What is Culture, What are its Characteristics?

You may love one animal more than another or approach one object differently than other objects. So why? I don’t know, if you think it’s a cultural thing, this answer is probably correct because that’s exactly what we call culture. Since the day we exist as humanity We have given special meanings to certain things, given importance and passed them on to future generations as a legacy.

Culture is the most important concept that separates humans from animals. The fact that it varies between different communities makes this concept even more unique. Of course, the definition of this concept is quite new, but the emergence of culture may be at the same age as humanity. Let’s go a little deeper and even if it’s a bit difficult By looking for the answer to the question of what is culture? Let’s see why it’s so important to us.

Let’s start with a basic definition; What is culture?

The culture, which passed from the Latin word Cultura to Western languages, passed to our language from French. According to the Turkish Language Association, it has more than one meaning. The first meaning is as follows;

“The sum of all the material and spiritual values ​​created in the historical and social development process and the tools used in creating and transmitting them to the next generations, showing the extent of man’s dominance over his natural and social environment.”

In the first definition, culture was considered as the creator of a historical process. The place where man is found both in nature and in society, emphasis on culture. Another meaning is as follows:

“The sum total of works of thought and art specific to a society or community of people.”

Things go a little deeper with this definition because the culture It is emphasized that it is much more than an anthropological approach. The effect of human artistic and philosophical production ability on culture is explained. Another definition is as follows:

“The form of reasoning, taste, and critical abilities developed through learning and experience.”

Perhaps the most basic reason why culture is a human-specific concept is given in this definition. Questioning and criticizing at least as far as we know, it is an exclusively human trait. Therefore, culture is much more than an acknowledgment. Another meaning is as follows;

“Knowledge gained by the individual.”

When we look at the definition order, we see that there is an order from social to individual. Some approaches are quite general, but some reveal that culture has much more in-depth aspects, and the last definition puts a real signature because the emergence of the culture we attribute to communities it is said to actually come from individual knowledge.

When exactly did the concept of culture emerge?

We have made a broad definition as if there is culture since the day humanity existed, but We met the concept of culture only in the 19th century. English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor was the first to mention the concept of culture. In his book Primitive Culture, which he wrote in 1871, he includes the following sentence;

“Culture is the complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other abilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

This definition has been used for many years, carrying out research in different parts of the world. became a basic definition accepted by anthropologists. Of course, different criticisms were made on this definition and ideas were developed. Each new view further improved the definition of culture.

In 1952, US anthropologists Al Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn They made 164 different definitions of culture. These included extremely interesting definitions such as learned behavior, idea in mind, logical structure, statistical construct, psychic defense mechanism. The basic method underlying every definition was the abstraction of behavior.

The mother-in-law taboo added a different depth to the concept of culture:

Abstract study of concrete behavior has not always been an adequate study technique for culture, and in 1959 Leslie A. White in her book The Concept of Culture a scientific interpretation tried to do.

According to this interpretation, behavior occurs after people interact with objects and events, and culture occurs as a result of the interaction of behaviors with each other. This situation is exemplified by the mother-in-law taboo. Behaviors that result from numerous variables such as a newly married couple’s residence, gender role distribution, and livelihood the approach to mother-in-law is offensive or defensive. determines. The continuation of this behavior constitutes the culture.

But how was the culture formed?

To approach the concept of culture from an anthropological point of view, culture actually came into being the day the human being separated from the animal. Because the studies it is clearly seen that animals do not behave similarly to human behavior. Concepts that form the basis of culture, such as assigning a special meaning to a day, classifying relatives, defining and prohibiting incest, are not found in animals.

Basic behaviors such as yawning, coughing and gasping are not unique to humans as they are also found in animals. In anthropological studies, homo sapiens at some point he had a grasp, It is thought that he makes sense of these basic behaviors and goes on a symbolization path. The interesting thing is that there is no logical or neurological intermediate point between these two situations.

Culture is created because people think:

The reason for the emergence of everything that human civilization has today, especially the concept of culture, is that people can think. If we evaluate mental development over four stages, The first is to discover the harmful thing, the second is to react, the third is to control, and the fourth is to symbolize.

Even the simplest organism can distinguish between harmful and beneficial things. As in the Pavlov’s Dog experiment, organisms can react. Even monkeys can make tools and control things. However mental skills we call symbolization It is seen only in human behavior patterns.

Culture development is similar to the development of a living organism:

Culture was born somehow, we get that. Its development was like biological evolution. Culture was formed once and since then, it has adapted to its own dynamics. developed within the framework of cause-effect relationships. Thanks to the mental abilities of man, it has been transferred from generation to generation and entered into a continuity.

According to anthropologists, external factors play a major role in cultural development, just as they do in biological evolution. Because even in villages next to each other Simple details such as being close to the river can cause major cultural changes. So a simple variable can cause a big change in the culture.

The most basic concept of human Answering the question of what is culture, we talked about some theories about how it is formed. Of course, there are many different hypotheses about the formation of culture, but the most basic theory is that it starts with thought.