Culture

Of all of the words in the English language, culture and nature are two of the most complicated and multi-faceted, making any discussion of “culture” in the context of environment–society relations fraught with complexity. The Latin word cultura, from which “culture” is derived, had the primary meaning of cultivation or husbandry, the process of tending natural growth, especially crops or animals. The concept was eventually extended to the process of human development, and “culture” was often used in the 18th century as a synonym for “civilization.” In the late 17th century, Matthew Arnold introduced the notion of culture as high [Page 390]culture, that which is beautiful, sublime, and perfect, the best of what has been thought and said. In this view, culture is embodied by extraordinary works of literature, painting, music, and philosophy. More recently, social scientists have argued by contrast that “culture is ordinary,” and that popular or mass culture is also worthy of study.

In 1952, anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn catalogued 164 definitions of culture. One common definition is culture as a distinctive, “total way of life” including meanings, values, norms, and ideas embodied in institutions, social relations, belief systems, customs, and material artifacts. Clifford Geertz argued that culture should be understood as “webs of meaning” coded in symbolic forms, such as artifacts and rituals, which can be interpreted like a text. Culture in this view is concerned with the production and exchange of meanings between members of a group. Culture is also often thought of as a way of organizing society through a system of signs or signification, and a set of stories that a society tells itself about itself. It is learned rather than biological or innate, but is often learned unconsciously, passed through generations by instruction, example, and imitation. Culture shapes awareness, perception, and the way an individual makes sense of the world, and thus is also intimately linked to knowledge and representation.