The Concept of Culture
Cultural is a broad term that encompasses a range of ideas and practices that are unique to human society. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines culture as “the totality of the characteristics that distinguish a people or group.” It may be expressed in the physical elements of a community’s heritage, such as its cuisines, clothing and architecture. It may also be seen in the non-physical elements, such as a culture’s value systems, traditions and beliefs.
The study of cultural history relies on a number of disciplines, with the field being most strongly linked to history, sociology and anthropology. It has also become increasingly important to fields such as art history, law and economics, and is one of the most significant areas of inquiry in postmodernism.
Historically, the concept of culture was defined by ethnographers as a way to explain the differences between different societies. This view is still widely held, although a number of scholars have suggested that the concept is more nuanced than simple classifications of cultural differences allow.
The emergence of new forms of cultural history has prompted discussions that are as varied as the different approaches to it. One common feature of these new forms is that they all attempt to acknowledge the difficulty of defining what the object ‘culture’ actually is. It can be divided into two families of meanings: those which designate works and gestures that avoid economical or symbolic urgencies of daily life and are submitted to an aesthetic or intellectual judgment, and those which aim at ordinary practices through which a community, whichever community it may be, lives and thinks out its relations to the world, to others, or to itself.
Among these ordinary practices, the study of which is the objective of cultural historians, are religious rituals and rites of passage, music, food, art, and other symbols. These practices help to shape a people’s self-image and provide them with a sense of identity and belonging. They also serve as a means of achieving the ultimate goal of all cultures: to make life sustainable and secure. This is evident in the fact that some cultures are more successful than others in meeting this objective, as demonstrated by statistical differences in death rates or the broader success of certain farming methods.
The sociologist Georg Simmel interpreted the word culture in terms of social organization, and some of the earliest practitioners of the new cultural history drew upon this understanding of the subject. Others, however, have questioned this conventional relationship between knowledge and power and have used their work to rethink the role of the historian in the field of cultural history. Some of these scholars, such as the French philosopher Michel Foucault, have explored the possibility that some forms of culture are powerful forces for oppression and domination, while others are a vehicle for creativity, resistance and liberation. Other scholars, such as the Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci, have argued that culture is a tool of class domination.
Cultural is a broad term that encompasses a range of ideas and practices that are unique to human society. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines culture as “the totality of the characteristics that distinguish a people or group.” It may be expressed in the physical elements of a community’s heritage, such as its cuisines, clothing and architecture. It may also be seen in the non-physical elements, such as a culture’s value systems, traditions and beliefs. The study of cultural history relies on a number of disciplines, with the field being most strongly linked to history, sociology and anthropology. It has also become increasingly important to fields such as art history, law and economics, and is one of the most significant areas of inquiry in postmodernism. Historically, the concept of culture was defined by ethnographers as a way to explain the differences between different societies. This view is still widely held, although a number of scholars have suggested that the concept is more nuanced than simple classifications of cultural differences allow. The emergence of new forms of cultural history has prompted discussions that are as varied as the different approaches to it. One common feature of these new forms is that they all attempt to acknowledge the difficulty of defining what the object ‘culture’ actually is. It can be divided into two families of meanings: those which designate works and gestures that avoid economical or symbolic urgencies of daily life and are submitted to an aesthetic or intellectual judgment, and those which aim at ordinary practices through which a community, whichever community it may be, lives and thinks out its relations to the world, to others, or to itself. Among these ordinary practices, the study of which is the objective of cultural historians, are religious rituals and rites of passage, music, food, art, and other symbols. These practices help to shape a people’s self-image and provide them with a sense of identity and belonging. They also serve as a means of achieving the ultimate goal of all cultures: to make life sustainable and secure. This is evident in the fact that some cultures are more successful than others in meeting this objective, as demonstrated by statistical differences in death rates or the broader success of certain farming methods. The sociologist Georg Simmel interpreted the word culture in terms of social organization, and some of the earliest practitioners of the new cultural history drew upon this understanding of the subject. Others, however, have questioned this conventional relationship between knowledge and power and have used their work to rethink the role of the historian in the field of cultural history. Some of these scholars, such as the French philosopher Michel Foucault, have explored the possibility that some forms of culture are powerful forces for oppression and domination, while others are a vehicle for creativity, resistance and liberation. Other scholars, such as the Italian marxist Antonio Gramsci, have argued that culture is a tool of class domination.