On the definition of culture:
This note is in response to the query by Arden, who asked:
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What I really wanted to know is what you mean by the keyword
'culture'. Is it a shorthand for the concept of difference? Is it
based on geography, language, history? Perhaps if I knew what you
meant by it, I would not be so unsettled by your article's insistence
on its absence in certain instances of product design.
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Culture is a frequently defined term, but defined differently each time.
After spending many years with cultural and cognitive anthropologists
as well as with a cultural psychologist, here is my meaning. But blame
me, not them.
Culture is the shared understanding among a group of people about what
is appropriate and inappropriate behavior, activities, and displays.A
culture also shares a rich body of knowledge about its history,
values, and membership. Much of this shared knowledge, however, is
implicit and sub-conscious, and the members of a culture may very well
be unaware of all of these shared beliefs: basically, they just assume
that these beliefs are commonsense and are surprised when others
violate them.
In the early days of anthropology, cultural studies were mostly of
exotic people in hard to reach places. But today, anthropologists are
apt to study the culture of Navy sailors or midwestern cowboys,
Australian herders or Wall Street traders. Those in the design
research business study cultures relevant to product design, such as
teen agers, retired folk, and so on.
To me culture is not restricted to geographic, linguistic, religious,
racial, gender, or national distinctions, although all of these do
play major roles. Some might consider cultures based upon these
differences. Teen-age japanese girls have a distinctly different set
of cultural attributes than middle aged Japanese business people,
although they also both belong to the same general national and
linguistic cultures of strict hierarchical rules in behavior and
language, etc.
So cultures can have sub-cultures. Cultures can overlap. Each person
belongs to multiple cultures, just as each person has several
identities/personalities.
NOTE: My definition is broader and more inclusive than traditional
definitions, but it is consistent with the thinking of the cognitive
science crowd that I hang out with. The Wikipedia article n culture is
amazingly good. One of the best Wikipedia articles i have encountered.
Don
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