Culture is manifested at different layers of depth
observable artifacts,
“how” a group constructs its
environment and “what” behaviour
patterns are discernible among the
members,
values
why members behave the
way they do
basic underlying
assumptions
how group members perceive,
think and feel. Such assumptions
are themselves learned responses
that originated as espoused
values
Culture affects behaviour and interpretations of behaviour
certain aspects of culture are
physically visible, but, their meaning is
invisible.
Culture can be differentiated from both universal
human nature and unique individual personality
Human nature
is what all human beings have in
common.
Personality
Is a unique personal set of mental
programs which is not share with any
other human being.
Culture influences biological processes
Responses to biological needs (that is,
eating, coughing, defecating) are frequently
influenced by culture.
Culture is associated with social groups
Culture is shared by at least two or more people. Everyone is
simultaneously a member of several different cultural groups
and thus could be said to have multicultural membership.
Culture is both an individual construct
and a social construct
Culture exists in each and every one of us individually as much
as it exists as a global, social construct.
Culture is always both socially and
psychologically distributed in a group, and so
the delineation of a culture’s features will
always be fuzzy
Group members are unlikely to share
identical sets of attitudes, beliefs and so
on, but rather show ‘family resemblances’.
Culture has both universal (etic) and distinctive
(emic) elements
Humans have largely overlapping biologies and live in
fairly similar social structures and physical
environments, which create major similarities in the way
they form cultures.
Culture is learned
Culture is learned from the people you
interact with as you are socialized.
Watching how adults react and talk to new
babies is an excellent way to see the actual
symbolic transmission of culture among
people.
Culture is subject to gradual change
Any anthropological account of the culture of any
society is a type of snapshot view of one particular
time.
The various parts of a culture are all, to some degree, interrelated
Cultures are coherent and logical systems, which particular
components may be related to other components
Culture is a descriptive not an
evaluative concept
culture is not something exclusive
to certain members; rather it relates
to the whole of a society