Culture is a complex concept with multiple definitions. Generally, it refers to the beliefs and values shared by groups of people, such as a nation or a society. These can include art, music, language, cuisine, religion, social habits, and other ways that people organize their lives together. However, many people use the term more broadly to mean all of these things and more, as well as a set of ideas about human nature that is held by a particular group or category of people.
The term has been studied by various disciplines, such as history, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. A prominent theory of culture was developed by cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1952, and later by Clifford Geertz, who developed what is called postmodernist theory of culture in 1973. This approach focuses on understanding how culture influences behavior, and the way that people think about themselves and others.
It is also important to remember that a person can belong to more than one culture. While a person may share many of the same values and traditions with someone else, their cultures will be slightly different because of their unique experiences. For example, a person who grows up in the United States may have some of the same beliefs as Americans from other parts of the country but will also have some very different ideas because of his or her own experiences.
A person’s culture may be a source of pride or a source of shame, depending on how it is viewed and used. Some people are proud of their culture and value it highly, while other people see the culture of another as being inferior and want to change it. The relationship between a person’s culture and his or her identity is complex and cannot be simply reduced to one word, such as “ethnic.”
In this Spotlight Series, researchers explore the facets of culture and its impact on human functioning and development. The papers in this series build upon the work of previous researchers and help to develop a conceptual framework for thinking systematically about the role that culture plays in human development.
Jin Li and Heidi Fung explore how culturally based values shape children’s development. They use a conceptualization of culture as a dynamic process and examine how it interacts with other processes that influence development, including biological and environmental factors. They use analyses of European-American and Taiwanese mother-child conversations about learning to illustrate their conceptualization.
It is important to distinguish between cultural generalizations and stereotypes, which are not based on systematic cross-cultural research. Cultural generalizations are broad tendencies that apply to most members of a group, while stereotypes are narrow and limiting, not allowing for flexibility or growth in knowledge. They are often harmful, such as when a person who has a common cultural background is judged to be less intelligent than those from other cultures. This type of stereotyping has been criticized for contributing to racism and other forms of oppression.