What Is Culture?
Culture is the shared beliefs, values, arts, customs, laws, abilities, traditions, habits, and behaviors of a group of people. This includes everything from language, music, food and clothing to myths and rites, art, architecture, and religion. It also refers to the overall attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices of a culture, from magical beliefs to gender roles, racial hierarchy, and more.
Often, when someone says they are part of a culture, they mean that they follow the rules and practices of that group in the way that members have always done so. This is sometimes referred to as the “envelope of tradition,” and it can be an important part of identity. This definition is common among anthropologists, who are experts in the study of cultures.
There are many ways to approach the question of what defines a culture, and this has led to controversy and disagreement. One common view is that a culture’s key characteristics are its values, and these can be either imponderable or measurable. These can be things like a shared belief in the afterlife, or a particular philosophy of life, or a set of moral standards (for example, that all human life is equal).
Other researchers take a more empirical approach to the question, looking at the actual practices of a culture to determine what it is. This may include examining how that culture organizes its community or how it treats its sick and elderly, for instance. The result of this is that cultures can be seen to have a certain “shape” or “form,” and the key questions about them are what these forms are and how they came to be.
As the discipline of cultural history has developed, so has the underlying methodology. It is no longer a narrow and exclusive branch of anthropology, and now draws on methodologies from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, history, economics, and even psychology. It also takes into account that what is a culture for the members of a group can change over time, and this is what the discipline seeks to understand.
It is sometimes claimed that cultural history can offer insight into the future, by identifying trends in behavior and social patterns. However, this claim has been contested as overstated, and it is more useful to see cultural history as providing an important window into the past.
The debate about what cultural history is has gone on for centuries, and it will probably continue into the future. This is partly because the concept is so elusive, and partly because there are different perspectives on what it should cover. Early conceptions of cultural history were criticized for being essentialist, and later attempts have sought to reformulate the concept in ways that avoid this criticism. The best example of this is the work of John H. Bodley, who has offered a baseline definition of culture that is inclusive and relativistic. This approach may prove to be a good starting point for the discussion of cultural history in the 21st century.
Culture is the shared beliefs, values, arts, customs, laws, abilities, traditions, habits, and behaviors of a group of people. This includes everything from language, music, food and clothing to myths and rites, art, architecture, and religion. It also refers to the overall attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices of a culture, from magical beliefs to gender roles, racial hierarchy, and more. Often, when someone says they are part of a culture, they mean that they follow the rules and practices of that group in the way that members have always done so. This is sometimes referred to as the “envelope of tradition,” and it can be an important part of identity. This definition is common among anthropologists, who are experts in the study of cultures. There are many ways to approach the question of what defines a culture, and this has led to controversy and disagreement. One common view is that a culture’s key characteristics are its values, and these can be either imponderable or measurable. These can be things like a shared belief in the afterlife, or a particular philosophy of life, or a set of moral standards (for example, that all human life is equal). Other researchers take a more empirical approach to the question, looking at the actual practices of a culture to determine what it is. This may include examining how that culture organizes its community or how it treats its sick and elderly, for instance. The result of this is that cultures can be seen to have a certain “shape” or “form,” and the key questions about them are what these forms are and how they came to be. As the discipline of cultural history has developed, so has the underlying methodology. It is no longer a narrow and exclusive branch of anthropology, and now draws on methodologies from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, history, economics, and even psychology. It also takes into account that what is a culture for the members of a group can change over time, and this is what the discipline seeks to understand. It is sometimes claimed that cultural history can offer insight into the future, by identifying trends in behavior and social patterns. However, this claim has been contested as overstated, and it is more useful to see cultural history as providing an important window into the past. The debate about what cultural history is has gone on for centuries, and it will probably continue into the future. This is partly because the concept is so elusive, and partly because there are different perspectives on what it should cover. Early conceptions of cultural history were criticized for being essentialist, and later attempts have sought to reformulate the concept in ways that avoid this criticism. The best example of this is the work of John H. Bodley, who has offered a baseline definition of culture that is inclusive and relativistic. This approach may prove to be a good starting point for the discussion of cultural history in the 21st century.