PSYC 3350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Maple Syrup, Theoretical Definition
17 Jan 2017
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Culture is used to describe and explain broad range of activities, behaviours, events and structures: norms and values. There is much confusion and ambiguity about its definition. Anthropologists discuss culture as a way of encapsulating their understandings of the relatively small and relatively isolated groups of people: every way of life is a culture. No agreement on the conceptual definition of culture. Culture is the man-made part of the human environment: moving to something objective that is out there, ex: road, classrooms, music, tools, symbols (something tangible) Culture is the shared customs of a society: culture is about behaviour (what you do) Examples of shared customs: canada day, champagne of grad day: focuses mostly on behaviour aspect. Culture is a relatively organized system of relatively shared meanings: the value we have (what we share with each other, a system of sharing, a series of norms we share with other people.
