What is Culture?
If there’s any key to sociological understanding, it is the idea that the personal traits, beliefs and values that govern behavior are product of an interaction between individuals and their environment. All human beings receive a double inheritance at birth:
(1) a biological one and
(2) a social one.
This social legacy is part of what we call CULTURE.
In addition, human beings learned their behavior and make use of their intelligence. Animals on the other hand, acts on instincts. Let us take the case of a new born human baby that physically depend on older human beings. Such infant doesn’t have certain behavior that it needed for survival. It rather relies on certain biological drives like hunger and on the kindness or sympathy of it elders to satisfy those drives. In order to survive, infant must learn.
Learn what?
Want to know?
This brings us to CULTURE. CULTURE is a design for living adopt by people in a particular society. Since human behavior is not determined by instincts, their behavior must be learned, shared and transfered from one generation to another.
To a great extent culture determines how members of a society thinks and feels. This inturn determines how they behave. It becomes part of them that they are sometimes not even aware of it in their actions.
Culture defines acceptable ways of behavior for members of a certain society. However, such definition vary from one society to another. In this way culture become altered.
How?
When it accommodate changes and when it resists changes.
Having an analyzed what culture is, next is…
Component of Culture
There are two (2) types of culture. They are:
- Material Culture: It consists of the physical aspect of the way of life of particular people in a particular society. Examples are: foods and drinks, arts, entertainment, mode of dressing, tools, music, etc.
- Non Material Culture: It is the cultural aspect that cannot be feel, touch or hold. They’re: values, beleifs, norms, mores, folkways, law, languages, customs, etc.
Also, Culture is a term that is used in everyday conversation. We often hear the remark that an individual is not cultured. The term is used in this context to describe someone who lacks good manners or who is not cultivated. At other times, people simply suggest that their culture differs from the others they interact with in everyday life.
In every day life, the way we dress, what we eat, where we work and how we spend our free time are all grounded in culture. Our culture lead us to sleep in houses made of bricks and woods while people of other cultures live in huts fashioned from brush and igloos. Culture frames the meaning we attaches to our lives, indicate standard of success, beauty and goodness. It also provide reference for a divine power, the forces of nature or long dead ancestors. More broadly culture in everyday conversation, usually refers to sophisticated items such as classical literature, music, dance and painting.
Lastly, culture as a way of life or design for living have two main aspects to it. The material and non material culture. Culture is dynamic because it undergoes changes due to the process of diffusion. Different ways of life are transmitted from one group to another. Sometimes this enriches or undermines the recipient of such culture. No matter how different one culture may be different from another, they all share these fundamental characteristics: (a) they are learned
(b) shared through systems of symbols (things that represents other things) that may be sounds, marks on a page or any objects, physical gestures or objects created to embody a symbolic meaning
(c) transfers from one generation to another.
No society can exist without culture and no culture can exist without society.
Credits:
Micheal Haralambos and Martin Holborn (2002): Sociology, Themes and Perspectives, Collins Educational, United Kingdom.
Bashiru Salawu: Sociology Concepts and Themes, An Introductions, Cresthill Publishers Limited, Ibadan.
Olayiwola A. Erinosho (2005) Sociology for Medical, Nursing and Allied Professions in Nigeria, Lucky Odoni Consult (Nig.) Enterprises, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria.
