Each person’s behaviour often depends upon some particular behaviour of someone else. The definition of culture indicated that the learned behaviour of people is patterned. Culture is a Pattern of Learned Behaviour: This behaviour occurs in regular, patterned fashion and it is called culture. In other words, we cannot see culture as such we can only see human behaviour. There are degrees of visibility of cultural behaviour, ranging from the regularised activities of persons to their internal reasons for so doing. Culture is the shared ways of doing and thinking. Culture is Abstract:Ĭulture exists in the minds or habits of the members of society. This sort of behaviour, which is not openly visible to other people, is called Covert behaviour. Such activities as planning tomorrow’s work (or) feeling hatred for an enemy, are behaviours too.

Such behaviour is called “overt” behaviour. People can be seen going to football games, eating with forks, or driving automobiles.

Culture is a system of learned behaviour shared by and transmitted among the members of the group. It is imbibing and making ours own, the life style and social pattern of the group one belongs to. Life style and social pattern of a society being the direct consequence of the accumulated heritage of ages past distinguish and differentiate one community from another.Ĭulture therefore, is moral, intellectual and spiritual discipline for advancement, in accordance with the norms and values based on accumulated heritage. It is a way of life of the people in a certain geographical area. “culture is the sum total of human achievements, material as well as non-material, capable of transmission, sociologically, i.e., by tradition and communication, vertically as well as horizontally”.Ĭombining several of these definitions, we may define culture as the sum-total of human achievements or the total heritage of man which can be transmitted to men by communication and tradition. Mlinowlski defines culture” as the handiwork of man and the medium through which he achieves his ends. “Culture is the total content of the physio-social, bio-social and psycho-social universe man has produced and the socially created mechanisms through which these social product operate”, According to Anderson and Parker.

“Culture is the complex whole that consists of everything we think and do and have as members of society”, says Bierstedt. “Culture is the sum total of integrated learned behaviour patterns which are characteristics of the members of a society and which are therefore not the result of biological inheritance.” Intercourse in our literature, in religion, in recreation and enjoyment, says Maclver. “Culture is the expression of our nature in our modes of living and our thinking. Some of the other important definitions of culture are as follows. “The entire accumulation of artificial objects, conditions, tools, techniques, ideas, symbols and behaviour patterns peculiar to a group of people, possessing a certain consistency of its own, and capable of transmission from one generation to another.” He defined culture as ” that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. One of the most comprehensive definitions of the term culture was provided by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor. There is no consensus among sociologists and anthropologists regarding the definition of culture. It refers to the sum of human beings’ life ways, their behaviour, beliefs, feelings, thought it connotes everything that is acquired by them as social beings.Ĭulture has been defined in number of ways.

This is also different from the technical meaning of the word culture.Ĭulture is used in a special sense in anthropology and sociology. In this sense, culture is identified with aesthetics or the fine arts such as dance, music or drama. Sometimes culture is used in popular discourse to refer to a celebration or an evening of entertainment, as when one speaks of a ‘cultural show’. However, this is not the sense in which the word culture is used and understood in social sciences. Culture, in this sense, refers to certain personal characteristics of a individual. Sometimes an individual is described as “a highly cultured person”, meaning thereby that the person in question has certain features such as his speech, manner, and taste for literature, music or painting which distinguish him from others. Image Source: /2010/10/b62e9-sans.jpg Meaning of Culture :

Cultural notion definition