To most people the word culture

Другие языки

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.

Culture means the patterns and characteristics of human behavior, and all that entails in terms of religion, beliefs, social norms, arts, customs, and habits

The word “culture” is used in different ways by different people.

To some, it might mean a string quartet and the use of multiple utensils at dinner. To others, it might be used in a vague way when planning a holiday overseas. If you are a scientist it means a petri dish full of microorganisms.

This is something every human experience and the way you experience it can define your life.

Culture is shared. Culture is learned, and it is not biological.

Rather, it might be said that it is developed as we seek to satisfy our biological needs. It belongs to us, to our families, our peers, our art, and institutions.

What is Culture?

Culture means the patterns and characteristics of human behavior.  Culture is one collective term of religion, beliefs, social norms, arts, customs, and habits that we possess

The interesting part is that culture, as a term, almost eludes absolute definition.

Because it is something intrinsic to our humanity, perhaps, and humans, as a rule, also elude definition. That has not stopped some of history’s brightest minds from attempting to define it, however.

The first person to use the term “culture” in the way we currently understand it was  Edward B. Tylor, an anthropologist,

He explained culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” ( Primitive Culture, 1871).

The Famous Definitions of Culture

Geert Hofstede said

“Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense is a system of collectively held values.”

Linton said

“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”

In L.A. Samovar & R.E. Porter (Eds.), Communication Between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. refers

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.” – National cultures and corporate cultures.

Edgar Schein quoted

“Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic ‘taken for granted’ fashion an organization’s view of its self and its environment.”

What is Culture in Anthropology?

Anthropology is the study of humanity, including prehistoric origins and contemporary human diversity. Often, it is confused with many other disciplines around humanity, history, sociology, etc., anthropology is far broader in scope

The culture of a society pervades it to its very roots.

• Biological anthropology — the study of the biological side of human including the evolution
• Archaeology – the study of past human cultures through their material remains.
• Linguistic anthropology – the study of human communication, including its origins, history, and variation, and change.
• Cultural anthropology – the study of living peoples and their cultures, including variation and change.

The fourth discipline – cultural anthropology – defines the culture to a deeper level by analyzing various two key aspects of culture

1. Diversity – Refers to the distinctive behaviors of humans and societies
2. Change – Refers to the evolution of these distinct behaviors and humans adapted to it.

Overall, cultural anthropology refers to how culture affects the way people live, the way they interact, the art they make, the jobs they hold, their beliefs, and relationships.

And yet an archaeologist digging up an ancient site, finding wall stubs and pottery fragments, could never say that they have dug up “culture”.

The results of the culture are there for all to see: the patterns on the pottery, the places of worship, the way a family home was set up. But they are remains, nothing more.

Culture belongs to life itself.

The relation between culture and society

It can be a little difficult to draw the lines between culture and society. Both involve the way we live, both involve beliefs and systems, both are formed by groups of people.

A society is a group of organisms that interact with one another. This might mean a school of fish, a flock of birds, a beehive, and so on. Human societies are similar, as they are groups of individuals who interact with one another, though not always directly. In human societies, however, the behavior of the group is not just determined by survival, but by history, tradition, and expectation.

Yet people living in a single society can have different cultures. So society and culture are not the same things – but they are linked.

If culture is a pattern of people’s behavior, and if people live in societies, then, of course, they are going to be tied together at multiple points.

And culture cannot exist without society, without people coming together and exchanging ideas and experiences. Without groups of people living together, why would we ever have needed to develop language or politics? You cannot have one without the other.

Culture is all about Learned Behaviors

Culture is not something that we are born knowing. No baby is born being able to understand art, or speaking the language of its parents. Yet what it does possess is a desire to communicate and be understood – a desire it generally seeks to fill by screaming, which works out just fine, to begin with. But then, it learns that different noises mean different things, and so language begins to be learned.

Because of this, culture is also something that accumulates. It is built on overtime.

It’s not as though a group of people in 1000BC sat down and discussed whether they were going to use forks or chopsticks, or whether they were going to teach math in school. These things developed slowly – and now, millennia later, schoolchildren are learning mathematical concepts developed by ancient Greeks.

Art and Culture – A soulful connection

Art is yet another concept that is very difficult to define.

Abby Willowroot  – “Art speaks the soul of its culture”

But when it comes to a shared understanding of art within a group of people, one could say that art is the physical manifestation of the culture to which it belongs – to the point that sometimes it almost seems impossible to separate the culture from its art.

If you pass a wedding venue and see it crowded with paper swans, it doesn’t matter if you are in Texas, Perth or Abu Dhabi, you will immediately recognize the sight as belonging to the culture of Japan.

Geometric patterns with bright colors and striking contrast might bring to mind traditional Kenyan textiles, even if seen in a window in Prague.

“Scandinavian interior design” could be found in a desert.

In addition to this, there is a reason great art movements tend to find their momentum in cities.

That’s where you can find the most people, packed in closely together – and, as a result, that’s where the cultures to which they belong become the richest, the densest, the most likely to turn into something new.

And sometimes, finding themselves so close to other cultures, they find themselves rubbing together and creating sparks.

An Adaptive Mechanism

When we look at the human experience in all its needs and forms, culture can sometimes seem like something of an extra.

True, humans create art, and language, and politics.

But these things, while adding to the richness, complexity, or possibilities of our lives, do not seem to be necessary for survival.

After all, a person could live in a hut on a hill for their entire lives and never see another human being.

They might never learn a language, create art, or develop an understanding of authority; as long as they can hunt and gather, they will do just fine.

And yet, if you look at cultures across the world, there seem to be very obvious differences between them that have sprung from a need to adapt.

For example, humans are warm-blooded creatures, which was fine when we were all living in subtropical conditions a few million years ago, but when you look further afield and forward in time, you see the mechanisms humans have put in place to survive the environments they moved to.

Thus we have architecture and communal planning.

Unlike other organisms, we did not wait for evolutionary adaptation to allow us to thrive in these new climates. Instead, we invented things to help us – things which became a part of the cultures which developed them.

From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, to the shape of our roofs, we can see how each culture was affected by humanity’s need for survival.

And, let’s be honest, it worked – we have dominated the planet with our technology and subsequent population growth. (Whether that is a good thing or not is quite another matter.)

Culture’s relation to Nature

Depending on the way we have defined culture, it can be argued that humans are not the only species to have developed it.

Not that we’re going to find any other animals that create paper cranes for their weddings, but using the broad and relatively simplistic definition of a complex pattern of learned behavior, we can see examples of culture in other species.

Chimpanzees, along with other intelligent primates, seem to be the closest contenders for this.

The young chimpanzees learn from the older ones – whether hunting or gathering skills, communication, or sexual education.

This is a fascinating addition to any discussions one might have regarding culture.

It opens up the possibility that culture is not strictly something that belongs to humans, but perhaps that it is the skill we have developed above all other animals.

We can be outrun, out-swam or out-fought by any number of other species. But our patterns of behavior, in terms of complexity and possibility, leave them all behind.

Culture, from a historical perspective..

The following extract from Kevin Avruch, famous anthropologist and sociologist

A great deal of the problem [of understanding the idea of culture] is caused by the different usages of the word as it was increasingly used in the nineteenth century. Broadly talking, it had been found in three ways (most of that can be found nowadays at the same time). Initial, as stated in Matthew Arnolds’ Culture and Anarchy (1867), cultures are known as special intellectual or imaginative endeavors or items, what right now we might get in touch with “high culture” in contrast to “popular culture” (or “folkways”).

From this classification, only a portion – typically a small one – associated with a sociable team “has” culture. (The rest are possible resources for anarchy!) This sensation of traditions is a lot more closely linked to beauty rather than to interpersonal science.

To some extent in the reaction to this utilization, another, as pioneered by Edward Tylor in Primitive Culture (1870), described a quality possessed by everybody in most social groupings, who nevertheless may be arrayed over an improvement (evolutionary) continuum (in Lewis Henry Morgan’s plan) from “savagery” through “barbarism” to “civilization”.

It is actually really worth quoting Tylor’s definition in their entirety initial, mainly because it became the foundational one for anthropology and 2nd because it in part explains why Kroeber and Kluckhohn located definitional fecundity from the early 1950s. Tylor’s meaning of traditions is “that intricate whole which includes understanding, notion, artwork, morals, regulation, custom, and any other features and practices obtained by a person as part of society”.

As opposed to Arnold’s perspective, all people “have” customs, they will obtain by virtue of account in some social team – culture. And a total grab case of stuff, from knowledge to behavior to features, tends to make up customs. The extreme inclusivity of Tylor’s description stayed with anthropology a very long time it can be one particular reason politics experts who became interested in social queries from the late 1950s experienced it needed to delimit their relevant social domain to “political culture”.

Although the best legacy of Tylor’s definition lay down within his “complex whole” formulation. This was recognized even by those later anthropologists who forcefully denied his evolutionism. They had taken it to mean that cultures were wholes – integrated systems. Even if this assertion has fantastic heuristic importance, in addition, it, since we shall disagree below, simplifies the entire world substantially. The third and last using traditions created in anthropology inside the twentieth-century work of Franz Boas and his awesome college students, although with roots within the eighteenth-century articles of Johann von Herder.

As Tylor reacted to Arnold to establish a technological (as opposed to visual) grounds for customs, so Boas reacted against Tylor and other interpersonal evolutionists. Whereas the evolutionists stressed the widespread personality of your single culture, with assorted societies arrayed from savage to civilized, Boas emphasized the individuality of the many and diverse ethnicities of several people or communities. Additionally, he dismissed the worth judgments he found inherent in both the Arnoldian and Tylorean sights of the tradition for Boas, you need to never separate higher from lower traditions, and another ought not differentially valorize civilizations as savage or civilized. Here, then, are three totally different understandings of tradition.

A portion of the difficulty within the expression depends on its number of connotations. But to compound concerns, the difficulties usually are not merely conceptual or semantic. Every one of the usages and understandings come linked to, or Primary Principles 2 Precisely what is Customs? | © Spencer-Oatey 2012 might be connected to, distinct politics or ideological agendas that, in a single type or some other, still resonate these days.

Conclusion – What is Culture?

Culture is inherent.

Culture is developed as we seek to fill our basic needs.

It is learned, taught from one generation to the next, picked up when you had no idea that you were paying attention.

Culture is cumulative, ideas, and behaviors collected by each society.  Yes, like they were debris being picked up and carried along by a river.

It is not programmed, it is not automatic, but it is not something that we can avoid becoming part of.

The beliefs and social behaviors are ingrained into every human on earth. These social norms are connecting us to each other within our own culture.

And cross-culturally, these norms are allowing us to reach each other across what sometimes seems to be unfathomable distances.

Culture is everywhere – It’s is in art, music, dance, the way we decorate our pottery.

It is our governmental systems, it is our leisure time, it is the places of worship we build.

Culture is the way we speak to one another, whether we take our shoes off before we come into the house.

It is shared behavior; the result of humanity trying to negotiate the world it finds itself in and thriving as it does.

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

There’s something innately funny about Merriam-Webster’s announcement, earlier this month, that “culture” is their 2014 Word of the Year. “Culture” is the “Scary Movie” of words of the year, which, ordinarily, are supposed to reflect culture (“vape,” “selfie”) without actually being “culture.” Merriam-Webster’s editors are at pains to clarify that they weren’t trying to be meta (which, incidentally, would’ve made a great word of the year back in 2000). The word “culture,” they explain, was simply the word that saw the biggest spike in look-ups on their Web site. Confusion about culture was just part of the culture this year. People were desperate to know what “culture” meant.

It goes without saying that “culture” is a confusing word, this year or any year. Merriam-Webster offers six definitions for it (including the biological one, as in “bacterial culture”). The problem is that “culture” is more than the sum of its definitions. If anything, its value as a word depends on the tension between them. The critic Raymond Williams, in his souped-up dictionary, “Keywords,” writes that “culture” has three divergent meanings: there’s culture as a process of individual enrichment, as when we say that someone is “cultured” (in 1605, Francis Bacon wrote about “the culture and manurance of minds”); culture as a group’s “particular way of life,” as when we talk about French culture, company culture, or multiculturalism; and culture as an activity, pursued by means of the museums, concerts, books, and movies that might be encouraged by a Ministry of Culture (or covered on a blog like this one). These three senses of culture are actually quite different, and, Williams writes, they compete with one another. Each time we use the word “culture,” we incline toward one or another of its aspects: toward the “culture” that’s imbibed through osmosis or the “culture” that’s learned at museums, toward the “culture” that makes you a better a person or the “culture” that just inducts you into a group.

There’s a historical sense, too, in which “culture” is a polemical word. In the nineteenth century, Williams explains, “culture” was often opposed to “civilization.” Civilization, the thinking went, was a homogenizing system of efficient, rational rules, designed to encourage discipline and “progress.” Culture was the opposite: an unpredictable expression of human potential for its own sake. (It’s for this reason that a term like “the culture industry” has an oxymoronic ring.) Today, we don’t often use the word “civilization”— we prefer to talk, more democratically, in terms of culture—but we’re still conflicted. We can’t help but notice how “civilized” life seems both to facilitate culture and to deaden it. Museums make it easy to see art, but they also weigh it down. Rock and roll sounds better in a club than in a concert hall.

These are solid, perennial reasons to look up “culture” in the dictionary. But why did more people than usual look it up this year? The editors at Merriam-Webster decline to speculate. They note, merely, that “the term conveys a kind of academic attention to systematic behavior.” Here’s my theory: more people looked up “culture” this year because it’s become an unsettling word. “Culture” used to be a good thing. Now it’s not. That isn’t to say that American culture has gotten worse. (It has gotten worse in some ways, and better in others.) It’s to say that the word “culture” has taken on a negative cast. The most positive aspect of “culture”—the idea of personal, humane enrichment—now seems especially remote. In its place, the idea of culture as unconscious groupthink is ascendent.

In the postwar decades, “culture” was associated with the quest for personal growth: even if you rejected “establishment” culture, you could turn to “the counterculture.” In the eighties, nineties, and aughts, it was a source of pride: the multiculturalist ethos had us identitying with our cultures. But today, “culture” has a furtive, shady, ridiculous aspect. Often, when we attach the word “culture” to something, it’s to suggest that it has a pervasive, pernicious influence (as in “celebrity culture”). At other times, “culture” is used in an aspirational way that’s obviously counterfactual: institutions that drone on about their “culture of transparency” or “culture of accountability” often have neither. On all sides, “culture” is used in a trivializing way: there’s no real culture in “coffee culture” (although the coffee at Culture, a coffee shop near my office, is excellent). But, at the same time, it’s hard to imagine applying the word “culture” to even the most bona-fide “cultural institutions.” We don’t say that MOMA fosters “art culture,” because to describe art as a “culture” is, subtly, to denigrate it. In 1954, when the magazine Film Culture was founded, its name made movie lovers sound glamorous. Today, it sounds vaguely condescending.

This year, there was the rise of the powerful term “rape culture.” (It was coined a long time ago, in a 1975 documentary film called “Rape Culture” that focussed, in part, on an organization called Prisoners Against Rape; Ariel Levy, in a recent piece for this magazine, defines it as “a value system in which women are currency, and sex is something that men get—or take—from them.”) The spread of the idea of “rape culture” hasn’t just changed how we think about rape; it’s changed how we think about culture. Among other things, “rape culture” uses the word “culture” in a way that doesn’t involve, on any level, the idea of personal enrichment. Instead, the term’s weight is placed, fully and specifically, on Williams’s other two aspects of culture: on the subterranean, group-defining norms (misogyny, privilege) that encourage violence against women, and on the cultural institutions (movies, fraternities) that propagate those norms. The term works, in part, because of its dissonance. You can’t see the word “culture” next to the word “rape” without revising your ideas about what “culture” means.

No comparable “culture” term has been invoked in relation to the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and the other African-Americans killed, recently, in encounters with the police. But those events have also pushed us to think about “culture” as an inhumane, malevolent force. And I suspect that many of us have also been keeping our own inner ledgers, where we track the ways in which “culture” has seemed, more and more, like the kind of thing you’d want “civilization” to overrule.

That’s not to say, necessarily, that music culture or art culture or book culture has gotten worse—or that our collective way of life has gone downhill. It’s our sense of the word “culture” that has grown darker, sharper, more skeptical. But, if words are tools for thinking, then this year “culture” has been used to think about the parts of our society that function poorly. That may even be a sign, in a way, of an improvement in our culture. If our increasingly analytical, sociological way of thinking about “culture” is helping us to improve the culture, that’s a positive development. Confusion over its evolving meaning is a good reason to look up “culture” in the dictionary, but so is an interest in understanding the world and making it better.

All this might make you wonder: Does it even make sense to have a single word, “culture,” with such divergent uses? Maybe not; many people, Williams writes, have called “culture” a “loose or confused” term. It’s possible to imagine a more rational system, in which one word describes the activities of artistic and intellectual life, another our group identity, and a third our implicit norms and ways of living. Those terms, whatever they might be, would be narrower and simpler—but they’d also be less accurate. They would obscure the overlap between life, art, and politics.

And they’d be less meaningful, too. “Culture” may be pulling itself apart from the inside, but it represents, in its way, a wish. The wish is that a group of people might discover, together, a good way of life; that their good way of life might express itself in their habits, institutions, and activities; and that those, in turn, might help individuals flourish in their own ways. The best culture would be one in which the three meanings of “culture” weren’t at odds with one another. That’s not the culture we have at the moment; our culture is fractured, and so our sense of the word “culture” is, too. But it’s possible to imagine a world in which our collective attitudes and institutions further everyone’s individual growth. Maybe, in such a world, the meaning of “culture” would be more obvious; we wouldn’t have to look it up.