What is Culture?
?
[excerpted from, Intercultural Competence ?2023 : Chapter 1]
Our first ‘Big Question’: How can we define ‘culture’, and what elements does it contain?
We turn first to a couple of cultural study experts for their definitions. Geert Hofstede, whose model of cultural dimensions we’ll return to later, defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.” And this, from scholar David Matsumoto: “the set of attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors shared by one group of people, but different for each individual, and communicated from one generation to the next.” (Interesting, that. A group identification and yet different in actual experience for each individual.) Finally, UNESCO, those protectors of tangible and intangible cultural heritage: “the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, that encompasses, not only art and literature, but lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions, and beliefs.”
For the non-scholar, there are 3 primary interpretations of culture. The first is one of intellectual or artistic endeavors, and often further described as either high culture, requiring specific education in order to fully appreciate (e.g., opera) or low, or popular / of the masses (e.g., pop music). In the second, culture is viewed as the whole of society – its knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, capabilities, habits – as mutually agreed by (dominant) society members, or a majority thereof; this may describe all levels of society from the simple to the complex. In the 3rd view, culture is far more nuanced with each society containing many and varied cultures; these aren’t seen as high or low, and complex isn’t better than simple – just different.
That iceberg model of culture mentioned in our introduction was first published in 1976 by American anthropologist and culture expert, Edward Hall. What we easily recognize in a society, then, the behaviors and artifacts, can be viewed in language, customs or habits, foods, literature, music and performance, holidays and festivals. Covert elements of culture are what challenge our understanding, including those who are members of the culture in question. The beliefs and assumptions, values and norms, of a group are demonstrated in communication styles and rules, courtesy and manners, concepts of beauty and modesty, personal space and relationship to privacy, body language and gestures as well as facial features and eye contact. This deeply embedded layer of culture is further demonstrated in concepts of selfhood, time, justice; it’s also manifest in relationships to authority, power, and social class, and in roles based on gender, age, position, as well as in work ethic, and expectations. And much, much more.
The tangibles are relatively accessible. The intangibles are another matter altogether.
Twelve key characteristics of culture have been identified. It manifests at different depths as outlined, such as artifacts vs values, and is distinct from both universal human behavior and individual personality – even as it has both universal and distinctive elements. It affects behavior and the interpretation of same, as well as biological processes such as eating, coughing, or pain response. Culture is both an individual and a social construct, though created in the latter context, and is directly associated with social groups (nation, region, ethnicity, religion, generation, gender, social class). Learned through socialization (Hofstede’s ‘programming’), culture is always distributed both socially and psychologically, with unclear boundaries. Its various parts are all interrelated to some degree or another, it’s subject to gradual change as a society evolves (or devolves), and is ultimately a descriptive rather than evaluative concept.
There are surely misconceptions about culture as well. It’s commonly viewed as something physical which, as we’ve now seen, is only a small percentage of the whole; it’s also typically though falsely believed to consist of custom and behavior, which again is only one aspect. Culture is often presumed to be uniformly distributed through its group, though we’ve also seen that it manifests differently for each individual, however subtly; culture is never homogeneous, another common misconception – as we’re all guilty of referring to ‘French’ or ‘male’ culture, for example. Culture isn’t timeless, but changes either gradually as a people change, or suddenly when a major event occurs (especially one that forever changes the way people live, like the 2001 terrorist attack in New York City or the very recent pandemic). And finally, it’s often though erroneously believed that an individual has one culture, most often national or ethnic in origin, when in reality, we are each made up of numerous cultural influences.
Culture, then – or cultures, to be more accurate – define the identity of the individual. In one such model, shaped as a pyramid, the foundational or largest part consists of human nature, which is universal and inherited. Next is culture, specific to a group or category, though this middle layer should perhaps be made up of many facets like a prism, to be more accurate; this factor of identity is learned, in particular through social conditioning as we go through childhood, further reinforced throughout adulthood by the society in which we live. And finally in this model, individual personality is the top and smallest portion of the pyramid, both inherited and learned or conditioned.
Culture, then, second only to biologically-driven human nature and far more significant than individual personality, is a major force in the formation of one’s identity. Identity becomes not only a question of “Who am I?” but also of “Where do I belong?”
Further, we must look at cultural patterning and variation.
Are you similar to other members of your culture? Do you inherently know how to be a member of that group? If so – how do you know?
There are 3 elements of culture: traits, complexes, and patterns, and they build on one another. Traits are those individual aspects, a tool or skill, action, or belief regarding a specific situation or need. A complex is a cluster of interrelated cultural traits, and a pattern is then a combination of multiple complexes in an interrelated whole.
领英推荐
How we know how to be, then, is of course because we’ve been taught, but it depends on this complexity. We don’t just pull out a single cultural trait like using a screwdriver for a task; it’s situated within a set of interrelated traits which are then bundled together with other sets to form complex patterns. Think of customs around death and mourning, for example, a rich source of cultural study. How we view and handle death and dying, how we bury, what ceremony accompanies this, and what we believe happens to the person who has died as well as those who remain, how long a person is expected to mourn, whether there are anniversary customs or similar long after the time of death – all this and more forges a complex cultural patterning. We know how to act, how to be, then, in all its nuances, because we’ve been taught and observed other members of our society through time, to this very rich complexity. And the list of patterns is endless – thus, the weight that culture is given in one’s individual identity formation.
And then there are cultural variations. In that previous question – of course you aren’t the same as all members of your culture, though you’ll have many similarities. There are universal features found in all cultures – customs of cooking, family, celebrations, funeral as mentioned, gift-giving and hospitality, religion and sport, myths and folktales, music and dance, tool-making, language, medicine. The broad strokes of these are shared by most members of that culture. Variation, however, is always found within these features, due in part to individual traits (maybe you hate dancing or can’t cook) but also to subcultures and counter-cultures.
As I spent a majority of my life in New York City, prior to my relocation abroad in 2005, I’ve never identified overmuch with US culture as a whole. New York is highly diverse with a global perspective, encouraged by the many ethnic groups represented within the city – quite a few members of whom are recent immigrants and haven’t become acculturated but maintain many cultural features from their homelands – and by the presence of the UN and other international bodies. Most of the rest of the country is almost as mysterious to us as to anyone from elsewhere. Beyond this, I’ve various individual traits and subcultures to which I belong that also don’t align with dominant American culture, and so I always felt a bit like that square peg in a round hold – which undoubtedly made it easier for me to go abroad and adopt an international lifestyle.
This is simply to say: one can be a stranger within one’s native culture. (I could also tell you about many characteristics within me – independence and self-sufficiency, directness, optimism, a belief in open-ended possibility of self-reinvention, for a start – that I know to be byproducts of my American heritage.)
Finally, a word of caution: as you attempt to gain intercultural understanding, be on guard against both ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. We’ll be looking more closely at this in our chapter on models, but for now, ethnocentrism is a natural bias toward one’s own culture as the norm, unconsciously judging others on this basis. (You can see this regularly in culturally mixed online discussion groups.) And cultural relativism, which swings too far in the opposite direction, is a view that each culture should be assessed based solely on its own standards, and that all features are valid within that context. While there are no cultural universals, there are general expectations against the harm or enslavement of another human being, for example, which may result in a near-universal condemnation of child marriage, domestic violence, honor killing, or similar.
Culture is a very complex thing – and goes a long way toward defining who we are as individuals.
.
Exercises
.
Discussion or Contemplation: What is culture? What is cultural patterning (universals) and variation? How does this apply to my own culture?
Writing or Recording: What patterns and variations can I identify in my own culture? How does this fit me personally?
Further Reading: What is Culture?
.