What is Culture?
Culture is everywhere…it is in what we eat, the music we listen to and dance to, the religions we practice and the clothes we wear.
As we celebrate the fourth of July – it represents so much about American Culture, its ideals, principles and traditions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I don’t think I realized what my culture was until I spent several months in another culture because it is so in grained from a very young age as to what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior – what we ultimately reward our citizens as a society.
What is your culture? While in graduate school I did some research, I found that everyone defines culture just a little bit differently. Everyone has their own ideas of what their culture is and how it represents them.
I would like to talk about the four common different types of definitions I found for culture. They are:
1. National / ethnic culture:
This is a child’s primary socialization group — Examples are the Hispanic culture and the African-American culture. This is usually the assumed meaning of culture in the United States, this is a fairly narrow view of culture.
2. Secondary or subgroup culture:
These are cultural groups we’ve been socialized into: organizational culture, professional culture, manager culture, religious culture, peer culture, prison culture, nerd culture, social media culture, materialistic culture and so on.
3. Culture in the anthropological sense:
These are the meanings and behaviors people develop and share over time. A common understanding of what behavior is considered right and wrong within a group (may be focused on geographic region).
4. Capital C Culture:
This type of culture includes the arts of theater, painting, music, etc., or may even mean a superior upbringing.
Each group we belong to throughout our lives creates the lens that we see other people in. Clearly culture plays a very important roles in our lives. Without culture – who would you be?
Bookmark this article!
