What do you understand by the term local culture?

Local Culture: (i) Culture is an integral part of human society. It is one of the major elements of a social system. Every society has its own culture with its own feature. The regional differences, however, do occur in culture within a single society. For instance, we notice many stream within Indian culture itself located in different regions.

(ii) There are different traditions in these cultural regions. We may call them subcultures. Some sociologists given name such regional cultures as ‘local culture’.

(iii) The term local culture is used in a relative sense, when we talk about culture of a country, for the people of other countries it becomes a national culture. But if the reference point is cultural regions within a country, its context changes. For example, Indian culture is a national culture of India for the Britishers, the Germans and the Americans. But for Indians, local cultures include different cultural patterns found in, say, Bihar, Punjab, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu or Kerala. We may even speak of local cultures of tribal communities.