The Conceptual Approaches Of Culture

“Culture comprises traditional ideas and related values, and it is the product of actions” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952); “it is learned, shared, and transmitted from one generation to the next (Linton, 1945); and it organizes life and helps interpret existence” (Gordon, 1964).

Bevan & Sole (2014) proposes that culture is the cumulative knowledge deposits, opinions, morals, occurrences, outlooks, positions, consequences, orders, moments, spatial relations, the views of the world and the significant things that a collection of people has developed over generations throughout groups and personal endeavors. Culture is not stationary; it is lively and is continuously changing through human conduct, viewpoints, occurrences, concepts and manners including other things said.

“Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts”. (Zimmerman 1)

When considering the connotative meaning of culture, often known as an identifying factor in a family, organization, or society, it can be rather simple to experience disconnect with rationalism. The concept of culture – complex and subjective – has been a paramount topic throughout history due to the curiosity, growth, and sprawl of populations. In modern era, an important idea to note resides in the fact that culture is not a term which is locked-in by political borders. Rather, culture exists as the embodiment of a group’s beliefs, experiences, and behavior; as well as the contrast apparent in

For the purposes of this piece, culture is defined as “the full range of human patterned experience” as described by Cole (1996) cited in Gla ̆veanu & Jovchelovitch (2017, p.113). This chapter also provides a description of the importance culture plays in psychological research.

While a best definition of the term ‘culture’ remains elusive, most anthropologists would agree on the necessity for having a working definition. John Monaghan and Peter Just elegantly define the slippery notion of culture as “our capacity to conceptualize the world and to communicate those conceptions symbolically” (2000).

The concept of culture has become clearer and clearer to me as this process continues. It has become apparent that culture is literally just who we are. In my opinion, culture can be the people around us, what we believe to be important, what we wish to carry with us as we grow up, and our values. It is important to understand that culture “contains words and ideas that people use to name and interpret what they experience” (Johnson 2014: 32). Culture is who we are as an individual within different groups that have developed us into the people we are today. As far as values, it

Secondly, culture is made up of many aspects and is still widely debated upon exactly how it should be defined. But according to Julia Wood (2017), culture “is a way of life—a system of ideas, values, beliefs, customs, and language that is passed from one generation to the next and that reflects and sustains a particular way of life” (p. 8-1). Furthermore, if the definition of culture cannot be agreed upon, then the aspects that create it must be universal. To be considered a culture, the aspects of first becoming an identifiable group; with a shared history who have an accumulated pattern of shared values, beliefs, and actions, through shared verbal and nonverbal codes must be

First, let’s look at the meaning of culture as presented in chapter four. “There are many different definitions of culture, but no single definition that all social scientist would accept.” (Banks, page 72) My first thoughts are, “Why must there be a definition of culture? Isn’t culture an indefinable part of human nature?” I can see the value of introspection into culture but not necessarily the need for a concise definition of culture. When I made an attempt to define myself from a cultural aspect, I easily identified my ethics, education, ethnicity, sexual identity, socio-economic status, religion and gender, or so I think. I know that there are many more aspects, but this small list is already a lot to consider. Which leads me to disregard the need for a concise or even static definition.

What is a culture and why are there so many definitions of a culture? Does it matter? Is it rapidly changing? An how does globalization impact a culture? During my research I have found many definitions of a culture, but the most admired one that was mentioned by Martin Gannon in his book of Paradoxes of Culture and Globalization. He indicates that a culture is defined by two famous anthropologists, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, who have studied more than 100 definitions of culture in 1952. They have stated that "Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action." (qtd. in Gannon 19).

Note that this motivates the definition of culture beyond patterns of behavior into the domain of jointly-held beliefs and meaning about “what is.” It says that

Culture is very important in every society and its understanding is crucial for business decisions. This is why Geert Hofstede

The term culture is defined by a number of authors. Shankar (2003) has defined culture as “complex and interrelated set of elements, comprising knowledge, beliefs and values, arts, laws, and habits acquired by a human as a member of a particular society. These act together to distinguish one group from another. “Culture determines the identity of a human group in the same way as personality determines the identity of an individual” (Hofstede, 1984). Further he always defined culture as the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another. In order to compare the cultures of different organisations Gerant Hofstede discovered five dimensions which he found universally present in different nations and organisations. They are Power distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Individualism vs

Culture is a broad term which has been described by various philosophers since decades. It has been claimed by Raymond Williams to be “…one of the two or three most complicated words in English language” (Williams, 1976). Different definitions of the term, culture may have distinct descriptive ways and criterion to evaluate human activity. It is important to define the broad base of the sophisticated term ‘culture’, in the sense used later in the paper, to narrow down the discussion on our topic.

'Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.' (Hofstede, 1991)