publish a comprehensive survey entitled Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions in . A sample of the various definitions is presented below. Try comparing these definitions to see which of these or which combination of these you find most satisfactory. You may first find yourself noticing words which recur–‘way’, ‘learn’ and ‘behaviour’.
However, if you then look at how each is used, you may be struck by the shifts in emphasis. The first phrase refers to mental ways but the second to the total way of life. Definitions (d), (e) and (f) lay stress on culture as what is shared and passed on among a group and down the generations. The last two phrases are the first to refer to culture as a means of directing behaviour.
Culture is… (a) a way of thinking, feeling, believing. (b) the total way of life of a people. (c) an abstraction from behaviour. (d) learned behaviour.
(e) a storehouse of pooled learning. (f) the social legacy the individual acquires from his group. (g) a set of standardised orientations to recurrent problems. (h) a mechanism for the normative regulation of behaviour.
Make a list of phrases you have heard containing the word ‘culture’. Ask your friends and family what they mean by culture? What criteria do they use to distinguish among cultures? It may have occurred to you that our understanding of material culture, especially art, is incomplete without knowledge acquired from the cognitive and normative areas.
It is true that our developing understanding of social process would draw upon all these areas. But we might find that in a community where few have acquired the cognitive skill of literacy, it in fact becomes the norm for private letters to be read out by a third party. But as we see below, to focus on each of these areas separately provides many important insights. Cognitive Aspects of Culture The cognitive aspects of one’s own culture are harder to recognise than its material aspects (which are tangible or visible or audible) and its normative aspects (which are explicitly stated).
Cognition refers to