Alfa General Directory » Arts & Humanities » Cultures & Groups
Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate) is a term that has various meanings. Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in 1952, compiled a list of 164 definitions of culture in "Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions". However, the word culture is most commonly used in three basic senses:
- Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture;
- An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning;
- The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group.
When the concept first emerged in Europe (eighteenth and nineteenth century), it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture. In the nineteenth century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals. In the mid-nineteenth century, some scientists used the term culture to refer to a universal human capacity. For the German nonpositivist sociologist, Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history".
In the twentieth century, culture emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term culture in American anthropology had two meanings:
- the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively;
- the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.
Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies.
In the social sciences a group can be defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity. By this definition, society can be viewed as a large group, though most social groups are considerably smaller.
A true group exhibits some degree of social cohesion and is more than a simple collection or aggregate of individuals, such as people waiting at a bus stop. Characteristics shared by members of a group may include interests, values, representations, ethnic or social background and kinship ties. Paul Hare regards the defining characteristic of a group as social interaction.
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