What the Heck is Culture?
Culture is a hot-button word of mine, because most people are at a loss to define it. However, it plays a very important part in everything that everyone does. In grad school I thought, and argued, that my professors’ definitions of culture were preposterous. A lot of the academic literature and research on culture has serious flaws that academia seems to ignore out of convenience.
The issue with coming up with a working definition of culture is context. An archaeologist and a linguist might be looking for different things. Different ways of defining and looking at culture may be useful, but not interchangeable.
So what’s my definition of culture? Rules transmitted and shared by a group. Let me break each component of my definition down for you:
Rules:
Culture is all about rules. There are rules for how to behave, what things mean, and the relative importance of things. Social scientists might refer to values and norms - two types of rules.
Language is an artifact of a set of rules.
Transmitted:
For rules to exist in a culture they must be transmitted from member to member. This is in contrast to rules that an individuals develop themselves, or rules like gravity.
The transmission of rules can be overt - “Thou shalt not…”, or they can be learned through observation or inference. Members of a culture need not be able to articulate a rule, or even be consciously aware of the rule for it to affect their thoughts or behavior.
Shared:
If I decide that there are now 13 28-day months in a year that’s fantastic. But if nobody else complies with that rule, it won’t be a component of any culture I belong to. The rule has to exist within and affect the group.
This is not to say that every member of a group will follow all the rules. That’s why we have cops. But the rules will invariably affect their behavior. Most people know that stealing is “wrong” and can lead to consequences. If they steal, they will probably try to hide it.
Group:
There’s no such thing as a culture of one. In order to study culture and its effect, really you need more than one person.
Imagine you discover a new tribe of people in the Amazon and you grab one of their people and bring him back to a lab to study. Can you extrapolate truths about his culture looking at him alone? Certainly not. You may have grabbed someone whose behavior is on the far end of the bell-curve for that tribe.
This is an important point because culture is a normalizing force which tends to enforce its rules. But, there are always people who live outside the normal range. They aren’t necessarily outside the culture, but they are outsiders within the culture.
Frequently pressure from outsiders will shift the rules. At one point, African Americans weren’t allowed to play mainstream professional baseball. Along comes Jackie Robinson. There was certainly negative pressure (in the form of verbal abuse and even death threats) for him not to play. In the end, he played an integral part to change the culture of baseball.
Many people confuse artifacts with culture. Remember that culture is about rules. Artifacts are a byproduct of culture. Artifacts include artwork, tools, language, stories, and any other outward reflection of culture.
My definition of culture is intentionally broad. Under this definition, every person most likely belongs to several cultures. I am American, live in the Northeast, work in technology. Each of these descriptive items implies a shared set of transmitted rules. Further, I live in Boston, practice martial arts, and have a graduate degree.
I like to think of people as layers of culture. To say I am a member of the culture of the United States is true, but not very granular. To say that I am a member of the Bostonian culture is a little clearer and also implies the United States Culture.
My definition of culture may or may not be useful to you in your particular corner of human experience design. It serves me well and, I dare say, holds up favorably to many definitions of culture.
