Culture for sociology is the set of beliefs, values, customs, artifacts, laws and norms of a society. This concept comprises all aspects arising from social contact between individuals and reflects their way of life.
All the elements that make up a culture are result of human creation and they belong to a society or a social group. Culture reflects how people act, think, express themselves and how they reproduce their lives.
The term culture comes from the Latin word "college", which means grow crops. The idea of cultivation, in this case, is associated with what was produced by human beings over time and which formed the culture of a given society.
culture and society
Although the term culture is commonly associated with the arts, for sociology, culture is a more broad and comprises ideas, behaviors, cultural, artistic, gastronomic, literary and etc. That is, everything that results from the interaction between individuals in a society.
This means that, for a culture to exist, a society must exist. Likewise, it is not possible for a society to exist without its own culture.
Culture also comprises the norms and morals of a society. For some cultures, there are behaviors that are desirable and behaviors that are reprehensible - this means that norms for social interaction are established.
Culture, however, varies greatly from one society to another. In Muslim culture, for example, it is desirable for women to cover their hair, face or even their entire body. In a Western country, this practice can be considered an oppression of women.
Thus, it is not possible to understand a culture outside its society and for this reason it can be very difficult to understand traditions and customs that are very different from ours. After all, when we interpret another society, we are based on our beliefs, traditions and morals.
At cultural differences, however, do not only exist in distant societies, they can be perceived within social groups in the same society.
For example, a group of evangelicals has beliefs, customs and behaviors that can be very different from a group of young people who like rock music or a community hippie. This means that each social group will have its own culture, with its own customs and knowledge.
But culture is not static. It is changing all the time, either by internal processes of a society, or by the influence of different societies that come into contact and start to absorb elements from each other.
Cultural changes became even faster and more intense with the advent of globalization. The facilities in communication and transport, made possible by technological advances, provided a close contact between different cultures as never before in human history.
know more about globalization and cultural diversity.
Tangible and intangible aspects of culture
Culture is formed by tangible and intangible elements. The elements intangibles are those who deal with symbols, beliefs, ideas and behaviors. That is, those elements that are not material.
the aspects tangibles, in turn, refer to elements of a material nature, such as the objects, the constructions, tools and technologies that are used by society to satisfy their needs.
Culture is, therefore, the set of all material and immaterial elements that make up a society, which are the result of a historical and collective process and which is subject to change as a whole. time.
See also the meanings of culture, acculturation, popular culture and mass culture.