Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the
social behavior
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an ...
,
institution
Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
s, and
norms found in
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
societies
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societi ...
, as well as the
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinc ...
,
belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...
s,
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
s,
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
s,
customs
Customs is an authority or agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out of a country. Traditionally, customs ...
, capabilities, and
habit
A habit (or wont as a humorous and formal term) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. s of the individuals in these groups.
[Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son] Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location.
Humans acquire culture through the
learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...
processes of
enculturation
Enculturation is the process by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary to that culture and its worldviews.Grusec, Joan E.; Hastings, Paul D. ''Handbook of Socialization: ...
and
socialization
In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cultur ...
, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.
A
cultural norm
Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or soci ...
codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group.
Accepting only a
monoculture
In agriculture, monoculture is the practice of growing one crop species in a field at a time. Monoculture is widely used in intensive farming and in organic farming: both a 1,000-hectare/acre cornfield and a 10-ha/acre field of organic kale are ...
in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change.
Thus in military culture,
valor
Valor, valour, or valorous may mean:
* Courage, a similar meaning
* Virtue ethics, roughly "courage in defense of a noble cause"
Entertainment
* Valor (band), a Christian gospel music group
* Valor Kand, a member of the band Christian Death
* ' ...
is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the
continuum of conflict
A conflict continuum is a model or concept various social science researchers use when modeling conflict on a continuum from low to high-intensity, such as from aggression to irritation to explosiveness.
The mathematical model of game theory ori ...
. In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group.
Cultural change, or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies.
Organizations like
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage.
Description
Culture is considered a central concept in
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social
learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machine learning, machines ...
in human
societies
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societi ...
.
Cultural universals
A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal) is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all known human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known ...
are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
,
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
,
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
ritual
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or objects, performed according to a set sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, b ...
,
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
, and
technologies
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
like
tool usage,
cooking
Cooking, cookery, or culinary arts is the art, science and craft of using heat to Outline of food preparation, prepare food for consumption. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric ...
,
shelter
Shelter is a small building giving temporary protection from bad weather or danger.
Shelter may also refer to:
Places
* Port Shelter, Hong Kong
* Shelter Bay (disambiguation), various locations
* Shelter Cove (disambiguation), various locatio ...
, and
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
. The concept of
material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of
social organization
In sociology, a social organization is a pattern of relationships between and among individuals and social groups.
Characteristics of social organization can include qualities such as sexual composition, spatiotemporal cohesion, leadership, s ...
(including practices of
political organization
A political organization is any organization that involves itself in the political process, including political parties, non-governmental organizations, and special interest advocacy groups. Political organizations are those engaged in poli ...
and social
institutions
Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
),
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
,
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
,
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
(both
written
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
and
oral
The word oral may refer to:
Relating to the mouth
* Relating to the mouth, the first portion of the alimentary canal that primarily receives food and liquid
**Oral administration of medicines
** Oral examination (also known as an oral exam or oral ...
), and
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
comprise the
intangible cultural heritage
An intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a practice, representation, expression, knowledge, or skill considered by UNESCO to be part of a place's cultural heritage. Buildings, historic places, monuments, and artifacts are cultural property. Int ...
of a society.
In the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
, sciences,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish
civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
Ci ...
s from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in
class-based
Class-based programming, or more commonly class-orientation, is a style of object-oriented programming (OOP) in which inheritance (object-oriented programming), inheritance occurs via defining ''class (computer programming), classes'' of object ...
distinctions between a
high culture
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society cons ...
of the social
elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...
and a
low culture
In sociology, the term Low culture identifies the forms of popular culture that have mass appeal, which is in contrast to High culture, which has a limited appeal to a smaller proportion of the populace. Culture theory proposes that both high ...
,
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, or
folk culture
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, r ...
of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to
cultural capital
In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as a social relat ...
. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by
ethnic groups
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as
body modification
Body modification (or body alteration) is the deliberate altering of the human anatomy or human physical appearance. In its broadest definition it includes skin tattooing, socially acceptable decoration (''e.g.'', common ear piercing in many s ...
,
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials and natural ...
or
jewelry
Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry (U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western ...
.
Mass culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
refers to the
mass-produced
Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...
and
mass media
Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.
Broadcast media transmit information ...
ted forms of
consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
and
critical theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...
, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the
proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
and create a
false consciousness
In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the ex ...
. Such perspectives are common in the discipline of
cultural studies
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
. In the wider
social sciences
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soci ...
, the theoretical perspective of
cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in
evolved biological dispositions.
When used as a
count noun
In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', et ...
, a "culture" is the set of customs,
tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
s, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense,
multiculturalism
The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "Pluralism (political theory), ethnic pluralism", with the tw ...
values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a
subculture
A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...
(e.g. "
bro culture
Bro culture is a subculture of young people (originally young men, hence "brother culture") who spend time partying with others like themselves. Although the original image of the bro lifestyle is associated with sports apparel and fraternities, ...
"), or a
counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
. Within
cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
, the ideology and analytical stance of
cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated ...
hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture.
Etymology
The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the
ancient Roman
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
orator
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
in his ''
Tusculanae Disputationes
The ''Tusculanae Disputationes'' (also ''Tusculanae Quaestiones''; English: ''Tusculan Disputations'') is a series of five books written by Cicero, around 45 BC, attempting to popularise Greek philosophy in Ancient Rome, including Stoicism. It is s ...
'', where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or ''"cultura animi,"'' using an
agricultural
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
for the development of a philosophical soul, understood
teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development.
Samuel Pufendorf
Samuel Freiherr von Pufendorf (8 January 1632 – 26 October 1694) was a German jurist, political philosopher, economist and historian. He was born Samuel Pufendorf and ennobled in 1694; he was made a baron by Charles XI of Sweden a few months b ...
took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, "''refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original
barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human."''
In 1986, philosopher
Edward S. Casey
Edward S. Casey (born February 24, 1939 in Topeka, Kansas) is an American philosopher and university professor. He has published several volumes on phenomenology, philosophical psychology, and the philosophy of space and place. His work is widely ...
wrote, "The very word ''culture'' meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin ''colere'', 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and ''cultus'', 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly."
Culture described by
Richard Velkley
Richard L. Velkley (born March 17, 1949) is an American philosopher and Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University.
Velkley is known for his expertise on Kant, Rousseau, and post-Kantian philosophy. He is a ...
:
[ ]... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in the writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
's criticism of "modern
Modern may refer to:
History
* Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Phil ...
liberalism
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...
and Enlightenment." Thus a contrast between "culture" and "civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
Ci ...
" is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such.
In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor, it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common.
The ''Cambridge English Dictionary
The ''Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary'' (abbreviated ''CALD'') was first published in 1995 under the name ''Cambridge International Dictionary of English'', by the Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the ...
'' states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that ''Homo sapiens'' became aware of when they acquired a larger brain.
The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
s and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current ''Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by ...
in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
s. However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction
Interaction is action that occurs between two or more objects, with broad use in philosophy and the sciences. It may refer to:
Science
* Interaction hypothesis, a theory of second language acquisition
* Interaction (statistics)
* Interactions o ...
and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form.
Change
Raimon Panikkar
Raimon Panikkar Alemany, also known as Raimundo Panikkar and Raymond Panikkar (November 2, 1918 – August 26, 2010), was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of Interfaith dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative reli ...
identified 29 ways in which cultural change Culture change is a term used in public policy making that emphasizes the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behavior. It has been sometimes called repositioning of culture, which means the reconstruction of the cultural conce ...
can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution
Involution may refer to:
* Involute, a construction in the differential geometry of curves
* '' Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia'', a 1963 study of intensification of production through increased labour inpu ...
, renovation, reconception, reform, innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entity ...
, revivalism, revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
, mutation
In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mi ...
, progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
, diffusion
Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...
, osmosis
Osmosis (, ) is the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of low water potential (region of ...
, borrowing, eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in ...
, syncretism
Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various school of thought, schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or religious assimilation, assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in t ...
, modernization, indigenization
Indigenization is the act of making something more native; transformation of some service, idea, etc. to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more indigenous people in public administration, employment and other fields.
The term is ...
, and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and the notion of progress. Rein Raud
Rein Raud (born 21 December 1961) is an Estonian scholar and author.
Early life
He was born in 1961 in the family of Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both children's authors. He is the eldest of three children. His younger brother Mihkel Raud is a ...
, building on the work of Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...
, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...
and Jeffrey C. Alexander
Jeffrey Charles Alexander (born 1947) is an American sociologist, and a prominent social theorist. He is the founding figure in the school of cultural sociology he refers to as the "strong program".
Career
He was born May 30, 1947, in Milwauke ...
, has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy
Rein Raud (born 21 December 1961) is an Estonian scholar and author.
Early life
He was born in 1961 in the family of Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both children's authors. He is the eldest of three children. His younger brother Mihkel Raud is a ...
and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question.
Cultural invention A cultural invention is any innovation developed by people. Cultural inventions include sets of behaviour adopted by groups of people. They are perpetuated by being passed on to others within the group or outside it. They are also passed on to futu ...
has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society.
Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structure
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rel ...
s and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change.
Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied prim ...
shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement
The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for Radical politics, radical and Liberalism, liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality b ...
involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...
, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.
Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion
Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...
, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing," on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book ''Diffusion of Innovations''; the book ...
theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.[Stephen Wolfram (May 16, 2017) A New Kind of Science: A 15-Year View]
As applied to the computational universe
Acculturation
Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society. Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and ...
has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation
Transculturation is a term coined by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in 1940 (from the article Our America by José Martí) to describe the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. Transculturation encompasses more than transition from ...
. The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.
Early modern discourses
German Romanticism
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
(1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to the concept of ''bildung
''Bildung'' (, "education", "formation", etc.) refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation (as related to the German for: creation, image, shape), wherein philosophy and education are linked in a manner that refers to a process of both pe ...
'': "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: "" ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism.
Biography
Born in Mohrun ...
(1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of : "For Herder, was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people."
In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named after ...
(1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During the Romantic era
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
, scholars in Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
, especially those concerned with nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview
A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural p ...
" (). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures.
In 1860, Adolf Bastian
Adolf Philipp Wilhelm Bastian (26 June 18262 February 1905) was a 19th-century polymath best remembered for his contributions to the development of ethnography and the development of anthropology as a discipline. Modern psychology owes him a great ...
(1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" (); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" (), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas
Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
(1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States.
English Romanticism
In the 19th century, humanists
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humanis ...
such as English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
poet and essayist Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the celebrated headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, lite ...
(1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
concept of : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection
Perfection is a state, variously, of completeness, flawlessness, or supreme excellence.
The terminology, term is used to designate a range of diverse, if often kindred, concepts. These have historically been addressed in a number of discrete a ...
by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world."
In practice, ''culture'' referred to an elite
In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...
ideal and was associated with such activities as art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
, and haute cuisine
''Haute cuisine'' (; ) or ''grande cuisine'' is the cuisine of "high-level" establishments, gourmet restaurants, and luxury hotels. ''Haute cuisine'' is characterized by the meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food at a high pri ...
. As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from la, civitas, links=no, lit=city). Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
, which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society cons ...
, namely that of the ruling
Rule or ruling may refer to:
Education
* Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia
Human activity
* The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power
* Business rule, a rule perta ...
social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
, and low culture
In sociology, the term Low culture identifies the forms of popular culture that have mass appeal, which is in contrast to High culture, which has a limited appeal to a smaller proportion of the populace. Culture theory proposes that both high ...
. In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies.
Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy
Anarchy is a society without a government. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. ''Anarchy'' was first used in English in 1539, meaning "an absence of government". Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted ...
; other Europeans, following philosophers
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influent ...
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest" ...
's theory of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
and Lewis Henry Morgan
Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evol ...
's theory of cultural evolution
Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation a ...
. Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects.
Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the refinement and sophistication
Sophistication has come to mean a few things, but its original uses were a pejorative, derived from sophist, and included the idea of admixture or adulteration. Today, as researched by Faye Hammill, it is common as a measure of refinement—disp ...
of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
(as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
as "noble savage
A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of the indigene, outsider, wild human, an "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. Besides appearing in man ...
s" living authentic
Authenticity or authentic may refer to:
* Authentication, the act of confirming the truth of an attribute
Arts and entertainment
* Authenticity in art, ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic
Music
* A ...
and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly stratified capitalist
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...
systems of the West
West is a cardinal direction or compass point.
West or The West may also refer to:
Geography and locations
Global context
* The Western world
* Western culture and Western civilization in general
* The Western Bloc, countries allied with NATO ...
.
In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 18322 January 1917) was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology.
Tylor's ideas typify 19th-century cultural evolutionism. In his works ''Primitive Culture'' (1871) and ''Anthropology'' (1 ...
(1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion
The evolutionary origin of religion and religious behavior is a field of study related to evolutionary psychology, the origin of language and mythology, and cross-cultural comparison of the anthropology of religion. Some subjects of interes ...
. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
societies. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of religion.
Anthropology
Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experience
Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience involv ...
s symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
ically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology
Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a scientific discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly from an e ...
, linguistic anthropology
Linguistic anthropology is the Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past cen ...
, cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
, and in the United States and Canada, archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
. The term , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas
Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
, refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that , which allow a person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately."
Sociology
The sociology of culture
The sociology of culture, and the related cultural sociology, concerns the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by a member of a society, as it is manifested in the society. For Georg Simmel, ...
concerns culture as manifested in society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...
. For sociologist Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.
Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach l ...
(1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation and ...
field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture
Culture consists of both material culture and non-material culture. Thoughts or ideas that make up a culture are called the non-material culture. In contrast to material culture, non-material culture does not include any physical objects or artifac ...
or material culture
Material culture is the aspect of social reality grounded in the objects and architecture that surround people. It includes the usage, consumption, creation, and trade of objects as well as the behaviors, norms, and rituals that the objects creat ...
. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present.
Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a Constitutional republic, constitutional federal republic for the first time in ...
(1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber
Alfred Weber (; 30 July 1868 – 2 May 1958) was a German economist, geographer, sociologist and theoretician of culture whose work was influential in the development of modern economic geography.
Life
Alfred Weber, younger brother of the ...
used the term ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn
The cultural turn is a movement beginning in the early 1970s among scholars in the humanities and social sciences to make culture the focus of contemporary debates; it also describes a shift in emphasis toward ''meaning'' and away from a positiv ...
of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis
As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representatio ...
and critical theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...
. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...
and social network analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) a ...
. As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the r ...
and cognitive science.
Early researchers and development of cultural sociology
The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
, Émile Durkheim, Durkheim, and Max Weber, Weber) with the growing discipline of anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.
Cultural studies
In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
such as Stuart Hall (cultural theorist), Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
. Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production.
In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall (cultural theorist), Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western culture, Western civilization or globalism.
From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis (cultural theorist), Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, Media influence, media theory, film theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...
, philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, museum studies, and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. Cultural studies is concerned with the Value (personal and cultural), meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on a historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice.
In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language, but also films, photography, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture
High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society cons ...
(the culture of ruling
Rule or ruling may refer to:
Education
* Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia
Human activity
* The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power
* Business rule, a rule perta ...
social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
s) and popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies.
Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later that of Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, Left-wing politics, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
as "capitalist" mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy.
In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralism, structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of Value (personal and cultural), meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power (social and political), power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, the mode of production, mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences base and superstructure, superstructures, such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book ''Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman'' (by Paul du Gay ''et al.''), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.
Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups:
# The first group covers the variables that represent the "efficiency orientation" of the societies: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance.
# The second covers the variables that represent the "social orientation" of societies, i.e., the attitudes and lifestyles of their members. These variables include gender egalitarianism, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, and human orientation.
In 2016, a new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud
Rein Raud (born 21 December 1961) is an Estonian scholar and author.
Early life
He was born in 1961 in the family of Eno Raud and Aino Pervik, both children's authors. He is the eldest of three children. His younger brother Mihkel Raud is a ...
, who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with the tradition of textual theory.
Psychology
Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture, and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's Big Five personality traits and culture, personalities across cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive Norms (sociology), norms, culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in a culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation.
Protection of culture
There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of culture and cultural heritage. UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation.
Basically, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of Cultural Diversity deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on the other.
The protection of culture and cultural goods is increasingly taking up a large area nationally and internationally. Under international law, the UN and UNESCO try to set up and enforce rules for this. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in the event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality.
Another important issue today is the impact of tourism on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society.
See also
* Animal culture
* Anthropology
* Cultural area
* Cultural studies
* Cultural tourism
* Culture 21 – United Nations plan of action
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* Outline of culture
* Recombinant culture
* Semiotics of culture
References
Further reading
Books
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* "Adolf Bastian"
Encyclopædia Britannica Online
January 27, 2009
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* Arnold, Matthew. 1869
New York City, New York: Macmillan Publishers (United States), Macmillan. Third edition, 1882, available online. Retrieved: 2006-06-28.
* Bakhtin, M.M. (1981)
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
'. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Press. .
* Barzilai, Gad. 2003. ''Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities'' University of Michigan Press.
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* Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. ''Outline of a Theory of Practice.'' Cambridge University Press.
* Michael C. Carhart, ''The Science of Culture in Enlightenment Germany'', Cambridge, Harvard University Press, Harvard University press, 2007.
* Cohen, Anthony P. 1985. ''The Symbolic Construction of Community.'' Routledge: New York,
* Dawkins, R. 1982. ''The Extended Phenotype, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene.'' Paperback ed., 1999. Oxford Paperbacks.
* Findley & Rothney. ''Twentieth-Century World'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1986)
* Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ''The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays''. New York. .
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* Goodall, J. 1986. ''The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
* Hoult, T.F., ed. 1969. ''Dictionary of Modern Sociology''. Totowa, New Jersey, United States: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
* Jary, D. and J. Jary. 1991. ''The HarperCollins Dictionary of Sociology.'' New York: HarperCollins.
* Keiser, R. Lincoln 1969. ''The Vice Lords: Warriors of the Streets''. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. .
* Kroeber, A.L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. ''Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum
* Kim, Uichol (2001). "Culture, science and indigenous psychologies: An integrated analysis." In D. Matsumoto (Ed.), ''Handbook of culture and psychology.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press
* McClenon, James. "Tylor, Edward B(urnett)". ''Encyclopedia of Religion and Society''. Ed. William Swatos and Peter Kivisto. Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 1998. 528–29.
* Middleton, R. 1990. ''Studying Popular Music''. Philadelphia: Open University Press. .
* O'Neil, D. 2006
Cultural Anthropology Tutorials
, Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California. Retrieved: 2006-07-10.
* Ronald Reagan, Reagan, Ronald
"Final Radio Address to the Nation"
, January 14, 1989. Retrieved June 3, 2006.
* Reese, W.L. 1980. ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought.'' New Jersey U.S., Sussex, U.K: Humanities Press.
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* UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
. 2002
Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity
issued on International Mother Language Day, February 21, 2002. Retrieved: 2006-06-23.
* White, L. 1949. ''The Science of Culture: A study of man and civilization.'' New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Wilson, Edward O. (1998). ''Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.'' Vintage: New York. .
* Wolfram, Stephen. 2002
A New Kind of Science
'' Wolfram Media, Inc. .
Articles
The Meaning of "Culture"
(2014-12-27), Joshua Rothman, ''The New Yorker''
External links
''Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology''
{{Authority control
Culture,
Social concepts
Social constructionism
Main topic articles