 Dear students, in this module, we are going to talk about a very important question that comes to our mind while trying to understand the culture. That is the foundation of culture, biological or social. Do we have some biological characteristics based on which we produce a certain type of culture? Or is it that we human beings are born like a blank slate? We have nothing in us when we are born and it's the culture that makes us so. So cultural determinism is the belief that culture is the primary factor that determines the behavior and beliefs. We have these two point of views. One is cultural determinism. The other one is biological determinism. The point of view of cultural determinism is that when a person is born, he is not a social being but a complete biological being. That biological being is a socialization of the social being and as a result of this socialization process, a person becomes a cultural being, a belief system, a value system and how they behave, how they reflect their behavior in the society, all of these things we learn through that cultural process. On the other hand, biological determinism is the belief that biology is the primary factor that determines the behavior and belief system. The biological determinists say that in a person, there are biological pre-disposed qualities or characteristics that develop on the basis of which their learning skills are developed. This person is different from the rest of the species, he is distinctive, his culture is distinct from the rest of the species, his learning process is also distinct. For example, language is a special capability of a person that is determined by its biological characteristics. If those biological characteristics are not present in a person's genetic code, then we will not be able to learn the language and the language is a foundation of the interaction process. So in a nutshell, they do claim that it is the biological factors based on which a human being would become a social being based on those key characteristics. So both cultural and biological factors are important to have that interaction to shape our behaviors and belief system. And culture and biology can reinforce or contradict each other. So as you have seen that they both are having quite an opposite point of view when we talk about the human behavior. So a balance of cultural and biological factors is necessary to understand the human behavior and its belief system. So when a particular field, which is called sociobiology, is based on the biological characteristics of a person and the cultural characteristics of a person, they both make a person a biological and cultural and social being. For example, if we think about any person in the Pakistani society, we have to understand how a culture or its biology helps a human being or a social being or a Pakistani to make a person a biological and social being. So for example, we can make it clear that cultural determinism can bring the influence of religion on the daily life and behavior whereas biological determinism can help us understand that how genetic predisposition to certain diseases brings us the human beings with certain genetic defects. Those genetic defects that we have later on reflect in the same cultural or behavioral aspects as well. For example, we see that in many cousin marriages, the transmission of genetics due to the transmission of these genetic characteristics also transmits such genetic diseases. So this can be an example of biological determinism. The example of cultural determinism is that in the process of your socialization, it helps you to produce your cultural identity or it can be clear from the example of cultural determinism.