Culture In The Nacirema

Culture has a paramount influence in everyday day life from the way people dress to way people gather food to how someone greets others. It united group of people based on their share ideas, perceptions, and knowledge (Blanco). Although some cultures share similar aspect, some can vary differently in their customs and norms. An example would a clan known as Nacirema whose culture would be described by outsiders as extreme and sadistic. Their culture consists of unique ritual, strong believe in magical essences, but how different does it vary from the American Culture?

Culture, the established, coherent set of beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices shared by a large group of people (McCornack, 2013) The differences that are shared around the world are not limited to race, religion and language. Culture is one of the largest distinguishing characteristics that separate people. Grecian culture is different not only to the United States culture, but the cultures within the United States as well.

If you ask 1000 anthropologists to define culture, you’ll get 1000 different definitions. However, you would see similar answers among them all. A solid culture is shared, and shapes the behavior and beliefs of a community. From what history shows, culture defines the very existence of a way of life and while our earliest ancestors relied more on survival adaptation, culture is now shaping humanity into a much more complex environment. Culture is taught not obtained. It is not passed down genetically. Much of learning culture is unconscious. We learn culture from our loved ones and the ever growing world around us. Culture is shared. Because we share culture with other members of our group, we are able to act in socially appropriate ways

The Simple definition of culture is the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. You can find multiple definitions for cultures and I believe that’s because I think everyone views culture in a slightly different way. To me culture is something that is always living and changing. The way I look at it is that if you look back at your grandfather’s generation you can see how different things were back then and that’s because the culture was different. Now look back at your father’s generation and you can also tell that his era

Culture is something that doesn 't not have a specific definition, however we see it around us in many different forms. Culture is traditional knowledge that that is passed down through generations, however ‘culture is flexible and fluid’ but is generally quite stable (Podolefsky, Brown and Lacy, 2012). From war and violence to fashion and appearance, culture shows us the many different and beautiful ways of life around the world. Angela Vandenbroek has said that; ‘Culture has come most often to be a heuristic term used to help anthropologists discuss the symbols, meanings, institutions, systems and behaviours of

Culture is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “The customary belief, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also: the characteristic features of everyday existence share by people in a place or time”. In other words, it is the complex whole which is socially shared and learned by the members of a society. Humans adapted culture which is unique in the world of nature. Culture is described such as beliefs, customs, language, education level, values, social behavior, economic status, laws, and other capabilities acquired by a man as a member of a society.

Culture can be defined as the norms, values, beliefs, and language that makes up a humans way of living; it influences the decisions people make, how people act, and more. Culture can vary among generations, nations, or even the small distance of a city. As humans, we use and rely on culture everyday to make decisions for good or bad outcome; it can influence negative or positive action in a society, for instance, racism is a negative cultural trait that has been carried through generations. Culture is a continuously changing process, while each culture is introduced through contact, accommodation, and diffusion of the other; Culture has developed over period of hundreds and thousands of years.

Culture is defined as “The arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, and other products of human work and thought considered as a unit, especially with regard to a particular time or social group” by American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2011). Also, the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2005) defines culture as “A feature of the terrain that has been constructed by man. Included are such items as roads, buildings, and canals; boundary lines; and, in a broad sense, all names and legends on a map”. In a nutshell, culture is everything that makes up the basic ways of life.

Culture is not just an attribute of an individual. Culture is a shared set of values, norms, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of a group that share these similarities.

A simple definition of the word culture is, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, place, or time” (2016). A culture includes everything around a human being that shapes their behavior: “arts, beliefs, customs, institutions, inventions, language, technology, and values” (World Book, 2015). The World Book Encyclopedia says, “There are several important characteristics of culture” (2015).

According to Zimmermann, culture is defined as a set of characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts (Zimmermann, 2017). Each society has a set of behaviors each member should know and understand very well. They might have their own taboos, language, their own way of worship or way of dancing or singing. All these characteristics form a culture of a certain society. Anyone from outside of this society should learn to be acquainted with their culture to be able to communicate to them.

What is culture? Culture is everything, simple but a complex make up of a people that binds us together. The word culture is broad and encompassing. There is no simple, universally accepted definition of the word culture. It is by definition: the behavior and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic or age group. It is characterized a group of peoples’ traditions, religion, food, customs and language. Culture is dynamic. Culture is static. It both changes with the times and withstands the test of time. Culture is what will be left of us as people when we as people are gone.

The word culture is used to describe anything that human beings work to achieve. Thus culture is both what we grow and we make, both with our hands and with our minds. It includes our houses, our tools, our cities and towns, our arts, crafts, customs, our games, sports, entertainment, music, literature, and food. It also includes our corporate bodies and institutions like families, churches, and governments;

Culture is the characteristic of group of people defined by everything such as religion, lifestyle, language and other things. Different people in different societies, countries or worlds have some sort of a different culture but they also have some similarities. The culture they may have varies in different things such as clothes, foods, religion and many others but culture is merely the identity of a group of people living in a particular place. Cultures are more than language, dress, and food customs. Cultural groups may share ethnicity or nationality, but they also come from socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, disabilities, political and religious affiliation, and gender to name only a few. Two things that are very crucial to remember about cultures is that they are always changing, and they relate to the symbolic dimension of life. This symbolic dimension is about where we are constantly making and enacting our identities. Cultural messages from the groups we belong to feed us information about what is meaningful or important, and who we are in the world and in relation to others, which help build our identities.

According to Sellnow et al., culture is “the system of shared values, beliefs, attitudes, and norms that guide what is considered appropriate among identifiable group of people” (44). Culture involves why we believe in certain things and why we act certain ways. There are many different kinds of cultures that an individual may have. There are even groups that can be formed called co-cultures that derive from these bigger cultures. Co-culture is “a group comprised of a smaller number of people who hold common values, beliefs, attitudes, and customs that differ from those of the dominant culture” (Sellnow et al. 45).