A simple definition
of culture: Learned and shared patterns of thought and behavior characteristic
of a given population, plus the material objects produced and used by that
population.
Every word in this
short definition of culture is important. For example, culture is learned.
Culture is learned not in a classroom or by reading a book (usually!) but by
experience, imitation, and informal instruction from parents and peers. All
three begin at the moment of birth. When we say that culture is learned
we are emphasizing that it is not genetically determined, not biologically
inherited.
While it is
possible to define culture simply, studying the more elaborate definitions in
the following list should help you understand this basic anthropological concept
more fully. Be sure to continue on to the sections containing Clifford Geertz's
and Raymond Williams' discussion of culture.
CLASSIC DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE
Culture is a term
used in confusing and contradictory ways. From an anthropological perspective,
there can be no youth culture or media culture. Here are some definitions of
the term which reflect how it is used in this course.
"Culture
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. The conditions of culture among
the various societies of mankind in so far as it is capable of being
investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of
human thought and action" (Edward Burnett Tylor).
Culture is "an
historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of
inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes
towards life" (Clifford Geertz).
"A society's
culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to
operate in a manner acceptable to its members" (Ward Goodenough).
Culture consists of
"learned systems of meaning, communicated by means of natural language and
other symbol systems, having representational, directive, and affective
functions, and capable of creating cultural entities and particular senses of
reality" (Roy D'Andrade).
Culture is "an
extrasomatic (nongenetic, nonbodily), temporal continuum of things and events
dependent upon symboling. Culture consists of tools, implements, utensils,
clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of
art, language, etc. (Leslie White).
"Culture
consists in the shared patterns of behavior and associated meanings that people
learn and participate in within the groups to which they belong" (Whitten
and Hunter).
A Definition of
Culture from Clifford Geertz in Emphasizing Interpretation (The
Interpretation of Cultures, 1973)
Clifford Geertz is
best known for his ethnographic studies of Javanese and Balinese cultures in
Indonesia and for his writings about the interpretation of culture. The most
influential aspect of Geertz's work has been his emphasis on the importance of
the symbolic -- of systems of meaning -- as it relates to culture, cultural
change, and the study of culture (see for example his "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" and idea of thick description); notice this emphasis as you read the
summaries and excerpts below.
In attempting to
lay out the various meanings attached to the word "culture," Clifford
Geertz refers to the important anthropological work, Clyde Kluckhohn's Mirror
for Man, in which the following meanings are suggested:
1. "the total
way of life of a people"
2. "the social
legacy the individual acquires from his group"
3. "a way of
thinking, feeling, and believing"
4. "an
abstraction from behavior"
5. " a theory
on the part of the anthropologist about the way in which a group of people in
fact behave""
6. a
"storehouse of pooled learning"
7. "a set of
standardized orientations to recurrent problems"
8. "learned
behavior"
9. a mechanism for
the normative regulation of behavior
10. "a set of
techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other
men"
11. "a precipitate
of history"
12. a behavioral
map, sieve, or matrix
"The concept
of culture I espouse. . . is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max
Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has
spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore
not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in
search of meaning. It is explication I am after. . . . (Geertz pp. 4-5)"
Geertz compares the
methods of an anthropologist analyzing culture to those of a literary critic
analyzing a text: "sorting out the structures of signification. . . and
determining their social ground and import. . . . Doing ethnography is like
trying to read (in the sense of 'construct a reading of') a manuscript. . .
."
Once human behavior
is seen as . . . symbolic action--action which, like phonation in speech,
pigment in painting, line in writing, or sonance in music, signifies--the
question as to whether culture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even
the two somehow mixed together, loses sense. The thing to ask [of actions] is
what their import is" (Geertz pp. 9-10).
Geertz argues that
culture is "public because meaning is"--systems of meaning are
necessarily the collective property of a group. When we say we do not
understand the actions of people from a culture other than our own, we are
acknowledging our "lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe
within which their acts are signs" (Geertz pp. 12-13).
Culture is Ordinary
Raymond Williams,
Moving from High Culture to Ordinary Culture Originally published in N.
McKenzie (ed.), Convictions, 1958
"Culture is
ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its
own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in
institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding
of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and
amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing
themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is also made and
remade in every individual mind. The making of a mind is, first, the slow
learning of shapes, purposes, and meanings, so that work, observation and
communication are possible. Then, second, but equal in importance, is the
testing of these in experience, the making of new observations, comparisons,
and meanings. A culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions,
which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered
and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human
minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both
traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and
the finest individual meanings. We use the word culture in these two senses: to
mean a whole way of life--the common meanings; to mean the arts and
learning--the special processes of discovery and creative effort. Some writers
reserve the word for one or other of these senses; I insist on both, and on the
significance of their conjunction. The questions I ask about our culture are
questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society
and in every mind.
