Culture

Groups and Cultures

Although a culture is often associated with a large-scale group, such as a nation state, smaller groups (e.g., Little League baseball teams, work groups) [Page 177]and organizations can have cultures as well. More generally, cultures and groups are conceptually interdependent. The second component of the culture definition offered earlier stated that cultural information is more or less shared among individuals in a population. A population is often, though not always, defined by a group. Here, a group is understood as a collection of individuals who selfconsciously regard themselves as members of the group, and as an entity with an existence independent from specific members. Therefore, it is possible to speak of the culture of a group as the totality of nongenetic information more or less shared among members of that group. The culture of a group is thus a property of that group.

However, the culture of a group includes what the group means and what it means to be a member of that group. These meanings include information (a) that the group exists (usually in contrast to other groups); (b) that it has a unique past, some current state, and potential continuity into the future; (c) that some individuals (but not others) are group members; (d) that there is a way to determine group membership (and the rules by which membership is determined); and (e) that to be a member of the group means to have certain psychological and behavioral characteristics. In this sense, culture and group are coconstitutive: The constitution of a self-reflective group presupposes the existence of its culture (a definition of the group, at the very least), and the culture of a group presupposes the existence of the group.

The set of meanings (a) through (e) above, about a group and group membership, may be called a group identity. Group identity in this sense differs from social identity, which was defined by the founder of social identity theory, Henri Tajfel, as “the individual's knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of his group membership” (1972, p. 292). In Tajfel's sense, social identity is an individual's representation of his or her own group membership, and it presupposes a group identity. That is, given the existence of a group and its meanings, an individual may define himself or herself as a member of the group. This self-definition as a group member, with its attendant emotional and value significance, contributes to the individual's social identity.

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