Culture is the accumulated beliefs, values, norms, traditions, and institutions of a people. It encompasses the language, art, food, religion, and everyday activities of a group. It influences the way people interact with each other and with nature and helps them determine their identities. Culture can be a force for oppression and domination, but it can also inspire creativity, resistance, and liberation. It’s hard to pin down what exactly culture is because it is so omnipresent and subjective, but researchers can attempt to understand its impact through studying cultural artifacts (e.g., paintings, music, and movies).
The term “culture” is derived from the Latin word colere, which means cultivation or taking care of plants. The meaning has evolved since its inception, and now the word culture describes the broad tendencies of a society to prefer certain states of affairs over others (e.g., good-evil, right-wrong, natural-unnatural). These values can be intangible or invisible to outsiders and are often unconscious for those within the culture. They form the basis for cultural beliefs, heroes, and rituals and can be reflected in the symbols, myths, and stories that a culture tells its members.
Anthropologist Edward Tylor was one of the first to popularize the concept of culture. He believed that cultures evolved in a similar fashion as plants and animals and had distinct stages, such as savagery, barbarism, and civilization. He based his theory on Charles Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species and other theories of evolution, and like many scholars of the nineteenth century, he thought that cultures developed through natural selection.
Today, the study of culture is conducted in a wide variety of disciplines. The field of anthropology is the most prominent, but researchers in other fields, such as sociology, history, and art also study culture. The study of culture can help to understand other aspects of human behavior, and recent research has focused on understanding cultural differences in child development.
In the past, methods for studying culture were primarily ethnographic and phenomenological, but with the advancement of technology, researchers can now analyze large databases to look at patterns and trends in cultural evolution. Some scholars use a selective approach, in which they select artifacts from a specific time and place that are expected to fulfill a particular function; others aim for exhaustivity and analyze all known cultural artifacts to discover how they have changed over the centuries.
Regardless of the method, all researchers must be aware that the cultural fossil record is incomplete and can only be extrapolated from a limited number of artifacts. Because of this, scholars should be careful not to impose their own assumptions on the results and should remain open to alternative interpretations of historical data. In addition, a researcher’s perspective can be biased by his or her background, education, and beliefs. Therefore, it is important to consider the context and motivation of a study of culture before making conclusions. This will help mitigate bias and allow the results to be as accurate as possible.