Culture And African Culture: The Three Levels Of Culture

A culture is the body of ideas, ways of looking at the world, values, and standards for conduct and behavior that a given people or nation hold in common. It includes the range of meanings that people assign to their own perceptions and behavior, as well as to the natural world around them. We can define the elements of that culture, and understand how they fit together as a culture, by examining that people's customs, language, religion, material artifacts, and social and political institutions.

A culture can be defined as a way of life of a group of people- their behaviors, beliefs, values that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. It also includes the customs, arts, literature, morals/values and traditions of a particular society or group (Virginia Encyclopedia). Culture can also be considered as a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in places or organizations. This topic is of huge importance to our society mainly in the state of

Culture: Culture refers to values, languages, symbols, norms, beliefs, expectations that members of a group possess and the good things they produce and use in their life. Culture is the thing that all the members of a group or society follow.

Culture can be defined as behavioral norms, meanings, and the values used by members of a particular society as its reference point for the construction of their view of the world and ascertain their identity in their way. Traditions, language, values, religious beliefs are all part of culture. There is lots of need to understand the cultural manifestation

Culture is extremely important in understanding a certain area or society. Culture is customs or beliefs of a certain place or society. Five characteristics that define culture are learned, shared, symbolic, intergraded, and dynamic culture (“Chapter 9: The characteristics of culture,” n.d.). Learned culture passes on socially and physically. Their customs and way of life pass on through their immediate family, tribe and

What is culture? Culture is an aspect of life, where through it, one is identified by the aspects that make the culture that belongs.We can say that culture is the set of knowledge, ideas and thoughts that characterize a particular sector of the population, where coexist each of one or more type of different cultures.

Culture is a collective word that depicts a particular kind of advancement mainly in arts, customs, groups and beliefs within a society in a given run of time. It is also a guide for what is considered to be acceptable, wrong or morally recommended. Culture affects a person in various ways including fears, worries, views and even values hence being an important tool in the lives of many.

Culture is described as the symbols that individuals, groups and societies use to make decision of daily life and to assure their values. Culture is a model of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given organization as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal combination, which has worked well enough to think correctly and, so to instruct to new comers as the valid way to observe, consider and feel in relation to these problems. Culture consists of manner, mind-set, values, rituals, religious belief, law (written and unwritten), arts, ideas, custom, belief, ceremonies, social institutions, myths and legends, individual identity and behavior. Cultural pattern classifies are used to describe the dominant beliefs and values. Culture has been called the way of life for an entire society. It is a group or community living together and sharing a set of norms. Culture and society are coexistent. One does not or cannot exist without the other. Culture and society may have some common elements but the two are not the same; they are not identical.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines cultural anthropology as the anthropology that deals with “human culture [especially] with respect to social structure, language, law, politics, religion, magic, art, and technology” (1998:282). Anthropology, when broken down, simply means the study of man (anthropos: man and ology: study). The word culture comes from the Latin word “colere,” which means to cultivate, or to worship. When you understand the meaning of the word, it provides you with a better understanding of what the word represents. Culture is something people create and then “worship” as a way to feel like a part of something. Cultural anthropology aims to study cultures and how they came to form.

Culture is a way of life. It can be defined as a group of people linked by geographical location, ethnicity, gender or age. Culture can be reflected through language, clothing, food, behavior, spirituality and traditions. The behavioral patterns developed through culture are difficult to change.

Culture can be defined in many ways due to the fact that everyone can have their own distinct and traditional beliefs and values. “ Culture is fluid, it is not a static entity which one takes out of the box on occasion. It is with us daily” (Cultural Handout). Someone’s culture is set as the characteristics of the group practices in language, religion, types of food, social traits and habits, and the distinct arts and music. There are a variety of different cultures for example, Western Culture, Eastern Culture, Latin Culture, Middle Eastern Culture, and African Culture. All of these different cultures have their own ideas, values, and individualism, laws that are implied, civil rights, and even technology. In our, “ Culture Handout” culture is defined as the tool of the mind, “ it is an individual’s way seeing and interacting within the world. It encompasses one’s values systems, beliefs, and perceptions of the world around them. Race, socio-economic class gender, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location, age, religion language, etc. all impact the formation of culture, but these various context are not culture” (Cultural Handout).

Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that the members of society use to interact with their world and with one another. It is a combination of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior pattern that are shared by racial, religious, ethnic or social group of people.

According to The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English Online, “culture” is “[t]he customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group” (“Culture”). Instead, according to E.B. Taylor, the first professional anthropologist, “culture is that complex whole which included knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”( qtd. in Scupin 42).

Every culture has its unique characteristics that make it different form the other culture. Some of the differences that prevail in various cultures are quite evident even to the non scholastic and unsophisticated people, these variations include changes in language, traditions, dressing styles, political organizations, beliefs and values etcetera. The other variations that prevail in various cultures, however, are not that loud and one can only come to know these variations after spending a long time in that culture. According to various scholars, culture can be defined as the learned characteristics or the pattern of living for the members of the society. For any society, culture is the way of living of its members. The diversified factors of the culture, however, may vary from family to family in a given society. (Exploring Cultural Differences, 2007)

A simple definition of culture is that it is the human response to the forces of Nature and History. According to the (World Conference on Culture Policies, Mexico 1982)Culture is “the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs."