Culture Culture is what makes an individual distinct from others. It is believed that culture is a powerful force that affects and shapes the way we perceive the world and on how we interact with other people. It is synonymous to a country or nation which sets and bears its own desired qualities or attributes. For instance, a group of people conversing in language other than English notices a woman passing by wearing veil over her face and a ruby on her nose would likely be described as one from different culture and which can likewise be alluded as one from somewhere else. There are multitude definitions of culture available in the literature and each definition relies on the context of one’s field of study. It was variedly defined that each …show more content…
A culture is less exact. It can mean the types of conventional conduct which are attributes of a given society, or of a gathering of social orders, or of a specific race, or of a specific region, or of a specific timeframe. From these definitions, we could deduce common characteristics of culture as: dependent on group membership and identification; an agreement within the group about how to make sense of or assign meanings to its environment, which behaviors are acceptable, what is important in life, and how to feel about other people; pattern of shared dimensions; shared by group members using verbal and non-verbal signals; transmitted over time through socialization; and, can change in response to changes in the environment. Moreover, as explicated by (Tan, 2016), culture was historically linked to the processes of colonization which is used by European anthropologists to describe the ways of life of others characterizing non-European societies as less civilized, barbaric, and primitive, thus lacking “culture.” In fact, this prompted the supposition that European culture is better than other culture and utilized as a support for colonization. From that point on, a polarity grew to stratify social orders into high and low …show more content…
Although generally resistant to change, culture is malleable, as a response to environmental changes. The major form of transmission is through communication. As culture is being learned and transmitted from one generation to the next, there is the question as to how it is being learned? And does it change? Banking on the simplified definition of (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, 2012) culture is learned through communication. This entails social interactions among people with common understanding of symbols, shared values and beliefs, and rules as a product of reciprocal information processing (Lustig, 2006). Culture is relative and it can change over time. People change. We change. Hence, we contribute changes into cultures or subcultures of which we are part of meaning we are agents of cultural change. For some, cultural change is desirable for it posters unity among societies, but for other groups, it threatens the identity and distinctiveness which leads to cultural
The term “ethnocentrism,” meaning the sense of taken-for-granted superiority in the context of cultural practices and attitudes, described the way Europeans looked at their “culture” as though they were superior to all others. Westerns even stated that non-Westerns had no culture and that they were inferior to the culture that was building in Europe.
As means of understanding the concept of culture, we must first know what culture is and its components because culture is a broad subject which is defined in different ways. Culture is expressed in so many ways, some of these are our gestures, our beliefs that we abide by and our custom. In the field of the social sciences, culture is a broad subject that is explained something that is primarily in your life, meaning it is what you’re made of from the beginning. According to the search engine Bing, “Culture is the shared beliefs and values of a group; the beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a particular nation or people.
Culture by definition is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices, as well as customary beliefs, social forms and material traits that characterize a racial, religious or ...
Culture, the behaviors and beliefs that a particular social, ethnic, religious, or age group possesses. Whether we like it or not a culture is always going to be apart of our life and it is most definitely not the same for every single person. Just as each book has a different story to tell, each culture does the same thing. Culture greatly affects the way people perceive others and the world around them by giving a person their sense of right and wrong, we take what we have learned from our culture and then build or take away from that knowledge to help us view things in the world. As young children we begin to grow with the same concept of memories, what is right and what is wrong. Now even though we learn the same lesson, it does not mean that the material is going to be the same. If we think of different cultural aspects as different books it is easier to distinguish the varying effects that a culture can have on a person’s outlook on life.
What is culture? Many people ask themselves this question every day. The more you think about it the more confusing it is. Sometimes you start leaning to a culture and then people tell you you’re wrong
Culture is set of the spiritual, moral, material, intellectual, social and emotional characteristics. It includes the distinctive features of a nation or a society that distinguish it from other groups, including the beliefs, values, language, principles, sanctities, laws and experiments.
The term “culture” first originated in the 18th century to signify a way of living, and in the mid-19th century, scientists referred to it as a wide span of living space. Culture has come a long way, with many different meanings and ideas. The basic concept of culture is the basis of all human behaviors, traditions, customs, and actions, which were inherited through sharing and learned through generation. In his essay “Culture is Ordinary”, Raymond Williams states that, “Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, and its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning…” In many social sciences, culture is defined differently. For instance, according to Kottak and Kozaitis, Anthropologists began to refer to culture as the main aspects of human traditions, beliefs, and symbols that control behavior (Page 9).
Culture of a society represents the customary beliefs, values, and social constraints that ethnic, religious, and social groups transmit fairly unchanged from generation to generation. Culture includes all the common characteristics to the member of a particular group or society. It is through culture that a particular group define themselves, conforms to society’s shared values, and contributes to the society. Culture incorporates all the societal aspects which include language, customs, values, norms, mores, rules, policies, tool, technologies, products, associations, organizations, and institutions.
Culture can be defined as “A pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore to be taught to the new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”. Schein (1988)
Culture is what shapes our understandings, opinions of one another, attributions and identity; just to name a few. Within this diverse world, culture encompasses activities, behaviors, rules, norms, values, beliefs, religion, and worldviews. It is something that can be described in many ways and shown throughout many different aspects within everyone’s lives. (Matsumoto and Juang, 2017).
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
Culture has five basic characteristics: It is learned, shared, based on symbols, integrated, and dynamic. All cultures share these basic features.
What is culture? The answers to this question reveals the complexity of its meaning. Every field of knowledge has its own answer: philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and economists have their own concepts of culture. (Kluckhohn, 19) One suggested answer is: “The behavioral norms that a group of people, at a certain time...
The term culture is considered as a subject of heated debates for having no straightforward definition. Generally speaking, speacilaists (Hofstede,1994; Matsumoto 1996: Spencer-Oatey 2008), try to explain its meaning by using a nunber of aspects such ast the way of life, traditions and customs, knowldge ,way of thinking, attitudes, beliefs of each specific member of society. Similarly, Damen, L. (1987: 367) defines it as:
The term “culture” refers to the complex accumulation of knowledge, folklore, language, rules, rituals, habits, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and customs that link and provide a general identity to a group of people. Cultures take a long time to develop. There are many things that establish identity give meaning to life, define what one becomes, and how one should behave.