To understand culture, you must first accept what it is not

Reviews the book, Culture as Embodiment: The Social Tuning of Behavior by Paul Voestermans and Theo Verheggen (see record 2013-05240-000). The authors advocate the rejection of the use of culture as an excuse and suggest instead inquiry about who benefits from it. Analyzing behavioral patterns that are established within groups rather than assuming that some supraindividual entity (i.e., culture) molds behavior provides for a more accurate and nuanced description of the behavioral processes that matter. So what is culture? One learns early on in this 10-chapter book, which is divided into three parts, that the authors are reluctant to use the term culture to denote group membership or draw distinctions between and among social groups. Certain parts of the book would be good to supplement materials for an advanced graduate-level course on cultural anthropology or human development. It is not an easy read, but one that a layperson wishing to learn more about what culture means and when it is appropriate to attribute behavior to culture would be advantaged by reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)