Culture is a complex concept that encompasses knowledge, beliefs and art, moral[3]laws and capacities acquired by humans in society[2]. Defined from various perspectives, it represents both ideas and practices learnt through social interaction. As a system[4] culture transmits changes through the generations, enabling human adaptation and evolution. It serves as an essential mechanism for solving problems, defining group identity and distinguishing human behaviour from natural instincts. Culture develops through invention, diffusion and discovery, with environmental influences moulding its transformation. Although challenged by entertainment and globalisation[1]Culture remains a crucial aspect of human experience, providing shared symbolic meanings and practical knowledge. Its multifaceted nature encompasses intellectual and material dimensions, reflecting how human groups interpret and respond to their environment through learned patterns of behaviour and understanding.
Note: For other meanings, see Culture (disambiguation).Culture (from Latin culture) is a concept with several meanings, the most common of which, especially in the anthropologythe generic definition formulated by Edward B. Tylor according to which culture is "the whole complex that includes the knowledge, the beliefs, a art, a moral, a law, the customs and all the other habits and capacities acquired by man as a member of an organisation. society". Tylor's definition has been constantly problematised and reformulated, making the word "culture" an extremely complex concept and impossible to pin down in a single way. In Ancient Romeyour ancestor etymological had the meaning of "agriculture" (from the Latin culturewhich means "to treat", "to cultivate" and "to cultivate knowledge", which originated from another Latin term, colerewhich means "to cultivate plants"), a meaning that the word still retains today in certain contexts, as used by Sweepfor example.
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Culture is also commonly associated with forms of artistic and/or technical manifestation of humanity, such as the classical music European (the term German "Kultur" - "culture" - comes closest to this definition). Definitions of "culture" have been realised by Ralph Linton, Leslie White, Clifford Geertz, Franz BoasMalinowski and other social scientists. In an in-depth study, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn found at least 167 different definitions for the term "culture". Clifford GeertzIn the same vein, he negatively discussed the gigantic number of definitions of culture, considering it valuable progress to develop a concept that was internally coherent and had a defined argument. Thus, he defined culture as a "pattern of historically transmitted meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge and activities in relation to life".
Because it has been strongly associated with the concept of civilisation in 18th centuryCulture is often confused with notions of development, education, good manners, etiquette and elite behaviour. This confusion between culture and civilisation was common, especially in France and England in the 18th and 19th centuries, where culture referred to an elite ideal. It led to the emergence of dichotomy (and possibly, hierarchisation) between "erudite culture" and "popular culture", best represented in Matthew Arnold's texts, still strongly present in the imagination of Western societies.
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