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Following is the classic definition by
the anthropologist Sir Edward B. Tylor, "That complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as
a member of society."1 According to Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn,
"culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired
and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups,
including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of
traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached
values."2 Of course, symbolic interactionists would add that the essence
of culture is language (i.e., symbols), as the essence of reality is language or symbols.
For this school, culture is most generally identified as "systems of human
meaning." It should be pointed out that some sociologists exclude artifacts or
material objects from their definitions of culture; they include in culture technical
knowledge about the artifacts but do not include the artifacts themselves. Other
sociologists and cultural anthropologists have suggested combining the concepts culture
and society contending that all human phenomena are sociocultural in nature. In Marxian sociology
culture is conceptualized as part of
the superstructure; and is thus seen as an outgrowth-upgrowth of the economic
infrastructure.
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