Introducing Society 4 · Section 4

Defining Culture Often the term ‘culture’ is used to refer to the acquiring of refined taste in classical music, dance forms, painting. This refined taste was thought to distinguish people from the ‘uncul- tured’ masses, even concerning something we would today see as individual, like the preference for coffee over tea! By contrast, the sociologist looks at culture not as something that distinguishes individuals, but as a way of life in which all members of society habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor ). Discuss how the visual captures a way of life Two generations later, the founder of the “functional school” of anthro- pology, Bronislaw Malinowski of Poland ( - ) wrote: “Culture comprises inherited artifacts, goods, technical process, ideas, habits and values” (Malinowski : - ).

Clifford Geertz suggested that we look at human actions in the same way as we look at words in a book, and see them as conveying a message. “… Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs…”.The search is not for a causal explanation, but for an interpretative one, that is in search for meaning (Geertz : ). Likewise Leslie White had placed a comparable emphasis on culture as a means of adding meaning to objective reality, using the example of people regarding water from a particular source as holy.

participate. Every social organisation develops a culture of its own. One early anthropological definition of culture comes from the British scholar Edward Tylor: “Culture or civilisation taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and Activity Find out from at least one region other than your own how natural environment affects food habits, patterns of dwelling, clothing and the ways in which God or gods are worshipped. Activity Identify equivalents in Indian languages for the word culture.

What associations do these carry?