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Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate")[1] may denote any one of several different, but related, concepts. It most commonly means an excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities; an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning; or the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.
In the twentieth century, culture emerged as central to the study of anthropology, where the field of cultural anthropology was established in America. In anthropology, culture came to refer to all non-genetic human phenomena. Specifically, the term was used in two senses: first, to refer to the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences symbolically, and to act imaginatively and creatively; second, it referred to distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
The idea of culture, and the impact of culture, is also relevant in many other academic fields including cultural studies, sociology, social psychology, organizational psychology, management studies, cross-cultural studies, cross-cultural psychiatry, cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, linguistics, political science, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication, cultural geography, and multicultural education. An understanding of the concept and effect of culture is also useful in many areas of ordinary community and business life.
A book published in 2006 provides a listing of over 300 definitions of culture from a wide array of disciplines.[2]
Etymology and application of the term
In 1773, Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language gave two meanings for culture:[3]
- The act of cultivation;
- Art of improvement and melioration.
In the first sense of the word, culture usually referred to the cultivation of plants or crops, as in agriculture, horticulture or the "culture of vines"[4] (a usage not discussed any further in this article).
The word culture was also used, both in the first and second senses, in connection with the art of improving the human mind, morals, or taste,[5][6] often in the context of education.[7]
In the 1870's, Edward B. Tylor, a professor of anthropology, extended and adapted the meaning of the word culture in the context of the human mind and behaviour. He introduced a "science of culture", saying that "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. The condition 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." This concept of culture is similar to some of the ordinary dictionary meanings of the word culture within society today.
During the 20th Century, culture within the field of anthropology came to refer to all non-genetic human phenomena. Specifically, the term was used in two senses: first, to refer to the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences symbolically, and to act imaginatively and creatively; second, it referred to distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
Culture as cultivation of the mind
From at least as early as the mid eighteenth century, some writers were declaring that human nature is more or less universal, and that differences are largely due to culture, in sense of improvement of the mind.[8][9] The idea of culture of the mind included that of self-improvement or self-culture[10]
In the nineteenth century, humanists such as poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, "...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."[11] He contrasted "culture" with "anarchy;" other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature. The idea of "culture" was identified with "civilization", in the sense of civilised, in contrast to barbarity, in the sense of uncivilised (although nowadays, the word civilisation most commonly refers to a more complex society. 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. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of cultural evolution. The term civilization is still often used as a synonym for the broader term "culture" in both popular and academic circles.[12] Culture also referred to an élite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine.[13] The view has been expressed that the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies.[14] But the distinction made between "high culture" and "low culture could also be seen in American publications.[15][16] In 1870 Edward Tylor (1832-1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms.[17]
Culture as a shared way of life or worldview
In nineteenth century Germany, Herder proposed a collective form of bildung: "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people."[18]
Similar, in modern common usage, "a culture" can refer to the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices of a group of people. This culture is wholly learned.
There is no necessary link between a culture, in this sense, and an ethnic group or a race, although particular groups of people of a particular race or ethnicity, may, in some circumstances, share the same culture.
Distinction between culture, ethnicity and race
An ethnic group is a group of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on a presumed or real common heritage.[19][20] Ethnic identity is further marked by the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness[21] and the recognition of common cultural, linguistic, religious, behavioral or biological traits,[19][22] real or presumed, as indicators of contrast to other groups.[23] During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany developed a more inclusive notion of "worldview." According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Ethnocentrism is a tendency for individuals will judge other groups in relation to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.[24]
There is a recognised phenomenon whereby we tend to group other people into "Them" and "Us".[25]
The term race or racial group usually refers to the categorisation of humans into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of heritable characteristics.[26] The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture), and self-identification.[26][27] Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. The controversy ultimately revolves around whether or not races are natural types or socially constructed, and the degree to which perceived differences in ability and achievement, categorized on the basis of race, are a product of inherited (i.e., genetic) traits or environmental, social and cultural factors.
Early studies of human societies and their languages
By 1846, descriptive studies of other societies from fieldwork, known as ethnography, including the language philology, were being published. A book describing these two disciplines was published in that year by Horatio Hale. From a review of that book, we can see the beginnings of concepts that came later to be conveyed by the concept of culture, although the word itself was used in the older sense. According to the reviewer, the book "is divided into two principal departments, ethnography and philology .... In the term ethnography are included the general description of the country, physical characteristics of the inhabitants, religion, mythology, cosmogonies, worship, civil polity, customs and manners, manufactures, migrations, and a variety of other minor but connected topics*. Philology includes whatever relates to mental culture, so far at least as this is connected with language. The several topics are grammar and comparative grammar, including prosody, dictionaries, and vocabularies, poetical composition, music, and the like. This arrangement is sound and rational. Ethnography forms an excellent introduction to philology ; it is a sort of basis for the intellectual superstructure."[28].
Notes
[[reflist}}
- ^ Harper, Douglas (2001). Online Etymology Dictionary
- ^ Baldwin, John R.; Faulkner, Sandra L.; Hecht, Michael L.; Lindsley, Sheryl L.; "Redefining Culture: Perspectives Across the Disciplines", 2006, Routledge, ISBN 0805842365, 9780805842364
- ^ Johnson, Samuel; "A Dictionary of the English Language", 5th Edition; 1773, W. Strahan and others; at page 15:
- ^ Today, that sense is also used for the culturing of micro-organisms.
- ^ Duncan, William; 'The Elements of Logick: In Four Books", 1748, R. and J. Dodsley, London, at page 3: Usefulness of Culture and Particularly the Study of Logic. "For if we look abroad into the several Nations of the World, some are over-run with Ignorance and Barbarity, others flourish in Learning and the Sciences ; and what is yet more remarkable, the same People have in different Ages been distinguished by these very opposite Characters. It is therefore by Culture, and a due Application of the Powers of our Minds, that we increase their Capacity, and carry human Reason to Perfection."
- ^ Chapman, George;[http://www.archive.org/details/treatiseoneducat00chapuoft "A treatise on education, with a sketch of the author's method", 3rd edition, 1784, T. Cadell, The Strand, London (first edition published in Edinburgh in 1773); Section II: "Of the culture of the mind till the age of nine or ten years", and Section III: "Of the culture of the mind from nine or ten to fifteen or sixteen years of age".
- ^ Ogden, John; "The science of education; or, The philosophy of human culture" ([c1879]), Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., Cincinnati, New York
- ^ Middleton, Conyers; "The History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero", 1742; W. Innys and R. Manby; on page vi, Dedication "I do not impute this to any superiority of parts or genius, peculiar to the Ancients; for human nature has ever been the same in all ages and nations, and owes the difference of it's improvements, to a difference onely of culture, and of the rewards proposed to it's industry: where these are the most amply provided, there we shall always find the most numerous and shining examples of human perfection.
- ^ Kames, Henry H.; "Elements of Criticism: Volume III", 1762, A. Miller, London; A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, in Ch. 25: "Standard of Taste" at p357-359 "Lastly, we have a conviction, that the common nature of man is invariable not less than universal: we conceive that it hath no relation to time nor to place; but that it will be the same hereafter as at present, and as it was in time past, the same among all nations and in all corners of the earth. Nor are we deceived: giving allowance for the difference of culture and gradual refinement of manners, the fact corresponds to our conviction.... But the conviction of a common standard being made part of our nature, we intuitively conceive a taste to be right or good if conformable to the common standard, and wrong or bad if disconformable."
- ^ Clarke, James Freeman, [http://www.archive.org/details/selfculturephysi00clarrich "Self-culture : physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual : a course of lectures", c1880, J.R. Osgood, Boston, at page 11: "By self-culture is intended the cultivation of the powers and faculties nature has given you, and that to the greatest degree your opportunities and circumstances will allow : and this done by and for yourselves, with, a view to improve your own condition here, as far as possible, and that you may stand on higher vantage-ground hereafter"
- ^ Arnold, Matthew; Culture and Anarchy.,1869.
- ^ "Civilisation" (1974), Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th ed. Vol. II, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 956.
- ^ Williams (1983), p.90. Cited in Shuker, Roy (1994). Understanding Popular Music, p.5. ISBN 0-415-10723-7.
- ^ Bakhtin 1981, p.4
- ^ Payne, Paul Hamilton, "Russell's Magazine: Vol. 6, 1860, October-March", 1860, Walker, Evans & Co., Charleston; at page 185 (Literary Notices): "In the strictest sense of the expression, he was a self-educated man - yet, in his works, ample proof will be found of 'a culture both high and wide, both profound and curiously exquisite'."
- ^ Giles, Henry: "Illustrations of Genius: In Some of Its Relations to Culture and Society", 1859, Ticknor and Fields, Boston, at pages 126-127: "Our country is peculiarly one of masses. .... The masses are becoming the supreme social authority. .... What is the future to expect from this power? ... Is it to be a progress in excellence, or is it to be a growth in evil? ... How, then, is this power to be not only safe, but hopeful; not brutal, but humane ; not destructive, but gracious? By progressive culture, intellectual and moral; a culture not partial, but complete ; the culture which builds up the man in his fulness and his maturity. The results of such a culture are wisdom and virtue, without which a nation can no more have security than an individual."; at page 171 "a higher and purer social culture"; at page 194 "There may possibly be yet such diffusion of superior culture that the possession of it shall be no longer a distinction, ..."; at page 199 "That, therefore, which we must rate for most in the culture of a man is his individual experience."
- ^ McClenon, p.528-529
- ^ Michael Eldridge, [http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/USC/pbt1.html "The German Bildung Tradition"
- ^ a b Smith 1987[page needed]
- ^ Marcus Banks, Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions (1996), p. 151 "'ethnic groups' invariably stress common ancestry or endogamy".
- ^ "Anthropology. The study of ethnicity, minority groups, and identity," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2007.
- ^ Statistics Canada Definition of Ethnicity
- ^ T.H. Eriksen, Small places, large issues. An introduction to social and cultural anthropology (second edition, London 2001), 261 ff.
- ^ Margaret L. Andersen, Howard Francis Taylor. Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society. Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 0534617166.
- ^ Lopreato, Joseph; Crippen, Timothy Alan ; "Crisis in Sociology: The Need for Darwin", 2001, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0765808749, 9780765808745; see "The clannish brain" at pages 248-275
- ^ a b AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race American Association of Physical Anthropologists "Pure races do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past."
- ^ Bamshad, Michael and Steve E. Olson. "Does Race Exist?", Scientific American Magazine (10 November 2003).
- ^ Making of America Project; "The North American Review", Vol. 63, 1846, University of Northern Iowa; at page 227: reviewing Horatio Hale's; "Ethnography and Philology"; 1846, C. Sherman. In a footnote the reviewer commented that the meaning of ethnography given in this book was wider than of late.