Before we start with this topic, we must first know what culture means. Culture has been defined in a number of ways, but most simply, as the learned and shared behavior of a community of interacting human beings. Culture describes what people develop to enable them to adapt to their world, such as language, gestures, tools to enable them to survive and prosper, customs and traditions that define values and organize social interactions, religious beliefs and rituals, and dress, art, and music to make symbolic and aesthetic expressions. Culture determines the practices and beliefs that become associated with an ethnic group and provides its distinctive identity. Every culture is enriched with some good and bad features.
Broadly the world has been classified into the western and the eastern culture. The East-West dichotomy is a sociological concept used to describe perceived differences between Western cultures and the Eastern world. Cultural rather than geographical in division, the boundaries of East and West are not fixed, but vary according to the criteria adopted by individuals using the term
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Aspects of culture:
When asked, “what is(or was) that culture like?” one person may respond by telling about the food and the types of sports played, while another may tell about the religion and the types of art works produced. Below is just one way to break the culture of a place down into six individual aspects.
- Government & international relations
- Resources & economics
- Religion & spiritual beliefs
- Learning & technology
- Family life, community & society
- Arts & crafts
