Conceptual approximations between cultural behavioral analysis and interpretive Anthropology

Abstract

The word culture had several definitions until it became an object of study in anthropology at the end of the 19th century. A variety of definitions have been developed in this area, with new forms to work with the concept being produced up to the present day. These definitions vary according to the area of anthropology being worked on, for example, symbolic anthropology is an area that produced definitions and reflections about this concept, but even on symbolic anthropology, there are many sub areas that work differently. In the 1950s, Behavior Analysis was also dedicated to the study of this concept, developing in parallel with the social sciences or proposing approaches with divergent theories. Many divergent definitions of culture can also be found in this area. In this sense, the objective of this study was to carry out a conceptual review on the concept culture and related issues for the symbolic anthropologist Clifford Geertz, applying the Conceptual Text Interpretation Procedure (PICT) in the author’s main work “The Interpretation of Cultures’’ to list categories with approximations with Behavior Analysis. They were: 1) concept of culture; 2) symbols and meanings; 3) interpretive method; and 4) role of science. The first is related with how culture is defined in this area. Second is about how the concept of symbols is defined. Third is how this approach collects the data. The last is how they understand how science may work in this field of cultural studies. The interpretivist concept of culture is similar to the behaviorist notions of culture as an environmental variable. The characterization of symbols was like the concept of stimulus equivalence. The interpretive method proves to be complementary to the use of functional analysis to study culture. Finally, science was highlighted in both aspects, as a possible method to be applied in the study of culture. As dialogue points, it was found that the behaviorist strand can contribute with methodological refinements to study the behavior of individuals in groups, and anthropology contributes with more refined theoretical conceptions about fundamental concepts to study social and cultural-behavioral phenomena. More studies should be carried out to assess the differences as well, since there are also gaps in these areas.