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Columnist: Dr. Jharna Chatterjee
A Short Discourse on Culture
by Dr. Jharna Chatterjee
Since I do not consider myself an expert on the
concept of 'culture' but am definitely interested to learn, I decided to seek
the experts' views those
of sociologists, educators, and anthropologists.
An article titled 'A Baseline Definition of Culture' (
www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-definition
)* suggested that the most important
characteristic of culture is that it is learned, and not innately, biologically,
or physiologically acquired. Our social environment shapes our likes, dislikes,
values, beliefs, and pattern of behaviors and acquaints
us with the symbols and rituals of the 'mother' society, and thus 'socializes'
us to adapt to our cultural norms. This is what makes one group of people
culturally similar or dissimilar from another group of people based
on where they have grown up (geographical/political environment), during what
period of time (historical environment) and under what socio-economic
circumstances. This
article proposes, "Culture involves at least three components: what
people think, what they do, and the material products they produce. Thus,
mental processes, beliefs, knowledge, and values are parts of culture. Culture
also has several properties: it is shared, learned,
symbolic
, transmitted cross-generationally, adaptive, and integrated."
An anthropologist, John H. Bodley, Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Washington
State University, subscribed to the same
line of thinking and presented the following table in his "Cultural
Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System, 1994":
|
TABLE: Diverse Definitions of Culture: |
|
|
Topical: |
Culture consists
of everything on a list of topics, or categories, such as social
organization, religion, or economy |
|
Historical: |
Culture is
social heritage, or tradition, that is passed on to future generations |
|
Behavioral: |
Culture is
shared, learned human behavior, a way of life |
|
Normative: |
Culture is
ideals, values, or rules for living |
|
Functional: |
Culture is the
way humans solve problems of adapting to the environment or living together |
|
Mental: |
Culture is a
complex of ideas, or learned habits, that inhibit impulses and distinguish
people from animals |
|
Structural: |
Culture consists
of patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors |
|
Symbolic: |
Culture is based
on arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society |
It is interesting to note that this table includes
topical, historical, behavioral, normative, functional, mental, structural,
and symbolic components and emphasizes the major feature of being 'learned',
similar to the Basic Definition, in it.
From another anthropologist's (Clyde Kluckhohn's Mirror for Man) perspective mentioned by Clifford Geertz (an anthropologist himself), culture is
described as:
|
1. |
"the total
way of life of a people" |
|
2. |
"the social
legacy the individual acquires from his group" |
|
3. |
"a way of
thinking, feeling, and believing" |
|
4. |
"an
abstraction from behavior" |
|
5. |
a theory on the
part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in fact
behave |
|
6. |
a
"storehouse of pooled learning" |
|
7. |
"a set of
standardized orientations to recurrent problems" |
|
8. |
"learned
behavior" |
|
9. |
a mechanism for
the normative regulation of behavior |
|
10. |
"a set of
techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other
men" |
|
11. |
"a precipitate of history" |
|
12. |
a behavioral
map, sieve, or matrix |
Again, we find that the descriptions of culture
presented above echoes some of the crucial components of the Basic Definition such
as 'the total way of life,' 'pooled
learning,' 'belief, values, and behavioral norms,'
'problem solving skills and techniques to adapt to the physical and social
environment,' and the 'symbolic' expressions.
I also found the following definitions of 'culture'
as seen by sociologists:
"The
learned shared behaviour of members of a society is known as culture. Culture
is a social blueprint, a guide for living, the way of life of a society". From Sociology In Focus: Paul Taylor et al.
"A
culture is a design for living or, more precisely, a complex whole consisting
of objects, values, and other characteristics that people have acquired as
members of society. A.Thio (1991)
[Please note
the words 'guide', 'design' or 'social blueprint' and 'a complex whole
consisting of objects'—indicating
the 'learned' and the adaptive aspects in the three definitions above. Needless to say, 'a complex whole consisting of objects and
other characteristics' acquired from a society includes social organization,architecture, and
agriculture, religion, economy, language, literature, ideals, values, behavioral norms, patterned and
interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors.]
"The
term refers to those things that are shared within a group or society: shared
truths (that is, knowledge and beliefs), shared values, shared rules about behaviour, and
material objects that are shared in the sense that they are widely used or recognised". Sociology: J.Farley (1990)
[These last two definitions make
it a point to include the 'material products' of a society.]
In an early effort to clarify the meaning of
'culture', Raymond Williams, one of Britain's greatest post-war cultural historians, theorists and a
distinguished literary and social thinker, made a distinction between
the concept of 'high culture' which denotes intellectual and artistic products
like Plato's Republic, Beethoven’s and Mozart's musical creations or Van Gogh's
paintings, and a much wider concept of culture—the
totality of human behavior that is transmitted by the society—the
body of 'ordinary,' learned
behavior, beliefs, institutions and all. Williams is said to have "forced the first important shift into a new way of thinking about
the symbolic dimensions of our lives. Thus,
'culture' is wrested from that privileged space of artistic production and
specialist knowledge [eg. "high culture"], into the lived
experience of the everyday." --Raymond Williams, "Moving from High Culture to Ordinary Culture.", Originally published in N. McKenzie (ed.), Convictions, 1958.
As we can see
very well, not everyone thinks exactly the same way about the
meaning of 'culture' and its expressions. However, there
seems to be an overwhelming convergence of ideas among contemporary experts
about the term 'culture' encompassing the entire gamut of human social (i.e.,
learned not innate) experience including economy,
social
organization, religion, beliefs, and
their symbolic expressions, ideals,
values, behavioral norms, patterns of behaviors and interrelated
ideas, material products and problem-solving skills,
knowledge and techniques acquired from one's society in the process of learning
to adapt to one's geo-political, historical and socio-political environment. I would also like to point out that
Cultural Streams International is an international (and we
want it to be
universally
shared)
website, and on principle, we wish to remain as wide and open as possible to
accommodate a wide range of contributions.
* If for some reason,
this link does not work, please use 'google' to
search for "