Essay On Culture And Culture

From an anthropological point of view culture is the set of learned behaviors and ideas (including beliefs, attitudes, values and ideals) that are characteristic of a particular society or any other social group. Although most people that live in a shared society consider themselves to be unique individuals with their own habits and opinions, the truth is most people that live within the same society have similar beliefs, habits and feelings (Turner, 1993). If a person lives in Australia, they are more than likely going to believe that it is normal for both men and woman in a partnership to be working fulltime jobs, that children should be going to school five days a week and they will have the habit of sleeping on a bed. Most people wouldn’t think about these similarities they have with their shared society because they feel ‘natural’. This is what is meant by culture. The word culture has many different meanings, but for anthropologists, culture is the learning of human behavior patterns. English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor was the first to use this term in this way, in his book, Primitive Culture’ in 1871. Tylor said that culture is "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.” Humans have changed or replaced traditional behaviors throughout history to suit their needs; this is obvious when you examine the history of a society. Culture is always changing because culture comprises of cultured patterns of behavior and belief, cultural traits can be unlearned and learned again as human needs differ. The foundations of change can be external and/or internal (Kottak, 2011).

The type of group within which cultural beha...

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...a culture, they generally are referring to the cultural patterns of a specific society—that is, a specific territorial populace communicating a language not generally understood by near territorial populaces (Rapport & Overing, 2013). Though other creatures show cultural behavior, humans are uncommon in the amount and complexity of the learned patterns that they communicate to their young. And they have a distinctive way of transmitting their culture: through spoken, symbolic language.

Culture refers to the entire way of life of any society, not simply to those parts of this way that the society regards as greater or more desirable. We must remember that, even when anthropologists refer to something as cultural, there is always individual variation, which means that not everyone in a society shares a particular cultural characteristic of that society.