Previous Student Team Definitions of Culture.

These are your teams’ definitions of ‘Culture’ AFTER you had created a definition and then enhanced it by considering definitions offered by specialists and theorists. All I have done to them is to tidy up the English expression a fraction where needed (not very often, I am glad to say!) and made things occasionally a little ’tighter’ without changing your meaning. I dropped sentences posed as questions and examples as they are not really needed in a definition.

Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Culture is the different way of life and mentality, behaviours, feelings within a country or continent. These explicit and tacit assumptions or understandings are learned and passed on to new members of the group through social interaction. Culture is dynamic – it changes over time.

Culture is a way of learning all the different languages, values, beliefs and habits that constitute a society. It helps people fill in a kind of lack of knowledge. Each country has its own traditions with a specific meaning for its inhabitants. Culture is a mean of communication. It enables people to perpetuate their knowledge and behaviour in their everyday-life. People acquire culture most significantly in early childhood, since they are more capable of learning and assimilating when they are young. Culture is different from one generation to another: it evolves.

Culture is all the behaviours, knowledge, values and beliefs based on the daily patterns of life and habits. It is created and perpetuated by the collective actions of individuals to maintain the stability of a society. Culture is an essential but intangible feature of social life, it's like the air around us, we can not see it, but we can feel it.

Culture is all the distinctive values and customs shared by a group of people. These people have the same way of life, which is influenced by their common past. Language allows them to perpetuate this culture, which is transmitted by symbols, meaning, premises and rules.

Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered or developed and operates across society. It represents the sum total of the shared knowledge and experiences that vary from person to person. This knowledge is developed in order to be understood by the present generation and transmitted to future generations.

A brief, yet hopefully reasonably comprehensive working definition I came up with BEFORE we looked at this together, was:

“A broadly-accepted, yet dynamic pattern of certain received wisdoms of life (or aspects thereof) operating within a collective and influenced by individual affiliates/members, which is facilitated, over time, by means of all forms of communication and learning, such that individuals may find acceptance, meaning, identity and security within the group and that the group may be distinguished from others in the eyes of both group members and those beyond its ‘borders’”. T Jolley (2008)

Key: ... = What ... = Where ... = How ... = Why ... = When ... = Who

Do I need to change this / add / improve to synthesis all your ideas on the matter?

Features of Previous Definitions of ‘CULTURE’

Student definitions offered many features which are closely related or held in common. I have tried to arrange these under meaningful headings or ‘dimensions’ below which I hope will help you think about culture …. As you will be doing a lot of this both on your course and in your future tourism career!

Components Behaviours Basic assumptions Knowledge Habits Values Beliefs Customs Common past Culture is communication (& vv)

Characteristics Intangible Experienced Dynamic Shared Common Individually variable

Arrangement Patterns Country / region / sub-group specific

Participants Individuals Collectives (Groups / sub-groups etc)

Transmission Learning Languages Social interaction Invention / discovery / development Symbols and recognisable patterns

Raison d’etre Gives meaning Fill in lack of knowledge Stability for society Meets ‘belonging needs’ for the individual To perpetuate To evolve To give group personality / identity / recognition To cope with problems of external / internal differentiation