What is Culture?
Anthropologists and sociologists define culture as “Ways of Living “, built up by a group of human beings, which are transmitted from one generation to another. A culture acts out its ways of living in the context of social institutions, including family, educational, religious, governmental, and business institutions. Culture includes both conscious and unconscious values, ideas, attitudes, and symbols that shape human behaviour and that are transmitted from one generation to the next. In this sense, culture does not include one-time solutions to unique problems, or passing fads and styles. As defined by organizational anthropologist Geert Hofstede, culture is “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one category of people from those of another”.
In addition to agreeing that culture is learned, not innate, most anthropologists share two additional views. First, all faces of culture are interrelated: Influence or change one aspect of a culture and everything else is affected. Second, because it is shared by the members of a group, culture defines the boundaries between different groups.
Characteristics of Culture
- Culture is prescriptive. It prescribes the kinds of behavior considered acceptable in the society. The prescriptive characteristics of culture simplify a consumer’s decision-making process by limiting product choices to those, which are socially acceptable.
- Culture is socially shared. Culture, out of necessity, must be based on social interaction and creation. It cannot exist by itself. It must be shared by members of a society, thus acting to reinforce culture’s prescriptive nature.
- Culture facilitates communication. One useful function provided by culture is to facilitate communication. Culture usually imposes common habits of thought and feeling among people. Thus, within a given group culture makes it easier for people to communicate with one another. But culture may also impede communication across groups because of a lack of shared common cultural values.
- Culture is learned. Culture is not inherited genetically-it must be learned and acquired. Socialization or enculturation occurs when a person absorbs or learns the culture in which he or she is raised. In contrast, if a person learns the culture of a society other than the one in which he or she was raised, the process of acculturation occurs. The ability to learn culture makes it possible to absorb new cultural trends.
- Culture is subjective. People in different cultures often have different ideas about the same object. What is acceptable in one culture may not necessarily be so in another. In this regard, culture is both unique and arbitrary.
- Culture is enduring. Because culture is shared and passed along from generation to generation, it is relatively stable and somewhat permanent. Old habits are hard to break, and people tend to maintain its own heritage in spite of a continuously changing world. This explains why India and China, despite severe overcrowding, have a great difficulty with birth control. The Chinese view a large family as a blessing and assume that children will take care of parents when growth old.
- Culture is cumulative. Culture is based on hundreds or even thousands of years of accumulated circumstances. Each generation adds something of its own to the culture before passing the heritage on to the next generation.
- Culture is dynamic. Culture is passed along from generation to generation, but one should not assume that culture is static and immune to change. Far from being the case, culture is constantly changing-it adapts itself to new situations and new sources of knowledge.
Source: Docstoc.com
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