Human Behavior and environment Chapter 8
1. What is Culture?
Culture, as delineated by contemporary social scientists, is a profoundly comprehensive and intricate system. It encompasses a vast array of elements: shared knowledge, deeply held beliefs, core values, specific languages, symbolic systems, observable patterns of behavior, tangible material objects, and established institutions. This multifaceted system is not static; it is actively and collectively created by groups of people, systematically learned through processes of socialization, widely shared among members, and frequently contested, debated, and reinterpreted within and between groups. This dynamic aspect—its creation, learning, sharing, and contestation—is crucial for understanding its role in human societies.
Culture manifests both internally and externally. Internally, it shapes our cognitive processes by influencing our thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and even our emotional responses, essentially forming our mental landscapes and worldview. Externally, culture is embodied in the social and material world, evident in the consistent patterns of behavior (e.g., rituals, etiquette), the physical objects societies create (e.g., tools, art, architecture), and the established institutions that organize social life (e.g., legal systems, educational bodies, religious organizations). The primary mechanism through which individuals acquire and internalize their culture is enculturation, a lifelong learning process.
While culture provides a powerful framework for shared identity and collective understanding, it is also perpetually subject to multiple definitions and ongoing scholarly debates regarding its precise scope, analytical focus, and theoretical underpinnings. This inherent complexity reflects its multidisciplinary study across fields like anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies.
1.1. Exhibit 8.1: Categories of Definitions of Culture
To better grasp the breadth of cultural conceptualizations, Exhibit 8.1 categorizes definitions of culture based on their primary emphasis:
Topical: Defines culture by enumerating specific subjects or thematic areas, such as social structure, religious practices, economic systems, political organization, artistic expressions, and daily habits. This provides a content-based understanding of what culture contains.
Historical: Highlights culture as a social heritage—the accumulation of traditions, customs, knowledge, and practices passed down through generations. This emphasizes continuity, legacy, and the temporal dimension of cultural development, viewing culture as a cumulative product of the past.
Behavioral: Conceptualizes culture as shared, learned behaviors, customs, and observable practices that constitute a distinctive way of life within a particular group. This approach focuses on overt actions and patterned interactions.
Normative: Focuses on the ideals, values, norms, or standards that guide, regulate, and prescribe appropriate conduct within a society. These norms act as internal or external rules shaping social expectations and moral judgments.
Functional: Explains culture by its utility and purpose—how human groups universally solve problems, adapt to their natural and social environments, and fulfill fundamental human needs (e.g., for survival, social cohesion, meaning-making). This perspective emphasizes culture's adaptive role.
Mental: Delves into the internal cognitive aspects of culture, such as shared ideas, belief systems, values, and habits of thought that characterize a group. This approach explores the ideational realm, including cognitive schemas and worldviews.
Structural: Describes culture as patterned, interconnected ideas, symbols, and behaviors that form a coherent and organized system. This perspective seeks to uncover the underlying organizational principles and deep structures shaping cultural phenomena.
Symbolic: Emphasizes the meanings—often arbitrarily assigned—to objects, actions, sounds, and concepts, and how these meanings are shared and interpreted within a group. This highlights the central role of communication, interpretation, and semiotics in cultural life.
1.2. Etymology and Origins of Key Cultural Definitions
The foundational understanding of culture has evolved significantly over time:
E. B. Tylor (): A British anthropologist, Tylor provided one of the earliest and most influential comprehensive definitions. He described culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” This seminal perspective underscored the holistic, learned, and all-encompassing nature of human culture.
Peter Berger (): A prominent sociologist, Berger broadened the scope, defining culture as “the totality of man’s products, both material and immaterial.” This expansive view recognized that culture extends beyond abstract ideas, beliefs, and customs to include all tangible objects and intangible creations generated by humanity.
Discussions around culture often distinguish between broad versus narrow definitions. Broad definitions tend to encompass all aspects of human social life, including both material and non-material elements. Narrow definitions might focus specifically on non-material aspects such as shared beliefs, core values, social norms, linguistic systems, symbolic representations, and the complex processes of meaning-making, or, conversely, strictly on material artifacts.
A crucial insight is that different academic disciplines offer distinct definitions and theoretical frameworks for understanding culture, reflecting their respective disciplinary focuses and methodologies. Consequently, there is no single, universally accepted definition of culture that satisfies all scholarly perspectives.
1.3. Contemporary Definitions of Culture (Exhibit 8.2)
Despite this variety, several contemporary definitions are widely used across multiple disciplines:
From Ballantine, Sociology Ballantine, Roberts, & Korgen (2018): Culture is understood as the collective ideas and tangible things—including knowledge, beliefs, values, rules/laws, language, customs, traditional practices, and symbols—that are consciously and unconsciously passed on from one generation to the next within a society.
From Roberts & Korgen; Barker & Jane, 2016 (Cultural Studies): Culture represents the actual grounded terrain of everyday practices, diverse representations (e.g., media, art), linguistic systems, and established customs characteristic of any specific society. This emphasizes culture as a lived, dynamic, and observable phenomenon.
From Guest, 2017 (Cultural Psychology; Anthropology; Sociology): Culture is defined as a complex cluster of deeply learned and widely shared beliefs, core values (e.g., achievement, individualism/collectivism), social practices (such as rituals and ceremonies), patterned behaviors (including social roles, customs, and traditions), symbolic systems, established institutions, linguistic structures, prevalent ideas, material objects/artifacts, and attitudes (moral, political, religious) that are characteristic of a particular group and transmitted across generations.
From Gardiner, 2018 (Cultural Psychology); Haviland et al., 2017 (Anthropology); Walrath et al., 2017 (Anthropology): Culture is conceptualized as an overarching system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts (material culture), and institutions that are actively created, systematically learned, widely shared, and often vigorously contested by a large group of people.
1.4. Process of Learning and Contestation
Culture is fundamentally learned through enculturation, which is the immersive, often unconscious, lifelong process by which individuals acquire the norms, values, behaviors, and traditions of their specific culture. This process begins in early childhood and continues throughout life. Crucially, culture is both widely shared among members of a group, fostering a sense of belonging and collective identity, and frequently contested, meaning there are often internal disagreements, reinterpretations, challenges, and shifts in norms and practices.
Case Example: Rubina's Cultural Navigation
Rubina’s story vividly exemplifies the challenges of navigating multiple interacting cultures (American, Pakistani, religious, university, family, MSA). Her experience highlights how culture is not a monolithic entity but a complex, multi-layered, and often conflicting landscape of expectations and identities. She learns and adapts to elements of each culture, demonstrating the dynamic nature of enculturation and contestation.
1.5. Exhibit 8.3: Cultural Creations
This exhibit presents diverse scenarios designed to facilitate the analysis of cultural judgments. These scenarios relate to various human activities, including specific preferences in music, distinctive food consumption patterns, traditional or evolving household and domestic activities, varied expressions of sexuality, hygiene practices like bathing, specific family living arrangements (e.g., multi-generational households), and communal eating rituals. By examining these examples, one can appreciate the broad, pervasive, and often subtle influence of culture on nearly every aspect of daily life.
2. Theories of Culture
Scholarly approaches to understanding culture generally coalesce into two broad and often distinct streams: the humanities approach and the social science approach. The humanities typically center on the analysis and interpretation of high arts, literature, philosophy, and aesthetic expressions, viewing culture as a realm of refined intellectual and artistic activity. In contrast, social sciences view culture more broadly as a society’s entire, encompassing way of life, including everyday practices, beliefs, and interactions. This approach emphasizes that culture is something we actively do continuously in our daily lives—a lived reality that shapes all social processes.
2.1. Relativism vs. Evaluation
A core epistemological tenet in social science approaches to culture is the advocacy for cultural relativism. This principle suggests that no culture is inherently superior or inferior to another; rather, cultures are simply different and operate according to their own internal logic, historical trajectories, and value systems. Cultural relativism encourages suspending judgment about the beliefs, values, and practices of other cultures to understand them within their own specific cultural context and from the perspectives of those who live within that culture. While it does not demand full acceptance or endorsement of all cultural practices, it is essential for fostering profound cross-cultural understanding, empathy, and effective communication. This principle is a fundamental aspect of cultivating cultural humility in social work.
2.2. Culture as a Dual Force
Culture serves as a powerful and often dual force within societies. On one hand, it acts as a significant mechanism for stability and persistence, providing continuity, tradition, shared norms, and a sense of collective identity across generations. On the other hand, culture is simultaneously a significant source of conflict and contestation, both internally within a culture (e.g., intergenerational divides, ideological clashes) and externally across different cultures (e.g., international relations, challenges of immigration). These conflicts often arise from competing values, divergent interpretations of cultural meanings, and struggles over power and control.
Case Example: Rubina's Internal and External Conflicts
Rubina's case vividly illustrates these inherent cultural conflicts. Her experiences reveal substantial tensions and profound internal identity struggles precisely because she is navigating and trying to reconcile the interaction between multiple, sometimes conflicting, cultural frameworks: her American upbringing, her Pakistani heritage, her Muslim/Islamic religious traditions, and her specific family culture. These layers of cultural influence create a complex landscape of expectations, personal desires, and social pressures, leading to psychosomatic symptoms and a need for support.
2.3. Three Main Theoretical Strands (Based on Haviland et al., 2017)
To analyze culture comprehensively, scholars often employ three main theoretical strands, each offering a distinct lens:
2.3.1. Materialist Perspective (Environment/Technology/Economy–driven)
This perspective primarily emphasizes environmental conditions, available technology, and economic organization as the fundamental drivers that shape and constrain cultural forms and practices. It posits that the material conditions of existence—how people produce and reproduce their lives—heavily influence beliefs, values, social structures, and cultural expressions. It views culture as a reflection of, and adaptation to, these material realities.
Classical Marxism: Drawing from Karl Marx, this approach posits that culture (the 'superstructure' including legal systems, politics, ideologies, art, and religion) is fundamentally shaped by the 'economic base' (means and relations of production). Material conditions and inherent class struggle are seen as primary forces. Culture often serves to legitimize and reproduce the existing economic order and power structures.
Neo-Marxist Critical Theory: Building on classical Marxism, critical theorists (e.g., of the Frankfurt School) argue that in advanced capitalist societies, a 'culture industry' mass-produces popular culture (mass media, entertainment) to manipulate people towards passivity, consumerism, and conformity. This limits human agency, creating a 'false consciousness' where individuals unknowingly consent to their own domination.
Cultural Ecology: Developed by Julian Steward, this sub-field examines how physical environments and the ways societies adapt to them (e.g., through technology and subsistence strategies) shape culture. It focuses on adaptive strategies people use to interact with and modify nature, often highlighting cultural practices of marginalized groups and informing ecological activism.
2.3.2. Mentalist Perspective (Beliefs/Values/Symbols/Meaning-Making)
This perspective asserts that culture is primarily produced, maintained, and transmitted through beliefs, values, language, and symbolic representations. It emphasizes the ideational aspects of culture—the internal frameworks, shared meanings, and cognitive structures that guide human thought and action. Culture is understood as a system of meanings that individuals create and interpret.
Interpretive Anthropology (Clifford Geertz): Geertz argued that humans are fundamentally symbolizing and meaning-seeking beings. Culture is a 'web of significance' that humans themselves have spun. The task of the anthropologist is 'thick description'—interpreting the layers of meaning embedded in cultural practices and symbols. Meaning unfolds through social interaction, and human agency is central in its ongoing creation.
Culturalism: This approach (e.g., Raymond Williams) emphasizes day-to-day participation and the active construction of shared meaning in cultural life. It places a strong emphasis on human agency, recognizing that individuals and groups are not passive recipients but active agents who produce, transform, and resist cultural norms and values through their everyday lived experiences.
Structuralism (Claude Lévi-Strauss): This theory posits that culture is shaped by universal, underlying mental structures in the human mind, often expressed through binary oppositions (e.g., good-bad, us-them). These cognitive structures organize how humans perceive the world. Human agency is somewhat limited, as thoughts and actions are largely structured by these unconscious templates.
Semiotics: The study of meaning-making through signs and symbols. Semiotics analyzes how cultural elements—like flags, the hijab, or memes—function as signs conveying meaning (a 'signifier' and a 'signified'). It explores how meanings are assigned, shared, and interpreted, acknowledging some space for agency in reinterpreting or contesting meanings.
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism: These critical approaches critique the idea of fixed structures, universal truths, and stable meanings. They argue that truth and meaning are always perspectival, context-dependent, fragmented, and constructed through language and discourse. Concepts like 'deconstruction' challenge stability. Human agency is contested, as individuals operate within complex systems of power and discourse. Debates about 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' reflect these ideas.
2.3.3. Other Perspectives (Practice Orientation)
These perspectives aim to bridge the divide between structural determinism and radical individualism by allowing for both human agency and structural constraints to be understood as interacting forces in shaping culture. They focus on how culture is enacted in daily life.
Key Figures: Prominent theorists include Pierre Bourdieu (habitus), Anthony Giddens (structuration theory), and Sherry Ortner (practice theory). They focus on how social systems and cultural structures shape values, beliefs, and behavior, while recognizing that human actors can actively perpetuate, resist, or change cultures through their daily practices and interactions.
Interwoven Elements: This orientation posits that history, social structure, institutions, and human agency are all integrally interwoven. Culture is seen as being produced within concrete historical and structural constraints, but individuals and groups can act to reproduce or modify existing norms, beliefs, and practices. Power dynamics and acts of resistance are considered central to how culture shifts.
2.4. Exhibit 8.4: Three Major Culture Types
Exhibit 8.4 summarizes the features across dimensions like rationality, authority, stability/change, and unit of value for three broad culture types:
Traditional Culture:
Authority: Primarily religion-based, inherited, or tied to established kinship structures and elders. Often non-rational or based on sacred tradition.
Social Organization: Kinship-based status, strong communal values, and hierarchical social orders. Collective identity is paramount.
Economy: Typically agrarian or resource-based, with subsistence primarily oriented towards stability and order rather than growth.
Values: Emphasis on tradition, spiritual beliefs, community cohesion, respect for elders, and maintaining the status quo. Individualism is often subordinated.
Modern Culture:
Rationality: Science and empirical reason replace tradition and religion as primary modes of knowledge and decision-making. Bureaucracy and technical efficiency are highly valued.
Institutions: Authority resides in state/national institutions, legal-rational systems, and formal organizations. Increased secularization.
Economy: Characterized by capitalism, industrialization, and rapid urbanization. Focus on economic growth, efficiency, and specialization.
Values: Strong emphasis on progress, individualism, personal achievement, human rights, and technological advancement. Social mobility is often seen as a virtue.
Postmodern Culture:
Context: Emerges in an era of globalization, hyper-consumerism, and pervasive mass media. Characterized by interconnectedness and fluid boundaries.
Perspectives: Embraces diversity, multiplicity of perspectives, and challenges grand narratives or universal truths. Truth is perceived as relative and fragmented.
Change: Characterized by rapid, unpredictable change, constant innovation, and a sense of impermanence in social and cultural forms.
Authority: Decentralization of authority; skepticism toward institutional power and established hierarchies. Authority is often fragmented and debated.
Communication/Consumption: Dominated by electronic communications, digital media, and mass consumption. The blurring of reality and simulation (hyperreality) is a common theme.
2.5. Practice Orientation and Human Agency
The practice orientation emphasizes that culture is continuously produced and reproduced within definable historical and structural constraints. However, it equally stresses that individuals and groups possess human agency, meaning they have the capacity to act autonomously within these constraints. Through their daily practices, decisions, and resistance, people can either reproduce existing cultural norms, beliefs, and practices or actively work to change them. This perspective highlights that history, social structure, powerful institutions, and individual/collective agency are all intricately interwoven, constantly shaping and reshaping the cultural landscape. It provides a dynamic understanding of how culture evolves, rather than a static determinism, recognizing the potential for both maintenance and transformation.
Case Example: Rubina's Exercise of Agency
Rubina demonstrates significant agency by actively exploring Islam via the university's Muslim Student Association (MSA) and choosing to wear the hijab, despite encountering substantial conflict with her parents. Her decision to assert this aspect of her identity, against familial pressure rooted in concern about anti-Muslim sentiment, is a clear example of exercising agency within intersecting cultural and structural constraints. She is actively shaping her personal culture and identity, even as she navigates expectations from her family and broader society.
3. Major Concepts in the Study of Culture
3.1. Values
Values are core beliefs about what is important, desirable, right or wrong, and good or bad within a culture. They guide individual and collective behavior, serving as fundamental principles that shape attitudes and actions. Values can often be seen in competing dualisms, such as environmental protection versus economic growth, or individual freedom versus the common good.
Individualist vs. Collectivist Orientations: Cultures often lean towards either individualism (prioritizing individual rights, autonomy, and self-reliance) or collectivism (prioritizing group harmony, interdependence, and collective well-being). These orientations profoundly influence social structures and personal decisions.
Case Example: Rubina's Value Conflict
Rubina's case prominently showcases the tension between familial collectivist values (expected elder-care, household duties, unconditional parental listening) from her Pakistani heritage and the individualist values of US culture (personal autonomy, independence, self-assertion) that she has embraced. This clash of values is a central source of her stress and family conflict.
3.2. Ideology
Ideology is a set of shared beliefs and values that explains the social world, defines what is moral and just, and provides a guide for collective action. Ideologies are often linked to political or economic theories and can be a potent source of conflict.
Regional Cultural Differences: Colin Woodard’s framework of 11 regional cultures in the US illustrates how different ideological systems (e.g., related to the role of federal government, national policy) underpin distinct regional cultural identities and contribute to modern political polarization. Attitudes towards immigration are often deeply embedded in these ideological threads.
Case Example: Parental Ideology and Rubina's Experience
Rubina's parents' expectations often reflect an ideology rooted in their