Culture, as I see it, describes behavior and thought patterns that are neither products of individual decision-making nor biological determinism. Cultural artifacts are referred to as culture by synecdoche, but are not culture per se; their interpretations and function in society are culture. When only the artifacts remain, but the people are forgotten by history, such as is the case of prehistoric cave paintings, the cultural value of the artifacts is lost.
People who are highly individualistic, perhaps because they're embedded in highly individualistic cultures, tend to resist culture as an explanation for behavior and thought, and have less interest in cultural practices and artifacts. By contrast, people who are embedded in more collectivist cultures are more apt to see culture as a default explanation, and an important matrix of variables to tinker with.
Theorists of culture may be interested in the phrase and concept from hip-hop culture, "Do it for the culture." Broadly, the phrase means to behave in a spectacular way so as to catalyze imitators and drive cultural change. See this video for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dbLCpAXhCI
Hip-hop, which is largely considered Black American, but which has considerable influence from the broader African diaspora and other immigrant communities like Jewish New Yorkers, has become a major global vector of cultural evolution, perhaps in part because it has a self-referential attitude about cultural evolution. Indeed, one could easily criticize hip-hop culture for being so obsessed with novelty and transgression that it's on an ever-increasing escalator towards lower and lower forms of attention-grabbing depravity.
Odd. You gave all the definitions except the one that I use. “Culture involves socially transmitted information or traits such as knowledge, beliefs, norms, skills and the artifacts created and transmitted via said traits.”
My apologies. You are right. I thought I read the article twice, but my bad. Not sure I love this term, but I see the value in calling it something other than culture.
You taxonomy can be extended indefintely as the economy increases in complexity. The cluster might be better off as a blur, as there will still be peeps tempted to find a just-so story, or aetheory for that matter, for one of these in the list. The clustering just keep a broad brush ready to tar anything new that pops up. Looking at how all these and more might descend from a time when economies were simple but still socially negotiated and these difference collapse would be of great benefit: (culture-yourtaxonomies/mores/ethnos/art/religion/polity/performance/rites/rituals) where all the one thing and undifferentiated.
What importance do you attribute to this rather nebulous concept? Wouldn’t it be better to work instead with sharper concepts that seem fundamentally important for theorizing about human affairs?
With #2 being “High Culture,” I expected #2 to be “Popular Culture”—movies, TV shows, music and dancing, sports, the circus, novels and comic books, etc. But your #2, though called “Arts and Entertainment,” seems to be something different. What did you have in mind?
I suppose that's more true nowadays that governments can collect taxes much more easily. Since so much of high culture is old, I think of it more as being funded by wealthy patrons (nowadays a foundation might act as intermediary).
I've always spelled it with a small "c" as there are many aspects of life that can add to one's "culture." For years I thought it highly desirable to move to a place that had minor league baseball (Eugene, Boise).
As a historical note, I think the Romans had the idea of cultural evolution in the sense of your cluster concept. They were self-consciously traditionalist and focused on keeping to the “mos maiorum”, the customs of their ancestors. They also thought a lot about prestige bias, the meaning of identity as a Roman, and cultural change.
I support tabooing the word culture in scientific communications because I think it obscures more than it reveals. I prefer to think of memetics, genetics, environment, and behavior, where behavior is a function of the first three. One key problem with the word culture is its tendency to confuse behavior with the causes of behavior. This leads to circular reasoning, when one endeavors to explain behavior.
It should be revealing, not obscuring. The problem is the folkish concept of 'culture' is so incoherent, it's obscuring. English is large enough we already have better words for any of its myriad meanings.
If the social influence is the one that (for good reason) is used by social evolution theorists, doesn’t that give us good reason to consider it to be central for scientific purposes? In some contexts ‘high culture’ or whatever might be salient, but it should be pretty obvious when circumstances call for one of the secondary definitions.
Culture, as I see it, describes behavior and thought patterns that are neither products of individual decision-making nor biological determinism. Cultural artifacts are referred to as culture by synecdoche, but are not culture per se; their interpretations and function in society are culture. When only the artifacts remain, but the people are forgotten by history, such as is the case of prehistoric cave paintings, the cultural value of the artifacts is lost.
People who are highly individualistic, perhaps because they're embedded in highly individualistic cultures, tend to resist culture as an explanation for behavior and thought, and have less interest in cultural practices and artifacts. By contrast, people who are embedded in more collectivist cultures are more apt to see culture as a default explanation, and an important matrix of variables to tinker with.
Theorists of culture may be interested in the phrase and concept from hip-hop culture, "Do it for the culture." Broadly, the phrase means to behave in a spectacular way so as to catalyze imitators and drive cultural change. See this video for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dbLCpAXhCI
Hip-hop, which is largely considered Black American, but which has considerable influence from the broader African diaspora and other immigrant communities like Jewish New Yorkers, has become a major global vector of cultural evolution, perhaps in part because it has a self-referential attitude about cultural evolution. Indeed, one could easily criticize hip-hop culture for being so obsessed with novelty and transgression that it's on an ever-increasing escalator towards lower and lower forms of attention-grabbing depravity.
Odd. You gave all the definitions except the one that I use. “Culture involves socially transmitted information or traits such as knowledge, beliefs, norms, skills and the artifacts created and transmitted via said traits.”
How is that different from what I call "social influence"?
My apologies. You are right. I thought I read the article twice, but my bad. Not sure I love this term, but I see the value in calling it something other than culture.
You taxonomy can be extended indefintely as the economy increases in complexity. The cluster might be better off as a blur, as there will still be peeps tempted to find a just-so story, or aetheory for that matter, for one of these in the list. The clustering just keep a broad brush ready to tar anything new that pops up. Looking at how all these and more might descend from a time when economies were simple but still socially negotiated and these difference collapse would be of great benefit: (culture-yourtaxonomies/mores/ethnos/art/religion/polity/performance/rites/rituals) where all the one thing and undifferentiated.
What importance do you attribute to this rather nebulous concept? Wouldn’t it be better to work instead with sharper concepts that seem fundamentally important for theorizing about human affairs?
The point is to make sense of why such concepts are given the same name.
With #2 being “High Culture,” I expected #2 to be “Popular Culture”—movies, TV shows, music and dancing, sports, the circus, novels and comic books, etc. But your #2, though called “Arts and Entertainment,” seems to be something different. What did you have in mind?
I think they are the same. But maybe your name of "popular culture" is better.
> “cluster concept”
That link doesn't work.
> often funded by governments
I suppose that's more true nowadays that governments can collect taxes much more easily. Since so much of high culture is old, I think of it more as being funded by wealthy patrons (nowadays a foundation might act as intermediary).
I've always spelled it with a small "c" as there are many aspects of life that can add to one's "culture." For years I thought it highly desirable to move to a place that had minor league baseball (Eugene, Boise).
As a historical note, I think the Romans had the idea of cultural evolution in the sense of your cluster concept. They were self-consciously traditionalist and focused on keeping to the “mos maiorum”, the customs of their ancestors. They also thought a lot about prestige bias, the meaning of identity as a Roman, and cultural change.
I support tabooing the word culture in scientific communications because I think it obscures more than it reveals. I prefer to think of memetics, genetics, environment, and behavior, where behavior is a function of the first three. One key problem with the word culture is its tendency to confuse behavior with the causes of behavior. This leads to circular reasoning, when one endeavors to explain behavior.
Taboos can blind you to things.
I mean it in this sense: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WBdvyyHLdxZSAMmoz/taboo-your-words
It should be revealing, not obscuring. The problem is the folkish concept of 'culture' is so incoherent, it's obscuring. English is large enough we already have better words for any of its myriad meanings.
If the social influence is the one that (for good reason) is used by social evolution theorists, doesn’t that give us good reason to consider it to be central for scientific purposes? In some contexts ‘high culture’ or whatever might be salient, but it should be pretty obvious when circumstances call for one of the secondary definitions.
I wanted to understand why there are these other concepts given the same name.