cultural belonging

54

To Be Human Is to Integrate
Socially

We have made Italy; now we have to make Italians.

—Speech made by Italian leader Massimo d’Azeglio to Parliament
following the unification of Italy as a country (quoted in

Hobsbawm & Kertzer 1992: 4)

The previous chapter introduced the research on young infants that is rapidly uncovering
the processes babies use to learn what we have come to call culture. For me, understanding
culture through the lens of learning “it” has important consequences for our lives and for
improving our human relations broadly as well as individually. We evolved these com-
plex abilities to learn to handle a huge challenge our ancestors faced—rapid environmental
change—and since then this cultural flexibility has enabled our species to populate every
environment on Earth and to create an abundance of different ways of life. So the advantages
of being a cultural species should now be clear—we are not locked into behaviors encoded
in our genes. The disadvantages should also be coming clear. We are born highly flexible
but very, very quickly we acquire and repeat patterns we observe so that we adapt to our
particular society’s culturally constructed ways of life. As we do, we feel comfort but we
become less plastic, less inclined to change, and we also become more like the people around
us but different from people we don’t know.

Becoming culturally competent in a narrower set of cultural abilities than we could
have learned at birth, however, does not mean we cannot continue to learn in life. New
things are good for our brains no matter our age. When we attempt novel activities—even
in our senior years—the brain continues to build new neural pathways. Researchers call
this “neuroplasticity” (Pascual-Leone et al. 2005). The more stimulation we encounter, the
more we can alter our brains. When we abandon activities, the neurons may be pruned or
redirected. Even when regions of the brain have been damaged, other areas of the brain
can be reorganized to take over the damaged area’s functions (Begley 2007; Eliot 1999;
Ramachandran 2011). The brain is a constant work in progress; it is a constant cultural work
in progress since the brain’s architecture is constructed through experience. How much our
brains change, however, reflects how much we experience novel things and have to adapt to
them. If circumstances don’t change, then we become very set in our ways and, like species

4
C h a p t e r

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 54 26/07/12 2:22 PM

Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially 55

dependent upon instincts, we will suffer when our environments, social as well as natural,
change. The more we use our brains to do similar things, the stronger the neural highways
become; and the more that happens, the less likely we are to divert onto side roads. Think
of a child practicing an instrument and the old adage “practice makes perfect.” Practicing
reinforces the brain’s circuits. Stopping an activity lets those connections atrophy. Now we
can better understand why this is true.

So this is the thesis of this book. The rest of the book provides examples of how useful
this perspective on culture is for solving the real-world problems and issues we face. In other
words, the rest of the book answers the biggest question of all: This perspective is nice, but
what does it matter? In this chapter I develop the first of a series of different responses to
this question, and in each subsequent chapter I discuss others, but this is just a partial list
of applications. I am sure that you will find many more applications as you get used to the
concept of “culture as comfort” over “culture as a thing.”

Learning CuLture is about soCiaLLy integrating
new PeoPLe into grouPs

As people learn culture, they become integrated socially into their society (and they also
adapt to the physical environments around them). Through this adaptive process, they
develop a sense of belonging with the people of their society; when away from these people,
they feel as if they’re among strangers. We do not recall the processes of integrating we
experienced as a young child, but if we can now see them for what they are, we can be more
mindful of how we, as adults, participate in the social integration of newcomers—and not
just babies. We integrate newcomers into our schools, workplaces, clubs, places of wor-
ship, communities, nations, and even virtual communities. Although the ways in which
we integrate people are remarkably similar, for most of us they remain mysterious. In the
next pages, I show how we gain feelings of belonging by examining various cases of how
we integrate newcomers. At the end, you will have tools to be more conscientious in your
efforts to integrate people into your environments, regardless of what they are. You will be
more empowered to integrate yourself as well as to integrate others. This is what we do as
people so I hope it will be helpful.

As social integration is a process (or processes) that transforms a person’s status from
newcomer/outsider to native/insider, it is to my mind most helpful to think of the process
as analogous to a rite of passage. The typical application of this concept, rite of passage,
in anthropology and other social sciences is to understand specific rituals in life that are
involved with status changes. I think rites of passage are excellent for understanding the
broadest idea of social integration more generally. In studying many rituals across different
cultural groups, anthropologists Arnold van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner (1967, 1977)
identified commonalities in the structure of these rituals. People who are being inducted
into a group are first separated out from the broader population, after which they undergo
some type of experience while they are separated. This experience transforms them, and
then they are allowed to re-enter society equipped with their status change; they are now
members of a new status group. So there are three stages: separation, transition, and reen-
try. At the beginning a person has one particular social status; that status is altered in the
transition period and then the person emerges from transition with a new status. This new
status is recognized by the society or sector of society into which the person is integrating
and typically this new status is accompanied by one or more symbols so that everyone knows

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 55 26/07/12 2:22 PM

56 Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially

the new status has been achieved. It’s a very simple recipe, but it is applied in such a wide
array of ways that we often do not see the recipe, only the finished meal.

integrating People into Families

From the previous two chapters, you should have a strong idea about the enormous amount
of cultural knowledge that babies learn extraordinarily quickly to adapt to their social envi-
ronments. So they do their part to integrate. However, the people around them must do
their part as well. They do this through interaction, as already explained, but one of the most
important ways they do this is much less known: social birth. Social birth is an anthropologi-
cal concept that is the outcome of studies involving the search for patterns or regularities in
what peoples do cross-culturally (Montgomery 2009). It turns out that peoples everywhere
practice a rite of passage to integrate infants into their social group(s), called social birth
(Lancy 2010). I can almost hear you saying to yourself, “What? Integrate a baby? A baby is
born into a family.” True, but being born biologically is different from being born socially.
This is best seen through examples.

Common examples of social birth can be found in religious rituals. Among many
Christians, for example, this is accomplished through infant baptism. As you may have seen,
baptism follows the classic rite of passage stages: The infant is cradled by his or her parents,
but they separate from their friends and family by heading to the front of the sanctuary to
initialize the ritual. The dress of the baby (typically in all white, a symbol of purity) also
identifies separation from ordinary clothes. When the parents hand the baby to the pastor or
priest, the transition phase begins. It continues when the pastor anoints the baby with water
while saying a blessing, and it ends when the pastor presents the baby to the congregation as
a new member. This last step marks the baby’s integration into the Christian community,
the public acknowledgment of the baby’s social birth. Most social births are marked by

Young Men Going Through a Rite of Passage into Adulthood. Note How
Dress Separates Them into a Group. Where Might this Ritual Take Place?
What Cues Do You Use to Decide?

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 56 26/07/12 2:22 PM

Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially 57

not only a ritual, but also some type of party or feast to which members of the larger social
group are invited. Note that the baptism occurs some time after biological birth. Another case
among Jews is the brit or bris, the removal of a baby boy’s penile foreskin eight days following
birth. Traditionally, this social birth, like baptism, involved the transition phase being done at
home by a religious specialist (the Mohel); now, the transition is often performed by a doctor
in a hospital, and is celebrated later with a party at the infant’s home. Although the act itself
is somewhat de-ritualized within the hospital, the infant’s social birth is still acknowledged
by a gathering of the social group into which the child has now been integrated. In each of
these cases, appropriate gifts for the infant would be anything symbolic of his new status,
such as jewelry or clothing with a cross or Star of David or religious storybooks.

According to anthropologist Alma Gottlieb (2004), most African Muslim peoples
confer social birth by naming their children about a week after their biological birth. In her
own research among the Beng peoples of the Ivory Coast in West Africa, Gottlieb learned
of their belief that babies carry the reincarnated soul of an ancestor. It takes a long time for
babies to achieve complete membership in Beng society since these reincarnated souls are
always tempted to leave the physical world for the wrugbe, the afterlife (literally, the “village
of souls”), which is a sweeter place to dwell than on Earth. The Beng feel that the pull of
wrugbe is so powerful that they must entice babies to remain among the living by elaborately
bathing and decorating them (as mentioned earlier), co-sleeping with them, and making
life on Earth as inviting as possible. Gottlieb (2004: 93) writes that babies are thought of as
living “betwixt and between” two worlds; as such, they are seen as only weakly attached to
each world while they slowly make the transition from one to the other. Not surprisingly,
Beng social birth takes a lot of effort and time. It begins, but certainly does not end, when
the baby’s umbilical cord falls off. On that day (and among other rituals), the baby is washed
four times by its maternal grandmother and is given its first necklace made of savannah grass
to encourage its health and growth. Baby girls also have their ears pierced.

Although these illustrations of social birth vary enormously in terms of the particulars
of rites of passage and the symbols of the newfound status for infants, they all follow the
rite of passage recipe. Additionally, they all are examples of social birth that follows biologi-
cal birth. There is a gap of hours to months between being born physically and being born
socially. Research trying to understand why there is always a gap suggests that it helps to pro-
tect the social group, and particularly the mother, from greater emotional trauma should the
child die shortly after birth (Lancy 2010; Kaufman and Morgan 2005). Until very recently in
most societies, infant mortality was so high—especially in the first weeks and months fol-
lowing birth—that investing a lot of emotional work into socially integrating a new member
could easily result in huge emotional duress with every loss of an infant. Separating social
birth from biological birth, then, protects caregivers from too much attachment and thus the
heartache that can accompany the loss of a child (Lancy 2010; Scheper-Hughes 1992). Social
birth, thus, provides a ritual to mark the commencement of greater emotional investment,
a public acknowledgment that the child is now likely to survive.

In recent decades, however, the science of childbearing has opened up much greater
knowledge of fetal development in the womb. And since the appearance of ultrasound
technology, expectant parents can view their baby and hear its heartbeat before birth itself.
Scholars studying obstetric technology acknowledge that among many people now, social
birth precedes biological birth (Kaufman & Morgan 2005; Mitchell & Georges 1998; Mont-
gomery 2009; Taylor 2008). Infants are being incorporated into their social groups, particu-
larly into families, earlier and earlier and thus social birth is accomplished through the ritual
of the first ultrasound itself. Before the invention of ultrasound and other technologies used

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 57 26/07/12 2:22 PM

58 Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially

to view the womb, a woman was typically viewed as pregnant, but the social status of her
fetus was ambiguous. Was it a human being, a human being in the making, or a pre–human
being? Peoples around the world take various perspectives on the social status of a baby in
utero (e.g., Huber & Breedlove 2007). For example, the Qur’an states that the soul enters
the fetus at 120 days at which time Muslims begin to refer to its personhood (Montgomery
2009: 83). However, new technologies can shift this perspective, particularly among peoples
who view pregnancy as that of an unborn child. When we refer to a child, there is a subtle
understanding that this being is a person and when we refer to “our” child, we acknowledge
him or her as a member of our family. How do you feel? At what point does social birth
take place in your understanding: at conception, in the womb, at birth, or after a ritual is
performed after birth? These are hugely important questions for many people and we often
argue and debate over them without being aware of the larger cultural phenomenon that
all people face—socially integrating new members. In the United States, battles over the
legality of abortion have shifted to hinge on social birth—when a fetus is officially accorded
personhood status. Whenever personhood status (social birth in this case as a citizen of the
country) begins, so, too, begin the rights accorded to that person.

With the help of technology, expectant families also typically learn the sex of the baby.
Armed with this information, the family incorporates the baby into his or her new setting
by buying the symbols of that new status: often pink for a daughter or blue for a son. The
extended family and coworkers are told about the pregnancy, the child’s sex, and the names
being considered (naming is itself an acknowledgment of social birth). All of this emotional
investment indicates that social birth has occurred. Therefore, should anything happen
except a normal biological birth, the emotional toll is huge, much larger than in societies
where social birth follows biological. The debates are basically about social birth—when is
a fetus a member of society with full social rights? When is a fetus a full member of a fam-
ily? Understanding that people respond differently to these questions helps explain the very
emotional debates in many parts of the world over abortion.

Of course, birth is but one of the events marked by rites of passage in the course of
human life. Among the most important other rites that are extremely common if not univer-
sal to all societies are weddings and funerals. Think about these rituals for a moment and see
if you can now trace the separation, transition, and reincorporation stages in marriages and
funerals. Stop for a moment and identify the stages for a funeral. After you finish, continue
reading as I will analyze marriages.

Weddings vary a great deal in specifics, but they have a lot of commonalities in terms
of their basic elements as rites of passage. First of all, they are all about incorporating new
people into established groups. People who have little to no social belonging now become
attached. Weddings knit together different families who thereafter have obligations that
they did not have before. These new bonds are acknowledged by giving the newly integrated
members a particular term—“in-laws” (or, as in my family, people often refer to themselves
jokingly as the “out-laws”). Again, see if you can identify the separation, transition, and
reintegration phases of marriage that result in not only the joining of the spouses, but also
of their families. Do you see how the special clothing of both the groom and, especially, the
bride symbolize that they are the ones undergoing the ritual? And, of course, you can see
the transition in the ceremony itself, particularly the vows, and the fact that, in many tradi-
tions at least, the couple faces away from the society bearing witness. That symbolizes their
separation from the group (even though they are in the same room).

On occasion, a covering over the couple during the transition part of the ritual sym-
bolizes their separation from everyone else. How about the reintegration with their new

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 58 26/07/12 2:22 PM

Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially 59

change of status? Just think about when the person officiating pronounces the couple as
newly married, mentions their new names, if any, and permits them to kiss. The couple
then turns toward their social group and literally reintegrates themselves by walking right
through the audience. Something that reinforces this is the way the bride is facing; as she
walks down the aisle to be married, she is seen best by her own relatives on her left side and
she is accompanied by her maid of honor on that side. After she is married, she turns around
and immediately is next to the groom’s best man. Then she walks back up the aisle and in so
doing literally passes all her new in-laws sitting on the opposite side of the aisle. Then there
is the reception party where everyone participates. What are the symbols of the couple’s new
status? Rings worn on the fourth finger are a common symbol, as are new forms of address-
ing the newly married couple and their newly acquired family members (e.g., Mrs. versus
Ms. or Miss; in-laws). Additionally, there is a wide variety of markers of married status,
especially for women. For example, a common practice among married Hindu women is
to wear the bindi, a dark red dot on the forehead. What do these symbols represent? That
someone is married, of course, but also that this person is now supposed to be off limits to
sexual attention from anyone other than the spouse. They also represent the person’s suc-
cessful transition into a new, acknowledged social status. I believe that this is where the rub
comes with gay marriage. Whether or not you favor gay marriage, you should be able to
see that prohibiting gays to marry leaves them in an unsettled social-integration position.
They are neither single nor married. Civil unions do not settle the issue because they do
not involve full reintegration, which is the sine qua non of rites of passage. Unions provide
some rights and status differences, but the most important socially speaking is acceptance
into the broader family, or society. As many religions as well as governments prohibit gay
marriage, that broader acceptance is not granted to gay couples.

Now, it’s important to recall that these examples of rites of passage are only part
of the overall objective of this chapter: to show how learning and doing culture is about

The Wedding as Rite of Passage: Note How the Bride and Groom Walk Up to
the Ceremony Along Their Relatives’ Side and Walk Down Along Their New
In-s’ Side. As the Two Become Family Officially, Their Families Change Too.

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 59 26/07/12 2:22 PM

60 Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially

socially integrating people into their groups. There are many things to learn, many cultural
competencies to acquire around important rituals, especially marriage. No wonder they
typically are planned far in advance. Traditions are passed down during weddings, perhaps
more than at any other time in life, and traditions take a lot of effort to learn so they can be
reproduced later. Marriages do not happen each and every day, so the traditions associated
with them must be learned well in order for them to be reproduced properly. No wonder,
then, that many weddings involve young boys and girls in the rituals so that they can begin
to learn all that is involved. No wonder also that even though marriages involve rites of pas-
sage that are now easily recognizable, people accustomed to certain traditions will feel very
much like “fish out of water” in someone else’s traditions. Next time you attend a wedding,
apply the rite of passage lens to it. You should see and appreciate it differently. Perhaps, if
you’re not yet married, you will plan your own wedding (or your children’s weddings) with
a new awareness of its rite of passage elements.

integrating PeoPLe into (FaCe-to-FaCe) institutionaL
grouPs

Arguably, the most important group all people need to integrate into, and feel we belong
in, is our families. Yet during the course of our lives, we also integrate into a wide variety of
additional groups. Some of these groups consist of people we know, while others are so big
that we cannot know everyone in them, and yet we still somehow feel a part of them. Large
companies and clubs, as well as nations, are examples of these latter groups. Despite wide
variations in types and sizes, however, the basic process for integration remains similar. We
go through a transition from outsider or uninitiated member to insider or full member;
therefore, integration processes can be viewed as rites of passage. In the following examples,
I highlight the rites of passage of integration, but it is important to recognize that groups are
more than just clusters of individuals; when I refer to a “group,” I really mean a “cultural
context shared by people.” When you join the military, for example, you do not just remain
the same as when you were a civilian. You must learn the cultural practices of the military,
as these differ quite significantly from civilian life. When you enlist, you do not know this
cultural context (unless you grew up in a military family), so you must be trained. “Train-
ing” is another word for learning the particular ways of a new cultural context. So, when we
integrate into new groups, we must learn new cultural ideas and practices. We are therefore
learning culture even as adults.

becoming soldiers in real Life and online

Since I have already mentioned joining the military and its rites of passage are very marked,
let’s begin by talking about them. In this transition a person begins as a civilian. Civilians
enlist voluntarily, are recruited, or are drafted into the military. At this point, they are
separated from the broader society as uninitiated members, but they must go through a
transition during which they are transformed into soldiers. What is that transition called? If
you guessed boot camp, you are right. But think a bit more about what boot camp involves.
When people are going through a transition, this phase in their rite of passage has them
separated from both the cultural context of their original status (civilian) and from the
cultural context they will assume (solider). This separation is physical but also symbolic.
What do you know about how boot camp separates newcomers physically and symbolically?
If you are not sure, imagine what happens. The key is to think about how people going

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 60 26/07/12 2:22 PM

Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially 61

through transformations pass through certain stages in their rituals—separation from the
broader group or society, a collective experience, and then reemergence into that society
with a new status.

Now compare your responses against what those who have studied this transition
have found. Recruits undergo physical separation by going to the camp itself and staying
there, away from civilian society, for weeks. They undergo a variety of symbolic separations
that not only communicate that they are now in the military, but also work toward get-
ting them to lose their individuality in order to enforce that they are now part of a larger
organization that is more important than any individual. As part of this deindividualization
process, they are issued “uniforms.” You may not think about the significance of that word,
but it means to make everyone similar. When we wear uniforms, we symbolize the larger
organization of which we are a part. We wear them to show our social integration into this
organization; when other people see our uniform, they typically see us as representatives
(symbols) of that organization. So, issuing new recruits military uniforms and forbidding
them to wear civilian clothes during boot camp communicates who they are expected to
become. Additionally, the military uniform is decorated by a multitude of symbols that
communicate rank and thus the hierarchy of the new cultural context. A soldier is expected
to respond to the rank, rather than to the individual behind the rank.

Another ritual that forms part of the initiation into military life is the haircut.
Hairstyles help people symbolize membership in groups (e.g., wearing “pig tails” symbol-
izes being a little girl, whereas older girls often wear a “pony tail”; wearing dread locks
is highly associated with Rastafarians; Sikhs and many Afghani men wrap their hair in
turbans; “punks” dye their hair in bright colors). Hair is often used to communicate
individuality, personal style (e.g., shaving a name or image into the haircut; coloring one
shock of hair or decorating hair with beads or bows). For the military, individuality is out
while uniformity is in. By making short hair the standard—crew cuts for men and above
shoulder-length hair for women—the military greatly reduces visible individuality. For the
same reasons, adornments are prohibited, such as nose rings, men’s earrings, and visible
or offensive tattoos. Similarly, even a new recruit’s personal effects must be standardized;
beds and belongings must be kept in exactly the same order. When all is said and done,
the separation from civilian life leaves little of the individual. The only markers of it are
the recruits’ last names stitched onto their uniforms.

My Step-Grandson Anthony Before and After Military Boot Camp.

M04_MAHL0003_01_SE_C04.indd 61 26/07/12 2:22 PM

62 Chapter 4 • To Be Human Is to Integrate Socially

The first step in the rite of passage is thus complete—separation. Now it is time for
the transitional stage to begin. At this stage, rites of passage of all different varieties have
initiates undergo an ordeal while sequestered from the rest of society. The more intense
the ordeal, the more initiates feel bonded both to each other and to their new group when
they emerge. The ordeal is the transition phase, but it also produces camaraderie. For this
reason, military recruits in boot camp are challenged physically (with exhausting work-
outs, marches, predawn exercises, etc.) as well as psychologically and emotionally (e.g.,
being humiliated by superiors who shout at them and chastise them publicly). For weeks,
recruits are at the complete mercy and domination of their superiors. During boot camp
they are, quite literally, torn into pieces as individuals and then melded back together as a
group. In an interesting book detailing the boot camp experiences of a platoon of Marine
recruits, Thomas Ricks (1997) begins by telling how the 36 young men he observed for ten
weeks were transported many hours by bus to Parris Island, South Carolina, where Marine
Basic Training occurs. They arrived after midnight to see the gate symbolized by a huge
sign “PARRIS ISLAND: WHERE THE DIFFERENCE BEGINS.” Instead of being led to
bed, however, they were lined up by their drill sergeant, told to memorize their new unit
number, stripped of their clothes and jewelry, and issued uniforms and bedding. Finally,
they were given the famously short buzz haircuts as well as a predawn lesson on how to
march as a group. The whole next day continued with their “disorientation” and “cultural
indoctrination” because, as Ricks comments, “Before they can learn to fight, they must
learn to be Marines” …