UNIVERSITAS NEGERI MALANG
Course: Human and Culture
Definitions of Culture
Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define. In 1952, the American
anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohn, critically reviewed concepts and definitions of
culture, and compiled a list of 164 different definitions. Apte (1994: 2001), writing in the ten-
volume Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, summarized the problem as follows:
‘Despite a century of efforts to define culture adequately, there was in the early 1990s no
agreement among anthropologists regarding its nature.’
Some Key Characteristics of Culture
1. Culture is manifested at different layers of depth
In analyzing the culture of a particular group or organization it is desirable to
distinguish three fundamental levels at which culture manifests itself:
(a) observable artifacts
(b) values
(c) basic underlying assumptions.
2. Culture affects behaviour and interpretations of behaviour
Hofstede (1991:8) makes the important point that although certain aspects of
culture are physically visible, their meaning is invisible: ‘their cultural meaning ... lies
precisely and only in the way these practices are interpreted by the insiders.’ For
example, a gesture such as the ‘ring gesture’ (thumb and forefinger touching) may be
interpreted as conveying agreement, approval or acceptance in the USA, the UK and
Canada, but as an insult or obscene gesture in several Mediterranean countries.
Similarly, choice of clothing can be interpreted differently by different groups of
people, in terms of indications of wealth, ostentation, appropriateness, and so on.
3. Culture can be differentiated from both universal human nature and unique individual
personality
Culture is learned, not inherited. It derives from one’s social environment, not
from one’s genes. Culture should be distinguished from human nature on one side,
and from an individual’s personality on the other (see Fig. 2), although exactly where
the borders lie between human nature and culture, and between culture and
personality, is a matter of discussion among social scientists. Human nature is what
