University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

Part One: Definitions of Culture

There are many definitions of culture, depending on the scientific context: definitions from a sociological, anthropological, or linguistic perspective, or definitions which can be used in empirical situations. In fact, these days the word culture has become the buzz word in many fields. Duranti (1997), for example, discusses six theories of culture from an anthropological-linguistic perspective:
First, there is the juxtaposition of culture and nature, which goes back to Hegel's view of culture. Hegel saw culture as the knowledge of oneself (Selbstbewusstsein). “The word that Hegel uses for culture is instructive: Bildung, that is, formation or shaping” (Duranti: 25). Then there is a cognitive approach, which considers culture as knowledge. “Society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves . . .” (Goodenough 1964: 36). The Levi-Strauss’ semiotic approach to culture assumes that culture is a system of signs which makes communication between the members of a community possible. Geertz, on the other hand, focuses on culture as a product of human interaction. “Culture . . . is public . . . it does not exist in someone’s head . . . ” (Geertz 1973). Other philosophers like Heidegger and Bordieu emphasise that the human actor can culturally exist and function only as a participant in a series of habitual activities that are both presupposed and reproduced by her/his individual actions. They believe that “culture is neither something simply external to the individual (e.g. rituals or symbols handed down by older members of the society) nor something simply internal (e.g. in the individual mind). Rather, it exists through routinised action that includes the material and physical conditions as well as the social actors’ experiences in using their bodies while moving through a familiar space” (Duranti:45).
The definition which is taken as a base here is Max Weber’s definition: that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it therefore to be not an experimental science in search of laws but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”