Professional Documents
Culture Documents
because of culture. Culture is something that has elevated him from the level of animal to the heights of
man.
Man cannot survive as man without culture. It represents the entire achievements of mankind. Culture
has been fulfilling a number of function among which the following may be noted.
Culture provides knowledge which is essential for the physical and intellectual existence of man. Birds
and animals behave instinctively with environment. But man has greater intelligence and learning
capacity. With the help of these he has been able to adapt himself with environment or modify it to suit
his convenience.
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Culture has made such an adaptation and modification possible and easier by providing man the
Culture preserves knowledge and helps its transmission from generation to generation through its
means that is language helps not only the transmission of knowledge but also its preservation,
accumulation and diffusion. On the contrary animals do not have this advantage. Because culture does
Culture defines social situations for us. It not only defines but also conditions and determines what we
eat and drink, we wear, when to laugh, weep, sleep, love to like friends with, what work we do, what
god we worship, what knowledge we rely upon, what poetry we recite and so on.
3. Culture defines attitudes, values and goods
Attitudes refer to the tendency to feel and work out in certain ways. Values are the measure of goodness
or desirability. Goods refer to the attainments which our values define as worthy.
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It is the culture which conditions our attitude towards various issues such as religion, morality,
Our values concerning private etc. are influenced by our culture. Our goals of winning the race,
understanding others, attaining salvation, being obedient to elders and teachers, being loyal to husband,
being patriotic etc. are all set forth by our culture. We are being socialized on these models.
Whether we should become a politician or a social worker, a doctor, an engineer, a soldier, a farmer, a
What career we are likely to pursue is largely decided by our culture. Culture sets limitations on our
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Individuals may develop, modify or oppose the trends of their culture but they always live within its
Culture directs and confines the behavior of an individual. Culture assigns goals and provides means
for achieving them. It rewards noble works and punishes the ignoble ones.
It assigns him status. We see dream, aspire, work, strive to marry, enjoy according to the cultural
expectation. Culture not only contains but also liberates human energy and activities. Man indeed is a
Culture exercises a great influence on the development of personality. No child can get human qualities
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Culture prepares man for group life and provides him the design of living. It is the culture that
provides opportunities for the development of personality and sets limits on its growth. As Ruth
Benedict has pointed out every culture will provide its special type or types of personality.
It is culture that makes the human, a man, regulates his conduct and prepares him for group life. It
It teaches him what type of food he should take and in what manner, how he should cover himself and
behave with his fellows, how he should speak with the people and how he should co-operate or
compete with others. An individual abstained from culture is less than human, he is what we call feral
man.
The individual to be truly human must participate in cultural stream without it he would have been
forced to find his own way which would meant a loss of energy in satisfying his elementary needs.
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Secondly, culture provides man with a set of behavior even for complicated situation. It has so
thoroughly influenced that often he does not require any external force to keep himself in conformity
Forming queues when there is rush at the booking window or driving left in the busy streets. In the
absence of culture he should have been baffled even at the simplest situations. He need not go through
painful trial and error learning to know what food can be taken without poisoning himself and fellow.
His culture directs and confines his behavior, limits his goals and measures his reward. His culture gets
into his mind and shutters vision so that he sees what is supposed to see in dream what he is expected
Through culture men gets traditional interpretation for many situations according to which he
determines his behavior. If a cat cross his way he postpones his journey.
It has seen on the top of the house he regards it as inauspicious. It may however be noted that these
traditional interpretation differ from culture to culture. Among some culture owl is regarded as a
Culture has importance not only for man but also for the group. Had there been no culture there would
have been no group life. Culture is the design and the prescription for guiding values and ideals. By
regulating the behavior of the people and satisfying the primary drives pertaining to hunger and sex it
Culture has provided a number of checks upon irrational conduct and suggestibility culture aids such as
characterized though they be by consciousness of kind, at once competing. They are held in line by
Culture has given a new vision to individual by providing him a set of rules for co-operation of the
individuals. He thinks not only his own self but also of the others.
Culture teaches him to think himself a part of the larger whole, it provides him with the concept of
family, state, nation and class and make responsible the cooperation and division of labour.
Culture also creates new needs and new drives, for example, thirst for knowledge and arranges for the
satisfaction.