Culture: Concept and Definition
CONCEPT OF CULTURE
Sociologists
and anthropologists use ‘culture’ as a collective noun for the symbolic and
learned aspects of human society, including language, custom and convetion, by
which human behaviour can be distinguished from that of other primates.
Cultural anthropology (as distinct from physical anthropology) takes as its
special province the analysis of the culture of human societies. Anthropology
recognizes that human behaviour is largely culturally and not genetically
determined. This has given rise to debates about cultural diffusion and the
uniqueness of cultures and cultural relativity.
Sociologists do not use the term ‘culture’, as it often is used in ordinary speech. Culture, as we conceive of it, does not refer to just the cultivated prestigious patterns of upper-class groups in a society culture viewed been passed down through the generations and which, increasingly, has differentiated the human way of life from that of other human species.
Culture consists of the thoughts and behaviour patterns that members of a society learn through language and other forms of symbolic interaction-then customs, habits, beliefs and values. The common view point’s which bind them together as a social entity.
Culture is an explanatory concept in two senses: (1) It has the potential for explaining why specific institutions occur when and where they do. For example, it has been suggested that certain types of religious patterns are associated with specific types of social structure. In other words, certain features of the cultural system explain other features of the system. (2) Culture contains principles for interpreting behaviour and institutions. To interpret is not to explain why an institution occurs when and where it does, but to make sense of it.
Most social scientists today employ some variation of the modern culture concept in their research and while they agree about the essential features of culture, they still disagree fundamentally about how culture works the factors governing it, and the full extent of its influence on behaviour, thought and perception.
5.2 DEFINITION OF CULTURE
What has been termed the classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th century English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor in the first paragraph of his primitive culture (1987):
“Culture... 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”.
In anthropology (1881) Tylor made it clear that culture so defined, is possessed by man alone. This conception of culture served anthropologist well for some 50 years. With the increasing maturity of anthropological science, further reflections upon the nature of their subject matter and concepts led to a multiplication and diversification of definitions of culture. In culture: a critical review of concepts and definitions (1952), U.S anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn cited 164 definitions of culture ranging from “learned behaviour” to ‘ideas in the mind, “a logical construct, “statistical fiction,” “a psychic defence mechanism,” and so on. The definition or the conception of culture that is referred by Kroeber and Kluckhohn and also by a great many other anthropologists in recent years is that culture is an abstraction or, more specifically, “an abstraction from behaviour”.
When things and events are considered in the context of their relation to the human organism, they constitute behaviour; when they are considered not in terms of their relation to the human organism but in their relationship to one another, they become culture by definition.
According to Spencer: Culture is “the superorganic environment as distinguished from the inorganic or physical and from the organic---the world of plants and animals. He called culture superorganic as it is a system of knowledge that exists apart from and above (“super”) man’s biological nature (“Organic”). Culture does not come from instincts or biology; it comes from knowledge, system created in man’s social life. Since culture is knowledge, it is expressed in symbols.
(1) It has the potential for explaining why specific institutions occur when and were they do. (2) Culture contains principles for interpreting behaviour and institutions.
Culture can be used to convey various meanings. Thus there is the common, literacy use to the term when we use culture to convey social charm and intellectual excellence. There are some sociologists also who use the term culture elite for the intellectual leaders of a society. Then there are philosophers like Cassirer and sociologists like Sorokin and Maclver to whom culture stands for the moral, spiritual and intellectual attainments of man David Bidney, philosopher-Anthropoligist, defames it as the self-cultivation of human nature as also the cultivation of natural, geographical environment.
According to E.B. Taylor: Culture stands for the beliefs, ideas, customs, laws, morals, arts and other capabilities and skill acquired by man as a member of society.
Culture has two essential qualities:
· It is learned
· It is shared
To a large culture determines how members of a society think and feel, it directs their actions and defines their outlook on life. Members of society usually take their culture for granted. It has become so much a part of them that they are often unaware of its existence. Hence “culture defines accepted way of behaving for members of a particular society.
Sociologists do not use the term ‘culture’, as it often is used in ordinary speech. Culture, as we conceive of it, does not refer to just the cultivated prestigious patterns of upper-class groups in a society culture viewed been passed down through the generations and which, increasingly, has differentiated the human way of life from that of other human species.
Culture consists of the thoughts and behaviour patterns that members of a society learn through language and other forms of symbolic interaction-then customs, habits, beliefs and values. The common view point’s which bind them together as a social entity.
Culture is an explanatory concept in two senses: (1) It has the potential for explaining why specific institutions occur when and where they do. For example, it has been suggested that certain types of religious patterns are associated with specific types of social structure. In other words, certain features of the cultural system explain other features of the system. (2) Culture contains principles for interpreting behaviour and institutions. To interpret is not to explain why an institution occurs when and where it does, but to make sense of it.
Most social scientists today employ some variation of the modern culture concept in their research and while they agree about the essential features of culture, they still disagree fundamentally about how culture works the factors governing it, and the full extent of its influence on behaviour, thought and perception.
5.2 DEFINITION OF CULTURE
What has been termed the classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th century English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor in the first paragraph of his primitive culture (1987):
“Culture... 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”.
In anthropology (1881) Tylor made it clear that culture so defined, is possessed by man alone. This conception of culture served anthropologist well for some 50 years. With the increasing maturity of anthropological science, further reflections upon the nature of their subject matter and concepts led to a multiplication and diversification of definitions of culture. In culture: a critical review of concepts and definitions (1952), U.S anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn cited 164 definitions of culture ranging from “learned behaviour” to ‘ideas in the mind, “a logical construct, “statistical fiction,” “a psychic defence mechanism,” and so on. The definition or the conception of culture that is referred by Kroeber and Kluckhohn and also by a great many other anthropologists in recent years is that culture is an abstraction or, more specifically, “an abstraction from behaviour”.
When things and events are considered in the context of their relation to the human organism, they constitute behaviour; when they are considered not in terms of their relation to the human organism but in their relationship to one another, they become culture by definition.
According to Spencer: Culture is “the superorganic environment as distinguished from the inorganic or physical and from the organic---the world of plants and animals. He called culture superorganic as it is a system of knowledge that exists apart from and above (“super”) man’s biological nature (“Organic”). Culture does not come from instincts or biology; it comes from knowledge, system created in man’s social life. Since culture is knowledge, it is expressed in symbols.
(1) It has the potential for explaining why specific institutions occur when and were they do. (2) Culture contains principles for interpreting behaviour and institutions.
Culture can be used to convey various meanings. Thus there is the common, literacy use to the term when we use culture to convey social charm and intellectual excellence. There are some sociologists also who use the term culture elite for the intellectual leaders of a society. Then there are philosophers like Cassirer and sociologists like Sorokin and Maclver to whom culture stands for the moral, spiritual and intellectual attainments of man David Bidney, philosopher-Anthropoligist, defames it as the self-cultivation of human nature as also the cultivation of natural, geographical environment.
According to E.B. Taylor: Culture stands for the beliefs, ideas, customs, laws, morals, arts and other capabilities and skill acquired by man as a member of society.
Culture has two essential qualities:
· It is learned
· It is shared
To a large culture determines how members of a society think and feel, it directs their actions and defines their outlook on life. Members of society usually take their culture for granted. It has become so much a part of them that they are often unaware of its existence. Hence “culture defines accepted way of behaving for members of a particular society.
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