DEFINING CULTURE

Sociology

How do sociologists define culture?

"The total, generally organized way of life, including values, norms, institutions, and artifacts, that is passed on from generation to generation by learning alone" -- Dictionary of Modern Sociology

"The patterned behavior resulting from social interaction" -- Francis Merill

"All the behavior and related products which men, as members of human society, acquire by means of symbolic interaction..."

"Sociocultural" "Pertaining to the social and the cultural in human life, the two terms, society and culture, being combined into one so as to call attention to the functional inseparability of these two essential aspects of human existence" -- Dictionary of Modern Sociology

"Culture stems from the development and transmission of human belief in symbols" "The language system is a series of symbols used to transmit cultural beliefs among members of a society" "Messages about cultural expectations can be found in the media, government, religious institutions, educational systems, and the like."-- Boudon et. al 1989

"That part of the total repertoire of human action (and its products), which is socially as opposed to genetically transmitted. -- Dictionary of Sociology, D. Mitchell (ed.)

"society relies on a culture that has unwritten rules and guidelines."

Members of the human species are trained in the family and in their education, formal and informal, to behave in ways that are conventional and fixed by tradition.

In some instances culture can be considered detrimental to the individual person.

What is the dominant or common culture?

"Common Culture: "A commonly shared system of symbols, the meaning of which are understood on both sides with an approximation to agreement." T. Parsons.

What is a subculture?

"A subculture may arise when an attempt is made to resolve collectively experienced problems resulting from contradictions in the social structure, and they generate a form of collective identity from which an individual identity can be achieved."-- Comparative Youth Culture by M.. Brake

Sometimes they refer to 'a culture' as 'a society' which is often imprecise, since it is extremely difficult to define an entire population as having distinctive cultural characteristics. Culture may also refer to a system of values, ideas, and behaviors which may be associated with a social or national group (e.g., African American Culture). The minority cultures which lay within a larger dominant culture are often described as sub-cultures. As outlined in her book The Individual and Culture "The 'whole' culture is a composite of varying and overlapping sub-cultures." ... Anthropologists may also speak of the 'personal culture' of a single individual.

Some sociologists view culture as "fragmented and diversified" (Lane 1984). This view takes a different approach to culture in that it relies on sub-cultures to come together to form one culture. Without each of the individual cultures the whole concept of culture would be incomplete. According to Lane, "In contemporary society there is no agreement whether societies possess a dominant culture or ideology"

"Subcultures, such as teenagers, exist as cultural undercurrents in the general society which don't encroach upon the main culture, but are important to some members." (Davies, 1972)

What does culture of poverty mean?

The culture of poverty is not just a matter of deprivation or disorganization, a term signifying the absence of something. It is a culture in the traditional Anthropological sense in that it provides human beings with a design for living, with a ready-made set of solutions for human problems, and so serves a significant adaptive function" -- O. Lewis 1966 Culture of Poverty, Scientific American.

"Culture of poverty" was developed by Oscar Lewis. Fatalism is the key aspect which leads this culture to continually repeat itself. The poor learn to cope instead of finding a way out because they feel this lifestyle is inevitable.. This theory has been criticized because it "blames the victim" and neglects external influences on economic development.

What is cultural lag?

Concept developed by Wm. Ogburn to describe the uneven processes of social, cultural, and technological change. Social changes tend to "lag" behind technological change. Cultural lag "result(s) when a culture's social institutions fail to adapt their functions so as to mesh with the changes in other parts of the larger sociocultural system" --Encyclopedia of Sociology (1981)

What is culture shock?

The disruption of one's normal social perspectives (own society, subculture, membership groups) as a result of confrontation with an alien culture. Might also apply to the experience of cultural lag resulting from massive and continuing technological change. e.g., future shock

What is cultural a definition of the situation?

"...An individual's interpretation of any given set of circumstances, such interpretations generally being largely dependent upon the cultural values in terms of which the individual has been socialized." -- Henry Fairchild

Anthropology

How do Anthropologists define culture?

The anthropologist's term "culture" originated in the 19th century. The idea first appeared in the Renaissance. "recognizing that the customs, beliefs, social forms, and languages of Europe's past were different from the present. ...The second period of culture occurred when it was recognized that "contemporary men themselves in different regions of the world varied even more widely in the languages they spoke, the rituals they practiced, and the kinds of societies they lived in." -- Encyclopedia of Sociology

"Culture is a well organized unity divided into two fundamental aspects -- a body of artifacts and a system of customs -- Malinowski.

"Humans cannot eat, breathe, defecate, mate, reproduce, sit move about, sleep or lie down without following or expressing some aspect of their society's culture. Our cultures grow, expand, evolve. Its their nature." -- Marvin Harris

The culture of a people is an ensemble of texts, themselves ensembles, which the anthropologist strains to read over the shoulders of those to whom they properly belong." -Geertz, Balinese Cockfight (222)

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning." -- Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures (5).

"people do not realize how greatly culture influences their behavior until they come across other ways of doing things."

"Culture is learned behavior" A person is not born with a culture. Culture is a universal, every human being possesses it by virtue of their biological state.

"(Cultural Anthropology) is inherently pluralistic, seeking a framework in which the distinctive perspectives of each cultural world can be appreciated."

"(c)ultural practices are meaningful actions that occur routinely in everyday life, are widely shared by members of the group, and carry with them normative expectations about how things should be done" (Goodnow, Miller and Kissell, 1995)

"A collective name for all behavior patterns socially acquired and socially transmitted by means of symbols, hence a name for all the distinctive achievements of human groups." -- Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences

"Culture is or civilization... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man (sic.) as a member of society." -- Edward Tylor

"Culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the product of human activities as determined by these habits." -- Franz Boas

Sociocultural Anthropology focuses on how language, customs, and culture in general develop.

Cultural Anthropologists compare and contrast the vast range of cultures with the hope of better understanding "the diversity of human behavior, and ultimately to develop a science of human behavior." --Friedl, J. Cultural Anthropology

What is traditional (or folk) culture?

"Traditional culture is the habitual behaviors or thoughts of any given social group, and there is not only the chance of customary behaviors occurring, customary behaviors are expected and generally required by members of the society (Smith-Seymour, 1986).

Folk culture is a model of the peasant community characterized by economic self-sufficiency, intimate social ties, the strong role of ritual and tradition, and the relative isolation from urban centers. The concept of folk culture is that it represents an attempt to characterize the values and social structure of traditional, rural communities existing within complex societies.

What methods do they use to study culture?

Fieldwork: visiting and living among a particular people.

Mapping, inventories, census, behavior protocols, questionnaires, projective tests, collecting genealogies, kinship terminologies, oral traditions, recording cases, and tracing networks." (Hunter and Whitten, 1976)

In order to study these cultures, ethnographers had to become part of them. Live with the people for extended periods of time. To study different groups of people, the scientists had to become immersed in their study.

One important qualification that anthropologists should possess is a strong awareness of their own culture. Although it is necessary for Anthropologists to be as unbiased as possible, it is also necessary for Anthropologists to be aware of their cultural tendencies in order to comprehend another's culture. Therefore, absolute objectivity, which would require that the Anthropologist have no biases, and in result no culture at all, should be given up in favor of a relative objectivity based on the characteristics of one's own culture. The Anthropologist is forced to include himself and his own way of life in his subject matter. In order to study others, and to study culture in general, the Anthropologist uses his own culture.

What is material culture?

Culture involves much more than behavioral traits, it includes all produced artifacts -- tools, art, books and texts etc.

"Probably no other country in the world has such high regard for material culture as the United States"

"Cultural materialism is a type of analysis that looks at ecology and economics for explanation of cultural beliefs and practices. It tries to explain cultural habits in terms of basic needs. 'A cultural materialist view of history looks for relationships between the use of new technologies, population booms, the material improvement of life, and the collapse of civilization." (Fisher, 1986)

What is cultural diffusion? "The worldwide tendency of human populations to share and pool creative efforts which are in origin locally known and used." -- David Hunter

Humanities

"An educated man is not always a cultured man, although a cultured man is usually educated ... and that the cultured man is not merely the knowledgeable man, but the man who uses his knowledge humanely" (Ashley Montagu).

How do humanities scholars define culture?

A Thesaurus of Word Roots of the English Language describes the root of the word culture like this: cult (Latin) meaning tend, care for. Cultus meaning care cultivation. These being the roots of the word culture, care...

The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another. Culture is transmitted, through language, material objects, ritual, institutions (including schools), and art, from one generation to the next." -- Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

What is American Culture?

I. American Culture is a melting pot:

The melting pot concept of American culture was dominant for many years. As early as 1782, J. Hector St. John de Cr6vecceur, a French immigrant, wrote in his Letters from an American Firmer about the creation of a new man:

What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. (1957, p. 39)

In 1845 Ralph Waldo Emerson expanded the amalgamation of American culture beyond Anglo-Europeans:

Man is the most composite of all creatures.... Well, as in the old burning of the Temple at Corinth, by the melting and intermixture of silver and gold and other metals a new compound more precious than any, called Corinthian brass, was formed; so in this continent,--asylum of all nations,--the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Cossacks, and all the European tribes,--of the Africans, and of the Polynesians,--will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state, a new literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting-pot of the Dark Ages, or that which earlier emerged from the Pelasgic and Etruscan barbarism. La Nature aime les croisements. (pp. 115-116)

The melting pot idea also found its way into historical interpretation of the development of this country. Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 essay The Significance of the Frontier in American argued that:

The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people.... In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. The process has gone on from the early days to our own. (p. 11)

II American culture is Pluralistic:

In the early years of the twentieth century some scholars began to educate about the richness of American cultural heritage. They pushed for cultural pluralism and argued that a political democracy must also be a cultural democracy and that each ethnic culture should play a unique role in American society. In his address to the National Education Association in 1916, John Dewey noted that:

Such terms as Irish-American or Hebrew-American or Germanmerican are false terms because they seem to assume something which is already in existence called America, to which the other factor may be externally hitched on. The fact is, the genuine American, the typical American, is himself a hyphenated character. This does not mean that he is part American and that some foreign ingredient is then added. It means that, as I have said, he is international and interracial in his make-up. He is not American plus Pole or German. But the American is himself Pole-German-English-French-SpanishItalian-Greek-Irish-Scandinavian-Bohemian-jew- and so on. The point is to see to it that the hyphen connects instead of separates. And this means at least that our public schools shall teach each factor to respect every other, and shall take pains to enlighten all as to the great past contributions of every strain in our composite make-up. I wish our teaching of American history in the schools would take more account of the great waves of migration by which our land for over three centuries has been continuously built up, and make every pupil conscious of the rich breadth of our national make-up. When every pupil recognizes all the factors which have gone into our being, he will continue to prize and reverence that coming from his own past, but he will think of it as honored in being simply one factor in forming a whole, nobler, and finer than itself.

In 1924, Horace Kallen used the lerm "cultural pluralism" to summarize his point of view. He proposed a federal republic that would have:

Its substance a democracy of nationalities, cooperating voluntarily and autonomously through common institutions in the enterprise of selfrealization through the perfection of men according to their kind. The common language of the commonwealth, the language of its great tradition, would be English, but each nationality would have for its emotional and involuntary life its own peculiar dialect of speech, its own individual and inevitable esthetic and intellectual forms. The political and economic life of the commonwealth is a single unit and serves as the foundation and background for the realization of the distinctive individuality of each nation that composes it and of the pooling of these in a harmony above them all. (Kallen, 1924, p. 124)

He also used the metaphor of the symphony orchestra:

As in an orchestra every type of instrument has its specific timbre and tonality, founded in its substance and form; as every type has its appropriate theme and melody in the whole symphony, so in society, each ethnic group may be the natural instrument, its temper and culture may be its theme and melody and the harmony and dissonance and discords of them all may make the symphony of civilization. (pp. 124-125)

III American Culture is Multicultural:

Social changes in the last half of the 20th century led to concepts of multicultural education. The American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education helped refine the concept. In November 1972, the Association adopted the statement No One Model American that:

Multicultural education is education which values cultural pluralism. Multicultural education rejects the view that schools should seek to melt away cultural differences or tne view that schools should merely tolerate cultural pluralism. Instead, multicultural education affirms that schoois should be oriented toward the cultural enrichment of all children and youth through programs rooted to the preservation and extension of cultural alternatives. Multicultural education recognizes cultural diversity as a fact of life in American society, and it affirms that this cultural diversity is a valuable resource that should be preserved and extended. It affirms that major education institutions should strive to preserve and enhance cultural pluralism. (Lopez, 1979, p. 5)

Furthermore,

Colleges and universities engaged in the preparation of teachers have a central role in the positive development of our culturally pluralistic society. if cultural pluralism is to become an integral part of the educational process, teachers and personnel must be prepared in an environment where the commitment to multicultural education is evident. Evidence of this commitment includes such factors as a faculty and staff of multiethnic and multiracial character, a student body that is representative of the culturally diverse nature of the community being served, and a culturally pluralistic curriculum that accurately represents the diverse multicultural nature. of American society. (p. 6)

Over the last several decades, the concept of multicultural education has been broadened to address the concerns of many additional groups, including women, the disabled, senior citizens, gays and lesbians, and individuals with special needs (Banks & Banks, 1989). After reviewing books and articles published since the early 1970s on multicultural education for grades k-12, Christine Sleeter and Carl Grant found five approaches used in American schools:

"Teaching the Culturally Different" is an approach used to assimilate students of color into the cultural mainstream and existing social structure by offering transitional bridges within the existing school program. A "Human Relations" approach is used to help students of different backgrounds get along better and appreciate each other.

"Single Group Studies" fosters cultural pluralism by teaching courses about the experiences, contributions, and concerns of distinct ethnic, gender, and social class groups. The "Multicultural Education" approach promotes cultural pluralism and social equality by reforming the school program for all students to make it reflect diversity.... Finally, "Education That is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist" prepares students to challenge social structural inequality and to promote cultural diversity. (1987, p. 422)

"A quality of enlightenment or refinement arising from an acquaintance with and concern for what is regarded as excellence in the arts, letters, manners, etc." --Webster

The training or refining of the moral or intellectual faculties: the enlightenment and refinement acquired by such training.

"The best that has been thought and known" -- Matthew Arnold The distinction of "best" to be decided by intellectuals who are disinterested and dissociated from class interests.

It is a belief, still pre-eminently honored that a primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgement." L. Trilling, Beyond Culture, 1979.

"Man must embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, because the greatest separation feat of all is when one manages to gradually free oneself from the grip of unconscious culture." -- E.T. Hall, Beyond Culture, 1976

The Great Tradition of English education has been about personal growth and development through access to other significant forms of thought and feeling: it has been about breaking the stranglehold of the present on the mind." -- F. Musgrove. "The domesticated university" 1978

Another definition of culture often associated with art and the art world, however, does not deal with time or place, but more subtle distinctions of 'taste.' These taste cultures may be subdivided into different stratification levels, but in the most simplified model a single division line exists between high culture and popular culture.

Most promoters of high culture believe that achievements should remain valuable through a test of time.

There are critics in every field defining what is acceptable to be a cultured person. Musical criticism involves writing about the aesthetics, history and evolution of music and also reviewing musical compositions and performances.

Culture is a study of achievement and development or the higher aspects of civilization. In the humanities these include a study of achievements in the arts, architecture, music, dance, literature, history, and philosophy to name a few. Within each of these branches of study, a canon may determine which achievements are emphasized more than others.

When a person is labeled as a cultured individual, automatically the assumption is that the person is an aficionado of high culture rather than a consumer of popular culture.... Popular culture is also known as mass culture by virtue of the fact that it has many consumers. ...High culture ... is much less accessible for several reasons. First there is a lesser volume of high culture material. Second, because the general public does not demand these materials they are rarely broadcast in the mass media. Third, many high culture events require the patron's economic status to be high. Fourth, higher education is prerequisite to understanding and enjoying high art. A modern aesthetician describes art as: "an entity produced by agents with relevant skills and knowledge, having some non-functional value, and open to appreciation by suitably qualified audiences, with appreciation persisting even if related functional values are removed." --Moravcisk

High culture is formed by the most powerful and wealthy strata of society. The art of this culture is greatly inaccessible to those in the general population. Popular art is created in mass profusion but is rejected by the higher culture as shallow.

Music can support multiculturalism, as there are no clear lines as to how many cultures a person can be identified with. This popular culture advocates tolerance and appreciation among our differences. the music of each culture is "...a unique record of where each culture has been; what is valued; how it lives, feels, and communicates; and sometimes even its dream and visions for the future." --Schmidt, W. Music and the Multicultural Mandate

A world without ignorance. a world without prejudice. This is what Madonna strives for. This is what our culture is made of. Whether she is raising money for AIDS research and education, giving talk show hosts innuendos that she is a lesbian, dancing in front of burning crosses, or masturbating on stage, she tries to bring these issues into cultural acceptance. Most people would just as soon forget these issues as well as Madonna.

"Violence, brutality, sadomasochism, evil and degeneracy in general are interconnected themes attracting attention in American popular culture" (Michale Selzer)

What is the canon?

The canon is a list of authors and books that constitute our cultural heritage (Kolb). The word canon: "derives from the Greek kanon, meaning rod, measuring line, standard; the word passed through Latin canon, with the definition model or standard, then to assume its ecclesiastical character in the Middle Ages as part of the catholic Church's terminology: law, rule, doctrine; the unchangeable, central part of the mass ritual; and, finally the list of sacred books (J. Bruce-Novoa)

The works that we consider the measuring stick against which we compare and critique all others.

The canonists don't like the new scholarship, and they attack many aspects of the educational system, merging and simplifying their points of ambush. However, the politically correct view or the "new humanities" have rebelled against the literary canons, believing that a variety of representations, and not simply the great literary works of the past, must be studied in order to interpret a society's culture.

Cultural studies