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Anthropology · Chapter 3

Enculturation: How a Child Absorbs Culture

No one is born with a culture, and no one chooses one. Children absorb the culture around them — its sounds, its kin terms, its manners, its idea of what a person is — through a lifelong process anthropologists call enculturation. Clifford Geertz described human beings as unfinished animals who complete themselves through culture; this is that completion, happening. Drag the age slider from birth onward, and tap the rings to see which channel is doing the teaching.

Infancy · the channels around a child

What is being absorbed now

Infancybirth – 12 months
Age of the childnewborn
Drag the slider — or tap a ring in the diagram