Nonmaterial Culture

Culture is a mixture including knowledge, belief, art, law, morality and conventions shared by nearly all the members of a specific society and separating one group member from another; other skills and habits; also common attitudes and responsibilities learned subsequently, such as original lifestyles, emotions, etc. It has played a crucial role in human evolution, allowing human beings to adapt the environment to their own purposes rather than depend solely on natural selection to achieve adaptive success. Every human society has its own particular culture, or socio-cultural system.

“The behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group” (Sagar, 2012) is the definition of culture. A culture can be something as simple and unique as being involved with those who love classical music, or it can be something more straightforward and typical such as being a parent. Many cultures descend from generation to generation including their beliefs held dearly to their hearts.

In the short story, multiple elements of material/non-material culture are portrayed. Material culture is composed of tangible items that are symbolic or hold meaning to a society such as having a car. Non-material culture consists of ideas, morals and values that hold importance a society or culture. This story illustrates the effect culture can have in our behavior and how it shapes our society, it just comes to support the idea that culture and society are dependent on each other in order to thrive. In order to comprehend material and non-material culture we will first have to separate the both an apply them to context.

Culture refers to any kind of morals, habits, norms, practices, beliefs, laws or customs acquired by man in a particular society. Culture is the set of knowledge, skills, traditions, customs, unique to a human group, to a civilization. It is transmitted socially from generation to generation and not by genetic inheritance, and largely determines individual behavior. (Arendt) Culture encompasses a very broad aspect of social life: techniques, manners, morals, lifestyle, system of values, beliefs, religious rituals, organization of the family and village communities, clothing, etc. Culture can simply be known as the way of life of certain people or area. Culture is a representation of a society with their thinking, norms, values and symbols. Culture is divided into two aspects; material culture and non-material culture.

Culture is the social behaviour and integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity fro learning and transmitting knowledge to future generations

A major aspect of society that sociologists and social scientists alike focus their studies on is culture. Culture is defined as of thought, behavior, and production that are handed down from one generation to the next by means of communicative interaction through language, gestures, writing and other forms of communication rather than by genetic transmission (Kornblum & Smith, 2011, p. 46). Commonly, culture is simple seen as a form of art or what cuisine a group of people eats, however, culture is complex network of behaviors and artifacts define a society. There are three major dimensions of culture that help one understand complexity of culture in a society: ideas, norms and material culture.

Throughout the 20th century, the anthropological views of culture have evolved significantly. Anthropologists view culture as the learned and accumulated experience. A culture of a particular community or society integrates the socially transmitted patterns of behaviors characteristics of a specific social group. However, the definition is still evolving with some scholars defining culture as the knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, customs and another element of life acquired by an individual in society. Kroeber defined culture as a mass of learned and transmitted motor reactions, habits, techniques, ideas, and values. Since Krober’s definition, anthropologists have defined culture in several other ways, although the core elements of Kroeber’s original definition are still relevant. Most o the modern definition of culture agree that culture is learned, widely shared, is responsible for most of the differences in ways of thinking and behaving and is essential in completing the psychological and social development f individuals. Cultural anthropologists often use the term when emphasizing the unique or most distinctive aspects of a specific group’s customs and beliefs. For instance, when we refer to Japanese culture, it refers to whatever customs and beliefs the Japanese people share that make them distinct or different from other people. In this scenario, the definition does not imply that the

Culture refers to learned values, beliefs, norms and life ways of an individual or group that are passed on and guide their thinking, decisions, actions and different ways of living. Culture consists of many characteristics and helps to construct and shapes the ways of communication, health beliefs, health practices and relationships of people. Culture usually helps to provide

Culture is a combination of many aspects of life that have been passed down for generation. Customs, beliefs, values and behaviors that become more specified to specific groups that tend to mimic themselves within a group are the broad range themes that come up when one discusses culture. Culture can exist on many different planes simultaneously. Culture is subjective and the way in which specific cultures are defined changes constantly. Researchers Kroeber and Kluckhohn state that “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action.” (1952, p. 181) This description of culture largely aligns with generally accepted definitions of culture but briefly considers that culture can also be a product of action. I believe that culture is grounded in traditions of the past but suggest that it could not exist without the continued evolution of the key elements that define the concept. For the purpose of this paper I will describe culture as not only the experiences that came before but the enduring and modifiable traits that allow culture to be completely unique

Culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a society, a country or a group. According to Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, organizational theorists and authors in the field of cross-cultural communication, “Culture is a shared system of meanings. It dictates what we pay attention to, how we act, and what we value.” (Trompenaars, 17) Culture is “observable” through language, living environments, governing institutions, food and material goods, the arts and literature, and religion of a particular group or society. Culture also reflects the norms and values of a group and directs their behavior. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner also believe a culture is distinguished by the way in which it “solves problems” and “reconciles dilemmas.” (Trompenaars, 8-9) A culture has to find ways deal with its external environment and has to determine how to effectively use available resources.

The studies into culture have been on-going and the importance of cultural significance in societies has increased in recent years due to the changing dimensions of the world we live in. Globalization itself has had a very profound effect on cross-cultural interactions through progression in the fields of communication and technology that allow the formation of virtual work teams, the elimination of borders in trade, increased labour mobility and migration between countries. While theorists over the years have tried to define culture, it is important to note that cultural experts themselves have stressed the difficulty of defining the concept without touching into different ideas and theories that contradict each other (Browaeys and Price, 2008). Hofstede (2001) defines culture as 'the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another '. In his book International Management (2003), Tayeb adds to the literature defining culture as ‘historically evolved values, attitudes and meanings that are learned and shared by the members of community and which influence their material and non-material way of life’. Some of the most commonly identified elements of culture are values, attitudes, rituals and shared meanings that are developed by individuals over the course of their lives through education, regional and national influences (Hofsede et al, 1991; Schwartz, 1992; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997). Having

According to the famous American anthropologist Ralph Linton, “The culture of a society is the way of life of its members; the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share and transmit from generation to generation.”

Culture was defined by anthropologist as learning and sharing concept, value and belief or can be said as an adaptable system (Lyman, 2008). While, in the wholistic sense, culture can be conceived as the empirical result of manifest in behaviour which already accumulated, transmitted and shared ideas.

Culture is the social behaviour and integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity fro learning and transmitting knowledge to future generations

Based on an anthropologist’s definition, culture is composed of patterned and interrelated traditions, which are transmitted over time and space by non-biological mechanisms based on man’s uniquely developed linguistic and non-linguistic symbolizing capabilities. As explained by Hofstede (1984), culture is not genetic, but instead is a learned characteristic. Even thought, cultural traits could be learned differently from one country to another, the differences in national patterns tend to be very stable over time.