Concept of Culture
Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values, customs, and behaviors of a particular group of people. It encompasses language, traditions, art, and social norms that shape the way individuals within a society interact and perceive the world. Culture is dynamic and can evolve over time, influenced by historical, environmental, and social factors.
6 Key excerpts on "Concept of Culture"
eBook - ePubIdeology and Modern Culture
Critical Social Theory in the Era of Mass Communication
- John B. Thompson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...3 The Concept of Culture In the literature of the social sciences, the study of symbolic forms has generally been conducted under the rubric of the Concept of Culture. While there may be little agreement concerning the meaning of the concept itself, many analysts would agree that the study of cultural phenomena is a concern of central importance for the social sciences as a whole. For social life is not merely a matter of objects and events which occur like happenings in the natural world: it is also a matter of meaningful actions and expressions, of utterances, symbols, texts and artefacts of various kinds, and of subjects who express themselves though these artefacts and who seek to understand themselves and others by interpreting the expressions they produce and receive. In the broadest sense, the study of cultural phenomena may be construed as the study of the social-historical world as a meaningful domain. It may be construed as the study of the ways in which meaningful expressions of various kinds are produced, constructed and received by individuals situated in the social-historical world. Construed in this way, the Concept of Culture refers to a range of phenomena and a set of concerns which are shared today by analysts working in a variety of disciplines, from sociology and anthropology to history and literary criticism. The Concept of Culture has not always been used in this way, however. It is a concept with a lengthy history of its own, and the sense which it conveys today is to some extent a product of this history. By retracing some of the main episodes in the development of the Concept of Culture, we can gain a deeper understanding into what is involved, and what is to be avoided, in the contemporary study of cultural phenomena. I shall therefore begin this chapter by offering a brief overview of this development...
eBook - ePubMulticulturalism and Diversity
A Social Psychological Perspective
- Bernice Lott(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...2 Culture [I]ndividuals feel, think, and see things from the viewpoints of the groups in which they participate (Smith, 1991, p. 182). [W]e cannot understand human diversity without understanding how culture contributes to the substantial variations we observe every day (Lonner, 1994, p. 241). Culture is to human behavior as operating systems are to software, often invisible and unnoticed, yet playing an extremely important role in development and operation (Matsumoto, 2001, p. 3). In the early years of psychology’s development as a discipline separate from philosophy, during the last part of the19th century, there was interest in what was called “folk culture.” But this interest waned as issues related to the concept were seen as too speculative and not readily amenable to empirical inquiry (Pepitone, 2000). Culture has re-emerged as a significant construct in the past few decades. In current psychological discourse, our definitions and conceptualizations of culture come primarily from cultural anthropology where culture is generally understood to refer to that part of our environment that is constructed by human beings to embody shared learning. Definitions and Common Themes An early definition, in 1891, presents culture as the incorporation of all socially acquired habits and knowledge (see Mio, Trimble, Arredondo, Cheatham & Sue, 1999). More than a century later, the core of this definition remains the same, despite multiple variations on the basic theme. Baldwin, Faulkner, Hecht, and Lindsley (2006) refer to the definition of culture as a “moving target” and devote an entire book to its discussion, providing an appendix of 300 variations. Nevertheless, for the purpose of the present text, I focus on what seems to be the essence of common agreement. In this common agreement within social science, culture is understood to represent “socially transmitted beliefs, values, and practices … [and] shared ideas and habits” (Latane, 1996, p. 13)...
eBook - ePub- Jack David Eller(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Cultural anthropologists call the process of acquiring culture enculturation, which is synonymous with socialization, the preferred term of sociology. Hardly a simple matter of imitation, enculturation is the active mastering of social knowledge and skill through observing and interacting with other people. Culture is shared. Culture is not a trait of the individual but of the group, specifically the “society.” We could say that a group/society has or does a culture or that a culture is the quality or possession of a group/society. However, we must also guard against the simplistic notions that (a) everyone in a group/society shares exactly the same culture and (b) what people do in one society is totally different and separate from what people do in another. There are variations within any society—subcultures, countercultures, regional cultures and cultural differences based on age, gender, class, race, etc. It is more accurate to say that culture is transmitted and distributed within a group. Culture is symbolic. While cultural anthropologists have become a bit leery of the strong linguistic or textual analogy of past decades, culture can still be usefully understood as a system of symbols and meanings akin to a language. Humans never live directly in an unmediated world; humans create meanings, store those meanings in words or gestures or objects and then exchange these meaningful things with each other in a grand symbolic conversation. Of course, this entails that the same sound or gesture or object may have an entirely different meaning—or no meaning at all—in some other society. Culture is integrated. As Tylor stated, culture is a “complex whole” composed of many parts in active and functional interconnection. This does not mean necessarily that every part of culture works well or that the integration is tight...
eBook - ePubCultural Anthropology
Global Forces, Local Lives
- Jack David Eller(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...There are almost as many definitions of culture as there are cultural anthropologists; in fact, there are fundamentally different approaches to a definition. One approach understands culture as primarily ideas or beliefs, that is, as basically “in people’s heads.” From this perspective, we cannot really “see” culture but can infer it from the behavior of people. Another approach construes culture as a set of real facts, albeit “social facts,” including observable behavior and the products of that behavior, such as the rules, groups, and institutions that shape people’s lives. Culture can even refer to material objects like tools and houses. Ultimately, culture undoubtedly encompasses all three. So there is no authoritative or universally shared definition of culture. But the oldest and most widely cited anthropological definition of culture was given by E. B. Tylor in his 1871 book called Primitive Culture. See Chapter 3 Tylor, E. B. 1958 [1871]. Primitive Culture. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. (1958: 1) THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF APPRENTICESHIP Culture, then, can be understood as those life-ways, and the social and material products of those ways, that are shared among a group of people not because they are innate or inborn but rather because they are observed and experienced in the group. This and Tylor’s characterization of culture include several key notions which we may consider the classic qualities of culture: ETHNOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE – CHAPTER 2 Learned Shared Symbolic Integrated Adaptive. Contemporary encounters with culture in the modern globalized context suggest that these standard features do not quite capture its full richness, though...
eBook - ePubCultural Issues in Psychology
An Introduction to a Global Discipline
- Andrew Stevenson(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Whatever culture is, then, it is certainly what renders one group different from others. Figure 2.1 Everyday ways of talking about ‘culture’ Short of striving for a single definition of culture, Berry et al. (2011) aid our understanding of the term by arguing that it is an idea that seeps into six areas of our lives. For them, when I talk about my culture I speak of my social group’s: History and traditions – e.g. Midwinter celebrations are a tradition in my culture. Conventions and norms – e.g. It’s conventional here to kiss both cheeks when greeting. Activities and behaviours – e.g. Music, dancing and sport are some of our favourite pastimes. Institutions and organisational infrastructure – e.g. The separation of Church and state is part of our culture. Biological ancestry – e.g. Our ancestry dates back centuries. Psychological characteristics – e.g. Modesty, pride and co-operation are part of our shared personality traits. It is interesting to note how these six contexts for culture encompass elements of both ethnicity (shared identity) and race (biological ancestry), as they are described in Table 2.1. This highlights the overlapping nature of all these concepts. Part of the reason why it is so hard to see where culture ends and nation and ethnicity begin is that these labels refer to phenomena that are partly intangible and unobservable, such as feelings of belonging or ‘psychological dispositions of different groups’. Triandis (2002) acknowledges this when distinguishing between material and subjective aspects of culture. The former refers to the visible, shared characteristics of my group: how we dress, our defining technologies, our favourite cuisine. Subjective culture encompasses the invisible yet influential ideas and values that my social group deems sufficiently valuable to pass on to future generations (through a process known as cultural transmission). These may include moral codes, religious doctrines and social etiquette...
eBook - ePubAmerican Cultural Patterns
A Cross-Cultural Perspective
- Edward C. Stewart, Milton J. Bennett(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Intercultural Press(Publisher)
...One aspect is subjective culture —the psychological features of culture, including assumptions, values, and patterns of thinking. The other is objective culture —the institutions and artifacts of a culture, such as its economic system, social customs, political structures and processes, arts, crafts, and literature. Objective culture can be treated as an externalization of subjective culture which usually becomes reified; that is, those institutions which are properly seen as extensions of human activity attain an independent status as external entities. They seem to exist “out there,” and their ongoing human origins are forgotten. In traditional universities the study of objective culture is well established in departments of social sciences and humanities. Perhaps this is because institutions and other external artifacts of behavior are more accessible to examination. Subjective culture is usually treated as an unconscious process influencing perception, thinking, and memory or as personal knowledge which is inaccessible to trainers or educators. In universities this aspect of culture is a newcomer and a minor thread in sociology, social psychology, and communication. Subjective culture becomes a major subject only in cultural anthropology. Although anthropologists typically make cross-cultural comparisons, they much more rarely investigate the practical aspects of intercultural communication. Instead, their major interest is in collecting information about the institutions of objective culture. While this kind of information provides useful background, it does not effectively prepare sojourners for the intercultural experience. Yet, it is precisely this information about objective culture which constitutes most of the cultural components of the majority of orientation programs for persons going abroad...
