Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to
cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significant
importance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating,
human activity.
Culture is manifested in music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film.[1] Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods
(as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture)[2], anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the
social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes
technology, art, science, as well as moral systems.
Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human
capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has
long been taken as a defining feature of the humans. However, primatologists have identified
aspects of culture among humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom.[3] As a rule, archaeologists focus on material culture (the
material remains of human activity), whereas social anthropologists focus on social
interactions, statuses and institutions, and cultural anthropologists focus on
norms and values. This division of labor reflects the different conditions under which different anthropologists have worked, and
the practical need to focus research. It does not necessarily reflect a theory of culture that conceptually distinguishes between
the material, the social, and the normative, nor does it reflect three competing theories of culture.
Farhang, culture, has always been the focal point of Iranian
civilization. Painting
of Persian women musicians from
Hasht-Behesht Palace ("Palace of the 8
heavens").
Defining "culture"
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 as well as
the arts and gastronomy. [4]
Various definitions of culture reflect differing theories for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.
Edward Burnett Tylor writing from the perspective of social anthropology in the UK in 1871 described culture in
the following way: "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."[5]
More recently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)
(2002) described culture as follows: "... culture should be regarded 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".[6]
While these two definitions cover a range of meaning, they do not exhaust the many uses of the term "culture." In 1952,
Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a
list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.[7]
These definitions, and many others, provide a catalog of the elements of culture. The items cataloged (e.g., a law, a stone
tool, a marriage) each have an existence and life-line of their own. They come into space-time at one set of coordinates and go
out of it another. While here, they change, so that one may speak of the evolution of the law or the tool.
A culture, then, is by definition at least, a set of cultural objects. Anthropologist Leslie
White asked: "What sort of objects are they? Are they physical objects? Mental objects? Both? Metaphors? Symbols?
Reifications?" In Science of Culture (1949), he concluded that they are objects "sui
generis"; that is, of their own kind. In trying to define that kind, he hit upon a previously unrealized aspect of
symbolization, which he called "the symbolate"—an object created by the act of symbolization. He thus defined culture as
"symbolates understood in an extra-somatic context."[8] The
key to this definition is the discovery of the symbolate.
Seeking to provide a practical definition, social theorist, Peter Walters, describes
culture simply as "shared schematic experience", including, but not limited to, any
of the various qualifiers (linguistic, artistic, religious, etc.) included in previous definitions.
Culture as civilization
Many people today have an idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This notion of
culture reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It
identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this way of thinking, one can classify some countries and nations as more civilized than
others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass
culture from the definition of culture. Theorists such as Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or
the Leavisites regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and
said in the world”[9] Arnold contrasted
mass/popular culture with social chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the
progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "... culture being a pursuit of our total
perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best
which has been thought and said in the world".[9]
An artifact of "high culture": a painting by
Edgar Degas.
In practice, culture referred to élite activities such as
museum-caliber art and classical
music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. These are often
called "high culture", namely the culture of the ruling social group,[10] to distinguish them from mass culture
or popular culture.
From the 19th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between the
highest and lowest culture, but have stressed the refinement and of sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural
developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music
(as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and
decadent. Equally, this view often portrays Indigenous peoples as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives,
uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West.
Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of
culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) -- simply
regarding them as just cultured in a different way. Thus social observers contrast the "high" culture of élites to
"popular" or pop culture, meaning goods and activities produced for, and consumed
by the masses. (Note that some classifications relegate both high and low cultures to the status of subcultures.)
Culture as worldview
During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially
those concerned with nationalist movements — such as the nationalist struggle to create a
"Germany" out of diverse principalities, 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 world view 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 19th 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 showed some reluctance to use biological evolution
to explain differences between specific cultures — an approach that either exemplified a form of, or segment of society vis a
vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination
and resistance.
In the 1950s, subcultures — groups with distinctive characteristics within a larger
culture — began to be the subject of study by sociologists. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of
corporate culture — distinct and malleable within the context of an employing
organization or a workplace.
Culture as symbols
The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the
practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes 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.[11]
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 (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices
of a group."[12] Thus, for example:
- "Stop, in the name of the law!"—Stock phrase uttered to the antagonists by the
sheriff or marshal in 20th century American Old Western movies
- Law and order—stock phrase in the United States
- Peace and order—stock phrase in the Philippines
Culture as a stabilizing mechanism
Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies
inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Stephen Wolfram's A new kind of science on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the
concept of culture as an operating mechanism can be developed,[13] and Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype for discussion of genetic and memetic
stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms.[14]
Culture and evolutionary psychology
Researchers in evolutionary psychology argue that the mind is a system of
neurocognitive information processing modules designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems of our distant
ancestors. According to evolutionary psychologists, the diversity of forms that human cultures take are constrained (indeed, made
possible) by innate information processing mechanisms underlying our behavior, including:
- Language acquisition modules
- Incest avoidance mechanisms
- Cheater detection mechanisms
- Intelligence and sex-specific mating preferences
- Foraging mechanisms
- Alliance-tracking mechanisms
- Agent detection mechanisms
- Fear and protection mechanisms (survival mechanisms)
These mechanisms are theorized to be the psychological foundations of culture. In order to fully understand culture we must
understand its biological conditions of possibility.
Cultures within a society
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, class or gender. The
qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be aesthetic, religious, occupational,
political, sexual or a combination of these
factors.
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 (i.e., "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. The study of cultures within a society is complex and research
must take into account a myriad of variables.
Cultures by region
-
Many regional cultures have been influenced by contact with others, such as by colonization, trade, migration,
mass media and religion.
- 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.
Hopi man weaving on traditional loom in the USA.
- Americas
The culture of the Americas has been strongly influenced by peoples that inhabitated the continents before Europeans arrived; people from Africa
(the United States especially has a large African-American population), and the immigration of Europeans, especially Spanish,
English, French, Portuguese, German, Irish, Italian and Dutch.
- 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 (see section on Eastern religion and philosophy, below). 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.
- 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 that of the Philippines. In any case, 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.
- 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 religion has declined in Europe.
- Middle East and North Africa
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.
Belief systems
-
Religion and other belief systems are often integral to a culture. Religion, from the Latin religare, meaning "to bind
fast", is a feature of cultures throughout human history. The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion defines religion in
the following way:
... an institution with a recognized body of communicants who gather together regularly for worship, and accept a set of
doctrines offering some means of relating the individual to what is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality.[15]
Religion often codifies behavior, such as with the 10 Commandments of
Christianity or the five precepts of
Buddhism. Sometimes it is involved with government, as in a theocracy. It also influences arts.
Eurocentric custom to some extent divides humanity into Western and non-Western
cultures, although this has some flaws.
Western culture spread from Europe most strongly to Australia, Canada, and the United
States. It is influenced by ancient Greece, ancient
Rome and the Christian church.
Western culture tends to be more individualistic than non-Western cultures. It also sees man, god, and nature or the universe
more separately than non-Western cultures. It is marked by economic wealth, literacy, and technological advancement, although
these traits are not exclusive to it.
Abrahamic religions
Judaism is one of the first, recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest religious
traditions still practiced today. 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 arts (visual and performance arts and the like.) Of course some of these are regional influences among the nations
the religions are present in, but there are some norms or forms of cultural expression distinctly emphasized by the
religions.
Christianity was the dominant feature in shaping European and the New World cultures for at least the last 500 to 1700 years.
Modern philosophical thought has very much been influenced by Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus and Christian Cathedrals have been noted as architectural wonders like Notre Dame de
Paris, Wells Cathedral and Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral.
Islam's influence has dominated much of the North African, Middle and Far East regions for almost 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 a Cathedral and a Mosque) and the many styles of Arabesque.
Judaism and the Baha'i faiths are usually minority religions among the nations but still have made distinctive contributions
to the cultures of the nations and regions. Of Judaism, people of note include Albert
Einstein and Henry Kissinger and musicians/performers like Paula Abdul, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bob
Dylan. Of the Bahá'í faith, consider the Bahá'í House of Worship as well
as musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and thinkers like Alain LeRoy Locke, Frederick Mayer and Richard St. Barbe Baker.
The mainstream anthropological view of ‘culture’
implies that most people experience a strong resistance when reminded that there is an animal as well as a spiritual aspect to
human nature.[16]
Eastern religion and philosophy
-
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.
Indian philosophy includes Hindu
philosophy. They contain elements of nonmaterial 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.
During the 20th century, in the two most populous countries of Asia, two dramatically different political philosophies took
shape. Gandhi gave a new meaning to Ahimsa, a core belief
of both Hinduism and Jainism, and redefined the concepts of nonviolence and nonresistance far beyond the confines of India.
During the same period, Mao Zedong’s communist
philosophy became a powerful secular belief system in China.
Folk religions
-
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.
The "American Dream"
The American Dream is a belief, held by many in the United States, that through hard
work, courage, and self-determination, regardless of social class, a person can
gain a better life.[17] This notion is rooted in the belief that the United States is a "city upon a hill, a light unto the nations,"[18] which were values held by many early European settlers and maintained by subsequent
generations.
This concept is mirrored in other cultures, such as in the case of the Great Australian
Dream, although this refers more closely to home ownership by the same means.
Marriage
Religion often influences marriage and sexual practices.
Most Christian churches give some form of blessing to a marriage; the wedding ceremony
typically includes some sort of pledge by the community to support the relationship. In marriage, Christians draw a parallel with
the relationship between Jesus Christ and His Church. The Roman Catholic Church
believes it is morally wrong to divorce, and divorcées cannot remarry in a church marriage (without a formal annulment of the previous marriage).
Cultural studies
Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the
re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in
part through the articulation of sociology
and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to
focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the
non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of
consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems
inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars
refer instead to "popular culture".
Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however,
reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and
consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of
shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this
view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.
Currently, a debate is underway regarding whether or not culture can actually change fundamental human cognition. Researchers are divided on the question.
Cultural change
Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change, depending on culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary
roles in many cultures. One gender might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century
in western 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:
- forces at work within a society
- contact between societies
- changes in the natural environment.[19]
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 helped lead to the invention of
agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations.
In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning)
moves from one culture to another. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States,
seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in
another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why
and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.
"Acculturation" has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of
the traits of one culture with those of another, such has happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the
process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.
Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be
useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a
global "accelerating culture change period", driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all,
the human population explosion, among other factors. The world's population now doubles
in less than 40 years.[20]
Culture change is complex and has far-ranging effects. Sociologists and anthropologists believe that a holistic approach to the study of cultures and their environments is needed to understand all of the various
aspects of change. Human existence may best be looked at as a "multifaceted whole." Only from this vantage can one grasp the
realities of culture change.[20]
Notes
