CULTURE

the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour. Culture, thus defined, consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and other related components. The development of culture depends upon humans' capacity to learn and to transmit knowledge to succeeding generations. Social scientists and anthropologists have offered a number of definitions of human culture, reflecting various schools of thought. Edward Burnett Tylor, in his Primitive Culture (1871), provided what has been termed the classic definition, according to which culture includes all capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. Every human society has its own particular culture, or sociocultural system, which overlaps to some extent with other systems. Variation among sociocultural systems is attributable to physical habitats and resources; to the range of possibilities inherent in various areas of activity, such as language, rituals and customs, and the manufacture and use of tools; and to the degree of social development. The attitudes, values, ideals, and beliefs of the individual are greatly influenced by the culture in which he lives, and an individual may, of course, live in or travel among several different cultures. In comparing cultures, ethnocentrism is the tendency to interpret or evaluate other cultures in terms of one's own. Cultural relativism, on the other hand, is a comparative approach that derives from an understanding and appreciation of cultures different from one's own. Changes take place within and among cultures by means of ecological and environmental changes; by diffusion of advantageous cultural traits among societies at approximately equivalent stages of cultural development; by acculturation, or the acquisition of a foreign culture by a relatively subject people; or by the evolution of cultural elements over a period of time. Culture may be viewed in terms of component patterns (cultural traits, cultural areas, and cultural types) and in terms of institutional structure and functions (social organization, economic systems, education, religion and belief, and custom and law). Culture may also be subdivided for study into nonurban culture as compared with modern urban culture and into peasant or tribal societies as distinct from modern industrial society. behaviour peculiar to Homo sapiens, together with material objects used as an integral part of this behaviour. Thus, culture includes language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, and ceremonies, among other elements. The existence and use of culture depends upon an ability possessed by humans alone. This ability has been called variously the capacity for rational or abstract thought, but a good case has been made for rational behaviour among subhuman animals, and the meaning of abstract is not sufficiently explicit or precise. The term symboling has been proposed as a more suitable name for the unique mental ability of humans, consisting of assigning to things and events certain meanings that cannot be grasped with the senses alone. Articulate speechlanguageis a good example. The meaning of the word dog is not inherent in the sounds themselves; it is assigned, freely and arbitrarily, to the sounds by human beings. Holy water, biting one's thumb at someone (Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene 1), or fetishes are other examples. Symboling is a kind of behaviour objectively definable and should not be confused with symbolizing, which has an entirely different meaning. Additional reading For a general account of man and culture, see William A. Haviland, Cultural Anthropology, 5th ed. (1987); Richard A. Barrett, Culture and Conduct (1984); Marc J. Swartz and David K. Jordan, Culture: The Anthropological Perspective (1980); and Elman R. Service, Primitive Social Organization: An Evolutionary Perspective, 2nd ed. (1971). The unique capacity for symboling that distinguishes humans from primates is discussed by Leslie A. White, The Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Behavior, in his Science of Culture, 2nd ed., pp. 2239 (1969); Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture (1944, reprinted 1974); and Terence Dixon and Martin Lucas, The Human Race (1982). The many conceptions of culture are discussed in A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952, reprinted 1978). See also Leslie A. White and Beth Dillingham, The Concept of Culture (1973); and Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (1973, reissued 1975). The history of theory and method in social and cultural anthropology is traced in Fred W. Voget, A History of Ethnology (1975). Leslie A. White The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Approaches to the study of culture Viewing culture in terms of patterns and configurations Cultural traits The concept of culture embraces the culture of mankind as a whole. An understanding of human culture is facilitated, however, by analyzing the complex whole into component parts or categories. In somewhat the same sense that the atom has been regarded as the unit of matter, the cell as the unit of life, so the culture trait is generally regarded as the unit of culture. A trait may be an object (knife), a way of doing something (weaving), a belief (in spirits), or an attitude (the so-called horror of incest). But, within the category of culture, each trait is related to other traits. A distinguishable and relatively self-contained cluster of traits is conventionally called a culture complex. The association of traits in a complex may be of a functional and mechanical nature, such as horse, saddle, bridle, quirt, and the like, or it may lie in conceptional or emotional associations, such as the acts and attitudes involved in seclusion in a menstrual hut or retrieving a heart that has been stolen by witches. Cultural areas The relationship between an actual culture and its habitat is always an intimate one, and therefore one finds a more or less close correlation between kind of habitat and type of culture. This results in the concept of culture area. This conception goes back at least as far as the early 19th century, but it was first brought into prominence by the U.S. anthropologist Clark Wissler in The American Indian (1917) and Man and Culture (1923). He divided the Indian cultures (as they were in the latter half of the 19th century) into geographic cultural regions: the Caribou area of northern Canada; the Northwest coast, characterized by the use of salmon and cedar; the Great Plains, where tribes hunted bison with the horse; the Pueblo area of the Southwest; and so on. Others later distinguished culture areas in other continents.