The concept of culture is one of the significant contributions of the discipline of anthropology to the understanding of society in an interdisciplinary perspective, meticulously developed by Talcott Parsons and his co-authors. Since sociology is the study of the social sphere, the concept of culture is central to its concerns.
Studying far-off, pre-literate societies, anthropologists were alerted to the great diversity in human behaviour.
To take a simple example, when two known acquaintances meet, how do they greet each other? In France, they greet by kissing the cheeks of each other, in India and in Thailand they greet with folded hands, saying ‘namaste’ or ‘sawadi khap’(both linked to the Indian civilization), in other parts of Europe and in America, the two parties shake hands. ‘An Andaman Islander from the Bay of Bengal … weeps copiously when he greets a good friend whom he has not seen for a long time’—something similar happens when an Indian family from Mewar in Rajasthan receives a near kin returning home after a long period of absence. In India, farewell is generally ‘tearful’; when the bride is sent off after the wedding, all relatives of the bride weep—a complete contrast to the ceremonies preceding the send-off, which are colourful and joyous.
All actions that become rooted in one’s culture and are followed almost instinctively might have originated randomly, but each society makes an effort to reduce such behaviour to ordered patterns. Such standardization of behaviour is technically called ‘institutionalization’ or norm-setting, which is then followed by members of a society as a matter of course, as learnt and internalized behaviour. These norms become part of culture.
This conception of culture is different from the everyday use of the word. In common parlance, we use the term for sophistication; for the way of life of the ‘high society’; for arts, music and literature that require special skills to perform or create, and are generally considered beyond the reach of the ordinary. That is how the government has a separate Ministry for Culture,9 under which come the academies of Fine Arts and Literature. But this is a narrow and elitist usage of the word culture. Culture is not a museum of tradition or of artefacts.
The social science usage of the term, adopted from anthropology, is different. It is used for all forms of the invented behaviour:
[T]hat are not biologically predetermined by any hereditary set of the organism. Though the biological imperatives of hunger, sex, and bare-bones survival are limiting factors which man may never totally ignore, he is free to experiment with many different ways of meeting these needs (Hoebel, 1958: 7).
Culture, then, is the sum total of integrated learned behaviour patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are therefore not the result of biological inheritance. Edward Tylor defined culture in his 1871 publication, a definition that is still valid, although there are numerous definitions of the concept.10 According to Tylor, culture is ‘that complex whole which included knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society’. Thus, in a technical sense, the concept of culture is much broader, not limited to the knowledge pool of a cultivated minority—the elite—and does not mean only the ‘good’ things. The skill of cheating in a game of cards, called ‘chaukdi’, is as much cultural—as it is knowledge learnt by people who play the game—as the art of singing a classical song. Culture, in the sociological sense, does not signify personal refinement. Thus, the culture of a society is ‘comprehensive’, in the sense that it relates to all aspects of social life of a given society, and thus makes the group ‘self-sufficient’. Tylor’s definition also implies that it is ‘cumulative’ in the sense that all the patterns invented by a group at any particular point in time become part of the collective memory of the group, and are transmitted from one generation to another. In the process, some of these receive primacy, others may become dormant, and the people living that culture might add some more elements to it either through invention or discovery, or through the emulation of an outside reference group. This is called the process of diffusion—elements of one culture diffusing into another through culture contact. Thus, while every culture is unique in the sense that all the cultural patterns are neatly integrated into it—making it more than the sum of its traits—each culture consists of elements that are indigenous to it and those that have been borrowed from the outside, but integrated into it. In the process, these traits may change their form, their usage, and even their meaning. A watch, for instance, might not only serve as a time keeper or reminder, but as a part of the jewellery.
In 1937, Ralph Linton published an article titled ‘One Hundred Per Cent American’. The purpose of the article was to demonstrate the phenomenon of diffusion through which cultures add to their material repertory and thereby change and develop. The imaginatively crafted article describes an average American’s daily routine from the time he wakes up till he catches the train to go to his place of work. Right from the morning coffee—the brew and the bowl—through the newspaper and cigar to the sleeping bed, most of the items used by Americans have their origins elsewhere. And yet they have become an integral part of the way of life of an American. The 100 per cent American is the one who leads his life on almost 100 per cent borrowed material cultural elements. This is how Linton concludes his essay:11
As he scans the latest editorial pointing out the dire results to our institutions of accepting foreign ideas, he will not fail to thank a Hebrew God in an Indo-European language that he is one hundred percent (decimal system invented by the Greeks) American (from Americus Vespucci, Italian geographer).
The point Linton makes is that the arrival of elements from abroad did not erode the identity of American culture. All cultures, be they small or big, enrich their stock through inventions and borrowing, and it is these processes that bring about changes in living cultures.
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