WHAT IS CULTURE?

CULTURE is a key concept in anthropology. The term is now widely adopted by other social sciences and humanities. Despite its common usage in everyday reference the term “culture” as employed in anthropology does have a more specific meaning.

CULTURE has been defined in various ways but most anthropologists would agree on the following definition:

CULTURE is the customary behavior, beliefs, values and ideals that are passed on through the generations among members of a social group. Culture can be thought of as the total life way of a group encompassing its symbolic beliefs.

The key ideas within the concept of culture are:

1) that culture is shared among a group.

2) that culture is learned by members of a social group not genetically inherited. The process of learning one’s culture is termed “enculturation”.

3) that culture is integrated, i. e 3) that culture is integrated, i.e. change in one aspect of a culture can bring change to other parts.

4) that culture is adaptive, its ways changing in response to new circumstances and new influences. Within any culture there is more or less room for diversity and dissention.

In anthropology we are interested in studying cultural behavior and beliefs, i.e. we are interested in what people do and why they do it; what people say and why they say it.

What we are NOT interested in doing is judging other people’s culture by our own cultural standards.

To judge others’ culture by our own standards would be termed “ethnocentric”.

We define ethnocentrism as the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior and apply one’s own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people from other cultures.