The Symbols Of Culture

What is culture? Culture is defined in the dictionary as the arts and other

manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. According to John J.

Macionis, “culture is the values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects together that together

form a people’s way life. For some anthropologists, like Sir Edward B. Tylor, “culture is the

complex whole which includes knowledge beliefs, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other c

capabilities and habits acquired by a human as a member of society. For some biologists,

“culture is the cultivation of bacteria, tissue, cells in an artificial medium containing nutrients.”

However, with these definitions, there are several additional parts that

For example, when someone sees a thumb up in the United States, it means good job, but the same symbol can have different meaning depending on location and people. Once a culture advances their symbolic techniques, they can be able to use these symbols for communication called language. In other cultures, language is used by either writing down symbols or talking through symbols. By this stage, a culture is able to extend its lifespan by promoting its language into the next generation. With words, both values and beliefs can be promoted thorough cultural stories such as folktales and highly popular characters such as James Bond. Values are culturally defined standards that people use to show goodness and beauty that serve as guidelines for social living. An example of a value in the United States is the idea of equal opportunity which that people should be given roughly the same chance to succeed in life through talent and effort. However, beliefs are specific standards a person has such as belief in a

From this example from Rap, it shows that cultural globalization can be eventually used to break down barriers between people by seeing that the vast majority of societies contain traces of Rap culture. It is from these differences between people that causes hate to permeate from the different societies. In general, these differences of cultural values cause societies to have feelings of superiority for their culture and other cultures to be inferior. This is shown through people by either promoting their own culture through nationalistic attitudes or disregarding their own culture by accepting another culture’s values and