When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. These include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. Cultural universals are found in all human societies. This type of music is thought to be the first expression of polyphony in world music.Ĭulture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. The motifs are independent, with theme and variation interweaving. Note the multiple lines of singers and dancers. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage.ĭescription Pygmy music has been polyphonic well before their discovery by non-African explorers of the Baka, Aka, Efe, and other foragers of the Central African forests, in the 1200s, which is at least 200 years before polyphony developed in Europe. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group.Ĭultural change, or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.Ī cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group.Īccepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Germans marching during a folk culture celebrationĬulture ( / ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər/ KUL-chər) is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.
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