Culture is a set of expressive forms physical and mental characteristics adopted by particular group of people that include language, customs and traditions, rituals, beliefs, values and knowledge as well as race, heritage, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.
A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in a society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. It is also what holds and maintains people together while sharing common belief and characteristics.
Cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.). Cultural capital functions as a social relation within an economy of practices and includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status and power. It comprises all of the material and non-material goods, that society considers is rare and is worth seeking.
Culture can bind people together in a country by its citizens, in a company while working together, in a physical geography, or being a member of a group.
People as individuals tend to adopt a monoculture or a multi-culture. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species is challenged in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Multiculturalism occurs when a individual or group is open to accept other cultures. By accepting other values and knowledge of other cultures, social groups increases their set of characteristics giving them more value while in risk moments they have gained the needed abilities to overcome changes that otherwise could threaten their own existence.
A person that adopt other cultural characteristics increases their cultural capital and are considered more valuable in society and are seen as people that have achieved a higher level of humanity and higher level of sophistication and understanding of the human experience. This acceptance of other cultures, increases the value of an individual and in a otherwise monocultural society increases the values for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same space. This acceptance extends to a peaceful coexistence of people in the entire planet.
Multi-cultures can bind people together while monoculture can result in dividing people. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies.
Enculturation is the process by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary to that culture and its worldview. As part of this process, the influences that limit, direct, or shape the individual (whether deliberately or not) include parents, other adults, and peers. If successful, enculturation results in competence in the language, values, and rituals of the culture.
In Ancient Rome, a document referring to the cultivation of the soul or “cultura animi and the development of a person philosophical soul is understood to be the highest possible ideal for human development to reach man’s natural perfection. — “Refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbaric nature, and through artifice, become fully human.”
Talcott Parsons an most influential sociologist of modern times referee to oftener describes children (from birth) as “barbarians” of a sort, since they are fundamentally uncultured. Thus, this a person who does become increasingly cultured ceases to become a barbarian and instead has the ability to achieve human perfection.
Talcott Parsons (ed.), Knowledge and Society: American Sociology. New York: Basic Books, 1968. (collection of essays with an introduction by Talcott Parsons)
Talcott Parsons and Victor M. Lidz (eds.), Readings in Premodern Societies. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Grusec, Joan E.; Hastings, Paul D. Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, Guilford Press, 2007.
