What is Culture?
Some definitions
Culture as Knowledge
• “Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret
experience and generate behavior.” -- James Spradley,
anthropologist
A word that means several different things
• National / ethnic culture (meanings and behaviors groups
of people develop and share over time)
• A subgroup – organizational or educational culture
Characteristics of Culture
• CULTURE IS LEARNED and passed generation to
generation
• CULTURE IS SHARED by a group of people
• CULTURE IS BASED ON SYMBOLS that have meaning
only understood by those within the culture
• CULTURE IS DYNAMIC – always moving (but slowly)
• CULTURE IS AN INTEGRATED WHOLISTIC SYSTEM
Culture is like an Iceberg
Surface Culture
Food, dress, music
visual arts, drama, crafts,
dance, literature, language,
celebrations games
Surface level (Concrete)
Deep
Structure
Unspoken Rules
(Behavioral
Unconscious Rules - Symbolic
Concept of time, personal space, rules of conduct, facial expressions, nonverbal communication,
body language, touching, eye contact, patterns of handling emotions, notions of modesty,
concept of beauty, courtship practices, relationships to animals, notions of leadership, tempo of
work, ideals of childrearing, theory of disease, social interaction rate, nature of friendships, tone of
voice, attitudes toward elders, concept of cleanliness, notions of adolescence, patterns of group
decision-making, definition of insanity, preference for competition or cooperation, tolerance of
physical pain, concept of “self,” concept of past and future, definition of obscenity, attitudes toward
dependents, problem-solving, roles in relation to age, sex, class, occupation, kinship, and so forth
Deep Structures of Culture
Roots of Reality – the “how” and “why”
The Deep Structures of a Culture:
• carry a culture’s most important beliefs (family, state,
religion)
• have messages that endure, are deeply felt and supply
much of a person’s identity (one of its most important
roles for a culture is to assist a person in their sense of
identity)
Deep Structures of Culture
Family
Provide definition and form (nuclear, extended)
The functions of family are to:
•teach socialization;
•pass on core values;
•share a worldview;
•foster identity development;
•provide communication training and social skills;
•establish gender roles;
•determine individualism vs. collectivism;
•define aging;
•teach social skills
What sunk the Titanic?