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For other uses of culture see Culture (disambiguation).
Definitions
The word culture comes from the Latin root colere, (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor).
In general it refers to human activity; different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding,
or criteria for valuing, human activity. In 1952 Alfred Kroeber
and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of over 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical
Review of Concepts and Definitions.
Popular use of the word culture in many Western societies
can reflect the stratified character of those societies. Many use the word culture to refer to elite consumption goods
and activities such as fine cuisine, art, and
music. Some label this as "high" culture to distinguish it from
"low" culture, meaning non-elite consumption goods and activities.
Historical Definitions
18th and early 19th century scholars, and many people today, often identify culture with "civilization" and oppose both to "nature". Thus people lacking elements of "high culture" often seemed more
"natural," and observers often criticise (or defend) elements of high culture for repressing "human nature".
By the late nineteenth century, anthropologists argued for a broader
definition of culture that they could apply to a wide variety of societies. They began to argue that culture is
human nature, and that culture has its roots in the universal human capacity to classify experiences, and encode and communicate
them symbolically. Consequently, people living apart from one another develop unique
cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another.
Anthropologists have thus had to develop methodologically and theoretically useful definitions of the word. Technically,
anthropologists distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because
each reflects different kinds of human activity but because they consitute different kinds of data that require different
methodologies.
Another common way of understanding culture is to see it as consisting of three elements: Values (ideas),
Norms (behaviors), and Artifacts (things, or material culture). Values are ideas about what in
life is important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms are expectations of how people will behave in different situations.
Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the
norm; norms that a society enforces formally are called laws. Artifacts, the third component of culture, derive from the
culture's values and norms.
As a rule, archeologists focus on material culture, and cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although
ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationship between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand
"culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning,
and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded.
In the early twentieth century anthropologists
understood culture to refer not to a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic) but rather to
underlying patterns of products and activities. Moreover, they assumed that such
patterns had clear bounds (thus, some people confuse "culture" for the society that has a particular culture). In smaller
societies in which people merely fell into categories of age, gender, household, and descent group, anthropologists believed that
people more or less shared the same set of values and conventions. In larger societies in which people undergo further
categorisation by region, race, ethnicity, and class, they believed that members of the same society often had highly contrasting
values and conventions. They thus used the term subculture to identify the cultures of parts of larger
societies. Since subcultures reflect the position of a segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a
whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance.
Related Topics
Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part
through the reintroduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and
other academic disciplines such as literary criticism, in order
to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the
non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on
the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th and 19th century distinction
between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which
cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to popular culture.
Today some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with
consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of
subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales, and link
social formations of different scales.
(see Culture theory, Culture jamming)
Culture of countries
Other cultures
Related articles
Quotations
- "Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love and of thought, which, in the course of centuries, have enabled man to
be less enslaved", Andre Malraux
- "When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists", Hermann Hesse
- "The Freudian and Einsteinian views of the world have been deeply embedded into the culture which has shaped their
generation. Freud and Einstein, from their utterly different perspectives, have influenced Western popular culture by generating
two powerful beliefs: the belief that all the answers to our psychological (and even spiritual) questions are within us: and the
belief that everything (not just time and space, but knowledge and morality as well) is relative, Hugh Mackay (1938-).
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