Culture. What is culture? How do you define it? How does a culture become just that? Culture is a way of life made up of groups of things. There are many upon many groups and they are all important. Three key features are social organization, customs and traditions, and finally arts and literature.
Social Organization is the social structure to which every culture bases its self on. Each culture has it’s own basic needs that is met through this social organization. The most important unit is the family. This is where the children learn how they are to behave and what they are to believe. Each family has different morals and ways to teach their children. Within the family status there lives the nuclear family and the extended family. The nuclear family holds a husband, wife and children. This is the typical family patter in many industrial societies within the United States. In this family unit there does not need to be many members. For this family buys what it needs with the earnings that it has made. Next, in the extended family there are several generations living together in one household it is common in this family to find that respect for elders is strong. The elders are the ones that pass on the wisdom so in that aspect they are given high respect. The people with authority often vary throughout different cultures. In most societies, and those before us were patriarchal. In a patriarchal family men are the ones with authority. In some cultures matriarchal is present. Matriarchal is when the woman contains the highest authority. Most all cultures have social classes in to which they base or rank their people by. The more modern social class is based on money, occupation, education, ancestry or some other form. In some societies religious leaders are the highest in their social class. Usually in the past you had to be born into a class of the upper society or you “change your stars.”
The Essay on The Concept of Culture and Society
Culture, as often defined in most sociology textbooks, is the way of life of a society. It is the sum of the ideas, beliefs, behaviors, norms, traditions, and activities shared by a particular group of people (Appelbaum and Chambliss, 1997). According to Giddens (1989), any society cannot exist without a culture. This means that culture is an important element that makes a group of people be ...
Customs and traditions are made entirely of the most important element in its class, which is a culture’s rule of behavior. As known rules may vary in importance and different rules are enforced in different ways. Some rules aren’t exactly rules. More like social pressure for example. Social pressure is usually used to enforce minor rules of daily life. If everyone in the neighborhood had a well kept yard and your yard was not so nice to look at the next thing you would probably do is fix your yard up also. That is just one idea on a broad range in Social Pressure. Social Pressure also shows the fact that people enforce their ideas about what is right and wrong and more strictly. Often those ideas so strongly imprinted are that cultures written laws. Most cultures are against murdering and stealing.
Arts and Literature, productions of the human imagination. These are here to please and entertain us, and instill our cultural values. Folk tales are very famous for doing just that. Folk talk help to keep alive a culture’s basic beliefs and values while comparing a story to real life. The Robinson Crusoe is one to which relates to a person’s will to survive and overcome obstacles. Arts and music help to strengthen a culture’s identity. It also encourages people to feel proud and contain a sense of belonging.
Culture is everything we are made up of and is everything that we are. Our daily life from eating to religious habits is confined within the wall of culture. Our views of what is right and what is wrong reflect who we are. Without culture we would not know who we are. Without culture we wouldn’t be able to contain our uniqueness and diversity.
The Essay on Concept Of Culture People Cultural Social
Anthropology introduces culture as a means to perpetuate human existence, because without culture, we would not exist. Individuals are created biologically, while persons are created by social society. Anthropologists firmly believe that our existence is dependent on culture, because culture shapes the social roles people fill on a day to day basis. Without these social roles, people would not ...
