Task 5: The nature of culture

Select the descriptions that best match your idea of culture. List three reasons for your choice at the end of the descriptions.

1. Culture is learned (the most essential characteristic of culture)

• • Learning our culture usually takes place through interaction, observation, and imitation.
  • Learning cultural perceptions, rules and behaviours go on without our being aware of it.
  • The essential messages of culture get reinforced and repeated.
  • Because culture influences us since we are born, we are rarely aware of many of the messages that culture sends.
  • We learn our culture from a large variety of sources: family, church, school, friends, society, mass media, and country teach our culture to us.

2. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation

• • Culture is transmitted through a variety of symbols such as language, words, letters, paintings, gestures, etc
  • Communication and culture are linked: communication makes culture a continuous process – cultural habits, principles, values, and attitudes are formulated, and they are communicated to each member of the culture

3. Culture is subject to change

• • All Cultures are inherently predisposed to change and, at the same time, to resist change.
  • Cultural change can have many causes, including the environment, technological inventions, and contact with other cultures. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may produce or inhibit social shifts and changes in cultural practices.
  • There are dynamic processes operating that encourage the acceptance of new ideas and things, while there are others that encourage changeless stability.

According to Nanda and Warms^[1]:
“All human beings belong to the same species and have the same biological features.…the big differences among human groups are the result of culture, not biological inheritance or race. ”