Understanding Culture: Definition, Change, and Impact
Culture: The Humanization Process
Culture is the humanization process. It is the set of items with which humans improve and develop their spiritual and physical gifts, take over the cosmos, humanize social interaction, communicate their ideas and experiences, and so on.
Analysis
Culture covers the life of a people, the set of values and disvalues of this, and how to express them.
- According to psychology, culture is a specific mode of existence and the human being refers to it as the highest expressions of the spirit (examples: literature, philosophy, music, etc.).
- According to anthropology, culture is defined as symbolic systems, language, customs, and codes governing the behavior and mindset of a people.
- According to sociology, culture states that it is how people adapt to their environment.
Humans live immersed in their culture, and there are responses required to maintain their lifestyle in their midst. Hence, any culture is worth its own and is suitable to the human group that supports it. Culture is holistic; that is, it covers the whole field of human activity and their multiple relationships and dependencies. It has, therefore, content or different aspects such as technology, economics, social structures, religion, political ideology, and so on.
Culture is the result of the particular experiences of each human group, past or present, as they undergo a process of change, of greater or lesser speed, but permanent.
You may recognize two levels in the culture: that of behaviors and values. They are both personal and social expressions that are related, but they manifest differently, forming two sides of a single culture.
- Objective Culture: Everything produced by a people as self-expression.
- Subjective Culture: How people understand themselves and interrelate.
Cultural Change
Cultural change can be evolutionary (the change is generated within this), or it may be an innovative transfer (taken from another culture).
- Endogenous cultural change is when you discover or invent an idea, and this is integrated into human life.
- The exogenous change occurs by the interaction of different cultures.
The way in which this change occurs can be either a belief and acceptance by the group of humans, or it can be induced by force (culture shock). Whichever is smaller, forgetting, and returning to the old one; otherwise, we will generate a transculturation.
Syncretism
Syncretism is when taking aspects of culture and carrying them to their own, creating new habits.
One thing to take into account is the fact that this culture represents a group of people, making it difficult to change these or innovate. Any culture change should be initiated as an innovation, which must be accepted by the group, as this covers changes in the daily lives of subjects. For innovation to be accepted, it must be compatible with the existing culture; otherwise, the more radical the change, the more difficult its acceptance will be. This is necessary for innovation to produce. Cultural change objectives (behavior) are much more visible and striking than the subjective (ideas) and, therefore, easier to evaluate and accept or reject. It influences the degree of prestige and leadership that the innovator has for it to be accepted.