Culture And Cultural Studies |
The concept of culture and how cultural meanings are formed and
changed.
A professor on a visit to another country asked the
professor who was hosting him "why a common man in your country fails to provide a
thatched 3 feet square (lavatory) for his woman and daughter?" In his country
"even men don't 'do it' on the highway."
If the process of learning is an essential characteristic of culture,
then teaching also is a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced
is itself an important component of culture. |
Culture:
- “The integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action,
and artifacts and depends upon the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge
to succeeding generations.”
- “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs,
institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.”
“The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or
social group.”
- “Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.” -
(dictionary.com)
Culture: (wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-definition.html)
People learn culture. That, we suggest, is culture's essential feature. Many qualities of
human life are transmitted genetically—an infant's desire for food, for example, is
triggered by physiological characteristics determined within the human genetic code. An
adult's specific desire for milk and cereal in the morning, on the other hand, cannot be
explained genetically; rather, it is a learned (cultural) response to morning hunger.
Culture, as a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society, acts rather
like a template (i.e., it has predictable form and content), shaping behavior and
consciousness within a human society from generation to generation. So culture resides in
all learned behavior and in some shaping template or consciousness prior to behavior as
well (that is, a "cultural template" can be in place prior to the birth of an
individual person). |
This primary concept of a shaping template and body of learned behaviors might be
further broken down into the following categories, each of which is an important element
of cultural systems:
* systems of meaning, of which language is primary
* ways of organizing society, from kinship groups to states and multi-national
corporations
* the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products
Several important principles follow from this definition of culture:
If the process of learning is an essential characteristic of culture, then teaching also
is a crucial characteristic. The way culture is taught and reproduced is itself an
important component of culture.
Because the relationship between what is taught and what is learned is not absolute (some
of what is taught is lost, while new discoveries are constantly being made), culture
exists in a constant state of change.
Meaning systems consist of negotiated agreements—members of a human society must
agree to relationships between a word, behavior, or other symbol and its corresponding
significance or meaning. To the extent that culture consists of systems of meaning, it
also consists of negotiated agreements and processes of negotiation.
Because meaning systems involve relationships which are not essential and universal (the
word "door" has no essential connection to the physical object—we simply
agree that it shall have that meaning when we speak or write in English), different human
societies will inevitably agree upon different relationships and meanings; this a
relativistic way of describing culture -
(wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-definition.html)
Cultural Studies Central - Cultural Studies today is a simmering stew
of the ideas, voices, and lives of people all over the world. It's the things we use and
the people we talk about. It's life and life only. Cultural Studies Central is a gathering
spot and central clearinghouse where those of us who live and breathe Cultural Studies can
go to learn more and do more. Editor: Robin Markowitz (Torrance, CA, USA)
http://www.culturalstudies.net/
What is Culture? - This Learning Topic proposes to explore the concept
of human culture. Culture is not easily defined, nor is there a consensus among scholars,
philosophers and polititicians (nor, probably, among the rest of us) as to what exactly
the concept should include. We hope, here, to outline some of the broad-ranging debates
which have gone on about the concept of culture during the past century. Furthermore, we
hope to offer some insight into what the culture debate means in our own lives and to
provide some examples of how cultural meanings are formed, maintained, and changed. -
www.wsu.edu:8001/vcwsu/commons/topics/culture/culture-index.html#top
Cultural Studies References and Links
Editor: Phoebe Sengers -
www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/phoebe/mosaic/cultural-studies.html
Popular Culture Studies - Bowling Green State University, USA.
www.bgsu.edu/departments/popc/resources.html
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