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What does the word culture mean to you?
For example, do you immediately think of artistic productions of all kinds through history, or in terms of sociological and anthropological studies, or in terms of the way urban communities fit together, or in other ways entirely…?
Be very interested to hear all your individual reactions to this word.
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A culture is a evolving system of collective behavior for continuing the clade through time.
Nothing less and nothing more.
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..proffered jenny, presumptuously.
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..proffered jenny, presumptuously. Not presumptiously, tsuwm, I answered the man's question...did you? 
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Culture to me means language, theatre, poetry, literature, dance and music. I think to me it means anything that is the creation of an individual that helps connect and helps communicate socially. I remember as a kid being told that india (or the subcontinent) is very rich culturally. I clearly remember asking the question what is culture and being told "music, dance etc."; it still didn't mean much to a child. I think culture is an adult concept, because the need to connect to society and to other individuals is more in an adult than in a child.
PS: I wonder whether this post is going to have culturally rich attempts to share, connect and communicate or is one going to have to ignore or endure uncultured snide remarks and nastiness.
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>>Nothing less and nothing more.
>I answered the man's question...did you?
nope: how could I possibly, given that?!
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I would say culture is all that which is not nature. All different categories and various ways in which mankind left and leaves traces of cohabitation. Traditions, usages, changes, art,language,science, fashion, philosophy, the material world. All of it.
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I'm sure tsomeone of your intellect can rise above The Truth once more, to enjoy tsome tcivilised conversation  Thanks for all contributions so far - anyone else putting a toe in the water? A common feature so far seems to tend towards seeing culture in a sociological light - but does not the 'value-free' nature of that response militate against the ideals of Avy's artistic production, which presumably implies some cleaving* to moral or aesthetic intent..? * Just for someone who loves the enantriodromic or Janusine :-)
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>>Nothing less and nothing more.
>I answered the man's question...did you?
nope: how could I possibly, given that?!
By telling mav what culture means to you, as jj told him what it means to her.
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To me it means the collection of little yeastie-beasties in my yogurt.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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My take on culture is that it cleaves to the aesthetic but cleaves from the religious (I do not know whether moral and religious are one and the same). I feel culture is expression of the experiences of life. If the mode of expression is common then culture can bind people together like nothing can ( case in point India and Pakistan). If expressing problems/experiences of life is culture then the extension of that - finding answers or solutions to the problems goes into the realms of religion. And nothing can divide people like religion. Those are just my thoughts on the subject.
Ps: and now I'm all talked out on the issue. Gasping for breathe.
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what culture is, is the output of human thought and endeavor (even including frippery or frivolity, I suppose).
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Sure thing, tsuwm, and the output of all of our endeavors has a singular function.
My bold font definition of Culture wasn't pomp. It was meant to delimit the term in a manner suitable for an informative discussion. As it were I failed to get purchase.
Hey, wait! I got another good idea! Be back in a minute...
Drat, I can't pull up the particulars so I'll just wing it:
(Continued on next box.)
Last edited by jenny jenny; 01/03/2013 7:49 PM. Reason: To look up information
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Heh... -|) < <(never found out how you made that)
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:¬ )
¬ = Option - l (That's Alt and a lowercase L)
formerly known as etaoin...
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In September a visiting professor at the University of Alabama anthropology department gave a talk on his digs in the Great Rift Valley in Africa with the immodest objective of assigning the few footprints and even fewer bones found there to the group Homo sapiens. A bold assertion in that the volcanic ash matrix they were in dated 1.3 million years BP.
But were they really our direct line ancestors? Much taller than the famous Lucy, and with brains almost as big as our own, a clincher was found in the physical evidence which showed that they had a Culture.
In the form of crude knives.
Sorry: Continued on next rock because this damn page won't scroll down so I can see exactly what I am saying.
Last edited by jenny jenny; 01/04/2013 1:39 AM.
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While crude knives alone do not necessarily prove the exisitance of Culture (some monkeys are said to sharpen rocks to throw) these knives were relatively heavy and were found at three sites over thirty miles distant from the place of quarrying.
And Culture, either by language or gestures, selected a female (most likely) individual to carry the cutters and scrapers to the site of the kill.
An early manifestation of Culture.
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Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them.
----please, draw me a sheep----
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I would say culture is all that which is not nature. This is wonderful! And accurate, I think. Having taken several Sociology courses, my thinking turns to that def. first. There are so many different levels! (She said, going in the opposite direction from Branny's succinct generalization.) There is "British culture" and "American culture", for example. But wait! Is there really? Do all Britons have the same culture? No! (And, did I get you to think that I was going to leave that sweeping statement as a perfect target? ) Everywhere, I think, there are sweeping likenesses (gender, religion, skin color, rural, urban, etc.) And also less-wide ones (education level, single parent households, homes with a person who requires constant care). But we can narrow cultures down, too: people who play clarinet, people who read King Lear . Every one in these (and other) cultural groups has at least something in common with the others in that group. But can we take culture, like language, as specific to an individual? Not an idiolect but an idioculture?
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Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them. Wich made me think: A man domesticates a crow to be his nut-cracker, that's culture. A crow who uses a nut-cracker to crack nuts is a cultured crow. Hypothetically.
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Crows have been known to drop rocks on nuts to crack them. Crows have been known to put nuts under the wheels of cars stopped for red lights to crack them.
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I'm a bit late joining this debate - sorry, looking the other way1
FWIW - I go along with Branny and Jackie to a great extent, but would add that the word "culture" has become broadened over the years since Matthew Arnold started the debate in 1867 (Culture and Anarchy Cirnhill Magazine)
It has become very contexturalised and can mean very different things to different people on different occasions. Which, I think, is very similar to Jackie's point.
Last edited by Rhubarb Commando; 01/04/2013 2:40 PM. Reason: typo
I'm immortal until proven otherwise
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One could define "Culture" as a learned responce, as opposed to a genetic responce, to situational conditions, except (at last, my chance to name-drop) E.O. Wilson would disagree. I chatted with "Ed" twice last year and both times he opined that collective ant behavior could best be described as ant Culture.
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The ant master of the world chooses his words with care: ' that collective ant behavior could best be described as ant Culture.' He did not say 'ís ant Culture'.
Till now we focussed on the sociological and anthropological part only.
Culture certainly had become a very stretchable word. As Jackie mentioned: each one his own culture, his own value in spite of the general similarities?
To Mavericks original question I still have no answer.
'What does the word culture mean to you?'
All I can say is: "a lot" (which isn't much)
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:¬ )
The cake is back too! As for the Alt and lowercase L I just took the easy road : 'beg, steal or borrow' :¬ )
Happy birthday!
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I often think of cognates and other etymologically-related words when asked to define a term or word. Latin cultus 'worship' is rather neutral WRT connotations, but English cult is pejorative and getting more pejus all the time. Cultus is the past passive participle of Latin colo, colere. 'to care for (someone or something); tend, till'. Thus agriculture (caring for fields) and horticulture (caring for gardens).
I think of culture, in its modern meaning, as the sum total of knowledge things produced by an ethnos, folk, or some other societal group. I don't think of language as culture, but a vehicle for it. (Oh, well; not very original or deep.)
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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:¬ )
The cake is back too!
Happy birthday!
Thank you!!
formerly known as etaoin...
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Yes, indeed, eta - Many Happies - have a R ight G ood day.. I shall raise a pint glas s to you ths evening.
I'm immortal until proven otherwise
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Likewise, best for your next year.
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Before moderator Maverick moderates this subject closed I'd like to add what Plato said, to wit...
If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.
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Oh, yes, jenny--I meant to ask earlier: what is a clade, please?
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Sure thing, Jackie.
A "clade" is a useful way to refer to any ancestral lifeform and all of it's descendents.
Definition:
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
n. A group of organisms, such as a species, whose members share homologous features derived from a common ancestor.
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I like your definition. Language is indeed a vehicle. But we have cult-language and fashion words and word art. I would not single language out from the other things you mentioned. All through history words have been cherished and worshipped for their own sake.( poetry, illuminated manuscripts and such)
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Branshe, I agree. Rather than just a vehicle, the culture is the language. Desparate cultures will almost invariably evolve a language that identifies the in-group and best serves their particular needs. Hey, maybe Maverick wasn't asking "What is Culture?" but just wanted a sampling of our mores and regionalisms. 
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the culture is the language
I suppose I was distinguishing between what Saussure calls language (langue) and speech (parole). The language itself is not culture, at least to me. Individual texts (or groups of them, i.e., literature) can be culture, but the abstract entity as a whole that is language is outside of culture. Don't know though; might be off the path.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Topic is 'Cultural values'. Question was: 'What does the word culture mean to you?.' Cultural values are what a group or/and an individual values in social moral behaviour and in all cultural heritage and actual forms in kind. The word culture just contains too much for a personal answer (imo. Maverick is silent; dear Maverick, I hereby would like to hear yóur answer to your question. ( if can be )
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heh, no moderator me - nor power nor will to curtail any discussion. I'm just a monkey clever enough to find that lobbing a stone in the waterhole creates some pretty patterns and sometimes gets the other monkeys' interest... Thanks for some thoughtful responses. I particularly found useful the associations you drew through analogous terns, nuncle. But all have been interesting. My thoughts were stirred in this direction by a talking-heads radio show on the BBC recently. Melvyn Bragg has assembled some leading brains around a table and discusses the sequential evolution of this term including its sociological connotations, initially in a British cultural context but swiftly branching into less insular waters. I think the programmes may be available as a download - I shall go look in case anyone wants to sample their thoughtful expositions. Yes, I think you can download each programme as an mp3 hereor are we supposed to say "you can gif it here"?!
Last edited by maverick; 01/06/2013 1:28 PM.
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and yet, you dasn't answer your own question?! 
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and yet, you dasn't answer your own question?! heh, for you magister, ok.... I think there seemed a fair consensus of responses around the basic idea that culture is an expression of group thought and endeavour – all the actions of the tribe that are learned, assimilated, handed down (whatever the demographic boundary of the group we happen to be thinking about, as Jackie implies). I’m not totally convinced by the clade concept, not so much because it doesn’t give a good description of the outcomes in many cases but more because it seems to look through the wrong end of the lens: it implies a coherent reaching for some ulterior objective, yet clade membership could know nothing of such boundaries. If I am not clear there, what I mean is it is like the misinterpretation of Darwinian logic that suggests creatures somehow evolve towards some higher state, whereas what actually happens is variation, culled by exposure. I note that Fong’s apparently facetious remark typically wears his learning lightly: yes, the way the bugs in the milk affect their environment and create certain visible outputs does tell us quite a bit about cultural normative influences, I think. I like nuncle’s suggested nuance that it’s implicitly bound up with “caring for” something – this points me to the key point for my interest in culture, that it cannot be value neutral. Whilst we might tend to broad agreement that culture is a bit like the observable output of other life forms, it seems important to me that we are a reflective animal; that we don’t merely leave a blind cultural path like some sort of snail trail, but also have an important capacity to consider, choose, rationalise, communicate, and behave in socially co-operative ways that are vital components of the culture we create around us and leave to the generations that come after us. To give another analogy, when a woman creates a piece of pottery for certain practical purposes we can see the product as a cultural artefact; but with how much richer meaning does that piece of pottery become endowed when it has accumulated several generations of iteration and elaboration, subjected each time to comparison, praise, study, copy, and so on? It seems to me that these processes over time lead to a higher form of cultural production, a more deeply meaningful reflection of what it is to be human – and thus (whether it’s a pot, a fabric, a picture, a piece of wrought metal, a song or a fragment of poetry) we come to produce aspects of culture that we recognise as ‘art’ rather than merely value-neutral articles of craft. Sure, all are aspects of culture: but not all, I think, are equal. Who imparts or arbitrates the value scale is a whole nother thang… That’s my not formally reasoned nor highly polished take on it so far anyway, and I will be interested to hear anything else all-y’all come up with, including if you like the broadcasts.
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