Chapter 5

Cultural Products

"Products are the visible dimension of culture, in other words, they are the Gateway to the new culture, the new way of life."

These creations of the members of a culture can be perceived with the five senses.  But one must remember that not all of them are tangible, some of them are complex and intangible. Some examples of tangible products are tools, typical costumes and buildings, while some intangible products are laws, economics, religion and art. One can examine cultural products by using two strategies: by studying their relationships with other products, and by studying their connections to other dimensions of culture (practices, perspectives, persons and communities).

Cultural products can be classified into four categories of increasing complexity: artifacts, places, institutions and art forms. These intangible products are made perceptible in the sense that they have tangible aspects. For example, you can´t see, smell, taste, hear or feel education, yet there are many objects related to it such as schools, textbooks, uniforms and desks.

Artifacts

Some artifacts are unique to a specific culture; others are common in many cultures, but are particularly adapted to respond to the needs of a specific group of people. Other cultural products may even be adopted just as they are. In this last case, the cultural aspect lies on the way the artifact is used and the perspectives that inform these practices, and not on the item itself.

Artifacts are also involved different manipulations or transactions. They can be designed, manufactured, bought, sold, traded, maintained, lost, damaged and many more handlings are possible.

"Chorreador": Typical costa rican device used to prepare coffee, is an exanple of a  cultural product

Places

The organization, layout or interpretation of this physical space is a critical feature of places, just as much as the artifacts and their arrangement in these places.

The ecology of a culture is the ways in which its members construct relationships between and among places, natural and man-made.

The Central Avenue in downtown San José is a costa rican cultural place. 

Institutions

These structures govern the activities of the culture, so they are closely linked to practices. Some institutions inside a culture are politics, law, economics, education, religion family and kinship. Other cases include health institutions, social welfare, mass media, intellectual-esthetic and humanitarian institutions such as leisure and recreation.

Our country's health and social security system  is a cultural institution

Art forms

These may be the most intangible components of cultural products, they are mental constructions, inventions or creations.  They are sometimes located in a “grey area” at the intersection between products, practices and perspectives, and are represented by esthetics and philosophy. They fade into one another, where material culture becomes ideational culture. 

The following are examples of Costa Rican art forms

Pre-Columbian pottery

Adobe house: an aquarelle by Roberto Salazar, a costa rican painter.

Tambito, a national rhythm

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Russian Cultural Products

Source: http://masterrussian.com/

Every culture has its own products, and the russians aren't the exception. Let's take a look on some interesting artifacts, places and art forms from this Eurasian country and culture.

1. The russian alphabet

The russian alphabet is a form of Cyrillic script, which consists of 33 characters. It has 11 vowels, 20 consonants, and 2 pronunciation signs, some of these letters are borrowed from Greek and Hebrew. As in any other language, the alphabet is used to write in Russian, based on the general principle that the letters represent basic significant sounds of the spoken language. 

If you borrowed your russian friend's computer, this is how the keyboard would look like!!!

2. Russian Everyday Food

Russians prefer homemade food, so they rarely eat out or buy prepared meals at supermarkets. There are three meals in Russia, but they have their own ideas about how and what to eat.

First meal = Breakfast

Ham Butterbrot

Tvorog

They have an early breakfast at seven or eight in the morning. kasha (a type of porridge made from different grains),butterbrots (a kind of sandwich made of a single slice of bread and one topping such as butter or ham), boiled or fried eggs, tvorog (similar to cottage cheese) or cereal for breakfast. Coffee or tea is an essential drink for many Russians.

Kasha

Obed (обе́д) = The main meal = Lunch or dinner

Kompot

It is served between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. A classic Russian lunch includes hot soup as the first course (пе́рвое блю́до or simply пе́рвое) and meat with potatoes, porridge or pasta as the second course (второ́е). This is then followed by the third course (тре́тье) which is usually a drink such as kompot (a non-alcoholic drink made by boiling fruit in water), tea, coffee or juice with an optional cake or chocolates. 

Uzhin  (у́жин) = Dinner = Supper

A typical Russian dinner consists of one or two appetizers and a hot main dish, which might be potatoes, meat, or fish. After dinner, Russians like to drink tea with sugar or jam.

Other typical russian delights are:

rye bread (ржано́й хлеб), also known as "black" bread (чёрный хлеб) because of its dark color. 

kvass (квас) -- a fermented beverage made from rye bread. Kvass has very low alcohol content not exceeding 1% and therefore it is enjoyed by people of all ages including children. 

Russian vodka (во́дка) is usually drunk on holidays in the circle of family and friends. 

First Rrussian nesting doll set

3. Matryoshka – The Russian Nesting Doll

The first Russian nesting doll set appeared in Moscow in 1890's. It was carved by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by a folk crafts painter Sergey Malyutin. The doll set consisted of eight dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other. All eight dolls depicted children -- the outermost was a girl holding a rooster, six inner dolls were girls, the fifth doll was a boy, and the innermost was a baby.

Despite the fact that first matryoshka dolls were intended for children to be used as toys, their price was so high that only adults could afford to buy them on special occasions. Matryoshka dolls were often given as a present to young women from their beloved ones. Today they are used as decration in many Russian dwellings. 

4. Russian Banya (ба́ня) and venik (ве́ник)

Banya

Banya (a Russian type of sauna, a kind of steam bath) has a special room, where a large amount of hot steam is created with the help of water and hot air. Inside the banya, which is usually built of wood, there are wide wooden benches along the walls. They are built up one above the other like steps. You can sit or lay on the benches. The higher up the bench the hotter the air is. Once someone has warmed up well enough, he or she leaves the steam room (it is called the парна́я in Russian) and dips into a pool of cold water. You can also pour water over yourself from a tub (уша́т).

Venik

At Russian banya there are special bath brooms "veniks" (ве́ник) that are used. These brooms or veniks are bundles of twigs and leafy branches bound together from some kind of tree—usually they are from birch or oak trees. The veniks are dipped into cold water and then smacked briskly all over the body.

5. Samovar

A samovar is a device traditionally used to heat and boil water for tea. Russian people believed that the samovar has a soul. This belief was mainly based on the fact that samovars were producing different sounds when being heated with fuel. The shape of the samovar's body accounts for amazing acoustics and water makes peculiar noises when it is being brought to the boil. It was common to say that "a samovar is singing" (самовар поёт).