This Thing Called Culture

Culture as observed by Williams (1983) is one of the two or three most complicated words in English Language. The word ‘culture’ has its root in the Latin word colere which means ‘to cultivate’. The word ‘culture’ can also be used to describe ‘the cultivation of or the constant exhibition of certain traits, acts, etc’. It can also be likened to the “idea of cultivating one’s self in an effort to attain the ideal of wisdom which was found in Greek thought: the idea through which human beings become themselves.” Culture can also be described as the “way of life of a group of people”. This is the commonest and most simplistic definition of culture.

Anthropologists are diverse in their views of what culture is or should be. However, the first known scholar that put forth a scholarly definition considered to be holistic enough to capture what culture represents is Sir Edward Burnett Tylor. Culture to Tylor (1871), in his seminal work The Primitives, is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society".  To Kluckhohn (1945), culture is the "historically-created design for living, explicit and implicit, rational, irrational and non-rational, which may exist at any given time as a potential guide for the behaviour of men".  The two definitions highlighted two key points without which culture would not be meaningful: membership of a society and guide of behaviours. It is inconceivable to think of a society without a culture and to imagine that the culture of a society does not influences or guide their affairs.

Culture encompasses languages, means of making a living, arrangement of family life, the focus of group loyalties and ways of perceiving the world, both the physical world and the world beyond (Oke, 2002). Culture influences man's attitudes, its dealings with fellow man as well as the environment. What this means is that culture puts a form of control on and influences man's drives and interactions including display of emotion and sexual behaviour, eating habits, kind of work, political life, hours of sleep, among others. It becomes part of man's survival as it provides for reproduction, care for new family members and patterns of child rearing. One can then agree with Hodge, Struckmann, and Trost (1975) that culture is  "the sum total of life patterns passed on from generation to generation within a group of people and includes institutions, language, religious ideals, habits of thinking, artistic expressions, and patterns of social and interpersonal relationships.”

Culture can also be used to refer to the organised system of knowledge and belief whereby people structure their experience and perceptions, formulate acts and choose between alternatives. The alternatives, we must note, can be confusing and sometimes difficult to choose from, live with or adapt to. Hence there are two major patterns within which culture is meaningful: ideals patterns and behavioural patterns.

The ideal pattern describes what people of a society would do or say in a defined situation if they conformed completely to ideals accepted in the society. There are two sides to the ideal patterns conformity: imperative and the obligatory. The imperative promotes a mandatory conformity to the ideals of a culture. It is a must position regardless of what those that found themselves within such culture thinks. The obligatory on the other hand is prescriptive hence promotes such ideals as the best of alternatives with little or no option for deterrence. The behavioural pattern as opposed to the ideal patterns, are products of observations of how people actually behave in particular situations. It is actual. The reality of the dichotomy between the ideal and the behavioural patterns is that the ideals are what becomes observable in the 'behavioural'. For instance, if one observed and described marriage patterns among the Yoruba people of southern Nigeria, the truth is that what we often observed were ideals that the society prescribes.

There are five categories of ideal patterns:

1. Compulsory: what culture provides for and considered acceptable

2. Preferred: the highly valued among the prescribed

3. Alternatives: where all acceptable ways of behaving have equal value

4. Typical: when a particular ideal is the most frequently expressed

5. Restricted: when certain ways of behaving are acceptable only for members of a particular group, family or society.

 

When the above ideals are undertaken, or adhere to, by members of the society and an outsider can comfortably describe them, such patterns are said to be explicit. They are explicit because they are readily abstracted from behaviour and verbalised by the participants.  The implicit patterns are difficult for participants to verbalise because they operate mostly at the unconscious level; hence the outsider cannot observe that but had to enquire into its nature.

Ogburn (1922) made a vital contribution to the discourse on the dichotomy between several cultural constituents when he opined that there are two aspects which are vital to all cultures, namely, material and non-material.

Material culture refers to the physical or technological aspects of our daily lives, including food items, houses, factories and raw materials. Prown (2001defines material culture as, the study through artifacts of the beliefs – values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions – of a particular community or society at a given time…

Material culture as a study is based upon the obvious fact that the existence of a man-made object is concrete evidence of the presence of a human intelligence operating at the time of fabrication. The underlying premise is that objects made or modified by man reflect, consciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of the individuals who made, commissioned, purchased, or used them and, by extension, the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged. Every man-made object required the operation of some thought and design. It is the assumption of material culture studies that this thought is a reflection of the culture that produced the man-made objects.

By studying material culture one is able to gain insights into things that are not fully articulated or into cultures that have not left written records. For social historians in particular material culture is a useful tool to gather information on the groups other than the elites. The life stories of the working class were not often recorded, and very rarely in their own words. By looking at the material objects left behind, we can extrapolate some of their stories.

Non-material culture, on the other hand, covers all other aspects of culture that cannot be found under material culture. In other words, it refers to ways of using material culture. To put it differently, it refers to ways of using material objects and customs, beliefs, philosophies, governments and patterns of communication. This aspect of culture has been found to be more resistant to change than the material culture. In fact, some African philosophers such as Kwasi Wiredu, Oladipo, Sogolo etc opined that it is important that the non-material aspects of culture that give meaning to it ought to be jealously guarded from undue infiltration so as to retain a groups’ identity. To them, these are the contingent aspect of culture that must be preserved for the sake of future generations.

Avruch and Black (1996) identified two orders of culture: generic and local culture. Generic culture is a species-specific attribute of homosapiens, an adaptive feature of our kind on this planet for at least a million years or so. Local cultures are those complex systems of meanings created, shared and transmitted (socially inherited) by individuals in particular social groups. Generic culture direct our attention to Universal attributes of human behaviour (of human nature); local culture on the other hand calls our attention to diversity and differences.

Regardless of the diversities of cultures in societies, there are certain common practices and beliefs which are common to all. These are referred to as the cultural universals. According to George Murdock (1945) such universals include: bodily adornment, courtship, dancing, decorative art, family, gestures, housing, language, laws, marriages, myths, etc

No matter how distinct a culture is, it must definitely have a relativistic view on the above outlined universals which are enamored further by other elements of cultures. These elements are: language, norms, sanctions and values.

Language is an abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture. It include speech, written characters, numerals, symbols, gestures and expression of non-verbal communication.

Norms, the second element, can be described as established standards of behaviour maintained by a society. It includes such standards or rule as ‘respect your elders’, etc

Next to norms are Sanctions which are penalties and rewards for conduct concerning societal norms. While positive sanctions can lead to appreciation, a medal or chieftaincy title etc, a negative sanction can include banishment, a fine, etc

Values, the last, are regarded as the collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable and proper – or bad, undesirable and improper in a culture. They indicate what people in a culture prefer as well as what they find important and morally right (o wrong).

It is pertinent, at this juncture, to briefly discuss qualities underlying cultures:

a. That everyone has a culture. It is core to their identity, behaviour and perspectives on the way the world works and should be. In fact, everyone lives as part of multiple cultural spheres: ethnic, religious, class, gender, race, language, and others. Culture is not just the group a person is born into. It is possible to acquire a new culture by moving to a new country or region, for example, or by a change in economic status, or by becoming disabled.

b. That there is diversity within cultures. While two people may both be Britons with parents from Nigeria, for instance, a religious Catholic daughter of professionals who lived in Onitsha will have very different cultural norms and perspectives from the son of an indigenous farmer who spent early years in a very poor rural area in Ijebu-Igbo.

c. Cultures are not static. They grow and evolve in response to new circumstances, challenges and opportunities. The ways of being female learned by young girls in South Asian culture, for example, have changed from one generation to another, and as people have moved from place to place.

d. Culture is not determinative. Different people take on and respond to the same cultural expectations in different ways. Assumptions therefore cannot be made about individuals based on a specific aspect of their cultural experience and identity.

e. Cultural “differences” are complicated by differences in status and power between cultures. When one cultural group has more power and status, the norms of that culture permeate the institutions of society as the “right” way. Cultures of less status and power become seen as “other,” or even deviant and deficient. In addition to understanding cultural norms and experiences, service providers and professionals in agencies that work with diverse populations need to be aware of these kinds of cultural biases, both as they play out in the lives of communities, and as they affect the practices and policies of organizations.

Pix Credit: differencebetween.net 

Culled from: Ademowo, A.J (2017) The Culture-Health Nexus: An Introduction to Cultural Competency Issues in Healthcare Provision. Ibadan: TicTacToe Consulting