systemic artifacts
created systems of meaning

DeChicchis デキキス
1artifacts(British spelling: artefacts)• An artifact is anything created by humans.
• A cultural artifact is an artifact that provides cultural information about its
creators or users.

• Common types of cultural artifacts include: tools, jewelry, weapons, clothing,furniture, musical instruments, maps, books, buildings, paintings, statues.

• Historically, technological advances have often been marked by noteworthychanges in material culture. For example, the collection of the Mercer Museum andFonthill Castle includes a vast array of American hand tools which became obsolete
as power tools and machines were developed.
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two cats paws
American and Japanese• Americans and Japanese have traditionallyused similar-but-diﬀerent tools to remove
nails from wood.

• At the end of the 20th Century, many

American carpenters working in Japanbought Japanese cats paws, and American
stores soon thereafter began to sell moreof the Japanese design.

3traditional instruments
similar but different• Cultural artifacts often show a “theme andvariation” pattern, which suggests a historyof cultural borrowing and independentdevelopment.

• Japanese shamisen 三味線• Okinawan sanshin 三線• Chinese sanxian 三弦

4architecture
large artifacts• Architects focus on the design ofhuman spaces. Their buildings,bridges, and other structures must
address environmental concerns.
However, we can also ﬁnd stylistic
variation which is cultural.

• Even in the same environmental

area, we can ﬁnd diﬀerent styles.

5nonmaterial artifacts
figments of our imagination• There is both material culture and nonmaterial culture. The way
people think can vary from one culture to another.

• Nonmaterial culture includes ideas, beliefs, values, norms, and any
fact or pattern of thought or propensity for behavior.

• Social anthropologists focus on nonmaterial culture. Culture has

been described as a “historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressedin symbolic forms by means of which men communicate,
perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes
toward life.” [Cliﬀord Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 89]
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systemic artifacts
created systems of meaning• Humans have a penchant for creating systems of meaning. Some of these systems,

such as calendars and mean clock time, are important in regulating our daily life.
Other systems, such as the naming of car models, may have only curiosity value.
Some of these systems, such as the framework of modern empirical science, isnearly universal in its scope. Other systems may be used by only a few cultures, orperhaps only by one culture. These systems of meaning are artifacts of humancreativity, and they are important for the people who create and use them. We maycall them systemic artifacts.

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the diversity of systemic artifacts
from artistic style to scientific fact

• Languages are the most complex systemic artifacts, and simple patterns routinely show the inﬂuenceof language and culture; cf. the patterning of women’s names:
Soﬁa, Giulia, Anna, Elena, Maria, Antonietta, Stefania
Sophie, Julie, Anne, Elaine, Marie, Antoinette, Stephanie• Ethnomusicologists have enriched our lives by bringing us musical patterns from other cultures.
• Cultural studies of religion, kinship, and commerce have discovered signiﬁcant diﬀerences in how

people conduct their lives due to their diﬀerent systems of social relations, beliefs, and obligations.

• More recently, studies of gender relations and internet communications are similarly revealing theways and means for people to deﬁne themselves and think about their lives.

• Nonmaterial culture often contains important scientiﬁc knowledge that can beneﬁt people fromother cultures; e.g., the indigenous ethnobotanical knowledge that helps modern pharmaceuticalcompanies develop new medicines. Today’s universal science has its origin in the systemic artifactsof local cultures.
8religion

kinship• Religious diﬀerences were among• Perhaps the most studied systemic artifacts
have been the kinship systems of variouscultures. The kind of people who comprise
one’s kin are not the same in all cultures;
nor are the kin term (e.g., “sister, uncle”)
systems the same in all cultures; nor are theassociated privileges and obligations
between kin folk the same in all cultures.

the ﬁrst things studied by social
anthropologists, and religious
belief systems are still among thesystemic artifacts studied today.

• Ideas about “the soul”, “the Trinity”,“angels”, “karma”, and otherreligious concepts, althoughoriginally particular to a particularculture, have been borrowed andspread throughout the world.

• When we survey the world’s cultures, we

9ﬁnd diﬀerent rules which govern who canmarry, who inherits a dead person’sproperty, who must care for children anddisabled people. Of course, we can ﬁnd
many similarities too.

embodied cultural capitalour knowledge and intellectual dispositions• Understanding nonmaterial culture helps shape each
person’s habitus.

• The habitus of a person includes both the hexis (i.e.,kinesic habits) and the mental habits of perception,
classiﬁcation, appreciation, and feelings.

• The systemic artifacts which we learn throughsocialization and education are part of our culturalcapital.

• According to Pierre Bourdieu, our attitudes,mannerisms, tastes, moral intuitions, and other habits
inﬂuence an individual’s life chances.
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copying
we learn by imitating• According to Bourdieu, our habitus lets us act in creative
ways on the basis of our gut feelings and intuitions.

• One’s habitus is acquired by imitating others in one’s
cultural group.

• Richard Stallman, who published the GNU Manifesto, haslectured widely on the wrongfulness of patenting or
copyrighting computer software.

• Lawrence Lessig, the inventor of the Creative Commons(CC) believes that traditional copyright laws compromise
creativity because such laws punish imitation.
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