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Definitions of Culture Based on Baldwin et al., 2006 Reviewing Time Capsule /teachers/support/culture.htm A “Typical” Definition Culture: “The deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving” (Samovar Porter, 2003, p. 8) New View(s) of Culture Structure: pattern, way of life, system of something Beliefs, attitudes, thoughts Symbols “Laundry list”: artifacts, concepts, behaviors Function: purpose, in order to, end Process: dynamic, ongoing Critical: power relations, etc. And others… Structural Definition “An historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89) “The term culture usually is reserved to refer to the systems of knowledge used by relatively large numbers of people” [i.e., national groups] (Gudykunst Kim, 2003, p. 17) Functional Definition “Culture, apart from its primary function of active adaptation to the environment, has another, derivative, but no less important, function as an exact material and spiritual environment which mediates and reflects the human collecties and among them.” (Tokarev, 1973, pp. 167-168) Process Definition “Culture is to be studied not so much as a system of kinship, or a collection of artifacts, or as a corpus of myths, but as sense-making, as a reality constructed and displayed by those whose existence is embedded in a particular set of webs [of meaning].” (Pacanowsky O’Donnell-Trujillo, 1982, p. 123) “Power” (Critical) Definition “Culture functions as an ideology that produces or is based upon a type of false consciousness and works to oppress a group of people; and there is generally an imperative for change that is accomplished, to one degree or another, through the formati