隆实行一夫多妻制，一个男人有四五个老婆很正 常，几十个老婆的还有，每个老婆住一座圆形的土屋， 男人单独住，男人给老婆排一个值日表，每天晚上老婆 按照值日表上的安排去男人的屋子里“值日”,长得漂 亮一点的机会就多一点。

坦桑尼亚 (Tanzania )–坦桑尼亚有一个马赛部落，马赛人以牛的数量和妻子 的多少来衡量这个男人的穷富，老婆是用牛换的，牛多 了换来的老婆越多，这个男人就越有面子。老婆多了也 就不珍惜了，闲着也是闲着，老婆和别的男人睡觉并不 生气，只要孩子归自己就行。

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

尼日利亚(Nigeria )–尼日利亚的犹罗巴族人也是一夫多妻，妻子越多 男人地位越高，越受人尊敬，据说有一位名字叫阿 布莱卡的酋长有400个妻子(够

他忙活的，一晚上一 个一年都轮不到头),妻子可以买卖，最低价在700 美元，如果一个女人嫁给了只有一个老婆的男人， 她就会认自己很不幸。

南非 (South Africa)–南非的祖鲁人实行一夫多妻制，南非总统祖马就 是祖鲁人，他已经有五个老婆了，最近又娶了一个 年轻貌美的。农村部落娶妻子还是用牛换，娶一个 妻子要十几头牛。

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

孟加拉(Bengal ) –孟加拉国实行娶老婆缴税制度，只要你 有钱能缴税你就可以多娶老婆，第一个老 婆免税，第二个老婆交1万塔卡，第三个老 婆3万塔卡，第四个老婆4万塔卡......以 此类推。 斯威士兰(The Kingdom of Swaziland ) –斯威士兰实行二元制君主立宪制，国王 的地位是世袭的，国王可以拥有无限个妻 子，国王每年都要选妃子。

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

Some years ago I met in New York City a young man who did not speak a word of English and was obviously bewildered by American ways. By ―blood‖ he was as American as you or I, for his parents had gone from Indiana to China as missionaries. Orphaned in infancy, he was reared by a Chinese family in a remote village. All who met him found him more Chinese than American. The facts of his blue eyes and light hair were less impressive than a Chinese style of gait, Chinese arm and hand movements, Chinese facial expression, and Chinese modes of thought. The biological heritage was American, but the cultural training had been Chinese. He returned to China.

Orphan: v. 使 沦为孤儿 Rear:to bring up and educate

思维方式

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

Para 6~9

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

Another example of another kind: I once knew a trader’s wife in Arizona who took a somewhat devilish interest in producing a cultural reaction. Guests who came her way were often served delicious sandwiches filled with a meat that seemed to be neither chicken nor tuna fish yet was reminiscent of both. To queries she gave no reply until each had eaten his fill. She then explained that what they had eaten was not chicken, not tuna fish, but the rich, white flesh of freshly killed rattlesnakes. The response was instantaneous ---vomiting, often violent vomiting. A biological process is caught in a cultural web.

Devilish: 魔鬼似的

tuna fish:金枪鱼Be reminiscent of: was like

vomit:呕吐