What is Culture?
Culture is an abstract concept, but one that is central to Anthropology. As culture is difficult to define, it is not necessarily always applied properly by those outside of the field.
In the broadest sense, culture is the collected customs, arts, social institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people, or society. Culture has become the central concept of American anthropology where is refers to the human capacity to “classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially.”
Culture can be thought of as “the way of life for an entire society.” What is particularly fascinating about culture is that all cultures, no matter where they are located in time or place, share at least five basic characteristics: they are learned, shared, based on symbols, integrated, and dynamic. This means the Mayan culture, which is now extinct, shared each of these characteristics with present-day American culture.
Below is an outline of the characteristics of any culture:
Culture is Learned
Culture is not biological, nor is it inherited and much of learning a culture can be unconscious. The process of learning culture is known as enculturation and can come from observing and interacting with family members, peers, institutions, and media. Children learn about their native culture through their interactions with their parents, teachers, religious leaders and others. But adults can also learn to integrate into a new culture through study or immersion
Culture is Shared
It is safe to assume that humans from the same cultural group will generally learn the same culture as everyone else in that group. Therefore, they should all know how to act in socially appropriate ways and will also be able to predict how others will act and react.
Culture is Symbolic
A symbol is something that stands for something else. Symbols typically (but not always) vary cross-culturally and are arbitrary. They only have a meaning when the members of a culture agree on their use. Language is the most important symbolic component of culture – English-speaking cultures agree that a stop sign is “red” while Spanish-speaking cultures agree that it is “rojo.” Similarly, money only has value when there is an agreement that a slip of decorated paper has the same value as a certain amount of commodities.
Culture is Integrated
In any culture, the various parts are interrelated and interconnected. For example, the basis of a culture’s system of justice is often based on its overlying morals, which in turn are often derived from the culture’s dominant religion. Because of this integration, to truly understand a culture, one must learn about all of its parts, not just a few.
Culture is Dynamic
This simply means that cultures interact and change. Because most cultures are in contact with other cultures, they exchange ideas and symbols (i.e., many countries use a red octagon for a stop sign). All cultures change, otherwise, they would have problems adapting to changing environments. And because cultures are integrated, if one component in the system changes, it is likely that the entire system must adjust to accommodate these changes.
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