| Culture as a System: How We Know the Meaning and Significance of What We Do and Say Subjects: Humanities; Language & Literature; Social Sciences; Philosophy; Language & Linguistics; Anthropology - Soc Sci; Sociology & Social Policy; Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Social Science; Sociolinguistics; Social & Cultural Anthropology; Sociology of Culture; A particular culture is associated with a particular community, and thus has a social dimension. But how does culture operate and how is it to be defined? Is it to be taken as the behavioral repertoire of members of that community, as the products of their behavior, or as the shared mental content that produces the behavior? Is it to be viewed as a coherent whole or only a collection of disparate parts? Culture is shared, but how totally? How is culture learned and maintained over time, and how does it change? David B. Kronenfeld is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Riverside, USA. |