For some, the word “cultural” relates to an appreciation of music, art and food. But for anthropologists and behavioral scientists, the term refers to the cumulative deposit of learned human behavior patterns. Culture encompasses a range of aspects that define an entire society, including language, ideas, values, customs, traditions, beliefs, symbols, laws, codes, institutions, and ways of life that are shared within a given group of people.
A society’s cultural characteristics are the result of interactions between individuals over time, explains The Field Museum. Human behavior patterns such as language and politics are cultural phenomena in the sense that they make no sense at all outside of a social context. Humans must interact in a social manner in order to create culture, and it is because of this need for interaction that different cultures exist.
Because of the need for interaction, cultures are not bounded by borders, but they do change over time. New beliefs, values and customs continually develop and replace older ones, and this process is faster in societies that are more open to outside influences, such as those that engage in cultural exchange activities (for example, hosting international students or trading with other countries), or that have high levels of immigration.
The concept of cultural is one of the most important in anthropology, a branch of the social sciences that deals with the study of humanity and its variations on earth. A broad and multidisciplinary discipline, anthropology has developed a number of research methods for studying human culture, ranging from traditional face-to-face interviews with participants to focus groups, questionnaires and surveys. One of the most common anthropological techniques is called “participant observation,” which involves living amongst a community and observing their daily activities and interactions.
The meaning of culture is much more complex than its surface appearance. It is stronger than life and death, and it provides a means of satisfying desires, of defining the self and the other, of expressing beliefs, of establishing morals and ethics, of preserving history and tradition, and of providing a framework for understanding the world around us. In fact, for most humans, life without a strong culture is unthinkable.