Understanding Culture: Definitions, Types, and Societal Concepts
Understanding Culture: Definitions & Concepts
Defining Culture
Culture is defined as the set of knowledge, beliefs, customs, and human inventions. It also encompasses a set of information that is socially acquired and transmitted by means of language. The notion of culture includes:
Key Components of Culture
- Tools, Techniques, and Technological Works: These are inventions by human beings, ranging from primitive tools for hunting and growing to the most sophisticated computers.
- Knowledge, Beliefs, and Opinions: These are products of human creativity. Clear examples include language, literary and artistic works, religious beliefs, or myths.
- Social Customs: This includes different ways of greeting, dancing, and playing.
Cultural Adaptation
Cultural adaptation allows us to:
- Address our limitations as animals: To defend ourselves in a very hostile environment, thus preventing the extinction of our species.
- Adapt to and modify the environment: To adapt to the environment, both natural and social, no matter how extreme it is, by modifying it.
Types of Culture
Material Culture: Physical Elements
It refers to all the physical cultural elements which are artificially produced by humans: objects, techniques, etc. For example, the technique to hunt.
Immaterial Culture: Abstract Concepts
Elements related to the ways of thinking, knowledge, feelings, etc., such as ideas, beliefs, symbolic systems, moral values, etc. Specific examples are: the rules and laws governing social relations between individuals, and institutions such as marriage.
Cultural Perspectives & Attitudes
Ethnocentrism
It is the attitude adopted by those who judge and evaluate the culture of other groups based on criteria or beliefs belonging to their own culture. These people think that their own culture is the best one and criticize those different cultural elements. This attitude, a basis for phenomena such as imperialism, led to the belief that it was a duty to impose their way of life on other cultures which were considered more primitive. This position can degenerate into more radical stances, such as racism or xenophobia.
Racism
It refers to all beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors that are based on the consideration that some races are superior to others; that is, it argues that there are different levels of human races. It appears in any behavior that encourages or permits the exclusion or isolation of a group or person based on their race.
Xenophobia
It is an attitude of rejection toward foreigners. The Greek word xénos (ξένος) means “foreigner” or “stranger.” It is an emotional attitude often produced by fear or ignorance.
Cultural Relativism
This position considers that it is impossible to compare or evaluate the characteristics of different cultures. It is based on the belief that every culture has value in itself, since all its elements can be understood and explained only by means of an internal logic. Often, it serves as an excuse for passivity and inaction against injustice.
Cultural Universalism
This position suggests a rejection of ethnocentric attitudes to avoid some cultures putting down others. It advocates for real dialogue in order to facilitate the acceptance of certain cultural elements: democratic organization of society, respect for fundamental rights, equal opportunities, or appreciation of values such as freedom or solidarity. People who defend this point of view think that these elements deserve to become universal values shared by all cultures. But this does not mean that the specific characteristics of each culture should disappear. Universalism is also opposed to relativism because it considers that there are some universal cultural traits; that is, characteristics that exist or should exist in all cultures. However, universalism also has detractors who see it as a kind of camouflaged ethnocentrism.
Historical Context: Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is an extrapolation of the concepts used in the theory of Darwinian evolution from biology to other aspects of human reality, such as economy, society, or politics, establishing the false idea that nature legitimizes certain outcomes. It posits that only the fittest will adapt to the market and to society, while other individuals would be gradually eliminated. Social Darwinism represented one of the ideological pillars of the colonialist expansion carried out by European nations during the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. The pseudoscientific assertion about the existence of a race called to dominate and subdue the other races spread within the common ideology of that time.