What is culture?

Some definitions

Culture as Knowledge• “Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret

experience and generate behavior.” -- James Spradley,l anthropologist

A word that means several different things• National / ethnic culture (meanings and behaviors groups

of people develop and share over time)• Secondary or subgroup culture

Elements of Culture

• HISTORY

• RELIGION

• VALUES

• SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

• LANGUAGE

Characteristics of Culture

• CULTURE IS LEARNED

• CULTURE IS SHARED

• CULTURE IS TRANSMITTED FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER

• CULTURE IS BASED ON SYMBOLS

• CULTURE IS DYNAMIC

• CULTURE IS AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM

Nitza Hidalgo’s Concept of Culture as an Iceberg

Surface Culture

Surface level (Concrete)

Unspoken Rules (Behavioral)Deep Culture

Unconscious Rules - Symbolic

Hidalgo, N. 1993. Multicultural teacher introspection. In Perry, T. and Fraser, J. (Eds.) Freedom's Plow: Teaching in the Multicultural Classroom. New York: Routledge.

Deep Structure of Culture – Roots of Reality – the “how” and “why”

•Deep Structure Institutions carry a culture’s most important beliefs (family, state, religion)

•Deep Structure Institutions and their messages endure

•Deep Structure Institutions and their Messages are deeply felt

•Deep Structure Institutions supply much of a person’s identity (one of its most important roles for a culture is to assist a person in their sense of identity)

Deep Structures of Culture

FAMILY – definition and forms of family (nuclear, extended), changing families in the US; mixed families.

“The family is the most basic unit of government…” (Charles Colton).

Functions of Family: teach socialization; core values; worldview; identity development; communication training; gender roles; individualism vs. collectivism; aging; social skills

HISTORY -- economic, social development of a region/grouping of people

Deep Culture

Surface Culture Food, dress, musicvisual arts, drama, crafts, dance, literature, language, celebrations games

Courtesy, contextual conversational patterns, concept of time, personal space, rules of conduct, facial expressions, nonverbal communication, body language, touching, eye contact, patterns of handling emotions, notions of modesty, concept of beauty, courtship practices, relationships to animals, notions of leadership, tempo of work, concepts of food, ideals of childrearing, theory of disease, social interaction rate, nature of friendshipstone of voice, attitudes toward elders, concept of cleanliness, notions of adolescence, patterns of group decision-making, definition of insanity, preference for competition or cooperation, tolerance of physical pain, concept of “self,” concept of past and future, definition of obscenity, attitudes toward dependents, problem-solving, roles in relation to age, sex, class, occupation, kinship, and so forth

What sunk the Titanic?