What is Culture?

“Culture consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodements and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves.” - T. Schwartz (1992; cited by K. Avruch, Culture and Conflict Resolution, Institute of Peace Press, Washington DC, 1998).

Life at Woodstock, 1969

‘[Culture] is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.” – G. Hofstede (Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, HarperCollinsBusiness, London, 1991/4).

‘... the set of attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors shared by a group of people, but different for each individual, communicated from one generation to the next.” – D. Matsumoto (Culture and Psychology, Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove, CA, 1996).

“Culture is a fuzzy set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies,

procedures and behavioural conventions that are shared by a group of people, and that influence (but do not determine) each member’s behaviour and his/her interpretations of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behaviour.” - H. Spencer-Oatey (Culturally Speaking. Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. 2^nd edition, Continuum, London, 2008).

 

“Just as there is no epidemic without individual organisms being infected by particular viruses or bacteria, there is no culture without representations being distributed in the brains/minds of individuals...There is no epidemic without diseased individuals, but the study of epidemics cannot be reduced to the study of individual pathology. From this perspective, the boundaries of a given culture are not any sharper than those of a given epidemic. An epidemic involves a population with many individuals being afflicted to varying degrees by a particular strain of micro-organisms over a continuous time span on a territory with fuzzy and unstable boundaries. And a culture involves a social group (such as a nation, ethnic group, profession, generation, etc.) defined in terms of similar cultural representations held by a significant proportion of the group’s members. In other words, people are said to belong in the same culture to the extent that the set of their shared cultural representations is large.” – V. Žegarac (A cognitive pragmatic perspective on communication and culture. In H. Kotthoff  & H. Spencer-Oatey (Eds.), Handbook of Intercultural Communication, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2007).

The above quotes are from the ebook:

What is Culture? A Compilation of Quotations

Compiled by Helen Spencer Oatey, GlobalPAD Core Concepts, 2012

www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/interculturalskills/global_pad_-_what_is_culture.pdf

“Culture, loosely defined, is the collective expression of core values, beliefs and principles that have taken root and finally flowered. These are the building blocks and may be coloured both by tradition and contemporary education, law, media, business, government which are among the criminal, patriarchal forces that may also actively and deliberately work against culture since these may be regarded as obstacles to the competitive, hegemonic interests of a supremacist mentality. In other words, they infect cultures with a cancer so that their own may flourish. That threat aside, the word ‘culture’ suggests common symbolism that informs and inspires activity and unites people regardless of space or time, depending on geographical restrictions, logistics and available resources. They manifest in the ideas, wisdom, customs, tastes, aspirations, concerns, language, religion, way of life, cuisine, social habits (manners, behaviour, etc.), music, literature and arts of a particular society or group. These things can be described as belonging to sets with flexible boundaries that may merge with other cultures. Thus, culture is an entity that may either remain within narrow parameters or expand to various parts of the world whether through invasion or natural affinity. Moreover, individuals may borrow and mix qualities from cultures in order to furnish their own unique character and deepen their identity. Hence, we have many subcultures today which choose a different focus to that which mainstream propagandists promote. This shifting emphasis, in turn, strengthens and enriches the consciousness of a community or network of people just as our cultural enemy uses its economic clout to erode the collective consciousness.” – Antraeus Voltage, 25 June 2016.

 

 

"Culture is one thing and varnish is another." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people." - Mahatma Gandhi.

"No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive." - Mahatma Gandhi.

"Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail." - Malcolm Bradbury.

 

 

"Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices." - P. J. O'Rourke.

 

"If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it." - Johan Huizinga.

"Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures." - Cesar Chavez.

"We live in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn’t encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom." - Shakti Gawain.

"There has to be innate circuitry that does the learning, that creates the culture, that acquires the culture, and that responds to socialization." - Steven Pinker.

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place." - Margaret Mead.

"Culture is properly described as the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection." - Matthew Arnold.

"Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world." - Matthew Arnold.

 

"Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit." - Matthew Arnold.

"Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances." - Matthew Arnold.

 

Eva Green by Ellen Von Unwerth

 

"If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance." - Pablo Picasso.

 

"Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture." - John Abbott.

 

"Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit." - Jawaharlal Nehru.

 

"Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization." - Walter Lippmann.

 

"General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming." - William Bolitho.

"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future." - Albert Camus.

 

"You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." - Ray Bradbury.

"Men are not suffering from the lack of good literature, good art, good theatre, good music, but from that which has made it impossible for these to become manifest. In short, they are suffering from the silent shameful conspiracy (the more shameful since it is unacknowledged) which has bound them together as enemies of art and artists." - Henry Miller.

  

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.