What is culture?

Question

What is culture?

Answer 1

Culture is a group of people's way of life. Culture can depend on location, ethinicity (Keep in mind i said ethinicity because we are all humans and to imply otherwise like using the word "racial" or "racially" means that we are not all humans). Culture is a tradition held by a group of people basically. A way of life that has been around for al llllllloooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnggggggggg... time.

Answer 2

its a way of life the a group of people have with shared values. i.e. British culture (the customs are the british food, literature, music, religion, etc)

Answer 3

interesting our teacher asked us the exact same thing....she told us to "define culture" and then after the assignment

she told us that there is "no exact definition for it"

dictionary.com definition however states that:

. the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.  

2. that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc.  

3. a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture.  

4. development or improvement of the mind by education or training.  

5. the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.  

6. Anthropology. the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.  

7. Biology. a. the cultivation of microorganisms, as bacteria, or of tissues, for scientific study, medicinal use, etc.  

b. the product or growth resulting from such cultivation.  



8. the act or practice of cultivating the soil; tillage.  

9. the raising of plants or animals, esp. with a view to their improvement.  

10. the product or growth resulting from such cultivation.

Answer 4

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning ;to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.

Culture is manifested in music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film and other things.[1] Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods (as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture)[2], anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems.

Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of the humans. However, primatologists have identified aspects of culture among humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom.[3] As a rule, archaeologists focus on material culture (the material remains of human activity), whereas social anthropologists focus on social interactions, statuses and institutions, and cultural anthropologists focus on norms and values. This division of labor reflects the different conditions under which different anthropologists have worked, and the practical need to focus research. It does not necessarily reflect a theory of culture that conceptually distinguishes between the material, the social, and the normative, nor does it reflect three competing theories of culture.

Answer 5

The way one lives when they are raised in New Orleans.

Answer 6

learned.

Answer 7

Culture includes everything we learn. Humans learn primarily through language.

Without language there is no culture, without culture there is no language.

Culture is different from biology, although even biology changes  because of our culturally-based behaviors.

One definition –

Culture is the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret their world and generate social behavior. Culture is learned, shared, arbitrary, symbolic and moral.

Learned – we understand culture because we pick it up through the interactions we have with other people throughout childhood until we die.

We learn as children by the way people react to us, our behavior, each other, the things they do and say. Rarely do people give us formal lessons about culture because most of culture is taken for granted. No one tells us how to behave in an elevator, for example.

- How do we behave in elevators?

-

(Almost everyone “learns” how much distance to maintain between yourself and someone else in an elevator if there are only two of you. No one tells you to look at the wall or the ceiling or the door and not directly at the other passenger if you are strangers. You just know it by having watched other people practice this behavior.)

- how did you learn to behave these ways in elevators?

-   This learning is called enculturation.

Learning culture is called enculturation.

Shared – there are people and groups with which one shares cultural expectations and boundaries. In the United States there is something like a “mainstream” culture. There are certain cultural norms that are broadly shared but not universal in the United States.

There are also subcultures – in these subcultures there is specialized knowledge or shared understandings. For example, college students are a sub culture with specialized knowledge about college culture. Other people who never attend college are outside the culture in that they haven’t experienced the specialized cultural knowledge of being in college.

Symbolic – (arbitrary) There is no biological requirement for what we do in culture. We make it up. As in language, a word is a symbol because it stands for something else and we share knowledge about what the word stands for.  Culture too is symbolic. Clothing, for example, tells us something about the person wearing it. We read clothes. Our reading of clothes depends on our shared understanding of what clothing means and that shared understanding is cultural. Clothing is not just to keep us protected from the elements.

Our understanding of culture is integrated because everything we have and do is intermingled with cultural meanings. Cars, for example, are not just for getting from place to place.  We read a great deal into cars.

Why are cars important to us? What do cars tell us about the people driving them? How are cars symbolic?

( They mean independence, wealth, status, more personal space, individualism, impatience, flexibility. Feelings we have about cars and the people who drive them. Behavior on the road. Etc. extension of self, expansion of need for space, road rage when our space is violated.)

Can we live without cars? Culture is integrated. Everything is intermingled and the car is an example.

Moral – Enculturation puts a moral element on shared human behavior. We learn to read right and wrong, good and bad, into what we do, what others do, and what we think should be done.

Every social system is a moral order

Every social system includes shared values that glue the group or community together

Share values give people a sense of being a member of a community

The moral nature of culture is part of adaptation and survival, but it also contributes to conflict and destruction.

Culture is limit setting. There are certain behaviors, beliefs, assumptions that we learn as we are enculturated. When we push those limits, we are bound to feel discomfort and to be punished in some way by those around us who are staying within the limits.

Can you think of a cultural limit you recently pushed? What were the consequences or reactions?

There will be cultural pressure to conform. If we do something such as wear pajamas to work or shopping, some people might enjoy it, but in general we will be gossiped about, laughed at, frowned at, loose privileges, and we might even be asked to leave depending on the shape of the pajamas.

These are all ways that culture maintains its limits when someone is challenging cultural expectations. Those who don’t conform will always experience and cause some type of conflict. Yet lack of conformity is often the root of cultural change.

Culture is not static. It’s always changing. Part of change is adaptation. When something in the environment changes, when subcultures push for change, cultures change.

But culture can be both adaptive and maladaptive. Not everything humans learn to do is adaptive. For example cars are adaptive and maladaptive. Highways are a destruction of the landscape. Sprawl is a result of car transportation. Global warming is a result. Maladaptive aspects of culture lead to change.

So culture is not a script – as in a play  that is set in writing. It changes.

One definition:

Culture is a set of principles for creating dramas for writing script and, of course, for recruiting players and audiences. Culture is not simply a cognitive map that people acquire, in whole or in part, more or less accurately, and then learn to read. People are not just map-readers; they are map-makers. People are cast out into imperfectly charted, continually revised sketch maps. Culture does not provide a cognitive map, but rather a set of principles for map making and navigation. Different cultures are like different schools of navigation to cope with different terrains and seas.

Answer 8

it is a way a country works

Answer 9

Culture is learned through enculturation.  

It includes different components: subsistence practices, social and political organization, leadership, economical system, kinship systems, marriage practices, post-marital residence practice, material culture, religious practices and practitioners.

Race does NOT exist. All human beings share 99.4% of all their genes.

Answer 10

culture, is a different groups customs and belives. and what they do is different from most cultures out there.

Answer 11

The heritage of a race

Answer 12

People connected usually by national and racial identity.

Answer 13

somewhere u originated from

Answer 14

Could be a yeast infection or a visit to the Louvre

Answer 15

There are two types of cultures, those that relate to people and those that relate to bacteria.  If we're talking about people it is the pattern of human activities and symbolic structures that make such activities significant.  If we're talking about bacteria it is a method of growing and/or maturing bacteria into a useful form, usually for a predetermined product or purpose (such as making cheese to be sold on the open market).

Answer 16

What you have when you live outside of the U.S.A.

Answer 17

Culture is Shared, learned behavior.

Or at least that is how my HS World history teacher taught us (and no one has given a convincing argument against it since)