The Existence of Different Types of Cultures

Every society has a culture, in fact, every human being is cultured. In our daily usage of the word 'culture', we often just refer it as a custom or tradition of certain group of people, or else the higher desirable quality we can acquire after paying a hard effort such as playing piano. However the definition of culture is not as simple as that but it refers to countless aspects of life which include every simple elements at whole (Linton, 1945). In general, the social scientists often refer to the Tylor's definition of culture when defining culture: "Culture... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Tylor, 1958, p. 1). Culture is learned through enculturation and commonly shared by the members of the society. In this paper, three types of culture are briefly discussed which include dominant culture, subculture and counter-culture.

The first type of culture is dominant culture. Quite often, the dominant culture is reflected as orthodox and universal in society. The dominant culture is typically shared and being practiced cumulatively by society (O’Reilly & Chatman, 1996). Anthropologists normally referred it as ideal cultural patterns. It had received support from majority of the constitutions, in terms of values, norms and beliefs are to be conducted every now and then. For example, complex society like United States is frequently taken into account for research purposes representing dominant culture. Weaver (1999, p2) emphasized, “There is no way to explain the behaviours of Americans unless you know their dominant or mainstream culture”. This implies that every aspects ranging from economic, politic...

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