What is Culture?
- by: Ray Ciervo 10/24/2004
What is culture? If we were fish, culture would be the water we swim in. The temperature, the salinity, current, depth, nitrate and nitrite levels, all would determine our culture.
Culture may seem like something that is difficult to define or explain. Many have attempted to bring clarity to the meaning of culture. First, we must understand that every culture is made up of different components. The structure of culture is made up of a dominant culture, sub-cultures and possibly counter-culture(s). However, this doesn’t define culture, it simply states the structure of culture, however, briefly.
R. C. Trench has written indirectly about culture attempting to give definition to the word normally translated ‘age’ in the NT. Trench wrote: “All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations at any time present in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral, or immoral, atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale, - all which is the subtle informing spirit of the cosmos.”
Although indirectly, Trench made profoundly enlightened statements on the nature of culture. In the NT, the word culture is not expressly used but the idea of culture is everywhere from the Jewish world and the Greek and Roman world Paul and the other apostles lived in.
More than a century ago, H. Richard Niehbuhr wrote the classic, Christ and Culture. In that work he stated that culture, “is the sum of all that has spontaneously arisen for the advancement of material life and as an expression of spiritual and moral life-all social intercourse, technologies, arts, literature and sciences.”
He goes on to say that the “culture” and “civilization” can sometimes be interchangeable. He says, “Culture is the secondary artificial environment which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organizations, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values.” He claims the NT writers had this in mind when they spoke of the “world” or as Trench said, “this age.”
Niehbuhr stated culture is always social and always a human achievement. “A river is nature, a canal culture.” He would say. Culture is the work of men’s hands and minds. “Hence it includes speech, education, tradition, myth, science, art, philosophy, government, law, rite, beliefs, inventions, technologies.”
“Another mark of culture is that it is the result of past human achievements, another is that no one can possess it without effort and achievement on his own part.” And, “Culture in all its forms and varieties is concerned with the temporal and material realization of values.”
This last statement may sum up Niehburh’s view of culture. Putting clothing on our values may be the unconscious purpose of culture.
Defining ‘Culture’ N.T. Wright
‘Culture’ in a broad sense embraces almost all features of a civilization or way of life. It almost means the same as ‘worldview,’ though draws attention more to the combination of different objects, symbols and activities that go to form a worldview. A bus-ticket can be just as much a sign of a particular culture as a Brahms symphony. A culture involves a whole complex web of shared assumptions and implicit stories, of life-patterns and symbols, within which certain things are quite literally thinkable and do-able and certain other things are not. Within Japanese culture in the 1940s, Kamikaze warfare was thinkable and do-able; within western culture, it wasn't.
Wright’s definition is somewhat problematic. He appears he struggles to differentiate between culture and worldview. As we’ll see, there must be a clear line between the two. Wright goes on, “Culture, in this broad sense, has a good deal to do with assumed norms [i.e. worldview]; we talk about a ‘cultural ethos,’ and the word ‘ethos’ is of course closely related to ‘ethics.’ In some cultures, broadly speaking, certain sexual lifestyles are assumed as the norm, the ethos of the culture; in others, other ones. In some Western cultures today, violence towards animals is regarded as one of the greatest evils; in others, often within a few miles of the first, fighting bulls and shooting songbirds are regarded as normal.”
It is these “assumed norm”s that Wright mentions that offer us what lies beneath culture. Culture is the expression of these norms, the more diverse the norms, the more diverse the culture. The more complex the norms, the more complex the culture will be. Take into account that every culture is a combination of a dominant culture, sub-cultures and possibly counter culture.
The dominant culture of a society is the one who’s norms or presuppositions rule. If we understand Niehbuhr’s contribution, along with Trench and Wright’s, these presuppositions are transferred from generation to generation. Each generation chooses to accept, reject, or modify each preceding generation’s presuppositions.
Presuppositions are more important than they are usually given credit for. Presuppositions are these “norms” which lie beneath the surface. Presuppositions are that which our worldview entails. Our worldview is made up of presuppositions, norms we have either consciously or unconsciously agreed upon. These presups are the grid through which we take in and interpret the data to make sense of reality. This then gives way to our culture. Some more definition of cultural structure and worldview may help to explain this. Worldview and presuppositions cannot be underestimated in any discussion of culture.
Sub-cultures are present in any social setting, whether urban, suburban, or rural. It is the presuppositions that hold sub-cultures together. These presuppositions help to form a worldview, that grid by which we gather the data our senses and our minds take in and
then interpret the data in order to make sense of reality.
A sub-culture’s ascendancy depends on its promotion within the culture. Today, a Latino culture is gaining acceptance in our culture. Latino’s have been a sub-culture in America for centuries. However, their sheer numbers and acceptance in media circles have brought them a prominence in American culture.
Any combination of sub-cultures can influence the dominant culture. The positive side of sub-cultures is that they share some of the presuppositions of the dominant cultures. Immigrant cultures in the northeast are a good example of this. Immigrants of the early twentieth century were sub-cultures in the dominant anglo-american culture. However, the immigrant cultures shared values, norms, and presuppositions with the dominant culture. Becoming American meant adopting the dominant cultures presuppositions. Through transference, education, and time spent, these sub-cultures acclimated to the dominant culture. Any residue of immigrant culture is where these sub-cultures hold on to their origins.
Counter-cultures have radically different presuppositions, usually confronting the dominant culture. The hippies of the sixties were a counter-culture, which effectively
transformed the dominant culture in America. What was once radically counter to the dominant culture has now become the dominant culture in America. For the first time, a counter-culture began to affect the dominant culture. That “sixties” culture has grown and taken root and is now the dominant culture. How did this happen?
The Sixties Generation has gained tenure in all the important places in culture. They have become tenured radicals, as one writer has put it. The hippies of the sixties have not faded away but finished their degrees and have taken places teaching in the universities; they’ve become lawyers and justices throughout the nation. They slowly changed the presuppositions of the nation exchanging the absolutism of modernism for the subjective reality of postmodernism, relativism, and pluralism.
Christianity may have been the unintended victim of this worldview shift. Modernism and Christianity shared similar presuppositions. Belief in absolute truth, meta-narratives, natural law, the place of education, were and are shared values of Modernism and Christianity. Post modernism, relativism, and pluralism reject absolute truth, meta-narratives, natural law, and provide different meaning for how we learn and how we know what we know. Although Postmodernism and Christianity share some presuppositions, what is shared is not what is prominent in the important places. A more subjective world, void of any absolutes, and knowledge built upon experience has made its way into the foreground.
Another place where the importance of presuppositions is between Westerners and Muslims. As Westerners we do not understand the presuppositions that make up that under gird the Muslim world. As we look upon their culture we strain to find commonality. These are worldviews in conflict.
Culture then is the dressing, the clothing, the flesh and blood of a worldview. It may include language, the arts, technology, education, economy, science, philosophy, religion, and everything else we could place as part of our civilization. However, the underestimated power of worldviews determines what culture will be like. The road to changing culture will be to change the worldview people hold.
A simple illustration of worldviews is like looking out different windows of a large house. Some windows view the front, some the sides, and some the back of the house. Some views see only one aspect. Some see overlapping aspects. Each view would be correct if there is no tinting of the windows to color what each sees.
C.S. Lewis said if you want to know how the water is you don’t ask a fish. The implication is that the fish is not aware of his wetness. He wouldn’t know he is wet without knowing what dryness is. In saying this, it is difficult to describe one’s own culture without the ability to step back and view it objectively. An examination of the norms, values, and the presuppositions is in order to discover whether the culture accurately reflects reality.
American culture is portrayed by the white, anglo-culture. There are however, many subcultures. The Anglo-American culture has shifted from a Modernistic, conservative, theistic worldview, to a naturalistic/atheistic, liberal, media driven worldview. Note the term media-driven. This is another aspect of all cultures that cannot be underestimated. The mode of communicating presuppositions has dramatically affected culture.
Neil Postman’s excellent book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, shows us the most dramatic shift in American culture happened when communication changed. The advent of the telegraph and then wireless radio dramatically affected how Americans lived. It was now possible to know the outcome of elections within minutes of the results. Current events no longer took weeks or months to arrive at the opposite coast. Now, within minutes people knew the news of that other coast.
How people learned or thought about knowledge was a major shift in America’s psyche. The development of media depended on this advancement. Today, American culture is media driven. The modern presuppositions are driven by mass media to ensure application.
Movies, music and TV provide the presuppositions and therefore worldview for American culture. George Barna lists these three as the most significant sources of influence on American culture. The church on the other hand does not even appear among the top twelve.
Let’s review: Culture is the product of a dominant worldview.
That means that culture is the expression of presuppositions/worldview held by any people. The dominant worldview is the people’s major cultures, and there can be many sub-cultures and even counter-cultures.
Culture is the clothing, the flesh and blood of the dominant worldview.
