Meaning of the word cultures

Culture consists of all learned, normative behavior patterns – that is, all shared ways or patterns of thinking and feeling as well as doing.

The word ‘culture’ comes from the Latin word ‘cultura,’ related to cult or worship. In its broadest sense, the term refers to the result of human interaction.

Society’s culture comprises the shared values, understandings, assumptions, and goals learned from earlier generations, imposed by present members of society, and passed on to succeeding generations.

Sometimes an individual is described as highly cultured, meaning that the person in question has certain features, such as his/her speech, manner, and taste for literature, music, or painting, which distinguish him from others.

Culture, in this sense, refers to certain personal characteristics of an individual.

However, this is not the sense in which the word culture is used and understood in social sciences.

Sometimes culture is used in popular discourse to refer to a celebration or an evening of entertainment, as when one speaks of a ‘cultural show.’ Culture is identified with aesthetics or the fine arts, such as dance, music, or drama.

This is also different from the technical meaning of the word culture.

Culture is used in a special sense in anthropology and sociology. It refers to the sum of human beings’ lifeways, behavior, beliefs, feelings, and thoughts; it connotes everything they acquire as social beings. Culture has been defined in several ways.

There is no consensus among sociologists and anthropologists regarding the definition of culture.

Some writers add to these definitions some of the important” other capabilities and habits,” such as language and the techniques for making and using tools.

Meaning of Culture

Culture is a comprehensive and encompassing term that includes what we have learned about our history, values, morals, customs, art, and habits.

Culture is the complex of values, ideas, attitudes, and other meaningful symbols created by people to shape human behavior and the artifacts of that behavior as they are transmitted from one generation to the next.

The above definition highlights three important attributes of an individual’s culture.

First, it is ‘created by people,’ evolving due to human activities, and passed on to the succeeding generations.

Second, the impact of cultural influence is both intangible and tangible. People’s basic attitudes and values directly result from their cultural environment. Beliefs in freedom of speech and choice, heterosexuality, and God are products of human action.

Additionally, people leave physical evidence of their culture through art and craftwork, buildings, furniture, laws, and food.

Third, the cultural environment evolves, and it most often evolves over lengthy periods. Changes in women’s roles in the home and business and the outward desire for leisure time have come about quite slowly. Other changes, however, occur more quickly. Clothing styles, for example, come and go rather hastily.

Culture may also be defined in other ways. According to Kroeber, “the mass of the learned and transmitted motor reactions, habits, techniques, ideas, and values – and the behavior they include – is what constitutes culture. It is all those things about men that are more than just biological or organic and more than merely psychological.”

It is the human-made part of the environment, the total way of life of a people, and the social legacy that the individual acquires from his group. The culture into which we are born provides many ready-made solutions to problems growing out of the geographic, biological, and social environment in which we live.

These ready-made solutions are provided in the form of cultural patterns relating to the ideology, role definitions, and socialization procedures of the society in which we live.

These cultural patterns are transmitted to individuals through social institutions such as family, educational institutions, religious institutions, social classes, languages, parents’ attitudes, behavior, and reading.

As a result, the cultural patterns that consumers learn to influence their ideas and values, the roles they play, how they carry those roles out, and how their needs and desires are handled.

E. B. Taylor defined culture as that complex whole, including knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Culture is thus composed of common habits and patterns of living of people in daily activities and common interests in entertainment, sports, news, and even advertising.

Culture is a comprehensive concept that includes almost everything that influences an individual’s thought processes and behaviors. Culture does not include inherited responses and predispositions.

Rather it is acquired. One more thing should also be borne in mind about culture. That is, in modern complex societies, culture seldom provides detailed prescriptions for appropriate behavior. Rather, it supplies boundaries within which most individuals think and act.

You should also keep in mind that the nature of cultural influences is such that we are seldom aware of them. An individual behaves, thinks, and feels like other members of the same culture because it seems natural.

The concept of culture has been debated in anthropological literature for at least two centuries and has acquired almost as many definitions as those trying to define it.

According to Singer, recent definitions of culture have grown progressively more formal and abstract. Culture has often been loosely defined as a behavior observed through social relations and material artifacts.

Although these may provide some raw data for a construct of culture, they are not, in themselves, the constituents of culture. In a deeper anthropological sense, culture includes patterns, norms, rules, and standards that find expression in behavior, social relations, and artifacts.

These are the constituents of culture. Singer’s definition revealed this development: ‘Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior, acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups including their embodiments in artifacts.

The essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas, especially their attached values. Thus, according to the above definition, culture is the conditioning elements of behavior and its products.

Referring to Ralph Linton, Berkman, and Gilson, in their book ‘Consumer Behavior – Concepts and Strategies,’ defined culture as ‘patterns of learned behavior held in common and transmitted by the members of any given society.’

Thus, culture consists of a society’s behaviors, which are well-established and accepted by the members of that society. The majority follow these patterns.

For example, most South-Asian women wear ‘sharee,’ and it is an established behavior pattern in this culture. There are exceptions to this pattern as well.

For example, some women may wear T-shirts and trousers, but this will not be considered a pattern since it is not found in the majority’s behavior. Let us now explain this definition at some length.

Definition of Culture

Culture has been defined in some ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of a community of interacting human beings.

According to British anthropologist Edward Taylor, “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”.

According to Phatak, Bhagat, and Kashlak, “Culture is a concept that has been used in several social science disciplines to explain variations in human thought processes in different parts of the world.”         ‘

According to J.P. Lederach, “Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them.”

According to R. Linton, “A culture is a configuration of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society.”

According to G. Hofstede, “Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.”

According to H.T. Mazumdar, “Culture is the total of human achievements, material and non-material, capable of transmission, sociologically, i.e., by tradition and communication, vertically as well as horizontally.”

Culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding learned through socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while distinguishing those of another group.

Characteristics of Culture

All organizations have a culture because they are embedded in specific societal cultures and are part of them. Some values create a dominant culture in organizations that help guide employees’ day-to-day behavior.

There is also evidence that these dominant cultures can positively impact desirable outcomes, such as successfully conducting mergers and acquisitions, supporting product innovation processes, and helping firms cope with rapid economic and technological change.

Learned Behavior

Not all behavior is learned, but most of it is learned; combing one’s hair, standing in line, telling jokes, criticizing the President, and going to the movie all constitute behaviors that had to be learned.

Sometimes the terms conscious learning and unconscious learning are used to distinguish the learning.

Some behavior is obvious. People can be seen going to football games, eating with forks, or driving automobiles. Such behavior is called “overt” behavior. Other behavior is less visible.

Culture is Abstract

Culture exists in the minds or habits of the members of society. Culture is the shared ways of doing and thinking. There are degrees of visibility of cultural behavior, ranging from persons’ regularized activities to their internal reasons for so doing.

In other words, we cannot see culture as such; we can only see human behavior. This behavior occurs in a regular, patterned fashion and is called culture.

Culture Includes Attitudes, Values, and Knowledge

There is a widespread error in the thinking of many people who tend to regard the ideas, attitudes, and notions they have as “their own.”

It is easy to overestimate the uniqueness of one’s attitudes and ideas. When there is an agreement with other people, it is largely Unnoticed, but when there is a disagreement or difference, one is usually conscious of it.

Your differences, however, may also be cultural. For example, suppose you are a Muslim, and the other person is a Christian.

Culture also Includes Material Objects.

Man’s behavior results in creating objects.

Men were behaving when they made these things. Making these objects required numerous and various skills, which human beings gradually built up through the ages. Man has invented something else, and so on.

Occasionally, one sees that man does not really “make” steel or a battleship.

All these things first existed in a “state of nature.”

The man merely modified their form and changed them from the state in which they were to the state in which he now uses them. The chair was first a tree which man surely did not make. But the chair is more than trees, and the jet airplane is more than iron ore and so forth.

The patterns of learned behavior and behavior results are possessed not by one or a few people but usually by a large proportion.

Thus, many millions share such behavior patterns as automobiles or the English language. Persons may share some part of a culture unequally.

Sometimes people share different aspects of culture.

Culture is Super-Organic

Culture is sometimes called super organic. It implies that “culture” is somehow superior to “nature.” The word super-organic is useful when it implies what may be quite a different phenomenon from a cultural point of view.

For example, a tree means different things to the botanist who studies it, the older woman who uses it for shade in the late summer afternoon, the farmer who picks its fruit, the motorist who collides with it, and the young lovers who carve their initials in its trunk.

The same physical objects and physical characteristics, in other words, may constitute a variety of quite different cultural objects and cultural characteristics.

Culture is Pervasive

Culture is pervasive; it touches every aspect of life. The pervasiveness of culture is manifest in two ways.

First, culture provides an unquestioned context for individual actions and responses. Cultural norms govern not only emotional actions but relational actions.

Second, culture pervades social activities and institutions.

Culture is a Way of Life

Culture means simply the “way of life” of a people or their “design for a living.” Kluckhohn and Kelly define it in his sense”, A culture is a historically derived system of explicit and implicit designs for living, which tends to be shared by all or specially designed members of a group.”

Explicit culture refers to similarities in words and actions which can be directly observed.

For example, adolescent cultural behavior can be generalized from regularities in dress, mannerisms, and conversation. Implicit culture exists in abstract forms, which are not quite obvious.

Culture is Idealistic

Culture embodies the ideals and norms of a group. It is the sum total of a group’s ideal patterns and norms of behavior. Culture consists of the intellectual, artistic, and social ideals and institutions that the members of society profess and strive to confirm.

Culture is Transmitted among Members of Society

Persons learn cultural ways from people.

Many of them are “handed down” by their elders, parents, teachers, and others. Other cultural behaviors are “handed up” to elders. Some of the transmission of culture is among contemporaries.

For example, the styles of dress, political views, and the use of recent labor-saving devices. One does not acquire a behavior pattern spontaneously.

He learns it. That means that someone teaches him, and he learns. Much of the learning process for the teacher and the learner is unconscious, unintentional, or accidental.

Culture is Continually Changing

One fundamental and inescapable attribute (a special quality) of culture is the fact of unending change.

Some societies sometimes change slowly, and hence in comparison to other societies, seem not to be changing. But they are changing, even though not obviously so.

Language is the Chief Vehicle of Culture

Man lives not only in the present but also in the past and future.

He can do this because he possesses a language that transmits what was learned in the past and enables him to transmit the accumulated wisdom to the next generation.

A specialized language pattern serves as a common bond to the members of a particular group or subculture.

Although culture is transmitted in various ways, language is one of the most important vehicles for perpetuating cultural patterns.

Culture is Integrated

This is known as holism, or the interconnected parts of a culture.

All aspects of a culture are related to one another, and to truly understand a culture, one must learn about all of its parts, not only a few.

Culture is Dynamic

This simply means that cultures interact and change.

Because most cultures are in contact with other cultures, they exchange ideas and symbols. All cultures change. Otherwise, they would have problems adapting to changing environments.

And because cultures are integrated, the entire system must likely adjust if one component in the system changes.

Culture is Transmissive

Culture is transmissive as it is transmitted front one generation to another.

Language is the main vehicle of culture. Language in different forms makes it possible for the present generation to understand the achievement of earlier generations.

Transmission of culture may take place by imitation as well as by instruction.

Culture Varies from Society to Society

Every society has a culture of its own. It differs from society to society. The culture of every society is unique to itself. Cultures are not uniform.

Cultural elements like customs, traditions, morals, values, and beliefs are not uniform everywhere. Culture varies from time to time also.

Culture is Gratifying

Culture provides proper opportunities for the satisfaction of our needs and desires.

Our needs, both biological and social, are fulfilled in cultural ways. Culture determines and guides various activities of man. Thus, culture is defined as the process through which human beings satisfy their wants.

So we can easily say that culture has various features that embody it in an important position in organizations and other aspects.

Functions of Culture

We will review the functions that culture performs and assess whether culture can be a liability for an organization. Culture performs some functions within an organization.

• First, it has a boundary-defining role; it creates distinctions between one organization and another.
• Second, it conveys a sense of identity for organization members.
• Third, culture facilitates the generation of commitment to something larger than one’s individual self-interest.
• Fourth, it enhances the stability of the social system. Culture is the social glue that helps hold the organization together by providing appropriate standards for what employees should say and do.
• Finally, culture serves as a sense-making and control mechanism that guides and

shapes employees’ attitudes and behavior. It is this last function that is of particular interest to us.

The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace.

As organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures have been introduced, and teams reduced formalization and empowered employees. The shared meaning provided by a strong culture ensures that everyone is pointed in the same direction.

3 Components Of Culture

If you study a modern or backward culture, you will identify three important components of it. 3 components of culture are;

1. cognitive component,
2. material component, and
3. normative component.

In other words, the culture of a particular society is composed of three distinct elements or components. Let us now have a brief discussion on them:

Cognitive Component

The basic component of any culture is one relating to people’s knowledge about the universe’s creation and existence. This aspect is based on either people’s observations or on certain factual evidence that they have.

An individual of a backward culture believes in gods, superstitions, and other objects as a part of their cognitive aspect. But, in a technologically advanced society, the cognitive aspect is based on scientific experiments and their applications.

The cognitive component of an advanced society’s culture is quite distinct from that of a primitive one because of the refinement of knowledge through systematic testing and observation.

Material Component

Another important component of any given culture is the material feature of society. It consists of all the tangible things that human beings make, use, and give value to. The material component varies from culture to culture as the cognitive component.

It is based on the technological state that society has achieved and understood, looking at society’s artifacts. The artifacts include the type of housing where people live, the furniture they use, and other material goods they possess.

Since it is tied to the level of technological advancement of society, the material features of cultures are very diverse as technological achievements vary.

Cognitive Component

The other important component of a culture is the cognitive component. The cognitive component is composed of society’s values and norms, which guide and regulate behavior.

In other words, it consists of the values, beliefs, and rules by which society directs people’s interactions. Understanding culture means understanding its values.

Values are shared standards of acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Values are abstract, very general concepts that are expressed by norms.

Norms are rules and guidelines that set forth proper attitudes and behaviors for specific situations.

For example, in South Asian countries, the culture places a high value on religious training; therefore, our norms specify formal religious education for every child up to a certain age. Mass religious education norms create a need for religious teachers, books, and other related materials.

Among the values the culture holds, some are core or central values, while others are peripheral values. Core values are the deeply held enduring beliefs that guide our actions, judgments, and specific behaviors, supporting our efforts to realize important aims.

Although not as deeply embedded or fundamental as central values, our peripheral values reflect our central ones. You may value regular exercise and a low-salt, low-cholesterol diet if you value your health. You may also abstain from smoking cigarettes and drinking alcoholic beverages.

Marketers should give a deep look at each of the three components of culture discussed above as they determine the consumption of goods and services by people of a particular culture to a great extent. Failure to understand them may become a grave concern for marketers.

3 Aspects of Culture

If we explain the above definition, we can identify three aspects of a given culture;

1. culture is a pattern of behavior,
2. culture is learned, and
3. culture is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Culture is a Pattern of Behavior

Culture refers basically to the style of behavior. This style is found to be present in the behaviors of the majority of people living in a particular culture.

This pattern varies from culture to culture, and as a result, consumptions vary among countries. The pattern of behavior you will see in South-Asian culture will definitely not be seen in other cultures. The behavior established by culture is found to be practiced by the majority as it satisfies their needs.

Someone not following the established pattern of behavior is likely to be condemned by others in society. Since the majority follows the same style of behavior in a particular culture, it becomes a pattern.

To be successful, marketers must find out the patterns of behavior and design their marketing strategies accordingly to be successful in a culture.

Culture is Learned

The second important aspect relating to culture is that we learn it through experiences and interactions.

The aspects of culture are not found in an individual right from his birth. He rather learns those from others in society as he follows, observes, and interacts with them. Since experiences vary among people of different societies, they learn different things resulting in differences among cultures.

For example, a South-Asian child grows up in a European country among Europeans and will definitely not learn South-Asian cultural aspects but the European cultural aspects, influencing his behavior.

It clearly indicates that culture is learned, not present from birth, which is why people of different cultures see the same object or situation differently.

The reason is that their learning differs. For example, wearing mini-skirts by females is seen negatively in South Asia, whereas it is seen positively in Western countries. Since people of two different cultures learn differently, they are likely to view the same object differently.

People learn about their cultures from their parents and different social organizations and groups. This will be discussed later.

Culture is Transmitted from One Generation to the Next.

We have in our culture in terms of values, ideas, attitudes, symbols, artifacts, or other, and we are likely to conform to those.

We follow the patterns of our cultures and teach them to the next generation to guide them. This process of transmitting the cultural elements from one generation to the next is known as ‘Enculturation”.

Thus, cultural elements do not persist in one generation but are transmitted to the next generation and survive the entire life span of an individual. That is why a lot of similarities in behaviors are found between people of two different generations.

Importance of the Cultural Study

The influence of society’s religious, family, educational, and social system on consumers’ behavior and their impacts on marketing comprise a company’s cultural environment. It would be difficult to overlook the importance of culture as a motivator of consumer behavior.

While it is easy to state the general significance of culture, it is more difficult to define the term to receive general acceptance.

Consequently, it is hard to be precise about the impacts of culture on consumer behavior. Cultural dimensions among countries vary even more than economic ones, so it becomes difficult to find general patterns at best.

For example, even though Western European countries’ economic characteristics are similar, their cultural dimensions make for very different eating habits.

Certainly, culture is the most pervasive external force on an individual’s consumption behavior. How people work and play, what they eat, how they eat, how and what they buy, and the cultural traditions and socially developed modes of behavior are all affected.

Even a slight change in them can significantly alter how and what people buy.

For example, in the US, in the early 1980s, some religious groups began a movement to boycott products promoted on certain highly popular but “immoral” (sex-oriented) Consumer Behavior Television shows.

Over 6000 churches joined the movement, and some companies agreed to cease their advertising on those shows.

Marketing executives must consider the importance of the cultural setting in which consumer behavior occurs. The attitudes people possess, the values they hold dear, the lifestyles they enjoy, and the interpersonal behavioral patterns they adopt are the outcomes of the cultural setting.

These forces affect the marketplace by influencing other external forces. They undoubtedly have a bearing on government standards, the state of the economy, and the intensity of competition and technological development.

You should remember that cultures vary from country to country, so consumption patterns among people vary.

Failure to carefully consider cultural differences is often responsible for monumental marketing failures. In fact, it has been convincingly argued that the root cause of most international business problems is the self­reference criteria, i.e., the unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values.

Marketing across cultural boundaries is a challenging and difficult task. You know that consumer behavior always occurs within a specific environment, and an individual’s culture provides the most general environment in which his consumption behavior occurs.

Cultural influences broadly affect buying behavior because they permeate our daily lives. Our culture determines what we wear and eat and where we reside and travel. It broadly affects how we buy and use products and influences our satisfaction with them.

For example, in our urban culture, time scarcity increases because of the number of females working. Because of the current emphasis we place on physical and mental self-development. Many people shop and buy time-saving products, such as instant noodles, to cope with time scarcity.

Culture, to some degree, determines how products are purchased and used, which affects the development, promotion, distribution, and pricing of products.

From the premise given above, it is now quite evident that studying the market’s culture where you operate or plan to operate is vital for your success and even existence.

Understanding culture is important to you as a marketing manager because it always provides approved specific goal objects for any generalized human want.

Conclusion: Understanding Culture is important

Culture is a comprehensive concept that includes almost everything around us and influences an individual’s thought processes and behavior. It would be difficult for a marketer to succeed if he overlooks culture’s importance as an indicator of behavior.

So, it is a must for marketing executives, business executives, entrepreneurs, and decision-makers to consider the importance of the cultural setting within which consumer behavior occurs.

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (opens in new tab) goes a step further, defining culture as shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding that are learned by socialization. Thus, culture can be seen as the growth of a group identity fostered by social patterns unique to the group. 

«Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones and a million other things,» Cristina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College in London (opens in new tab), told Live Science.

Many countries, such as France, Italy, Germany, the US, India, Russia and China are noted for their rich cultures, the customs, traditions, music, art and food being a continual draw for tourists. 

The word «culture» derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin «colere,» which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture, according to Arthur Asa Berger (opens in new tab). «It shares its etymology with a number of other words related to actively fostering growth,» De Rossi said.

Western culture

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The term «Western culture» has come to define the culture of European countries as well as those that have been heavily influenced by European immigration, such as the United States, according to Khan University (opens in new tab). Western culture has its roots in the Classical Period of the Greco-Roman era (the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.) and the rise of Christianity in the 14th century. Other drivers of Western culture include Latin, Celtic, Germanic and Hellenic ethnic and linguistic groups. 

Any number of historical events have helped shape Western culture during the past 2,500 years. The fall of Rome, often pegged to A.D. 476, cleared the way for the establishment of a series of often-warring states in Europe, according to Stanford University (opens in new tab) historian Walter Scheidel, each with their own cultures. The Black Death of the 1300s cut the population of Europe by one-third to one-half, rapidly remaking society. As a result of the plague, writes Ohio State University (opens in new tab) historian John L. Brooke, Christianity became stronger in Europe, with more focus on apocalyptic themes. Survivors in the working class gained more power, as elites were forced to pay more for scarce labor. And the disruption of trade routes between East and West set off new exploration, and ultimately, the incursion of Europeans into North and South America. 

Today, the influences of Western culture can be seen in almost every country in the world.

Eastern culture

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Eastern culture generally refers to the societal norms of countries in Far East Asia (including China, Japan, Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea) and the Indian subcontinent. Like the West, Eastern culture was heavily influenced by religion during its early development, but it was also heavily influenced by the growth and harvesting of rice, according to a research article published in the journal Rice (opens in new tab) in 2012. In general, in Eastern culture there is less of a distinction between secular society and religious philosophy than there is in the West. 

However, this umbrella covers an enormous range of traditions and histories. For example, Buddhism originated in India, but it was largely overtaken by Hinduism after the 12th century, according to

Britannica

(opens in new tab).

As a result, Hinduism became a major driver of culture in India, while Buddhism continued to exert influence in China and Japan. The preexisting cultural ideas in these areas also influenced religion. For example, according to

Jiahe Liu and Dongfang Shao

(opens in new tab), Chinese Buddhism borrowed from the philosophy of Taoism, which emphasizes compassion, frugality and humility.

Centuries of interactions — both peaceful and aggressive — in this region also led to these cultures influencing each other. Japan, for example, controlled or occupied Korea in some form between 1876 and 1945. During this time, many Koreans were pressured or forced into giving up their names for Japanese surnames, according to History.com (opens in new tab). 

Latin culture

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 The geographic region encompassing «Latin culture» is widespread. Latin America is typically defined as those parts of Central America, South America and Mexico where Spanish or Portuguese are the dominant languages. These are all places that were colonized by or influenced by Spain or Portugal starting in the 1400s. It is thought that French geographers used the term «Latin America» to differentiate between Anglo and Romance (Latin-based) languages, though some historians, such as Michael Gobat, author of «The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy and Race» (opens in new tab) (American Historical Review, Voll 118, Issue 5, 2013), dispute this.

Latin cultures are thus incredibly diverse, and many blend Indigenous traditions with the Spanish language and Catholicism brought by Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. Many of these cultures were also influenced by African cultures due to enslaved Africans being brought to the Americas starting in the 1600s, according to the African American Registery (opens in new tab). These influences are particularly strong in Brazil and in Caribbean nations. 

Latin culture continues to evolve and spread. A good example is Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a holiday dedicated to remembering the departed that is celebrated on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2. Day of the Dead dates back to before Christopher Columbus landed in North America, but was moved to its current celebration date by Spanish colonizers, who merged it with the Catholic All Saints Day. 

Mexican immigrants to the United States brought the holiday with them, and in the 1970s, artists and activities brought focus to Día de los Muertos as a way of celebrating their Chicano (Mexican-American) heritage, according to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (opens in new tab). The holiday is now well-known in the United States. 

Middle Eastern culture

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Roughly speaking, the Middle East encompasses the Arabian peninsula as well as the eastern Mediterranean. The North African countries of Libya, Egypt and Sudan are also sometimes included, according to Britannica (opens in new tab). The term  «Middle Eastern culture» is another umbrella that encompasses a huge diversity of cultural practices, religious beliefs and daily habits. The region is the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and is home to dozens of languages, from Arabic to Hebrew to Turkish to Pashto. 

While there is significant religious diversity in the Middle East, the predominant religion by numbers is Islam, and Islam has played a large role in the cultural development of the region. Islam originated in what is today Saudi Arabia in the early seventh century. An influential moment for the culture and development of the Middle East came after the death of the religion’s founder, Muhammad, in 632, according to the Metropoliton Museum (opens in new tab). 

Some followers believed the next leader should be one of Muhammad’s friends and confidants; others believed leadership must be passed through Muhammad’s bloodline. This led to a schism between Shia Muslims, those who believed in the importance of the bloodline, and Sunni Muslims, who believed leadership should not pass through the family. Today, about 85% of Muslims are Sunni, according to the Council on Foreign Relations (opens in new tab). Their rituals and traditions vary somewhat, and divisions between the two groups often fuel conflict. 

Middle Eastern culture has also been shaped by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled a U-shaped ring around the eastern Mediterranean between the 14th and early 20th centuries, according to Britannica. Areas that were part of the Ottoman Empire are known for distinctive architecture drawn from Persian and Islamic influences.

African culture

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Africa has the longest history of human habitation of any continent: Humans originated there and began to migrate to other areas of the world around 400,000 years ago, according to the Natural History Museum (opens in new tab) in London. Tom White, who serves as the museum’s senior curator of non-insect invertebrates, and his team were able to discover this by studying Africa’s ancient lakes and the animals that lived in them. As of the time of this article, this research provides the oldest evidence for hominin species in the Arabian peninsula.

African culture varies not only between national boundaries, but within them. One of the key features of this culture is the large number of ethnic groups throughout the 54 countries on the continent. For example, Nigeria alone has more than 300 tribes, according to Culture Trip (opens in new tab). Africa has  imported and exported its culture for centuries; East African trading ports were a crucial link between East and West as early as the seventh century, according to The Field Museum (opens in new tab). This led to complex urban centers along the eastern coast, often connected by the movement of raw materials and goods from landlocked parts of the continent. 

It would be impossible to characterize all of African culture with one description. Northwest Africa has strong ties to the Middle East, while Sub-Saharan Africa shares historical, physical and social characteristics that are very different from North Africa, according to Britannica (opens in new tab) . 

Some traditional Sub-Saharan African cultures include the Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya, the Zulu of South Africa and the Batwa of Central Africa. The traditions of these cultures evolved in very different environments. The Batwa, for example, are one of a group of ethnicities that traditionally live a forager lifestyle in the rainforest. The Maasai, on the other hand, herd sheep and goats on the open range. 

What is cultural appropriation?

Oxford Reference (opens in new tab) describes cultural appropriation as: «A term used to describe the taking over of creative or artistic forms, themes, or practices by one cultural group from another.» 

An example might be a person who is not Native American wearing a Native American headdress as a fashion accessory. For example, Victoria’s Secret was heavily criticized in 2012 after putting a model in a headdress reminiscent of a Lakota war bonnet, according to USA Today (opens in new tab). These headdresses are laden with meaningful symbolism, and wearing one was a privilege earned by chieftains or warriors through acts of bravery, according to the Khan Academy (opens in new tab). The model also wore turquoise jewelry inspired by designs used by Zuni, Navajo and Hopi tribes in the desert Southwest, illustrating how cultural appropriation can lump together tribes with very different cultures and histories into one stereotyped image. 

More recently, in 2019, Gucci faced a similar backlash for selling an item named «the indy full turban» which caused considerable anger from the Sikh community, according to Esquire (opens in new tab). Harjinder Singh Kukreja, a Sikh restaurateur and influencer, wrote to Gucci on Twitter (opens in new tab), stating: «the Sikh Turban is not a hot new accessory for white models but an article of faith for practising Sikhs. Your models have used Turbans as ‘hats’ whereas practising Sikhs tie them neatly fold-by-fold. Using fake Sikhs/Turbans is worse than selling fake Gucci products.»

Constant change

No matter what a culture looks like, one thing is for certain: Cultures change. «Culture appears to have become key in our interconnected world, which is made up of so many ethnically diverse societies, but also riddled by conflicts associated with religion, ethnicity, ethical beliefs, and, essentially, the elements which make up culture,» De Rossi said. «But culture is no longer fixed, if it ever was. It is essentially fluid and constantly in motion.» 

This makes it difficult to define any culture in only one way. While change is inevitable, most people see value in respecting and preserving the past. The United Nations has created a group called The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (opens in new tab) (UNESCO) to identify cultural and natural heritage and to conserve and protect it. Monuments, buildings and sites are covered by the group’s protection, according to the international treaty, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (opens in new tab). This treaty was adopted by UNESCO in 1972.

Additional reporting by Live Science Contributors Alina Bradford, Stephanie Pappas and Callum McKelvie.

English[edit]

Wikiquote

Wikisource

Alternative forms[edit]

• culcha (pronunciation spelling)

Etymology[edit]

From Middle French culture (“cultivation; culture”), from Latin cultūra (“cultivation; culture”), from cultus, perfect passive participle of colō (“till, cultivate, worship”) (related to colōnus and colōnia), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to move; to turn (around)”).

Pronunciation[edit]

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃə/

Noun[edit]

culture (countable and uncountable, plural cultures)

1. The arts, customs, lifestyles, background, and habits that characterize humankind, or a particular society or nation.

   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 125:

     Castration of bulls was a socialization process that turned a bull into an ox; in this transformation something wild became something very useful; nature became culture.

   • 2013 September 7, “Farming as rocket science”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8852:

     Such differences of history and culture have lingering consequences. Almost all the corn and soyabeans grown in America are genetically modified. GM crops are barely tolerated in the European Union. Both America and Europe offer farmers indefensible subsidies, but with different motives.

2. The beliefs, values, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.
3. The conventional conducts and ideologies of a community; the system comprising the accepted norms and values of a society.

   • 2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 164:

     Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution.

4. (anthropology) Any knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not necessarily with respect to human beings.
5. (botany) Cultivation.
   • http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/grownet/flowers/sprgbulb.htm

     The Culture of Spring-Flowering Bulbs

6. (microbiology) The process of growing a bacterial or other biological entity in an artificial medium.
7. The growth thus produced.

   I’m headed to the lab to make sure my cell culture hasn’t died.

8. A group of bacteria.
9. (cartography) The details on a map that do not represent natural features of the area delineated, such as names and the symbols for towns, roads, meridians, and parallels.
10. (archaeology) A recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society.
11. (euphemistic) Ethnicity, race (and its associated arts, customs, etc.)

Derived terms[edit]

[edit]

• agriculture

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

culture (third-person singular simple present cultures, present participle culturing, simple past and past participle cultured)

1. (transitive) to maintain in an environment suitable for growth (especially of bacteria) (compare cultivate)
2. (transitive) to increase the artistic or scientific interest (in something) (compare cultivate)

[edit]

Translations[edit]

References[edit]

• culture at OneLook Dictionary Search
• culture in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• «culture» in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 87.
• “culture”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Latin cultūra (“cultivation; culture”), from cultus, perfect passive participle of colō (“till, cultivate, worship”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- (“to move; to turn (around)”).

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kyl.tyʁ/

Noun[edit]

culture f (plural cultures)

1. crop
2. culture (“arts, customs and habits”)

Derived terms[edit]

Descendants[edit]

• → Turkish: kültür

Further reading[edit]

• “culture”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Friulian[edit]

Noun[edit]

culture f (plural culturis)

1. culture

[edit]

• culturâl

Italian[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kulˈtu.re/
• Rhymes: -ure
• Hyphenation: cul‧tù‧re

Noun[edit]

culture f

1. plural of cultura

Latin[edit]

Participle[edit]

cultūre

1. vocative masculine singular of cultūrus

Middle English[edit]

Noun[edit]

culture

1. Alternative form of culter

Spanish[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /kulˈtuɾe/ [kul̪ˈt̪u.ɾe]
• Rhymes: -uɾe
• Syllabification: cul‧tu‧re

Verb[edit]

culture

1. inflection of culturar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

The word culture, from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of «culture» reflect different theoretical orientations for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term «culture» to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify, and communicate their experiences symbolically.

Society and culture are similar concepts, but their scopes are different. A society is an interdependent community, while culture is an attribute of a community: The complex web of shifting patterns that link individuals together. Civilization, also, is closely connected to culture, and has often been used almost synonymously with culture. This is because civilization and culture are different aspects of a single entity. Civilization can be viewed as the external manifestation, and culture as the internal character of a society. Thus, civilization is expressed in physical attributes, such as toolmaking, agriculture, technology, and so forth while culture refers to the social standards and norms of behavior, the traditions, values, and religious beliefs and practices that are held in common by members of the society. Culture is also manifest, however, through the arts as well as in the social structures and institutions of the society.

Defining culture

Culture is a complex of features held by a social group, which may be as small as a family or a tribe, or as large as a racial or ethnic group, a nation, or in the age of globalization, by people all over the world. Culture has been called «the way of life for an entire society.» As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief.^[1] The elements of culture are first adopted by members of the social group, found to be useful, and then transmitted or propagated to others. In this way, culture is both defined by the social activities of the group and also defines the behavior of the members of the society. Culture, however, is not fixed or static; rather, it involves a dynamic process as people respond to changing conditions and challenges.

Different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity.
Edward Burnett Tylor wrote, in 1871, that «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.»^[2]

The United Nations agency UNESCO has defined culture as the «set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.»^[3]

Another common way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements: Values, norms, and artifacts.^[4] Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, or «sanctions,» of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. Artifacts—things, or material culture—derive from the culture’s values and norms.

Julian Huxley gives a slightly different categorization of culture, dividing it into three inter-related subgroups—»mentifacts,» «sociofacts,» and «artifacts»—standing for ideological, sociological, and technological subsystems respectively. Mentifacts are mental manifestations of culture—different ideas, beliefs, and knowledge and the ways in which these things are expressed in speech or other forms of communication. Socialization depends on the belief subsystem, that is, on mentifacts. The way people interact with each other, and the types of relationship they form, depends greatly on the dominant cultural belief systems. However, at the same time, the sociological subsystem governs interactions between people and influences the formation of mentifacts. That is to say, the quality of human interactions influences the formation of new ideas and beliefs that form cultural mentifacts. Material objects and their use make up the technological subsystem of culture, which is also strongly interconnected with other two subsystems.^[5]

In the early twentieth century, anthropologists regarded culture not as a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic), but rather as the underlying patterns that are reflected in those products and activities. Thus, patterns of relationship among people (husband and wife, co-workers in a company, and so on) reflect the social structure of a particular society (social roles). On the other hand, art and myth also reflect patterns from the worldview of a particular society. Both patterns of social structure and patterns of worldview form what characterizes a culture.

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz and Victor Turner, holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen wrote of the «symbolic gloss» which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings.^[6] Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible, and readable. They are the «webs of significance» in Weber’s sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu, «give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group.»^[7]

In addition, sociobiological theory argues that observers can best understand many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins has suggested the existence of units of culture—memes—roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. They are the scripts of culture, repeatable, and transferable through imitation of another’s actions, through instruction by others through demonstration or through the medium of language, even through reading what was written in detail by others. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists have generally rejected it.

While these definitions range widely, they still do not exhaust the many uses of this concept. In 1952, Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. They organized these diverse concepts of culture into eight categories:^[8]

• Topical: A list of topics such as social structure, religion, economic system, and so forth
• Historical: Social heritage, or tradition, passed from generation to generation
• Behavioral: Shared, learned human behavior, a way of life
• Normative: Ideals, values, norms, or standards for life
• Functional: The way people solve problems and adapt to their environment
• Mental: Complex of ideas, or learned habits, that distinguish people from animals
• Structural: Patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors
• Symbolic: Arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society

Finally, Kluckhohn suggested that «Culture is to society what memory is to individuals.»^[9] Thus, culture can be viewed as the collection of information, experiences, ideas, and so forth that were found useful, widely adopted, and considered worth transmitting to future generations.

One of the main questions in measuring cultural development has always been in which norms can that development be measured. There are more than 6,000 communities in the world, and as many different languages. Such diversity naturally led toward the development of different beliefs, values, practices, and visions that each of those communities possess, and consequently toward different expressions of those values and beliefs—through the development of material, tangible things: Arts, crafts, architecture, means of transportation, and so forth.

Models of cultural development produced until the 1970s frequently measured cultural development exclusively in terms of material, tangible development—number and quality of housing, industrial development, visible arts, and so forth. As a consequence of an application of those models, Western cultures were seen as more advanced, while all others were regarded as more primitive. Modern developmental models go beyond mere economic growth. UNESCO today in the definition of culture includes means of achievement of satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual existence. Cultural development is thus not measured only by the development of material tangibles (although those are considered important parts of it), but also by the lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs that certain culture produces.

Views of culture

As a rule, archaeologists focus on material culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationships between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand «culture» to refer not only to material, 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.

Culture and religion

Religion and other belief systems are integral to a culture. Religion often codifies behavior, such as with the 10 Commandments of Judaism and Christianity or the five precepts of Buddhism. Sometimes it is involved with government, as in a theocracy. It also influences the arts.

The values and history of the Jewish people are a major part of the foundation of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, Islam, as well as the Bahá’í Faith. However, while sharing a heritage from Abraham, each has distinct traditions in the arts. Some of these also include are regional influences, but there are several norms or forms of cultural expression that are particular to these religions.

Christianity was the dominant feature in shaping modern European and the New World cultures. Modern philosophical thought has very much been influenced by Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus and Christian cathedrals like Notre Dame de Paris, Wells Cathedral, and Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral have been noted as architectural wonders.

Islam’s influence has dominated much of the North African, Middle, and Far East regions for 1500 years, sometimes mixed with other religions. For example Islam’s influence can be seen in diverse philosophies such as Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail, Ibn Khaldun, and Averroes as well as poetic stories and literature like Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, The Madman of Layla, The Conference of the Birds, and the Masnavi in addition to art and architecture such as the Umayyad Mosque, Dome of the Rock, Faisal Mosque, Hagia Sophia (which has been both a cathedral and a mosque), and the many styles of Arabesque.

Philosophy and religion are often closely interwoven in Eastern thought. Many Asian religious and philosophical traditions originated in India and China and spread across Asia through cultural diffusion and the migration of peoples. Hinduism is the wellspring of Buddhism, the Mahāyāna branch of which spread north and eastwards from India into Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan, and Korea, and south from China into Vietnam. Theravāda Buddhism spread throughout Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, parts of southwest China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.

Hindu philosophy from India contains elements of non-material pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Carvaka, preached the enjoyment of material world. Confucianism and Taoism, both of which originated in China have had pervasive influence on both religious and philosophical traditions, as well as statecraft and the arts throughout Asia.

Folk religions practiced by tribal groups are common in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Their influence can be considerable; may pervade the culture and even become the state religion, as with Shintoism. Like the other major religions, folk religion answers human needs for reassurance in times of trouble, healing, averting misfortune, and providing rituals that address the major passages and transitions in human life.

Culture as civilization

The term «civilization» has been used almost synonymously with culture. This is because civilization and culture are different aspects of a single entity. Civilization can be viewed as the external manifestation, and culture as the internal character of a society. Thus, civilization is expressed in physical attributes, such as toolmaking, agriculture, buildings, technology, urban planning, social structure, social institutions, and so forth. Culture, on the other hand, refers to the social standards and norms of behavior, the traditions, values, ethics, morality, and religious beliefs and practices that are held in common by members of the society.

Many people today use a conception of «culture» that developed in Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This view of culture reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies «culture» with «civilization.» According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more «civilized» than others, and some people as more «cultured» than others. Theorists like Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis have regarded culture as simply the result of «the best that has been thought and said in the world (Arnold, 1960, p. 6), thus labeling anything that doesn’t fit into this category as uncivilized. On this account, culture links closely with social «cultivation»—the progressive refinement of human behavior.

In practice, however, culture has often referred to elite activities and goods, such as haute cuisine, high fashion, museum-caliber art, and European classical music. The word «cultured» described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used «culture» in the sense of «cultivation» might argue that European classical music is more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock, or than the indigenous musical traditions of aboriginal peoples of, for example, Australia.

People who use «culture» in this way tend not to use it in the plural as «cultures.» They do not believe that distinct cultures exist, each with their own internal logic or values, but rather that only a single standard of refinement suffices, against which one can measure all groups.

Thus, in this view, people with different customs from those who regard themselves as cultured are not considered as «having a different culture,» but rather as as «uncultured.» People lacking «culture» often seemed more «natural,» and observers often defended (or criticized) elements of high culture for repressing human nature.

From the eighteenth century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between cultured and uncultured, but have stressed the interpretation of refinement and of sophistication as corrupting and unnatural developments which obscure and distort people’s essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) is seen as honestly expressing a natural way of life, and classical music is regarded as superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays non-Western people as «noble savages,» living authentic, unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of western culture.

By the end of the twentieth century, most social scientists rejected the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture (nurture) to innate nature. They recognized all groups as cultured, just cultured in a different way. Thus, social observers contrasted the «high culture» of the élite to the «popular culture» or «pop culture»—goods and activities produced for, and consumed by, the masses.

Culture as worldview

During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to unite «Germany» out of numerous smaller entities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as «worldview.» In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable worldview characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between «civilized» and «primitive» or «tribal» cultures.

By the late nineteenth century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term «culture» to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also started to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures—an approach that either exemplified a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism. They believed that biological evolution would produce a most inclusive notion of culture, a concept that anthropologists could apply equally to non-literate and to literate societies, or to nomadic and to sedentary societies. They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. Since human individuals learned and taught these symbolic systems, the systems began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if the two humans do not share a biological relationship). That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning stems from human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture. Thus, Clifford Geertz has argued that human physiology and neurology developed in conjunction with the first cultural activities, and Middleton concluded that «human instincts were culturally formed.»^[10]

People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another. Culture changes dynamically and people teach and learn culture, making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical conditions. Anthropologists view culture as not only as a product of biological evolution, but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation to the world.

This view of culture as a symbolic system with adaptive functions, and one which varies from place to place, led anthropologists to conceive of different cultures as defined by distinct patterns (or structures) of enduring, arbitrary, conventional sets of meaning, which took concrete form in a variety of artifacts such as myths, rituals, tools, the design of housing, the planning of villages, and so on. Anthropologists thus distinguish between «material culture» and «symbolic culture,» not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies.

This view of culture, which came to dominate between World War I and World War II, implied that each culture had bounds and demanded interpretation as a whole, on its own terms. This resulted in a belief in «cultural relativism:» The belief that one had to understand an individual’s actions in terms of his or her culture, or that one had to understand a specific cultural artifact or a ritual in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it forms a part.

Culture as consumption goods

Cultural studies developed in the late twentieth century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the process of articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines, such as literary criticism. The cultural studies movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in industrial or capitalist societies. This movement generally focused on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). However, because the eighteenth and nineteenth century distinction between «high» and «low» culture seemed inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyzes, these scholars used instead the term «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 that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.

Subcultures

Historically, in the case of 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. People in such societies remained strongly connected to their common culture. In the case of larger societies, in which people undergo further categorization by region, race, ethnicity, and social class, anthropologists came to believe that members of the same society often had highly contrasting values and conventions. Thus, they used the term «subculture» to identify the cultures of parts of larger societies.

Large societies often have subcultures, or groups of people with distinct sets of behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a part. The subculture may be distinctive because of the age of its members, or by their race, ethnicity, social class, or gender. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be aesthetic, religious, occupational, political, sexual, or a combination of these factors.

Immigrant cultures

In dealing with immigrant groups and their cultures, there are essentially four approaches:

• Monoculturalism: In some European states, culture is very closely linked to nationalism, thus government policy is to assimilate immigrants, although recent increases in migration have led many European states to experiment with forms of multiculturalism.
• Leitkultur (core culture): A model developed in Germany by Bassam Tibi. The idea is that minorities can have an identity of their own, but they should at least support the core concepts of the culture on which the society is based.
• Melting Pot: In the United States, the traditional view has been one of a melting pot where all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated without state intervention.
• Multiculturalism: A policy that immigrants and others should preserve their cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation.

The way nation states treat immigrant cultures rarely falls neatly into one or another of the above approaches. The degree of difference with the host culture, their «foreignness,» the number of immigrants, attitudes of the resident population, the type of government policies that are enacted, and the effectiveness of those policies all make it difficult to generalize about the effects. Similarly with other subcultures within a society, attitudes of the mainstream population and communications between various cultural groups play a major role in determining outcomes.

Cultural change

When it comes to change, cultures both embrace and resist change. For example, the role of women in Western cultures faced serious challenges in the twentieth century, and changes were at first met with great resistance. However, once the changes had been implemented, many non-Western cultures wanted to embrace the positive aspects of this change into their own cultures. Thus, there are both dynamic influences that encourage acceptance of new things, and conservative forces that resist change.

Three kinds of influence cause both change and resistance to it:

1. Forces at work within a society
2. Contact between societies
3. Changes in the natural environment.^[11]

Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions (and other internal influences), and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age witnessed the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations (such as new rituals and customs that were agriculture-centered), that further changed how people related to nature and, ultimately, to each other.

Additionally, the fact that culture comprises symbolical codes and can thus pass via teaching from one person to another means that cultures, although bounded, can and do change through social interaction. Cultural change can result from invention and innovation, or from contact between two cultures through acculturation. Under peaceful conditions, contact between two cultures can lead to people learning from one another («diffusion» or «transculturation»). Under conditions of violence or political inequality, however, people of one society «steal» cultural artifacts from another, or impose cultural artifacts on another.

The spread of culture and language in human populations can be explained by two models—the culture diffusion model and the demic diffusion model. Culture diffusion connotes spreading of one or more cultural traits (customs, ideas, attitudes) from a central point outward, usually from one culture to its neighboring cultures. The pace of the change in this case is slow, gradual, and limited. «Stimulus diffusion» refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another. For example, after seeing English writing system in 1821, Sequoyah developed the unique Cherokee writing system.

All human societies have participated in the processes of diffusion, transculturation, and acculturation, and few anthropologists today see cultures as completely bounded. Modern anthropologists argue that instead of understanding cultural artifact in terms of its own culture, one needs to understand it in terms of a broader history involving contact and relations with other cultures.

Beside the culture diffusion model, which explains some limited change inside a culture, the demic diffusion model refers to a mass movement of people from one geographical area to another (and usually from one cultural sphere to another), which brings rather rapid and sudden change to the area where people migrated. Migration on a major scale has characterized the world, particularly since the days of Columbus. Phenomena such as colonialism and forced migrations through, for example, slavery became prominent.

Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one’s culture of origin, with those of another, usually dominant culture in the place where one lives. Such happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. The process of acculturation is common among immigrants from one country to another, where an immigrant adapts to the new culture by replacing one or more cultural traits from his own culture with traits from the new culture. The final stage of acculturation is assimilation—the total absorption of an individual or minority group into another culture, what is often accelerated by intermarriage and by deemphasizing cultural differences. A related term to acculturation is transculturation, which refers to the situation when an individual moves to a new culture and adopts it.

As a result, many societies have become culturally heterogeneous. Some anthropologists have argued, nevertheless, that some unifying cultural system bound heterogeneous societies, and that it offers advantages to understand heterogeneous elements as subcultures. Others have argued that no unifying or coordinating cultural system exists, and that one must understand heterogeneous elements together as forming a multicultural society.

Cultures by region

Many regional cultures have been influenced by contact with others, such as by colonization, trade, migration, mass media, and religion. Yet, regions, mostly defined by continents, still retain unique histories and, to some extent, distinct cultural identities.

Africa

Though of many varied origins, African culture, especially Sub-Saharan African culture has been shaped by European colonialism, and, especially in North Africa, by Arab and Islamic culture.

Americas

The culture of the Americas has been influenced by indigenous peoples of the Americas. The immigration of Europeans, especially Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, German, Irish, Italian, and Dutch has had the strongest impact, however, bringing European (or «Western») cultural influences together with Judeo-Christian beliefs and values. Additionally, people from Africa, many brought as slaves, have impacted American culture in numerous ways.

Asia

Despite the great cultural diversity of Asian nations, there are, nevertheless, several transnational cultural influences. Though Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are not Chinese-speaking countries, their languages have been influenced by Chinese and Chinese writing. Thus, in East Asia, Chinese writing is generally agreed to exert a unifying influence. Religions, especially Buddhism and Taoism have had an impact on the cultural traditions of East Asian countries. There is also a shared social and moral philosophy that derives from Confucianism.

Hinduism and Islam have for hundreds of years exerted cultural influence on various peoples of South Asia. Similarly, Buddhism is pervasive in Southeast Asia.

Europe

European culture also has a broad influence beyond the continent of Europe due to the legacy of colonialism. In this broader sense it is sometimes referred to as «Western culture.» This is most easily seen in the spread of the English language and to a lesser extent, a few other European languages. Dominant influences include ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and Christianity, although the legacy of pre-Christian pagan beliefs and worldview (such as the Celts) is still evident in many parts.

Middle East

The Middle East generally has three dominant and clear cultures, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which have influenced each other with varying degrees during different times. The region is predominantly Muslim although significant minorities of Christians and smaller minorities of other religions exist.

Arabic culture has deeply influenced the Persian and Turkish cultures through Islam; influencing their languages, writing systems, art, architecture, and literature, as well as in other areas. The proximity of Iran has influenced the regions closer to it such as Iraq and Turkey, traces of language can be found in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti dialects of Arabic as well as the Turkish language. The 500 years of Ottoman rule over most of the Middle East has had a heavy influence over the Arabic culture, this may spread as far as Algeria but can be found to a heavier degree in Egypt, Iraq and the Levant.

Pacific

Most of the countries of the Pacific Ocean continue to be dominated by their indigenous cultures, although these have generally been affected by contact with European culture. In particular, most of Polynesia is now strongly Christian. Other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand have been dominated by white settlers and their descendants, whose culture now predominates. However, Indigenous Australian and Māori (New Zealand) cultures are still present.

Propagating culture

Insofar as culture grows and changes naturally within human society, it requires little or no formal propagation. Family or age-based peer groups will instinctively foster (and develop) their own cultural norms (that are often very similar to the major culture), on that way preserving and propagating culture.

However, few cultures act in such a laissez faire manner. Most societies develop some sort of «ideology» or similar basis for inculcating and preserving established or «correct» cultural behavior. Many societies take the task of education out of the hands of priests and parents and place it on a wider footing, so that the young gain a practical and emotional identification with a standardized version of their nurturing culture.

Groups of immigrants, exiles, or minorities often form cultural associations or clubs to preserve their own cultural roots in the face of a surrounding (generally more locally-dominant) culture. Thus the world has acquired many Garibaldi Clubs, Pushkin Societies, and underground schools.

On a broader scale, many countries market their cultural heritage internationally. This occurs not only in the promotion of tourism (importing money), but also in cultural development abroad (exporting ideas). Thus, many countries have developed the roles of cultural attachés in embassies and specific organizations devoted to propagating the mother-culture, its language and its ideologies abroad, as seen for example in the work of:

• Alliance Française
• British Council
• Fulbright Program
• Goethe-Institut
• Instituto Cervantes
• Instituto Camões

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Arnold, M. Culture and Anarchy. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1882.
• Bourdieu, P. Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 052129164X
• Cohen, A.P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York: Rutledge, 1985. ISBN 0415046165
• Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 1976.
• Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0465097197
• Hoult, T.F. Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1969.
• Kluckhohn, C. «Culture and behavior.» In Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954.
• Kroeber, A.L., and C. Kluckhohn. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1952.
• Middleton, R. Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1990. ISBN 0335152759
• Turner, Victor W. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Symbol, Myth, & Ritual). Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975. ISBN 0801491517
• Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom. Gordon Press, 1976 (original 1871). ISBN 087968464X
• UNESCO. UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Retrieved May 11, 2020.

Word	CULTURE
Character	7
Hyphenation	cul ture
Pronunciations	/ˈkʌlt͡ʃə/

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What do we mean by culture?

The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit, especially with regard to a particular time or social group. noun

These arts, beliefs, and other products considered with respect to a particular subject or mode of expression. noun

The set of predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize a group or organization. noun

Mental refinement and sophisticated taste resulting from the appreciation of the arts and sciences. noun

Special training and development. noun

The cultivation of soil; tillage. noun

The breeding or cultivation of animals or plants for food, the improvement of stock, or other purposes. noun

The growing of microorganisms, tissue cells, or other living matter in a specially prepared nutrient medium. noun

Such a growth or colony, as of bacteria. noun

To cultivate (soil or plants). transitive verb

To grow (microorganisms or other living matter) in a specially prepared nutrient medium. transitive verb

To use (a substance) as a medium for culture. transitive verb

To cultivate: as, “cultured vales,”

In a map, all those features represented which are artificial or of human origin, such as meridians, roads, railroads, trails, ferries, bridges, houses, etc. noun

The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops; tillage; cultivation. noun

The act of promoting growth in animals or plants, but especially in the latter; specifically, the process of raising plants with a view to the production of improved varieties. noun

Hence— In bacteriology: The propagation of bacteria or other microscopic organisms by the introduction of the germs into suitably prepared fluids or other media, or of parasitic fungi upon living plants. Also called cultivation. noun

The arts, customs, lifestyles, background, and habits that characterize a particular society or nation.

The beliefs, values, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.

The conventional conducts and ideologies of a community; the system comprising of the accepted norms and values of a society.

Any knowledge passed from one generation to the next, not necessarily with respect to human beings.

Cultivation.

The process of growing a bacterial or other biological entity in an artificial medium.

The growth thus produced.

A group of bacteria.

The details on a map that do not represent natural features of the area delineated, such as names and the symbols for towns, roads, meridians, and parallels.

A recurring assemblage of artifacts from a specific time and place that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society.

The totality of communication practices and systems of meaning; a whole way of life of a people; the social production and reproduction of sense, meaning and consciousness. Culture does not express the way of life of a people, it actively shapes up that way of life. Urban Dictionary

A controlled growth of bacteria Urban Dictionary

-A term invoked by people who feel pride in accomplishments of others.
-A justification for all kinds of human rights violation.
-An outcome of evolutionary beneficial group thinking, and thus a racist generalisation.
-Also used in conjunction with ‘history’ for more pride and group thinking. Urban Dictionary

What happens when people strive to live together. Urban Dictionary

Culture is a vague but meaningless term used by clueless high school sports team coaches, which tries to shift the focus of a team’s success from the talent of the players to the «vision» or other attributes of the coach. Urban Dictionary

A word, as such, represented in many ways through human language: either as a sound or an image(characters).
Many, many different people, all across the world, have given a differrent meaning, their own meaning to this sound/image.
Within their contexts these definitions were accepted.
Therefore the true question is: «Which meaning does the person who said it intended to say?» Urban Dictionary

A word used to draw attention, between friends, to an attractive foreign individual or group of the opposite sex. Urban Dictionary

Wasted on Americans.
You ask an American about art, he says «Art who?» Urban Dictionary

Sugar coated word for narcissistic scum bags that try to brain wash you into believing their way is the right way.
Scum that try to convince themselves and others thar they are doing everything for the good of everyone .
Cult, group of brain washing dirt bags,with the ideals of the insane.
Culture of different countrys
The way of a tradition of societies and beliefs and ways. Urban Dictionary

Socially transmitted patterns of action and expression. Material culture refers to physical objects, such as dwellings, clothing, tools, and crafts. Culture also includes arts, beliefs, knowledge, and technology. Urban Dictionary

Culture is one of the most important creations from human beings. One of the primary ways that humans are separated from the rest of living creatures is based on the fact that we have enough organization and awareness to develop unique cultures and communities. 

Even if culture isn’t something that you think about often, it’s something that you interact with every single day. Virtually every person is in a specific social group or a particular group of people, influencing their preferences, tastes, and decisions. Knowing how to appreciate and differentiate between these cultures is both tricky and incredibly important. 

If you want to live the most fruitful life possible in the world today, learning how to integrate and interact with culture is one of the most important steps you can take. This is what culture is, where the word itself comes from, and how it works in the world today. 

What Is Culture? 

The definition of culture (ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər) in the English dictionary is the arts, customs, achievements, and collective attitudes of a specific social group or location. While there may be similarities between cultures, each culture has its own aspects, quirks, and elements. 

One of the most common ways that cultures are created is through people who share the same ethnicity or physical location. For example, American culture will be different from African or European culture, and New York culture will be different from Chicago culture. Similarly, cultures can differ depending on personal factors, including race, age, religion, and even musical preference. 

Culture is also found inside different organizations and companies. This is typically referred to as corporate culture. At the end of the day, you will have a different set of written or unwritten rules virtually anywhere that need to be followed. These rules can dictate peoples’ attitudes toward life and the rest of the world. 

Anthropologists are the people that study the different aspects of cultures. But you don’t need to get a college degree to look into culture — just looking at the popular culture around you can help you understand what culture is and how it works. Just remember that while your own culture is unique, other cultures are just as valid as your own! 

What Is the Etymology of Culture? 

The word culture is fascinating because it comes from many words in other languages, but all of those words came from the same word. It’s the epitome of a romance language word, and it goes to show that language at large is both deeply interconnected and constantly shifting. 

The word culture began with the Latin colere, which means to tend to or cultivate something. This word was used in the context of farmers tending to their crops and farming the land. As time went on, the term shifted into the Medieval Latin cultura or cultus, which retained essentially the same meaning. 

Over the centuries, this word entered many languages in various forms, including French and English. Around the time Middle English was starting to take shape, the word cultivate was becoming more and more common regarding food and farming. However, as discussions around anthropology and psychology became more and more prominent, the word culture started to be used in its modern contexts. 

Synonyms for Culture

If you looked into a thesaurus for word lists of synonyms for the word culture, you would likely find words including: 

• Civilization
• Society
• Lifestyle
• Customs
• Traditions
• Heritage
• Values
• Habits
• Way of life
• Ways

How Culture Is Used Today

In the modern world, the ideas and thoughts of culture are incredibly relevant. As the world is slowly getting more and more interconnected, it’s becoming critically important to understand that different cultures are worth understanding. 

If you ever move from one location, organization, or social group to another, you will experience a culture change. It’s important to remember that that isn’t a bad thing — it’s just how the world works! Even if some aspects of life seem different at first, you can get used to them over time. 

Example Sentences Using the Word Culture

One of the best ways to learn how to use a word is by seeing it in real-world use. That’s how everyone learns how to speak and communicate, and that specific kind of learning continues throughout a person’s entire life! Here are some examples of the word culture in a sentence: 

Based on the first world fascination with material objects, most people from poorer countries think we have a material culture. 

When I changed jobs last year, I had to go through several weeks of culture shock before figuring out how things worked in my new place! 

The biology department based almost their entire culture on their fervent passion for microorganisms. 

I learned the hard way that when a meeting is set for a particular time at this new job, arriving any later is seen as disrespectful in this culture. 

The gym culture here is intensely focused on ensuring that everyone gets the right amount of nutrients every day. 

Conclusion

If you want to learn more about the English language and how it works, check out our blog here at The Word Counter! We’re constantly creating new articles and posts to help inform people about best practices surrounding complicated grammar, confusing words, and strange phrases. 

If you want to learn more about how you can make your communication as successful as possible, look at some of our latest articles and posts right here! 

Sources: 

1. Culture Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary
2. CULTURE | Cambridge English Dictionary
3. Culture Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com