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Working Definition:
A culture is primarily a way of living, a set of practices which are
inculcated in the members of that culture by the institutions which authorize
them on the basis of the beliefs that constitute the authorizing institution.
[
Take marriage as an instance of a cultural practice central to the specificity
of a particular culture. The ritual which joins persons in marriage is authorized
by the institution of marriage (as a religious or civil service) which is
founded and maintained on the basis of a beliefs like monogamy, incest taboos,
and so forth. Thus you have a ritual, which establishes a custom as valid.
The validity of this ritualized custom is maintained by the threat of punishment--being
demoted in the social order of things.
]
Disciplinary Definitions:
Anthropology: The system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning (Bates and Fratkin: Cultural Anthropology, 7)
Raymond Williams identifies three common meanings of the term, "culture": 1 "a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development"; 2 "a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group"; 3 "the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity" --the "most widespread use" (from Raymond Williams's Keywords, 80).
Raymond Williams identifies three common meanings of the term, "culture": (1) "a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development"; (2) "a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group"; (3) "the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity" --the "most widespread use" (from Raymond Williams's Keywords, 80). He remarks that these "complex senses indicate a complex argument about the relations between general human development and a particular way of life, and between both and the works and practices of art and intelligence" (80-81).
We can combine William's sense into the complex defintion of CULTURE AS "A PARTICULAR WAY OF LIFE, WHETHER OF A PEOPLE, A PERIOD OR A GROUP" IN WHICH "THE WORKS AND PRACTICES OF INTELLECTUAL AND ESPECIALLY ARTISTIC ACTIVITY" FORM "A GENERAL PROCESS OF INTELLECTUAL, SPIRITUAL, AND AESTHETIC DEVELOPMENT."
A culture is primarily a way of living, a set of practices which are inculcated in the members of that culture by the institutions which authorize them on the basis of the beliefs that constitute the authorizing institution. Take marriage as an instance of a cultural practice central to the specificity of a particular culture. The ritual which joins persons in marriage is authorized by the institution of marriage (as a religious or civil service) which is founded and maintained on the basis of a beliefs like monogamy, incest taboos, and so forth. Thus you have a ritual, which establishes a custom as valid. The validity of this ritualized custom is maintained by the threat of punishment--being demoted in the social order of things. (from "Cultural Manipulation," Sosnoski, et al. - included to note the role of institutions in culture
Eward Said "In this book I shall use the word culture to suggest an environment, process, and hegemony in which individuals (in their private circumstances) and their works are embedded, as well as overseen at the top by a superstructure and at the base by a whole series of methodological attitudes. It is in culture that we can seek out the range of meanings and ideas conveyed by the phrases belonging to or in a place, being at home in a place. The idea of culture of course is a vast one. As a systematic body of social and political as well as historical significance, 'culture' is similarly vast (Kroeber, A. L. and Clyde Kluckhohn. Culture: A critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. 1963, 8)
"In the first place, culture is used to designate not merely something to which one belongs / but something that one possesses and, along with that proprietary process, culture also designates a boundary by which the concepts of what is extrinsic or intrinsic to the culture comes into forceful play." (89). . . "But, in the second place, there is a more interesting dimension to this idea of culture by virtue of its elevated or superior position to authorize, to dominate, to legitimate, demote, interdict, and validate; in short, the power of culture to be an agent of, and perhaps the main agency for, powerful differentiation within its domain and beyond it too." (9.) from Edward Said's "Secular Criticism":
James Berlin " ... culture is more adequately portrayed as the entire lived experience of human agents in response to their concrete historical conditions, and that these responses are not simply reflections of economic and political behavior. Culture in their conception stands for a complex way of life that can never be finally reduced to a superstructural reflex of an economic base. At the same time, it cannot be seen as completely unrelated to the economic and political conditions of its creation. This formulation also breaks down the distinction between canonical and other cultural texts, arguing that cultural workers, such as English teachers, ought to consider noncanonical texts and forms of representation traditionally excluded from concern, such as film and television, advertisements, and oral histories." James Berlin "Introduction: A Provisional Definition" Cultural Studies in the English Classroom, viii
Tony Bennett Culture is more cogently conceived, I want to suggest, when thought of as a historically specific set of institutionally embedded relations of government in which the forms of thought and conduct of extended populations are targeted for transformationùin part via the extension through the social body of the forms, techniques, and regimens of aesthetic and intellectual culture. As such, its emergence is perhaps best thought of as a part of that process of the increasing governmentalization of social life characteristic of the early modern period which Foucault and others have referred to by the notion of police. Bennett, pgs 26-27
Stephen Greenblatt: "the ensemble of beliefs and practices that form a given culture function as a pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behavior must be contained, a repertoire of models to which individuals must conform" Stephen Greenblatt from "Culture" in Critical Terms for Literary Study, 225
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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