Objective: To explore and clarify what culture is and what it means to different people

• What is Culture?

• Adapted for Geog 1001, 1002, & 2001
• By Joe Naumann, UMSL

• Objective: To explore and clarify what culture is and what it means to different people

• Culture and Learning Goals

• CULTURE: The values, traditions, worldview, and social and political relationships that are created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and/or religion. (adapted from Sonia Nieto)

• Objective: To explore and clarify what culture is and what it means to different people

• Culture and Learning Goals

• CULTURE: The learned, generally accepted, and ever changing way of life of a group of people that is shaped by the attitudes, objectives, technical skills, and world view of the group. (adapted from Preston E. James)

• 1. Culture is a dynamic, constantly changing process that is shaped by the attitudes, objectives, technical skills, knowledge and world view of the society and the consensus perception of political, social and economic conditions.

• What is Culture?

• What is Culture?

• 2. People share a myriad of different group identities based on a complex interaction of factors including racial identity, ethnicity, language, gender, socio-economic status (class), age, physical ability, religion, political ideology, interests and experiences.

• What is Culture?

• 3. Although general knowledge of the cultures represented in our classrooms is useful, authentic cultural knowledge is gained one person at a time and requires long exposure to that culture.
• Adapted from Eugene García

What Culture Is (the social framework for living)

• Dynamic, neither fixed nor static

• A continuous and cumulative process

• Learned and shared by a people

• Behavior and values exhibited by a people

• Symbolically represented through language and interactions

• That which guides people in their thinking, feeling and acting