Classic Definitions of Culture

"Culture...taken, in its wide ethnographic sense is 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. The conditions of culture among the various societies of mankind in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action” (Edward Burnett Tylor).

Culture is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life" (Clifford Geertz).

"A society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members" (Ward Goodenough).

Culture consists of "learned systems of meaning, communicated by means of natural language and other symbol systems, having representational, directive, and affective functions, and capable of creating cultural entities and particular senses of reality" (D'Andrade).

Culture is "an extrasomatic (nongenetic, nonbodily), temporal continuum of things and events dependent upon symboling...Culture consists of tools, implements, utensils, clothing, ornaments, customs, institutions, beliefs, rituals, games, works of art, language, etc. (Leslie White).

"Culture consists in the shared patterns of behavior and associated meanings that people learn and participate in within the groups to which they belong" (Whitten and Hunter).

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This page is managed by Rev. Raymond A. Bucko, S.J. of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Creighton University. E-Mail: bucko@creighton.edu Page Last Updated: April 17, 2000

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