Culture

Culture is a central concept in anthropology that describes the shared ways of life in human societies.

It encompasses a vast range of phenomena transmitted through social learning. This includes social behaviors, institutions, and norms found within groups. It also covers the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, and customs of individuals. Culture often originates from or is attributed to a specific region or location. It serves as a complex whole that includes everything from morals to tool usage.

Human beings acquire culture through learning processes called enculturation and socialization. Within a group, cultural norms act as guidelines for acceptable conduct. These norms provide a template for expectations regarding behavior, dress, language, and demeanor. In specific groups, such as the military, certain behaviors become typical. For example, valor is a typical behavior in military culture. Other virtues like duty, honor, and loyalty serve as functional responses within the continuum of conflict.

Scholars divide culture into two main categories: material and immaterial. Material culture involves physical expressions like technology, architecture, and art.

Immaterial culture, or intangible cultural heritage, includes things you cannot touch. This includes principles of social organization, mythology, philosophy, literature, and science. All human societies share certain "cultural universals." These include expressive forms like music and dance, and technologies like cooking and clothing.

The term "culture" has a deep history rooted in agricultural metaphors. The word comes from the Latin *colere*, meaning to inhabit, care for, or till.

The ancient Roman orator Cicero used the term *cultura animi*. This referred to the "cultivation of the soul" as a philosophical ideal. In Middle English, the word meant a "place tilled." To have a culture is to inhabit a place intensely enough to cultivate it. This implies being responsible for and caring for one's environment.

Cultural change, or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a society's cultural concept. This change can be driven by internal forces or external contact. Internally, changes can stem from social conflict or new technologies. For example, the feminist movement produced new practices that altered gender and economic structures. Environmental shifts also play a role. After the last ice age, the return of tropical forests provided plants for domestication. This led to the invention of agriculture, which triggered massive cultural shifts.

External change often occurs through contact between different societies. One method is diffusion, where a form moves from one culture to another. "Stimulus diffusion" involves the sharing of ideas that lead to new inventions. "Direct borrowing" refers to the movement of tangible technology. Another process is acculturation, which can involve the replacement of one culture's traits with another. This occurred during the colonization of many indigenous peoples. Today, the transnational flow of culture helps merge different ideas and beliefs.

In modern discussions, culture is viewed through many different lenses. Some see it as a way to distinguish social classes, such as "high culture" versus "popular culture." Others study "mass culture," which emerged in the 20th century through mass media. Some philosophers, like those in the Marxist tradition, argue that elites use culture to manipulate the working class. In the social sciences, cultural materialism suggests that symbolic culture arises from material conditions. Meanwhile, the principle of cultural relativism argues that cultures cannot be objectively ranked. This is because every evaluation is situated within a specific value system.