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What is Culture?

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    Posted: 31-Mar-2006 at 06:04

Ok I've been having this discussion with my friends for a while now and we havn't come to any conclusion which would satisfy all of us.

What is culture?What are the constituents of a culture?What's the relationship between a culture and religion,culture and nation,culture and language,culture and race,culture and ethnicity,etc.

How long does it take to form a culture and how long to dissolve it.How many cultures are there in the world.Which is the biggest culture amongst all.Which was the first culture in the world.Which one is the latest.

Is culture limited to human beings or do animals too have cultures of their own.

I have a few other questions which I'll post later.

I really want you to help me so that I can come up with a smarty answer and convince my friends that my view of culture is the best.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Mar-2006 at 08:04
... culture and religion,culture and nation,culture and language,culture and race,culture and ethnicity,etc. ...


All them except the particular case of "race" are part of culture. Culture is how a community of humans or other animals express themselves in a unique way that is not genetically imprinted and that is, therefore different from other groups of the same species.

For instance different "nations" of chimpanzees have different cultural practices: in some region they eat ants by attacking them with a small stick and in another region they just do't eat ants at all.

This is a minmalistic example: in our species, culture extend to virtually everything: language, specific forms of utilitarian production, art, clothing, daily behaviours, food, signs, if you are expected or not to look at people in the eyes, age, class and gender differences, etc.

All but what is biological and maybe some more purely economical part, though we can't ignore its correlation with culture: for some cultures eating certain animals is taboo, therefore they will alter their productive relation to them according to such cultural rules.

NO GOD, NO MASTER!
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  Quote guest Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-Mar-2006 at 08:12

Thanx for the reply Czar.

So is it possible that an animal/human being can belong to more than one culture simultaneously.

PS:From your pic I came to the conclusion that you are a Dutch.Are all Dutch people black?

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