My views on Culture

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. In general, the term culture denotes the whole product of an individual, group or society of intelligent beings. It includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems and the characteristic behaviors and habits of the selected intelligent entities. In particular, it has specific more detailed meanings in different domains of human activities.

Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity has long been taken as a defining feature of the humans. However, primatologists have identified aspects of culture among human's closest relatives in the animal kingdom. It can be also said that culture is the way people live in accordance to beliefs, language, history, or the way they dress.

Large societies often have subcultures, or groups of people with distinct sets of behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a part. The subculture may be distinctive because of the age of its members, or by their race, ethnicity, class or gender. The qualities that determine a subculture as distinct may be aesthetic, religious, occupational, political, sexual or a combination of these factors.  All said, Culture is not something that should be the basis for hatred among human beings that identify with different cultures.


 

Links on Culture

www.everyculture.com

This link takes you to a site that lists out different cultures of the world.

 

Mukuldey Archives

This link leads you to a web site on foreign influences on Indian Culture.

 

Centre for Intercultural learning

This link takes you to the Canadian Centre for Intercultural learning.

 

UNESCO Culture Sector

This link leads you to UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded on 16 November 1945. For this specialized United Nations agency, it is not enough to build classrooms in devastated countries or to publish scientific breakthroughs.