Culture

Traditionally defined by English anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Taylor in 1871, culture is a
complex whole which encompasses belief, practices, values, attitudes, law, norms, artifacts,
symbols, and knowledge that a person learns and shares as a member of society.

- Leslie White
Culture refers to an organization of phenomena that dependent upon symbols and includes acts,
objects, ideas, and sentiment.

- Richley Crapo
He describes culture as a system of ideas, feelings, and survival strategies shared in a particular
group. He claims that culture is the structure that unifies a human group and gives an identity as
a society.
Aspect of Culture
culture has essential characteristics that need to be acknowledge for anyone
to understand clearly its nature and dynamism.

one must understand that culture-given that a society is composed of

different people with different characteristics-is shared and contested.

Culture bearing a complex set of patterned social interactions, is learned and

transmitted through socialization or enculturation.
 Most people adopt the complexities of culture from environment they are in
because culture behavior and actions can only be learned through observation,
experience, and education.

Culture also requires language and other forms of communication. As American

anthropologist George Murdock (1949) has pointed out, what differentiates humans
from animals is their ability to communicate.

Culture is also dynamic, flexible, and adaptive. It is constantly changing.

Material and Nonmaterial Culture
Most culture manifest materially. Human’s material inventions and
innovations such as tools, weapons, instruments, and likes are all part of
material culture.

Nonmaterial culture, refers to the intangible ideas that form within a

society, including beliefs, perceptions, and traditions.
Subculture and Counterculture

• Subculture- may be defined as a modified culture within a larger culture

practiced by a society.
• Counterculture- A subculture that tends to be in conflict with the dominant
culture and opposes the latter’s standards is known as counterculture.
Ideal and Real Culture
Crapo (2001) defines ideal culture as the ways in which people describe
their way of life, while real culture refers to the actual behavior of people in the
society.
Elements of Culture

• Norm- one special distinct element of culture is the norm. A set of norms is a society’s
standards of acceptable behavior.
• Mores- the term mos, from which mores was coined, is a Latin word which means
“custom.” in a sociological perspective, mores are the custom folkways a society needs to
adhere to strictly.
• Laws- formalized mores that legislated, approved, and implemented in a society.
• Beliefs- Richley Crapo defined beliefs as the means by which people make sense of their
experiences, or ideas that people hold to be true, factual, and real.
• Symbols- are illustrations used to represent to a particular meaning of something.
Leslie White, a renowned American anthropologist, has proposed that the use f
symbols is the origin of all human behavior.
• Language- is defined as the system of symbols that individuals utilize to communicate,
interact, and share their views, thus creating an understanding among individuals.
• Values- as desirable, transsituational goals that vary in importance and serve as guiding
principles in people’s lives.
Social Institutions
institution is defined as the organized system of social relationships which
embodies certain common values and procedures.