Task 4: What is culture?
‘Culture’ can have a variety of meanings for different people.
Watch one of the two videos below. Is either of them similar to the definitions and descriptions you found in Tasks 2 and 3? Are either of the definitions and descriptions new to you?
Watch and Record
Optional: Read, Watch and Record
Read aloud all the extracts below. What words or phrases did you find which provide a definition of culture? Record an explanation of one of the extracts in your own words.
- People have grouped together into communities in order to survive. Living together well and smoothly, people developed forms of cooperation which created rules, customs, manners, common habits, behaviours, and ways of life. All of these are called culture.
- Examples of culture in everyday life include clothes, food, holidays, music, knowledge and beliefs, traditions and innovations, family life, and much more. These examples of everyday culture with established cultural norms affect the lives of each social group, each of us.
- Culture is defined as an accumulated pattern of values, beliefs, and behaviours, shared by an identifiable group of people with a common history and verbal and nonverbal symbol system.
- Culture is shared and learned behaviour that is transmitted from one generation to another generation to promote individual and social survival, adaptation, and growth and development.
- Culture has both external (e.g., artefacts, roles, institutions), and internal representations (e.g., values, attitudes, beliefs).
