CULTURE

Definition -is concerned with beliefs and values on the basis of which people interpret experiences and behave, individually or in groups -refers to a group or community with which you share common experiences that shape the way you understand the world -is the lens through which you view the world

More definitions
The quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits  A particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture  A development or improvement of the mind by education or training


More definitions
The behaviours and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group: the youth culture  Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances Matthew Arnold


The fundamental element or building block of culture is the culture trait.  Traits assume many forms varying from material artifacts tools, house structures, art works to behaviourial regularities family interrelationships, economic exchanges, and legal sanctions to abstract concepts and beliefs.  All these complex and diverse manifestations share one feature in common; they are symbols and as such express meaning


 Cultural

elements as symbols assume their meanings in relationship to other symbols within a broader context of a meaning system  To interpret a symbol, therefore, anthropologists must investigate the interrelatedness of elements and the presence of unifying principles that connect symbols to form larger patterns and cultural wholes

Culture traits and broader cultural patterns inclusive of language, technology, institutions, beliefs, and values are transmitted across generations and maintain continuity through learning, technically termed enculturation  Accordingly, learning abilities and intelligence are essential assets for all human groups and have replaced the role of biologically based genetic transmission of instincts


Conclusion
Culture refers to the following ways of life, included but not limited to:  Language: the oldest human institution and the most sophisticated medium of expression  Arts and Sciences: the most advanced and refined forms of human expression  Thought: the ways in which people perceive, interpret and understand the world around them


Spirituality: the value system transmitted through generations for the inner wellwellbeing of human beings, expressed through language and actions  Social activity: the shared pursuits within a cultural community, demonstrated in a variety of festivities and life celebrating events  Interaction: the social aspects of human contact, including the give-and-take of give-andsocialization, negotiation, protocol, and convention


MEANS OF EXPRESSING CULTURE

         

Pictures Writing Books Printing Newspapers Telegraph Radio Cinema Television Internet

CULTURAL AND SYMBOLIC PRODUCTION

-international tourism  -thematic parks  -fashion  -cuisine  -culture of the body  -video game market  Growing entertainment industry( Disney, AOLAOL-Time Warner, Fox, Vivendi Universal)


CROSSCROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
 

Culture is at the root of communication challenges To open channels for cross cultural communication one must explore the historical experiences and the identity of the interrelating groups Identity cannot exist without Alterity, each Alterity, human being relates himself to the Other in the process of defining the difference National identity strongly related to culture and its symbols

CULTURAL IDENTITY


Criteria to define the Other:

 Religious  Political  Ideological  Economic  Cultural

More Culture Definitions

Culture is learned, shared and transmitted from one generation to the next  Culture is primarily transmitted from parents to children, but at the same time, by school, church, social organizations, even by governments or special interest groups  Social pressure influences culture due to its power of reinforcing ways of human thinking


Aim of this course

The presentation of a specific culture, the British culture  Understand it  To acquire basic knowledge on the life and thinking of the British society with its language, customs, shared manners, attitudes and feelings, religion, aesthetics, education, social and political institutions, geographical environment and historical events


Cultural Universals
Elements included in all cultures  Represent general values characteristic of the manifestations representing the worldwide way of life of any group  Include: etiquette, the concept of family, family rituals and celebrations, gestures, mealtime, music, artifacts (clothes, cars) trade customs


Civilization


 

AT A CERTAIN MOMENT OF ITS EXISTENCE, EACH SOCIETY OR SOCIAL GROUP FINDS ITSELF AT A CERTAIN LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT, REGARDING SOCIAL, MATERIAL OR SPIRITUAL LIFE THE LEVEL OF MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL ECONOMIC GROUP A PROCESS OF IMPROVING INSTITUTIONS, EDUCATION, LEGISLATION

definition
A relatively high level of cultural and technological development  Specifically: the stage of cultural development at which writing and the keeping of written records is attained  The culture characteristic of a particular time or place  Refinement of thought, manner, taste


More definitions
The people or countries that have reached an advanced stage of human development marked by a high level of art , religion, science, and social and political organization  Life in a place which has all the comforts of the modern world


The beginning
Has not always been an island it became one after the end of the last ice age  First evidence of human life dates about 250,000 BC stone tools  Around 10,000 BC Britain was peopled by small groups of hunters, gathers and fishers  About 3000 BC Neolithic people crossed the sea from Europe in small boats. They came either from the Iberian peninsula or North Africa


They were small, dark, and long-headed longpeople, the forefathers of dark-haired darkinhabitants of Wales and Cornwall  They settled in the Western parts of Britain and Ireland, from Cornwall at the southwest end of Britain all the way to the far north  After 3000 BC people started building great circles of earth banks and ditches centers of religious, political and economic power


Most spectacular: Stonehenge built over a period of more than 1000 years  The purpose remains a mystery  Suggests: the political authority of the area surrounding Stonehenge was recognized over a very large area, probably over the whole of the British Isles  After 2400BC new groups of people arrived in southeast Britain from Europe  They were round-headed and strongly roundbuilt became leaders of British society  They spoke an Indo-European language Indo

The Celts
From the 7th century to the 3rd century BC they were moving across Europe in many directions  One great body settled in France element in the racial content of the Galish nation  A southern wing settled in the Valley of Po put an end to the Etruscan hegemony in Italy  Others pushed into Spain and the Balkans


A northern wing of this great world movement overran the British Island and imposed the Celtic rule and language on its inhabitants  They came in successive tribal waves, each with a dialect of its own  Wave after wave of Celts entered Britain by lowlands of south and east, slaughtered, subdued or chased across the island not only the Iberians, but also their own kinsfolk that preceded them


Characteristics
  

 

Tall, light-haired warriors, skillful in iron lightImposed themselves as an aristocracy on the conquered tribes throughout Britain and Ireland They remained tribesmen bound together by legal and sentimental ties of kinship as the moral basis of society They didn t develop any territorial or feudal organization Hunting, fishing, herding, weaving, bee-keeping, beemetal work, and above all fighting preoccupied most of their time

     

Highly successful farmers suggested by the increasing number of hill forts filled with houses They remained local economic centres long after the Romans came to Britain and long after they went For money they used iron bars Men wore shirts and breeches and a striped or checked cloak fastened with a pin (Scottish tartan and dress) Very clean and neat Women more independent than hundreds of years later the Romans found women who ruled the tribes and fought on chariots The most powerful woman who stood up to the Romans - Queen Boadicea she almost drove them from Britain in 61 AD

The Roman Britain

 

The name Britain comes from the Greco-Roman Grecoword Pretani for the inhabitants of Britain The Romans mispronounced the word and called the island Britannia


  

Why did they invade?

the Celts of Britain were working with the Celts of Gaul against them - important food producers - came to exploit and govern by right of superior civilization

The Roman conquerors effort was to induce their western subjects to assimilate Latin life in all its aspects  Their success with the Gauls was permanent and became the starting point of modern European history  55 BC the first invasion under Julius Caesar  - the need of tributes and slaves to enrich his partisans and to pay the soldiers  - quite a failure


  

43 AD emperor Claudius sent an army of 40,000 men and the Romans settled for the next 400 years The highlands and moorland of the northern and western regions (present -day Scotland Caledonia - and Wales) were not as easily settled, they remained the frontier They built a strong wall along the northern border - Hadrian Roman control came to an end when the empire began to collapse 409 AD Rome pulled its last soldiers out of Britain