How does the understanding of culture in social science differ from the everyday use of the word ‘culture’?

(i) Culture : Generally the term culture is used to refer to the acquiring of refine taste in classical music, dance-forms, painting.

This (culture) refine taste was thought to distinguish people from uncultred masses, even concerning something we would today see as individual, like the preference for coffee over tea.

(ii) Culture and Sociologist : By contrast, the sociologist looks at cultural as something that distinguishes individual, but as a way of life in which all members of society participate. Every social organisations develops a culture of its own.

(iii) Definition of Culture : One early anthro pological definition of culture comes from the British scholar Edward Tylor, ‘culture or civilisation taken in its wide enthnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knownledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

(iv) Definition given by Malinowski : More than hundred year later on, the founder of ‘functional school’ an anthropology, Bronis law malinowski of Poland wrote about culture he define this term in the the following manner “culture comprises in-herited artificats, goods, technical process, ideas, habits and values.”

(b) According to Ralph Linton, “The culture of society is a way of life of its members, the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share and transmit from generation to generation.”

(c) Clyde Kluckahn says that culture is a design for living, held by members of a particular society.

Try comparing these definitions to see which of these or which combination of these you find most satisfactory.

You may first find yourself noticing words which rear-‘way’, learn ’ and ‘behaviour’. However, if you then look at how each is used, you may be struck by the shifts in emphasis. The first phrase refers to mental ways but the second to the total way of life. Definitions (d) (e) and (f) lay stress an culture as what is shared and passed on among a group and down the generations. The last two phrases are the first to refer to culture as a means of directing behaviour.