Culture

Culture is the full range of human behavior for a given people group, including their shared knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, morals, customs and any other capabilities or habits acquired as a member of a given society. When we speak of Latin, Japanese, French or North American cultures, we are referring to the shared language, traditions and beliefs that set each of these peoples apart from others.

You share a given culture likely because you were born or adopted into it and were raised by parents or other family members who were already a part of it. Cultures change over time, adopting new beliefs, laws and customs and shedding older ones. Cultures are not the product of individuals, but rather the interaction of people--language and politics make no sense in isolation as there would be no need for communication or government if you were the only person on earth.

Some traits that we commonly use to identify and differentiate various cultures include:

• A common verbal language
• Using age and gender to classify people (e.g., teenager, senior citizen, woman, man)
• Classifying people based on marriage and descent relationships and having kinship terms to refer to them (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin)
• A common family setting in which to raise children
• A sexual division of labor and behavior (e.g., men's work versus women's work)
• A common concept of privacy
• Rules to regulate sexual behavior
• Distinguishing between good and bad behavior
• Common body ornamentation or dress
• Making jokes and playing games
• Art
• Organized leadership roles for the implementation of community decisions

Culture is generally regarded as an anthropolical term first described by Edward B. Tylor in 1871 in his book Primative Culture.

A culture differs from the marketplace in that the marketplace is an economic environment that exists within a given culture. A culture also differs from a society in that a society is a group of interacting organisms. Humans are not the only animals to have societies--schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of cattle are examples--but humans are the only species to which we apply the designation of culture. (There is some minor debate on this--do complex primates like chimps exhibit cultural behavior, for instance? Generally, though, we're talking about people when we talk about culture.)