The Concept of Culture - Essay Example

Concept of “Culture” “Culture” emerged from the Latin word colere which means “to cultivate” but it is a term which has range of meanings (William 2008, p.16) and is understood in different contexts by various theorists and learned men. As for instance, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn in 1952 listed 164 definitions of culture in their work Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, culture for the people all over the world is the way of expressing their collective tastes, fine art, religion, beliefs, behavior, and their shared attitudes, values, aims and practices (Reagan 2008, p. 29) In the year 1983, Raymond Williams propounded that “culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in English language” (Sewell 2008, p. 42) and intricacy and complexity associated with the word has not been reduced since then. But William Sewell (2008, p. 42) goes on to explain that culture is that part of the social life that needs to be separated from the actual human existence constituting economics, biology or politics. The concept culture has itself intrigued our lives and is the most crucial component of human existence yet its constituting elements are different for the people living in the different areas of the world. We are all identified and recognized by our culture we have adopted while living in our own family, society and even our country. Mathew Arnold, the nineteenth century poet and essayist, used the term culture to speak about as model of individual human refinement as he opined that culture means, “the best that has been thought and said in the world” (1999, p. 190). This conceptual analysis of this culture is quite similar to the German concept of the term bildung (Arnold 1999, p. 190). In other words it is an attempt to achieve total precision and a way of knowing others on the matters which are of deep concern to us. Yet the word itself is shrouded in the most debacle position as different propounders, anthropologists and even socialists are explaining the term in different contexts. They go on to the extent of explaining culture as a part of a science as it is associated with the human evolution, while others suggest that it germinates in the minds of the individuals who are more and more linked to their ancestral roots. Cultural socialists felt the necessity to show that culture has an impact on the upbringing of the children and to gain their identity and recognition in the society. This allowed many to formulate the culture as assortment of different items whose impact on the behavior can be scrupulously compared to that of standard sociological variables like class, gender, ethnicity, economic interest and level of education (Sewell 2008, p. 45). It was thus assumed that culture as a system of symbols and meanings defined by Weberian, Parsonian and Durkheimian as ambiguous rather metaphorically it’s a collection of tools understood as a way of carrying out combined activities in the society (Sewell 2008, p. 45). In the United Kingdom, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams and other scholars as well as sociologists greatly influenced by Marxism formed cultural studies, and connected the culture with consumer goods and services and leisure activities like music, film, art, food, sports etc. It is the various means of production that determine the class relations and how the goods and services are consumed by the large number of people. The term “cultural studies” was first coined in 1964 by Richard Hoggart when Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was founded by him in Birmingham. Since then it has been associated with Stuart Hall as he became the next director after Hoggart (Munt 2000, p.4). In United States of America, the terms culture and cultural studies connote the study of the popular culture (Munt 2000, p. 6), in other words, it is the way people feel themselves associated and share voices and ideas and about the things we make use of in the daily life. Today what constitutes culture is the way we live, eat, wear, behave in the society, perform religious rituals and celebrate festivals. In this context, culture is defined in two broad spectrums with the one constituting ‘material’ and the other ‘non-material’ (Perry & Perry 2010, p. 58). The material constitutes each and everything we use to fulfill our tasks, in other words, these are of our daily use and means of production (Perry & Perry 2010, p. 58). Let us take an example of the people who have agriculture as their main occupation to understand how these things become the part of our culture. Among the farming communities, farmers use different products in their respective regions like in the hilly regions, they make use of hoes for farming while in the plains ploughs are used. The main cause behind this difference is the variation in climate and environment. It is an expression of man with their environment that makes their culture. As the environment varies from place to place so is the culture of the people. Another example we can take of our clothes, particularly warm clothes made of animal skin are worn by people surviving in colder areas in contrast to the people of warmer areas. People are generally recognized by the clothes they wear in their respective areas and this has become the part of their culture. Attitudes, values, norms and beliefs people share with each other in their respective societies constitutes the ‘non material’ component of culture (Perry & Perry 2010, p. 58) as for instance Muslims observe fast for complete one month (known as the month of Ramadan) whereby they eat food only once in a day in the evening after seeing moon (Porterfield 2009, 21). Though it is their religious belief yet this ritual is also a part of their culture. Similarly many Christians believe in offering prayers in the church every Sunday. It is their faith in the God and their religious fervor that makes them go to the church but in reality this attitude is absorbed in their culture. Similarly food related beliefs and restrictions are different in different regions. In some societies, people are not allowed to eat non vegetarian food while in many cultures it is very popular. Values too shared by the people become the part of their culture. In many societies, still kingship prevails while many nations are favoring democracy proving the intensity of such beliefs as the most prodigious part of their culture. However time is a proof in itself that culture never remains stable though its outer layers remain fresh forever. But its inner components keep on changing with the change in the time. Culture is no doubt a changing process making it the most vibrant part of our lives. The best example of this we can give of is our living styles and eating habits. Our living styles are continuously changing with new innovations and scientific inventions. As and as technology is improving, we can see our lives getting easier and faster even more. Though the term “culture” was conceptualized later by theorists and sociologists yet it had been a part of the human lives since the day they began hunting for food in the forests and started burning wood to keep them warm. Hunting practices that they adopted, and religious rituals they performed to keep themselves secure and safe were very well their culture indeed. Slowly when human beings began to get civilized, the concept of culture too began to change. Culture now is just not the part of our lives but it has become a way of our life as now we are identified by the contents we follow be it through our religion, art, clothes, eating habits or behavior or values. However still for many anthropologists, sociologists, theorists, writers, economists and even scientists, culture has their own meaning. We can say that the term “culture” takes in its paradigm the depths of the seas and vastness of the ocean as and more and more we try to understand this term more and more we are perplexed by its diversity and its variedness. Reference list Arnold, M 1993, Culture and anarchy and other writings, 1st edn, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. Kroeber, AL & Kluckhohn, C 1952, Culture: a critical review of concepts and definitions, Vintage Books, New York. Munt, SR, 2000 Cultural studies and the working class: subject to change, 1st edn, Cassell, New York, NY. Perry, J & Perry, E 2010, Contemporary society: an introduction to social science, 12th edn, Dorling Kindersley, New Delhi. Porterfield, J, 2009, Islamic Customs and Culture, 1st edn, The Rosen Publishing Group, New York, NY. Sewell, W 2008 ‘The concepts of culture’ in T Oakes & PL Price (eds.), The cultural geography reader, Routledge, New York, NY. Reagan, TG 2008, Non-Western educational traditions: indigenous approaches to educational thought and practice, 3rd edn, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Williams, R, 2008 “‘Culture’ from Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society, revised edition (1983)” in T Oakes & PL Price (eds.), The cultural geography reader, Routledge, New York, NY. Read More