ATTRIBUTES OF CULTURE

Let us now enumerate the key characteristics of culture.

1. Culture is universal: By this, it meant that culture is a distinguishing feature of all human societies, past or present. Animals lower than man may have group, that is, social, life, but it is man alone who has culture irrespective of the size of the society, or the level of its development. There are certain activities of man that are present everywhere, and yet they are not biologically determined. Similarly, culture is found in all sorts of natural environments in which man has created his habitat. George Peter Murdock (1943) surveyed the literature pertaining to several societies of the world and prepared a list of practices found common in them. The list is given in the box.Of several items, the one that Murdock mentions is language. Heredity has given us the ability to speak—that is, to produce a multitude of meaningful sounds. But not all cultures speak the same language. From this enormous capacity, people of a given culture are able to utter only a limited number of sounds; and any particular member of that society masters a selection from this limited number. And all this is learned, not biologically inherited. Even in the same society, speakers of the language continually modify not only the words, but also the syntax and grammar. In the process, several new words are coined and old words go into disuse. The Hindi that is spoken today is very different from the one spoken by the promoters of Khadi Boli. The way Indians speak English is very different from the way the Americans, the British, or the Filipinos speak. In today’s parlance, with the arrival of the computer, several new words have been coined that our forefathers, if they were to return to this earth, will find hard to understand—blog, Google, e-mail, SMSing, uploading, and so on. The vocabulary that students have now invented at their school is another case in point. See Appendix 4.2 for examples of student vocabulary.Box 4.4 Universally Found Social Practices  age gradinggamesmusic  athletic sportsgesturesmythology  bodily
   adornmentgift givingnumerals  calendargovernmentobstetrics  cleanliness
   traininggreetingspenal sanctions  community
   organizationhair stylespersonal names  cookinghospitalitypopulation policy  cooperative labourhousingpostnatal care  cosmologyhygienepregnancy usages  courtshipincest taboosproperty rights  dancinginheritance
   rulespopulation of  decorative artiokingsupernatural beings  divinationkin groupspuberty customs  dream
   interpretationkinshipreligious ritual  educationnomenclatureresidence rules  eschatologylanguagesexual restriction  ethicslawsoul concepts  ethnobotanyluck
   superstitionsstatus differentiation  etiquettemagicsurgery  faith healingmarriagefool making  family feastingmeal timesfrade  fire makingmedicinevisiting  folkloremodesty concerningweaning  food taboosnatural
   functionsweather control  funeral ritesmourning
2. Culture is unique: Although culture is universal, it is unique to each society. Each culture, as was said earlier, is a product of innovation and diffusion. But each culture screens all elements coming from abroad before granting them entry, and upon their acceptance, these elements are suitably accommodated within the cultural fabric of the host society. The presence of a common trait in both societies need not necessarily mean their common origin, or their common function or meaning.As an example, take hospitality, which is a common element in culture. How hospitality is offered to a visiting guest differs from society to society. Warriors, coming as invaders to India, had to first confront the locals and even indulge in violent wars. But once settled, a different orientation guided the behaviour of the inhabitants toward them. From conflict to accommodation, and finally assimilation, Indian culture has been enriched through these associations, and transformed into a pan-Indian civilization, facilitating the emergence of several sub-cultures, or regional cultures. We regard a guest as a god: Atithi Devo Bhav. Accordingly, we offer a good welcome to the visitor. But we will not go as far as the Eskimos living in snow-clad environs would, where [H]ospitality to a lone traveller always includes food and shelter, and in some cases may include a female sleeping partner. Such a custom is followed only with the consent of the parties concerned, namely both husband and the wife. If such hospitality is extended, its rejection is considered an insult to the woman and the host. The man is head of the house and sexual irregularities without his consent are severely punished. Thus there are rules of behaviour in sex matters, and in no sense is there promiscuity (Ogburn and Nimkoff, 1958: 59).  Igloo: The house of an Eskimot The Eskimos living in Greenland provide a good contrast to life lived on the plains. Living in snow-clad areas, Eskimos have developed architecture to survive in such a cold climate. Their Igloos are dome-shaped and made of snow, and yet are very warm.They have also developed techniques of hunting in the snow, of transportation using a sledge, and the use of bone and stone in fashioning weapons and other tools. But they also have their own religion and social structure. An elderly Eskimo, unable to hunt or be of use, often goes way to die alone, or voluntarily asks to be left behind when the family moves on, particularly if the food supply is short and one more person to feed is likely to be a danger to the group. Or, failing voluntary action, the group may decide to leave the old one behind to die alone (ibid.: 59). Both aspects of social behaviour among the Eskimo—hospitality extended to the guests and the attitude towards the elderly and towards death—differ markedly from many other cultures, where different norms of hospitality and different constructions of eschatology apply. However, cool scientific objectivity demands that they not be viewed from our cultural perspective and be discarded as ‘bad’ or undesirable practices. This is what we mean by cultural relativism. Each culture, being unique, has its own standards of judging an act as bad or good or desirable.
3. Culture is carried and made manifest by a group/society: As was said earlier, culture is the product of a group; that group can be society as a whole, or a group within society. When it is of the latter type, it may be called a sub-culture. In India, we often talk of regional cultures, of tribal cultures, and even of Hindu and Muslim cultures. But this should not be confused with ‘society’. A society is ‘people’, a culture is the ‘way of life’ of that people. To quote Herskovits: A culture is the way of life of a people, while a society is the organized aggregate of individuals who follow a given way of life. A society is composed of people; the way they behave is their culture.’ This is an important difference. Individuals constituting a group or a society may die or migrate; the migrants may carry some elements of a culture that gives them an identity, but the culture remains and moulds the behaviour of people who replace the ones who leave—and this replacement is both through birth and immigration. Those who immigrate also bring some elements of their parent culture, and thus enrich the culture of the society of their adoption.
4. A living culture is not static, it is constantly changing: It is true that culture is socially inherited. A child is born into the culture of its parents and right from its birth, is inducted into it. But those who live that culture also enrich it through innovation and borrowing from other cultures in a variety of ways. For example, those trained in cooking add to the cuisine by experimenting with different combinations of spices or vegetables, and thus add to the cuisine and to culinary art. Painters and artists similarly develop new art forms. As speakers of a language, many changes are introduced either in the manner of speaking, pronunciation, abridgement of words or acronyms, use of words drawn from foreign language—Hindi today contains so many words from Arabic, Persian, and English, and now from the vocabulary associated with IT products—computers, mobile phones, and other gadgets. The composite culture of twenty-first century India is indeed very different from eighteenth-century India, and yet it is distinctly Indian. Appendix 4.2 contains words that are new to the student vocabulary, and are practically unknown to students who had passed out from the same university some two decades ago.
5. Culture is superorganic: The word superorganic is understood in three different senses:
   1. Herbert Spencer meant the phenomena that are directly dependent upon the organic and vary with the latter. In other words, it a process that supervenes over organic evolution.
   2. Other scholars use the term to indicate that cultural evolution is not limited by man’s organic structure. They refer to Man’s unique psychological capabilities.
   3. Alfred Kroeber—the leading proponent of the concept of clture—takes it beyond the psychological frontier. He said that culture is not only super-organic, but also super-psychic. He argued that mentality relates to the individual, whereas culture is non-individual. ‘Civilization is not mental action itself, it is carried by men without being in them.’It must be said that for long, there has been debate concerning the role of biological and geographic factors, some highlighting their key significance and others discarding such claims. However, both were extremist positions, and both should be recognized as integral elements in the making of a culture. It is ture that they play a limiting role and not a determining one. But culture influences them too. The kind of food we eat affects our anatomy and physiology. Many diseases now occurring in present-day society are man-made, and are likely to increase in the near future, changing the profile of the burden of disease of a given society. If the fear of tobacco causing cancer has reduced the incidence of public smoking, long periods of work in front of computers and at odd hours in the call centres is adversely affecting life and marriages. HIV, swine flu, impotency and old age diseases (geriatrics) are gifts of the globalizing world.
6. Culture is integrated: A culture is more than the sum total of its traits and complexes. The various elements of culture interface with each other directly or vicariously and form an integral part of it. The presence of the same element—particularly a material cultural element—in two different cultures does not mean that it has identical functions or meanings. Foreign tourists who buy tribal or ethnic products and place them in their drawing rooms do not carry the culture of the place from which these originate. For them, these products serve the function of museumization. In the originating culture, they might be part of the religious practice or of daily use in the kitchen; in the culture of its exporter, they may become show pieces in drawing rooms. The purchase of these items is motivated by factors such as their exotic character, primitiveness, or as an example of folk art. It may also be guided by the humanitarian consideration of helping ‘poor craftsmen’. However, bringing them into the market may seriously affect the cultural fabric of the community, might even alienate some, or create a rich-poor divide that might not be so prominent in a tribal social structure.

This consequence alerts us to the fact that cultures change as a result of interactions, both between members of a society and with non-members—with visitors, or when natives visit other societies.

Integration also suggests that different aspects of culture are so intertwined that any change brought about in any part of culture has wide-ranging ramifications that affect the other parts in different ways and to different degrees. The arrival of loudspeakers and microphones—products of modern technology invented abroad—affected not only the manner of organizing large public gatherings for political purposes in India, but also the working of our temples and mosques. In Indonesia, for example, morning Azans are broadcast on loudspeakers installed throughout the city. Big religious congregations are held in India where the voice of the religious preacher can be heard through loudspeakers, while they can be seen on the large screens posted in different parts of huge assembly halls; they are also telecast live, reaching large audiences even beyond the country. The popularity of religious leaders like Ramdev or Asaram Bapu, or Murari Bapu has been greatly facilitated by the arrival of the TV, and their appearances have rekindled interest in religious thought and practices like yoga even among those who had earlier taken pride in declaring themselves ‘secular’.

Culture is thus to be seen as an integrated whole. All elements, even the minor ones, play an integrative role.

Children’s games and nursery rhymes undoubtedly reinforce the norms and values of a culture, often ending with rather explicit ‘lessons’ about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. Similarly, ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and confirmations prepare participants for new social roles and reduce the shock of change which might threaten social continuity. Sociologists agree that no culture can be logically divided into separate parts for analysis and be truly understood. Every part of the culture is intertwined with others and contributes to the culture as a whole (Schaffer and Lamm, 1998: 80).