Culture encompasses the learned meanings, knowledge, values, customs, practices, and material objects through which people organize and interpret their lives. It includes everyday activities and institutions as well as art, religion, and intellectual traditions. In anthropology and sociology, culture is distinguished from society: society refers to people and their organized relationships, while culture concerns the ways of thinking, acting, and making that develop within those relationships. Culture is transmitted socially rather than simply inherited biologically, and it changes as people reproduce, reinterpret, or challenge established practices. (openstax.org)
Meanings and scope
The word has both narrow and broad uses. In everyday speech, culture may mean artistic and intellectual activity, including literature and music. Social-scientific usage is broader, encompassing food preparation, forms of politeness, work routines, beliefs, technologies, and social expectations. Calling a practice cultural does not imply that it is prestigious, ancient, or universally accepted within a community. (openstax.org)
Nineteenth-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor formulated an influential definition that treated culture as a complex whole of knowledge, beliefs, customs, and capabilities acquired through membership in society. This approach made learned social life, rather than artistic achievement alone, central to the concept. UNESCO’s 1982 Mexico City Declaration likewise adopted a broad understanding, including ways of life, value systems, traditions, and beliefs alongside artistic and literary expression. These definitions establish culture as a multidimensional concept rather than a single measurable quality. (openstax.org)
Elements of culture
Material culture consists of objects and physical environments that people create, use, or invest with meaning. Tools, clothing, buildings, and works of architecture belong to this category. Nonmaterial culture includes beliefs, classifications, conventions, and expectations. The distinction is analytical rather than absolute: an object’s cultural significance depends partly on the meanings and practices associated with it. A building, for example, can be both a physical structure and a setting for collective identity. (openstax.org)
Symbols allow objects, gestures, sounds, and images to convey socially understood meanings. Language is especially important because it enables people to communicate experience, formulate categories, and transmit knowledge. Cultural meanings depend on context: the same gesture or object can carry different associations in different communities or situations. (openstax.org)
Values express ideals about what is desirable or important, while beliefs concern what people understand to be true. Social norms establish expectations for conduct. Some are formalized through law or institutional rules; others operate through informal approval, criticism, or exclusion. Researchers distinguish stated ideals from actual behavior, since people do not always act consistently with the values they endorse. (openstax.org)
Learning and transmission
People acquire cultural knowledge through participation in social life. Socialization concerns learning social expectations and roles; enculturation emphasizes acquiring the meanings and practices of a particular cultural environment. Learning occurs through direct instruction but also through observation, imitation, repeated participation, and responses from others. Much cultural knowledge is acquired without deliberate teaching or conscious awareness. (openstax.org)
The family, peer groups, and institutions of education provide settings for this process. Transmission is not exact copying: people apply inherited knowledge to new circumstances and may modify its meaning. Cultural practices also shape how biological needs are met. Eating and sleeping are biological necessities, but meal schedules, acceptable foods, and sleeping arrangements vary culturally. This distinction does not separate humans from biology; it identifies the learned organization of activities that have biological foundations. (openstax.org)
Diversity and internal variation
A society does not necessarily possess one homogeneous culture. Its members may differ in practices and perspectives according to locality, occupation, generation, or social experience. Individuals participate in multiple overlapping groups, so cultural membership does not determine every belief or action. Anthropological research examines differences within communities as well as between them. (openstax.org)
A subculture has distinctive practices or identities within a larger cultural setting. A counterculture explicitly challenges important norms or values of the dominant culture. Popular culture refers to widely circulated practices and expressions, often associated with entertainment and commercial media. Distinctions between popular and prestigious cultural forms concern social recognition and access, not an objective division between people who possess culture and those who do not. (openstax.org)
Cultural change
Culture changes through innovation, reinterpretation, and cultural diffusion, the movement of practices or objects between social settings. Trade, migration, and communication create opportunities for exchange. Globalization extends such connections across regions, while the internet accelerates the circulation of information and cultural products. Borrowed elements may acquire new meanings when incorporated into local practices. (openstax.org)
Different elements can change at different rates. The concept of cultural lag describes delays between technological developments and adjustments in associated norms or institutions. Change therefore need not proceed uniformly or eliminate older practices. (openstax.org)
Interpretation and heritage
Ethnocentrism means interpreting or judging other ways of life primarily through one’s own cultural standards. Cultural relativism, as a research approach, seeks to understand practices within their social and historical contexts. Contextual understanding does not require moral approval of every practice. UNESCO’s 2001 declaration explicitly states that cultural diversity cannot justify violations of human rights. (openstax.org)
Cultural heritage concerns elements of the past recognized as meaningful in the present. UNESCO’s 2003 convention defines intangible heritage to include community-recognized practices, expressions, knowledge, and skills. It emphasizes that these are transmitted between generations and continually recreated, rather than preserved only as unchanging remnants. (ich.unesco.org)