THE CONCEPT OF

CULTURE
R IVERA , A LEANDRA R.
“WHAT IS CULTURE?”
 SOME DEFINITIONS:
■ Theoretically: Culture is a separate as-
pect of social life that must be
abstracted out from the complex real-
ity of human existence.
– Culture for the sake of academic
study
 SOME DEFINITIONS:
■ Concretely: Culture is a bounded world
of beliefs and practices.
– Culture is equal in form and relations
to a clearly defined societal group
 CULTURE AS A CATEGORY OF LIFE
■ Learned behavior: It is the whole body
of practice, beliefs, institutions,
customs, habits, myths, and so on
built up by humans and passed on
from generation to generation.
 CULTURE AS A CATEGORY OF LIFE
■ Institutional sphere devoted to the
making of meaning: Cultures are
social formations composed of
clusters of institutions devoted to
specialized activities.
 CULTURE AS A CATEGORY OF LIFE
■ Creativity or agency: Cultures are
realms of creativity that escapes from
the otherwise pervasive determination
of social action by economic or social
structures.
 CULTURE AS A CATEGORY OF LIFE
■ System of symbols and meanings:
Cultures are a "level of abstraction" of
social relations.
– Contrasted to a "social system," which
was a system of norms and institutions,
and a personality system," which was a
system of motivations.
 CULTURE AS A CATEGORY OF LIFE
■ Practice: Cultures are spheres of
practical activity shot through by willful
action, power relations, struggle,
contradiction, and change.
 CULTURE AS A WORLD OF BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES
■ Contradictory: Beliefs and practices in
culture often contain contradictory
symbolisms or meanings.
 CULTURE AS A WORLD OF BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES
■ Loosely integrated: Centrifugal cultural
tendencies that arise from disparate
spheres of activity.
 CULTURE AS A WORLD OF BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES
■ Contested: People who occupy
different positions in a given social
order will typically have quite different
cultural beliefs or will have quite
different understandings of what
might seem on the surface to be
identical beliefs.
 CULTURE AS A WORLD OF BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES
■ Subject to constant change: Cultures,
regardless of societal complexities, are
mutable.
 CULTURE AS A WORLD OF BELIEFS AND
PRACTICES
■ Weakly bounded: Cultures, regardless
of societal complexities, are mutable.