| 1 culture |
| A culture is the propagation of microorganisms in a growth media. Any body or tissue or fluid can be evaluated in the laboratory by culture techniques in order to detect and identify infectious processes. Hmm... that does not sound right. |
| So what else could we mean when we talk about culture? |
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| Famous anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn wrote a book on the subject... Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. (1952) Here is what they came up with: Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action. |
| Noted archaeologist Indiana Jones had a more rough-and-ready approach to culture. |
| Here is a more contemporary definition from another anthropologist, Daniel G. Bates: Culture is a 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. |
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| Old-fashioned anthropology thought of culture as the "totality" of the humanly created world. Contemporary economic or ecological perspectives tend to define culture as a "tool", a kind of human adaptation to the world. Another pyschological view tends to think of culture as a cognitive phenomenon restricted to forms of communication through symbols, language and relationships. AnthroBase has a useful description of these different definitions. |
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| We can make some generalizations about culture regardless of the particular perspective or definition we choose to adopt. Culture is... |
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| 3. a complex of patterns in thought and behaviour |
| 2. shared with others |
| 6. generally taken-for-granted and assumed to be "natural" |
| 4. created in systems of relationship and interaction |
| 1. a result of learning |
| 5. symbolic |
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| But wait... there is more to culture than that! |
| This is Raymond Williams. His large brain and pipe-smoking are evident in this image. |
| Raymond Williams' Culture and Society (1958) is often credited with helping to instigate what is now known as "cultural studies". Williams thought of culture as: 1. a process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development 2. aesthetic and intellectual pratices and works 3. a way of life. These three overlap each other and anthropological definitions. But Williams was concerned with class and power in relation to culture. In other words, who controls the production of culture? Who gets to decide what culture is made up of in the first place? We might think of our definitions of culture as part of the practice of creating culture. |
| Anthropologists tend to think of culture in a technical or scientific context. Cultural studies tends to think of culture through perspectives which are held outside traditional academic contexts. Here are a few ways the word culture is used to define: |
| 1. High culture |
| 2. Popular culture |
| 3. Folk culture |
| 4. Traditional culture |
| 5. Organizational or institutional culture |
| Academic uses of the word culture are in the minorty considering the variety of ways in which people use it to make sense of the world. These different uses of the word are often contested and contradictory. Think about the following examples... what sense of the word culture best describes them? Do you think everyone would agree with your opinion? |
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