BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES - Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie

7.1. The Concept of Culture
Behavior and Cultural Contexts
134
Chapter 7
Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love,
and of thought, which, in the course or centuries,
have enabled man to be less enslaved
Andre Malraux
The concept of culture has a long and complicated story.
Nowadays is accounted more than one hundred meaning or definition of it.
The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate,
or to honor). So the firstly this concept connoted a process of cultivation or
improvement, as in agriculture. Cicero, the roman ancient philosopher
used an agricultural metaphor to describe the development of a
philosophical soul, which was understood teleologically as the one natural
highest possible ideal for human development. In other words Cicero
defines culture as development or improvement of the mind by education.
In the nineteenth century, humanists such as English poet and essayist
Matthew Arnold used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual
human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the
world." Thus culture is the quality in a person or society that arises from a
concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners,
scholarly pursuits, etc.
Sir Edward B. Tylor in 1871 gave the very cited especially by
anthropologist definition of culture. He said "culture or civilization, is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society". In the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central
and unifying concept of American anthropology, where it most commonly
refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode their
experiences symbolically, and communicate symbolically encoded
experiences socially. In 2002 United Nations agency UNESCO states that
culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and