Tóth Ferenc szerk.: Fiatal Néprajzkutatók Országos Konferenciája. Makó, 1991. augusztus 26-28. A Makói Múzeum Füzetei 75. (Makó, 1993)

ELŐADÁSOK - WILHELM GÁBOR: A kultúra modellezése

sciences dealing with human behaviour; ever since it came to existence, ethnography has been differentiated from other social sciences by its use of "culture" as the central theoretical concept. In the most general terms, culture can be defined as "acquired behaviour." Since this behaviour is acquired

, the vehicle of culture is the individual (and not the society or communities, which explains why society is not a central concept in ethnography). The task of ethnography is theoretical description and interpretation of culture on various levels of generalization; the units of its investigation are persons living within any kind of organisational framework. After clarifying certain basic concepts, in the second part of the paper, I wish to discuss some basic problems of cultural description and interpretation (e. g. social behaviour, mutual knowledge, the possibility of describing mental states). 70