WORLD CULTURE

World Culture

World Culture

From the Latin colere, i.e. “to till” or “cultivate,” this term came into use in the eighteenth century and today displays great semantic diversity, prompting discussions in everyday contexts, anthropology, sociopolitical philosophy, and the philosophy of culture or cultural philosophy, i.e. the branch of philosophy that deals with such topics as the notion of culture, its relation to civilization, and the variety of social, scientific, and philosophical problems it poses. This entry itself is an instance, however introductory, of the philosophy of culture.

As for the meanings of culture, there is, for example, a collective-heritage sense in which a culture is developed in the historical experience of social groups and, as social heritage, is intentionally passed on to succeeding generations. What counts as heritage is not just anything that is passed on, however indirectly and inadvertently this may happen. Instead, the group's members must generally endorse what, perhaps inadvertently, is passed on (Milne, 1986).

This collective heritage sense, in which we talk of Southeast Asian, Sub-Saharan, Andean Pre-Colombian, and Native American cultures of North America, by contrast with Western cultures, is different from the subgroup heritage sense of culture in which we talk of, say, the jazz musicians' culture or, more accurately, subculture (Galston, 1991). However, the difference is one of scale, because all these groups can be said to have a historically developed, though perhaps more specifically focused, social heritage that they intentionally pass on to succeeding generations.

Cultures in this practice sense are not typically thought to prompt debate, e.g. in the multiculturalism issue. By contrast, one crucial concern is respect for heritage. However, this respect is both too wide and too narrow to cover all the concerns crucial to the multi-culturalism issue. First, it is too wide, because not just any group's heritage is at issue. That of jazz musicians is not (Kroeber, 1963). Second, it is too narrow because the culture of such groups as gays and lesbians is also involved in the multiculturalism issue, but not for reasons of heritage. Indeed, these cultures are not, or not predominantly, thought to have a historically developed social heritage of their own that they intentionally pass on to succeeding generations. This suggests that, in fact, there is still another operant sense of culture, the way of life or lifestyle sense, in which what is at issue is simply the ways in which given groups prefer to live their own lives without in any way treating them as heritage to be passed on.

As for anthropological conceptions of culture, except for agreeing that we all need culture, anthropologists are not entirely of one voice on the subject. First, there is culture as knowledge - a conception that identifies culture with the accumulation of information which need not be shared. Second, there is culture as a cluster of norms and institutions - a view that identifies culture with group structure (Galston, 1991). Third, there is culture as constructed reality - a position that identifies culture with conceptual structures within which people construct ...