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Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,")Harper, Douglas (2001). Online Etymology Dictionary. generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another"Findley, Carther Vaughn and John Alexander Rothney (2006). Twentieth-century World. Sixth edition, p. 14. ISBN 978-0618522637. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. [Site] culture: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com Culture is manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater and film and similar things.Raymond Williams (1976) A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Rev. Ed. (NewYork: Oxford UP, 1983), pp. 87-93 and 236-8. Although some people identify culture in terms of consumption and consumer goods (as in high culture, low culture, folk culture, or popular culture),John Berger, Peter Smith Pub. Inc., (1971) Ways of Seeing anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them, culture thus includes art, science, as well as moral systems. [News] Taliban storm Afghan culture ministry, kill 5 Cultural Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity and activities to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of humans. (although some primatologists have identified aspects of culture among humankind's closest relatives in the animal kingdom).Goodall, J. 1986. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior.. Painting of Persian women musicians from Hasht-Behesht Palace ("Palace of the 8 heavens.")]] art.]] [Image]
Defining "culture"Culture can be defined as all the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed down from generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society."Williams, Raymond. Keywords, "Culture" As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior such as law and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.[Video] The Ukrainians I Various definitions of culture reflect differing theories for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. Writing from the perspective of social anthropology in the UK, Tylor in 1874 described culture in the following way: "Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."Tylor, E.B. 1874. Primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom. [Auction] INVERTED TISSUE CULTURE TRINOCULAR MICROSCOPE 40X-800X More recently, the United Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) (2002) described culture as follows: "... culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs".UNESCO. 2002. [1] Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. [Post] 4.2 Contacts with Greek culture While these two definitions cover a range of meaning, they do not exhaust the many uses of the term "culture." In 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. [Book] Leading in a Culture of Change Jossey-Bass These definitions, and many others, provide a catalog of the elements of culture. The items cataloged (e.g., a law, a stone tool, a marriage) each have an existence and life-line of their own. They come into space-time at one set of coordinates and go out of it another. While here, they change, so that one may speak of the evolution of the law or the tool. [Site] Human Culture: What is Culture? A culture, then, is by definition at least, a set of cultural objects. Anthropologist Leslie White asked: "What sort of objects are they? Are they physical objects? Mental objects? Both? Metaphors? Symbols? Reifications?" In Science of Culture (1949), he concluded that they are objects "sui generis"; that is, of their own kind. In trying to define that kind, he hit upon a previously unrealized aspect of symbolization, which he called "the symbolate"—an object created by the act of symbolization. He thus defined culture as "symbolates understood in an extra-somatic context."White, L. 1949. The Science of Culture: A study of man and civilization. The key to this definition is the discovery of the symbolate. [News] Taliban storm Afghan culture ministry, kill 5 Seeking to provide a practical definition, social theorist, Peter Walters, describes culture simply as "shared schematic experience", including, but not limited to, any of the various qualifiers (linguistic, artistic, religious, etc.) included in previous definitions. [Image]
Culture as civilizationMany people have an idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This notion of culture reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts it with "nature." According to this way of thinking, one can classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Some cultural theorists have thus tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists such as Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavisites regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world”Arnold, Matthew. 1869. Culture and Anarchy. Arnold contrasted mass/popular culture with social chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "... culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world".[Video] El Greco - Vangelis In practice, culture referred to élite activities such as museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. These are often called "high culture", namely the culture of the ruling social group,Bakhtin 1981, p.4 to distinguish them from mass culture or popular culture. [Auction] 11-12mm salt water culture white baroque pearl neckl From the 19th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between the highest and lowest culture, but have stressed the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays Indigenous peoples as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West. [Post] Case Western Reserve junior studies American corporate culture at ... Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) -- simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way. [Book] Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide NYU Press
Culture as worldviewDuring the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements — such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire — developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview." In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures.[Site] culture definition | Dictionary.com By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures — an approach that either exemplified a form of, or segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance. [News] As an old pop culture friend goes, two others return In the 1950s, subcultures — groups with distinctive characteristics within a larger culture — began to be the subject of study by sociologists. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture — distinct and malleable within the context of an employing organization or a workplace. [Image]
Culture as symbolsartist Chen Hongshou (1598–1652). The Chinese viewed painting as a key element of high culture.]]The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings.Cohen, A. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematics to the practices of a group."Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Thus, for example:[Video] bmw arts car 850ci painted and clearcoated
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Culture as a stabilizing mechanismModern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Stephen Wolfram's A new kind of science on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the concept of culture as an operating mechanism in can be developed on Friday,* Wolfram, S., A New Kind of Science. and Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype for discussion of genetic and memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms.Dawkins, R. 1982. The Extended Phenotype[Post] The Culture of Character
Culture and evolutionary psychologyResearchers in evolutionary psychology argue that the mind is a system of neurocognitive information processing modules designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems of our distant ancestors. According to evolutionary psychologists, the diversity of forms that human cultures take are constrained (indeed, made possible) by innate information processing mechanisms underlying our behavior, including:[Book] Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions Productivity Press
[Site] What Is Culture? These mechanisms are theorized to be the psychological foundations of culture. In order to fully understand culture we must understand its biological conditions of possibility. [News] Taliban storm Afghan culture ministry, kill 5
Cultures within a societyLarge societies often have subcultures, or groups of people with distinct sets of behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a part. The subculture may be distinctive because of the age of its members, or by their race, ethnicity, class or gender. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be aesthetic, religious, occupational, political, sexual or a combination of these factors.[Image] In dealing with immigrant groups and their cultures, there are essentially four approaches:
[Video] York UK Come Take a Look. The way nation states treat immigrant cultures rarely falls neatly into one or another of the above approaches. The degree of difference with the host culture (i.e., "foreignness"), the number of immigrants, attitudes of the resident population, the type of government policies that are enacted and the effectiveness of those policies all make it difficult to generalize about the effects. Similarly with other subcultures within a society, attitudes of the mainstream population and communications between various cultural groups play a major role in determining outcomes. The study of cultures within a society is complex and research must take into account a myriad of variables. [Auction] Hongshan Culture Nephrite Wealth tiger pendant
Cultures by regionMany regional cultures have been influenced by contact with others, such as by colonization, trade, migration, mass media and religion.[Post] Build your culture with free audio - Jon8cr
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[News] Culture Card for Dutch pupils Hinduism and Islam have for hundreds of years exerted cultural influence on various peoples of South Asia. Similarly, Buddhism is pervasive in Southeast Asia. Another monotheistic religion is Sikhism. Sikhism is found in South Asia. [Image]
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[Post] Bushwick Culture Weekend Picks 10/30/08 The Middle East generally has three dominant and clear cultures, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, which have influenced each other with varying degrees during different times. The region is predominantly Muslim although significant minorities of Christians and smaller minorities of other religions exist. Arabic culture has deeply influenced the Persian and Turkish cultures through Islam; influencing their languages, writing systems, art, architecture and literature as well as in other areas. The proximity of Iran has influenced the regions closer to it such as Iraq and Turkey, traces of language can be found in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti dialects of Arabic as well as the Turkish language. The 500 years of Ottoman rule over most of the Middle East has had a heavy influence over the Arabic culture, this may spread as far as Algeria but can be found to a heavier degree in Egypt, Iraq and the Levant. [Site] Culture definition
Belief systemsReligion and other belief systems are often integral to a culture. Religion, from the Latin religare, meaning "to bind fast", is a feature of cultures throughout human history. The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion defines religion in the following way:[News] Group helps keep Italian culture alive in S. Jersey ... an institution with a recognized body of communicants who gather together regularly for worship, and accept a set of doctrines offering some means of relating the individual to what is taken to be the ultimate nature of reality.Reese, W.L. 1980. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought, page 488. [Image] Religion often codifies behavior, such as with the 10 Commandments of Christianity or the five precepts of Buddhism. Sometimes it is involved with government, as in a theocracy. It also influences arts. [Video] The reinstallation of the Aksum Obelisk Eurocentric custom to some extent divides humanity into Western and non-Western cultures, although this has some flaws. [Auction] Chinese Culture jade Wealth Fish pendant Western culture spread from Europe most strongly to Australia, Canada, and the United States. It is influenced by ancient Greece, ancient Rome and Christianity. [Post] La Dolce Vita: the new Italian language and culture course for ... Western culture tends to be more individualistic than non-Western cultures. It also sees man, god, and nature or the universe more separately than non-Western cultures. It is marked by economic wealth, literacy, and technological advancement, although these traits are not exclusive to it. [Book] Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way McGraw-Hill
Abrahamic religionsJudaism is one of the first, recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. The values and history of the Jewish people are a major part of the foundation of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity, Islam, as well as the Bahá'í Faith. However, while sharing a heritage from Abraham each has distinct arts (visual and performance arts and the like.) Of course some of these are regional influences among the nations the religions are present in, but there are some norms or forms of cultural expression distinctly emphasized by the religions.[Site] culture - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary Christianity was the dominant feature in shaping European and the New World cultures for at least the last 500 to 1700 years. Modern philosophical thought has very much been influenced by Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus and Christian Cathedrals have been noted as architectural wonders like Notre Dame de Paris, Wells Cathedral and Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral. [News] Louisiana culture in focus at forum Islam's influence has dominated much of the North African, Middle and Far East regions for almost 1500 years, sometimes mixed with other religions. For example Islam's influence can be seen in diverse philosophies such as Ibn Bajjah, Ibn Tufail, Ibn Khaldun and Averroes as well as poetic stories and literature like Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, The Madman of Layla, The Conference of the Birds and the Masnavi in addition to art and architecture such as the Umayyad Mosque, Dome of the Rock, Faisal Mosque, and the many styles of Arabesque. Judaism and the Bahá'í faiths are usually minority religions among the nations but still have made distinctive contributions to the cultures of the nations and regions. [Image] The mainstream anthropological view of ‘culture’ implies that most people experience a strong resistance when reminded that there is an animal as well as a spiritual aspect to human nature.Jonathan Benthall Animal liberation and rights Anthropology Today Volume 23 Issue 2 Page 1 - April 2007 [Video] Cultural Academy 2007/8
Eastern religion and philosophy, Hindu fire god.]]Philosophy and religion are often closely interwoven in Eastern thought. Many Asian religious and philosophical traditions originated in India and China and spread across Asia through cultural diffusion and the migration of peoples. Hinduism is the wellspring of Buddhism, the Mahāyāna branch of which spread north and eastwards from India into Tibet, China, Mongolia, Japan and Korea and south from China into Vietnam. Theravāda Buddhism spread throughout Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, parts of southwest China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand.[Auction] Hongshan Culture Nephrite diploid pendant Indian philosophy includes Hindu philosophy. Both contain elements of nonmaterial pursuits, whereas another school of thought from India, Cārvāka, preached the enjoyment of material world. Confucianism and Taoism, both of which originated in China have had pervasive influence on both religious and philosophical traditions, as well as statecraft and the arts throughout Asia. Sikhism, founded in India during the 16th and 17th centuries, is a monotheistic religion with a belief in one, universal, non-anthropomorphic God. [Post] Techno Perfection: Teens Need to Be Perma-Hot During the 20th century, in the two most populous countries of Asia, two dramatically different political philosophies took shape. Gandhi gave a new meaning to Ahimsa, a core belief of both Hinduism and Jainism, and redefined the concepts of nonviolence and nonresistance far beyond the confines of India. During the same period, Mao Zedong’s communist philosophy became a powerful secular belief system in China. Increasingly Christianity is gaining a foothold in Chinese culture, developing heretofore unforeseen changes in both Christianity and Chinese culture. [Book] Christ and Culture Revisited Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Folk religionsFolk religions practiced by tribal groups are common in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Their influence can be considerable; may pervade the culture and even become the state religion, as with Shintō. Like the other major religions, folk religion answers human needs for reassurance in times of trouble, healing, averting misfortune and providing rituals that address the major passages and transitions in human life.[Site] Introduction to Sociology/Culture - Wikibooks, collection of open ...
The "American Dream"The American Dream is a belief, held by many in the United States, that through hard work, courage, and self-determination, regardless of social class, a person can gain a better life.Boritt, Gabor S. Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, p. 1. This notion is rooted in the belief that the United States is a "city upon a hill, a light unto the nations,"Ronald Reagan. "Final Radio Address to the Nation". which were values held by many early European settlers and maintained by subsequent generations.[News] Arts & Culture Wall of Fame inducts six more Saturday This concept is mirrored in other cultures, such as in the case of the Great Australian Dream, although this refers more closely to home ownership by the same means. [Image]
MarriageReligion often influences marriage and practices.[Video] khaled Marriage occurs in most cultures, though specific customs vary widely. Marriage is difficult to define cross-culturally because cultures define family, love, parenthood, gender roles, etc., differently. Cross-culturally, one's motivation to get married and expectations of it, therefore, vary widely. In some cultures, marriages are conducted very much like business transactions, in others they are deeply sentimental. [Auction] Chinese Culture Nephrite Wealth bead
Cultural studiesCultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture".[Post] Philadelphia: Philly Announces World Series Victory Parade Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity. [Book] Culture Warrior Broadway Currently, a debate is underway regarding whether or not culture can actually change fundamental human cognition. Researchers are divided on the question.
Cultural change"natives" opposing the arrival of Captain James Cook" in 1770.]][News] Solar Culture bill will include Parts & Labor Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change, depending on culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures. One gender might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century in western cultures. Thus there are both dynamic influences that encourage acceptance of new things, and conservative forces that resist change. [Image] Three kinds of influence cause both change and resistance to it:
[Video] The Culture of Me-Cristina Frias/Post-produced by L.Bondani Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models. Environmental conditions and contact with other societies may enter as factors, spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics . [Auction] Hongshan Culture Nephriteluck dragon pendant Contact between societies produce different types of changes in those societies. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct Borrowing" on the other hand tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. [Post] Defiance: Endorsing A Candidate Is Now Your Only Job, America Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such has happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period", driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture change is complex and has far-ranging effects. Sociologists and anthropologists believe that a holistic approach to the study of cultures and their environments is needed to understand all of the various aspects of change. Human existence may best be looked at as a "multifaceted whole." Only from this vantage can one grasp the realities of culture change. [News] Taliban storm Afghan culture ministry, kill 5
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