Totality Of Culture Essay

INTRODUCTION

In everyday usage, the word culture refers to a desirable quality we can acquire by attending a sufficient number of plays and concerts and trudging through several miles of art galleries. The anthropologist , however has a different definition as Ralph Linton explains culture refers to the total way of life of any society regards as higher or more desirable. Thus, culture when applied to our own way of life, has nothing to do with playing the piano or reading Browning. For the social scientist such activities are simply elements within the totality of our culture. This totality also includes such mundane activities as washing dishes or driving an automobile and for the purpose of cultural studies these stands quite on a par with the “finer things of life.” It follows that for the social scientist there are no uncultured societies or even individuals. Every society has a culture, no matter how simple is the culture may be, and every human being is cultured in the sense of participating in the some culture or

Thus, a rose by any other name (say,tuna) might not immediately smells sweet. It is the conventional aspects of symbols that gives them, and culture in general, a sense of stability and consistency. Indeed, although some playing with conventional meanings of symbols is allowed and even appreciated, if I constantly use symbols in unconventional ways, I will likely to be locked up or in some other way removed from society. On the other hand, it is the arbitrariness of symbol that gives culture its dynamic and changeable quality. The fact that culture is a symbolic system gives culture both the power to change and the power over change this ongoing tension about change is at the heart of many debates in the social sciences, as scholars seek to understand these seemingly opposition characteristics of