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General Forum: Religion | | What is Culture? Please Define it. | |
| Culture: The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning
This is a complex definition and points to four important characteristics stressed by cultural relativists:
symbolic composition,
systematic patterning,
learned transmission,
societal grounding.
symbolic composition::
The fundamental element or building block of culture is the culture trait. Traits assume many forms varying from material artifacts -- tools, house structures, art works -- to behaviourial regularities -- family interrelationships, economic exchanges, and legal sanctions -- to abstract concepts and beliefs. All of these diverse and complex manifestations share one feature in common; they are symbols and as such express meaning.
Systematic Patterning
Cultural elements as symbols assume their meanings in relationship to other symbols within a broader context of a meaning system.
Learned Transmission
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Culture traits and broader cultural patterns inclusive of language, technology, institutions, beliefs, and values are transmitted across generations and maintain continuity through learning, technically termed enculturation. Accordingly, learning abilities and intelligence are essential assets for all human groups and have replaced the role of biologically based genetic transmission of instincts dominant in most other animal species
Societal Grounding
Culture is observable only in the form of personal behaviour but can be abstracted from individuals' actions and attributed to the social groups to which they belong
We most consciously experience social forces in the form of legal sanctions, which are themselves culturally based, but group norms constrain our behaviour in a wider array of circumstances. There is no law that says that I must communicate with you in English, but I am impelled to do so by the fact that we are engaged in a social relationship that requires mutual understanding. Under special circumstances, you or I might use another language and expect that the other learns it or engages a translator. However, I would never be allowed to use my individual creative powers to invent my own personal language
second example involves the selection of clothing. Here in the virtual classroom I am not subject to a dress code, but I do teach this class to a live audience as well and must face each day with the problem of what to wear for my lectures. Of course there are some legal constraints to my selection, since I cannot appear naked, but there are less obvious social restrictions as well. Past generations imposed fairly well defined limits to professorial dress. We had to wear academic gowns symbolic of our status. At a later period professionally identifying clothing was no longer in fashion, and we donned the more mundane adornments of generic business attire, although gowns were and still are required for academic processions.
Posted by: Mr. Siri Siri At: 9, May 2003 1:55:56 PM IST
Popular culture is a body of widely shared and contested beliefs, practices, and material objects that presents ordinary social life’s extraordinary possibilities: the "popular" accents the potentially remarkable dimensions of "ordinary" practices, such as style, literature, and music. In this sense, popular culture mirrors real life, but it is a distorted and selective reflection that presents familiar realities in their most spectacular forms. Popular culture illuminates how we are all ordinary yet desire to be extraordinary or at least envision extraordinary possibilities within ourselves
Posted by: Mr. Siri Siri At: 9, May 2003 1:49:45 PM IST
We live, we breathe, we think, we die. We define ourselves in the context of others. We plan, we anticipate. We choose our behaviors before we act.
Our human journey began as two-legged, sentient, upright beings with mostly two opposed thumbs, ten fingers and ten toes. Yet this picture is as incomplete as a spider without its web. Clothes of both body and spirit also make us what we are. Beyond cotton and concepts, the clothing of our atmosphere is critical as well: On Jupiter every bone in our bodies would be crushed. We are earth-dwellers, and must carry a patch of earth wherever we travel.
We plan to travel far. We are star-gazers filled with longing. It is, after all, "human nature" to fly and to do all sorts of "unnatural" things that our brains conjure up out of protoplasm, hope, and jelly. What transmutations will occur along the way that push us past who we presently are? In the gray fuzziness of actuality, will some beings, looking backward, define themselves apart?: Beings who have perhaps joined symbiotically with artificial intelligences, gaining the ability to calculate as fast as machines? -- Beings who have somehow managed to defy the presently understood limits of time and space? -- What future androids and angels, if any, will categorize themselves as "post-human"? It is human to invent imaginary partners and to speculate.
In the meantime, as we explore our roots we see we have sprung from a place of triple lineage: Halfway between the ethereal realm of gasses and the fixed world of crystals, we stand in a middle place inhabited also by the amoeba and rose. And though neither amoeba nor rose is haunted by ambition and the endless craving for meanings, still, we share a joint journey: Neither chaos nor complete order is our destination, but rather, the dynamic spiraling space between.
As we evolve we ask ourselves: What cannot be changed? What can be changed, and, — should we? Who am I? Who are you? Where have we come from? Where are we going? Our answers often lead to better questions. We are the Keepers of Questions. It is our ethically sacred task.
The questions keep coming: Philosophically, we ask: Is any one thing any one self-called human does human nature? What is the lowest common denominator? That may depend on our intentions. Are we looking for a common base, or are we searching for what at least some humans are capable of becoming? What are our highest aspirations? Given, say, a goal of "continuance of eternal play", what should we discourage? What should we enhance? How can we create holding environments that liberate rather than incarcerate? How might "attributing worth to ourselves and others" help make this happen?
Ethically, we ask: Is it human nature to do good things . . . bad things? How do we define good and bad? What is it to be greedy, selfish., altruistic, cooperative. ? How do we differentiate between a masochist and a martyr? Is intensity or balance our goal?
Culturally, we ask: What are the behaviors common to all cultures? (It would be strange to find a culture that emphasized the creation of hermits.) Should a more ethical culture go for or against what is "wired in"? ("Because you can, it would be best you could." Or, alternately, "You may not even though you can.") Is it possible to distinguish between repressed and non-existent behavior without resorting to anecdotal evidence? ("My culture doesn't allow me my sister.") Ought Jack ever marry Sister Jill or Brother John?
People arguing along different lines will come up with different answers. This is desirable. Profound questions are always too broad to be fully and succinctly answered. They are designed to lead us past pat solutions to that vast domain of silence, where, in still places, listening is born. In time, refreshed, we return, with ever keener questions.
Posted by: Mr. Siri Siri At: 9, May 2003 1:47:12 PM IST
Culture is the sum total of learned behavior------Hobel & frost
Posted by: Mr. Funky At: 7, May 2003 1:28:07 PM IST
while, occupational structure, art, music and literature are manifestations of culture. not culture itself.
Posted by: Ms. G Sunita At: 3, May 2003 11:09:48 AM IST
way of life includes the values, principles, customs, outlook, attitudes and interpersonal relationships. culture is not just a way of life, it is what a particular people try to leave behind them, by teachings to their next generation.
Posted by: Ms. G Sunita At: 3, May 2003 10:55:46 AM IST
culture is a way of life and lifestlye that a people follow and pass on to their next generation.
Posted by: Ms. G Sunita At: 3, May 2003 9:00:01 AM IST
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