How can culture contribute to social sustainability

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How can culture contribute to social sustainability?

Culture, for the human experience, is anything that is learned, read, thought about, written and known.  The cultural experiences of traditional people provide a way for modern civilization to reconstruct the past.  Generally speaking, this is achieved where the archaeologist locates an item which, under scientific scrutiny appears to be human made or adapted for human needs.  Such an item may be a tool, implement or device and have mythological associations to a local story about life in the area.  People connected things on the land to the manner in which their lives seemed to evolve.  The theory of evolution is grounded in scientific truth and falseness.  The problem is that scientists do not always agree among themselves as to what constitutes true and false.  Social scientists tend to see the big picture about knowledge and culture.  The most radical anthropologist might claim that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, that things around us are all interconnected. Nothing we can see exists in isolation from the surroundings, but rather that science and people are intrinsically related.  People created scientific enquiry when scientific truth was able to be viewed by future generations.  That is, when words written on paper were organised in such a way that they were not easily lost.  Traditional people tend to rely on story telling from parent to sibling for culture to be relayed in such a way that makes life more meaningful and abundant in things that make people happy.

Culture contributed to social sustainability in traditional Australian Aboriginal societies because the family was at the centre of work and economic life.  Aboriginal law concerning kin country meant that there were certain places that were taboo to visit.  That is, a family residing in Dreaming tract x were required by law to stay there unless invited by another family into their country, Dreaming tract y.  Kinship and reciprocal obligations to one another provided a secure means through which food was acquired daily.  If a kangaroo was speared in home territory and hopped over to another man’s country, the likelihood is that express permission would need to be sought from the owner to go and retrieve it.  Food was abundant for traditional Aboriginal people before the arrival of Europeans, so there was no need to break laws.  Every society has criminals though, so men continually refusing to adhere to law about country would not have lived an enjoyable life.  It is obvious to an anthropologist that people who do not abide by the law get punished.  Murder attracted a spear in the leg (and still might) just as stealing another person’s food probably started a punch-up between men.  Secret women’s business is of concern to them only in the traditional political setting.  The method through men hunting, women gathering idea is that getting organised outside requires  rapid adjustment but prehistoric caves did not allow men to speak above normal levels in the cave.  

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According to Taylor, (1998) “We share with other species a common relationship to Earth.  In accepting the biocentric outlook we take the fact of our being an animal species to be a fundamental feature of our existence.  We consider it an essential aspect of “the human condition”.  We do not deny the differences between ourselves and other species, but we keep in the forefront of our consciousness the fact that in relation to our planet’s natural ecosystems we are but one species population among many...[on evolution, the writer challenges]…The laws of genetics, of natural selection, and of adaptation ...

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