Culture has been studied in two different disciplines - one as shared collectively by a group, the other via individual learning. There are thoughts falling into two categories – first is that behaviors and products reflect culture as observable phenomena, the other is about ideas which explain culture as non-observable. It is internal but can be explicitly described. In this summary, culture is defined from the point of view of Behaviorism, Functionalism, Cognitivism and Symbolism.
Behaviorist definition of culture focuses on the discrete practices of people. This studies the behavior of people - ‘how they spend their leisure, go about their activities, buy food, go to work etc.,’ Behaviorists focus on the behavior itself rather than on the reason of such behavior or why it is taking place.
A Functionalist definition somewhat supports the idea of Behaviorism. Only, it adds another dimension - it makes sense of what is observable. It presupposes that there are reasons and rules for behaving which the researcher can infer out of the observable behavior. The assumption is that understanding a person can only take place if the learner begins to understand the reason for a person’s behavior or the particular event where he is the ‘actor’.
The third definition is Cognitive. It states that culture is one’s own internal interpretation of the world out of the inputs provided. It is concerned about the mechanism used for processing, i.e., the cognitive map. It shows how the members of a culture categorize and interpret their own experience with the limited knowledge conveyed through cognitive modes. Ethnography is the method used to get at this inside point of view.
Behaviorist definition of culture focuses on the discrete practices of people. This studies the behavior of people - ‘how they spend their leisure, go about their activities, buy food, go to work etc.,’ Behaviorists focus on the behavior itself rather than on the reason of such behavior or why it is taking place.
A Functionalist definition somewhat supports the idea of Behaviorism. Only, it adds another dimension - it makes sense of what is observable. It presupposes that there are reasons and rules for behaving which the researcher can infer out of the observable behavior. The assumption is that understanding a person can only take place if the learner begins to understand the reason for a person’s behavior or the particular event where he is the ‘actor’.
The third definition is Cognitive. It states that culture is one’s own internal interpretation of the world out of the inputs provided. It is concerned about the mechanism used for processing, i.e., the cognitive map. It shows how the members of a culture categorize and interpret their own experience with the limited knowledge conveyed through cognitive modes. Ethnography is the method used to get at this inside point of view.
The last definition of culture is called Symbolic. It believes that through symbols, meaning, experience and reality are conceptualized and communicated. From this standpoint, culture is a dynamic system that uses symbols to connect past and present experiences in order to create meaning.
In a nutshell, to the Behaviorist and the Functionalist, culture is an observable action/event whereas to the Cognitive and Symbolic, it is non-observable and internal. The first two approaches facilitate cultural awareness of why some people act the way they do but it can be highly subjective given the premise that only what is observable can be used to define culture. The latter approach involves a kind of synthesizing cultural inputs in order to interpret or create meaning. None of the above concepts is mutually exclusive in their relevance, however, given enough emphasis on culture and learning we have arrived at a better view of ‘cultural understanding.’
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