Culture Is Culture

906 Words2 Pages

Culture: It Makes Us Who We Are
Culture is the knowledge, language, values, customs, material and symbolic elements that acts as a lenses through which one views the world and is passed from person to person and from generation to the next in a human group of society (Kendall, 2005). Culture varies in a particular society at a particular time and place. This defines that cultures throughout the world and during different time periods are unique. Likewise, in a multicultural nation, such as Canada, there are various cultures with distinct views, opinion, beliefs and values that have been brought by the new immigrants and shared within their ethnic communities, as well as their families (Kendall, 2005). Over a period of time these cultures and views can conflict, and result in one perception of what is believed to be right to override the other. Thus, the simplest way to think about culture is to think about the distinction between nature and nurture. Nature refers to human nature or genetics. Nurture refers to care given to children by parents, and social environmental influences. …show more content…

F. Ogburnin first used the term cultural lag for the explanation of social change. Ogburn classified culture into two categories: 1. Material culture and 2. Non-material culture. By material culture, Ogburnin means the objects associated with a cultural group, such as dressing and food; any physical object to which we give social meaning. For instance, logo on a woman’s purse might say she follows fashion (Kendall, 2005). Likewise, such physical aspects of a culture help to define its members ' behaviors and interpretation. For instance, technology is a vital aspect of material culture in today 's United States. Whereas, by nonmaterial culture, Ogburnin refers to language, family, religion, and education that people learn as a culture from where they

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