Culture as a Very Important Factor That Determines the Lifestyle - Research Paper Example

Culture Culture is a very important factor that determines the lifestyle of people in a certain society. There can be different meanings for the word “culture”. Culture can mean anything from good literature to eating habits, forms of art, and types of music. A biologist would define culture like a colony of microorganisms or bacteria growing together in a Petri dish in a lab. An anthropologist, on the other hand, might define culture as a complete range of acquired patterns of human behavior. Edward B. Tylor, the pioneer English Anthropologist, used the term culture for the first time in his book published in the year 1871 named Primitive Culture. In his book, Tylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor cited in Haviland et al., 2013, p. 10). Culture is obviously not limited to men. Women’s role in the creation and possession of culture cannot be undermined. The concept of culture has become the mainstream topic in Anthropology ever since it was first used by Tylor. Culture is a very powerful survival tool for humans, though it is a sensitive phenomenon. Culture keeps changing constantly. Owing to the fact that culture is stored in the mind only, it can easily be lost as new trends set it. Culture is omnipresent and reflects in everything in the surroundings ranging from written languages to structures and events. The artifacts and broken pots discovered by the archaeologists from underneath the earth are such remains of old civilizations that define their cultural patterns. Old civilizations made those artifacts using their cultural skills and knowledge. People tend to identify cultures by observing materialistic things. “When we think of company culture, we focus on what we can see and touch – the foosball tables, happy hours, and free lunches. But these are only artifacts, what our culture produces. It’s much harder to pinpoint the root culture” (Wherry, 2014). Real culture is what causes people to purchase certain things and decorate the place with them. Culture as part of the learned patterns and perceptions of behavior has three layers. Cultural traditions play a pivotal role in giving a unique identity to a society. By Japanese, Italian, or Indian culture, people mean shared traditions, language, and beliefs that distinguish the people of one culture from those belonging to the other. In a vast majority of cases, people sharing a certain culture have a basis to relate to each other because they were raised up with the same trends, norms, values, and beliefs. The second layer of culture which can be the component of an individual’s identity is subculture. People in diverse and complex societies originate in different parts of the world. Even after spending many years in the foreign culture, they can never completely forget or part ways with their indigenous culture. The indigenous culture is ingrained in an individual’s personality and reflects in the thought processes, ideology, and general outlook of the world. Their association with their indigenous culture even after spending considerable periods of time in the foreign culture makes them identifiable as a subculture in the new society. Their shared cultural features of subcultures give them a distinct identity which is different from the identity of the society at large. Many easily identifiable subcultures dwell in the US that include but are not limited to such ethnic groups as African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Vietnamese Americans. People belonging to each of these subcultures have a shared identity in that they have similar food traditions, cultural traits, and language which originate in their shared ancestral experiences and background. It takes several generations for the cultural differences between the culture of the majority and the subculture to disappear. When these differences eventually vanish, the subculture stops existing except for the common ancestry between a group of people. This is particularly the case with the Irish Americans and the German Americans in the US both of whom consider themselves Americans beyond any other identity. The third layer of culture is comprised of the cultural universals. Cultural universals are learned patterns of behavior which are collectively shared by human beings. People living anywhere in the world share these traits because they are universal. Some examples of human cultural traits are, using gender and age as means of classifying people, constructing sentences with certain grammatical rules and sounds in order to communicate with each other, having terms of kinship to define relationships, classifying people on the basis of relationships, bringing children up in a family setting, having and cultivating the concept of privacy, having a system of law and order to stop crimes, making jokes and having fun. Although these universal traits are found commonly across all cultures, different cultures carry out these practices in specific ways that are particular of their culture. An example of this is the use of hands as a way of communicating with each other in the deaf subculture. Although the sign language is very different from the verbal language, yet it also has a set of grammatical rules understood by the people belonging to the deaf subculture just like those existing in the verbal language. Many people confuse culture with society, though they are not the same. Societies are interacting organisms’ groups whereas cultures are complexes comprising learned perceptions and patterns of behavior. Societies exist in animals in addition to human beings as well. Examples of societies in non-human beings include hives of bees, bird flocks, and schools of fish. Members of a society interact with each other in direct and indirect ways. Although human culture and human society are two different terms carrying different meanings, yet there is an inextricable connection between the two because society provides culture with a platform to be created and transferred through. Cultures cannot be created or spread by lone individuals. Cultures keep evolving continuously as a result of the interaction that takes place between people in a society. Such patterns of culture as politics and society do not carry any sense other than the interaction of people. A single human being inhabiting the earth would neither need language nor government. Culture is not only created and nurtured by human beings. Non-human beings also cultivate cultures in their own ways. The broad use of culture for referring to a complex of patterns of learned behavior implies that animals also create cultures. Many species of birds and animals teach their offspring how to eat, catch prey, and live in order to survive. Cultures can particularly be observed in animals with a relatively high level of intellect like apes, monkeys, and chimpanzees. It is the culture that causes crows to get together and make hue and cry when one of them catches electricity when sitting wet on a wire in the open. They understand that one of the members of their community has lost its life. Similarly, many birds including crows and sparrows have a habit of inviting other members of their community to a place where they locate some food. Seagulls have a culture of flying in a line in a very disciplined manner. The forms of culture and the ways in which they are practiced and nurtured significantly differ between humans and animals, yet both cultures are comparable to each other in terms of power. Certain factors have a very strong impact on culture. One such factor is religion. Religion has a very profound effect on culture because religion itself dictates what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. When people following a certain religion become a majority in an area, they commonly approve of the behaviors, trends, traditions, and practices deemed acceptable by their religion and tend to abstain from or at least, disapprove of the behaviors and practices which are condemned by the religion. When people following different religions live together in a society, room for difference of opinion and conflicts is created. Another factor that has a very strong impact on the culture of a society is the history. Although culture is a constantly evolving phenomenon, yet it always shows traces of the particular circumstances and events it has gone through in the past. To conclude, culture means a set of beliefs, practices, trends, and traditions shared by a certain community. Culture is a way of living that is susceptible to change. Many subcultures exist within a large culture based on the common elements between the members of those subcultures. Such elements can be religion, case, gender, occupation, and nationality. Culture never remains stagnant. It keeps changing and evolving as a result of the interplay between a range of internal and external factors. Culture is both a cause and effect of change in the society. Culture and society are often considered as the same thing, though the two differ in that society serves as a platform where culture is created and nurtured. Animals also create and nurture cultures in different ways. Some factors that have a very strong impact on culture are religion and history. References: Haviland, W., Prins, H., McBride, B., and Walrath, D. (2013). Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge. Cengage Learning. Wherry, E. (2014, Feb. 26). What Is Culture? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/26/what-is-culture/. Read More