Characteristics Of Culture

Culture

Culture is learned and shared behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, values, and material objects that characterize a particular group or society. While society is a group of people that has lived and worked together long enough to become an organized population and o think of themselves as a social unit. The characteristics or culture is learned, transmitted from generation to generation, it’s shared, is also adaptive and always changing. Culture can be broken up into two such Material Culture and Non-material Culture; Material Culture consist of the tangible objects that people in society make, use and share like furniture, jewelry. While Nonmaterial culture deals with the way people interpret and understand the world; some example of these

Language is system of shared symbols that communicate with one another it makes us human, helps us interact, it directs our thinking, controls our actions, and gives us a sense of belonging. Norms are the society’s specific rules of right and wrong behavior; they tell us about what we should or should not do.

The characteristics of norms are as follows – most are unwritten, they are instrumental, some are explicit while others are implicit, they change over time, most are conditional and norms can be rigid or flexible. The three types of norms are folkways, mores and laws. Folkways- norms that members of a society look upon as not being critical and that may be broken without severe punishment; Mores – norms that society considers very important because they maintain morals and ethics; Laws – norms that are defined and enforced by a political

Carnival was introduced into Trinidad in 1787, as the settlers of the French people began to arrive in our small nation. The word Carnival originated from a pagan festival in ancient Egypt where the Greeks and the Romans celebrated this festival by holding a wild costume festival right before Lent. During the Lenten season Catholics are not supposed to eat meat, this festival is called “Carne-vale” which means to put away meat. The word Carnival is made up of two Latin words, ‘Carne’ means flesh and ‘Vale’ means farewell and this feast celebration is celebrated on the Sunday (Dimanche Grass), Monday (Lundi Gras) and the Tuesday (Mardi Gras) before Ash Wednesday. The popular festival was adopted by the Roman Catholic Christian church in Europe as the festival of Carne Vale. The Carnival festival was transported in the Caribbean by the European slave traders and the African transformed this festival into a celebration of the end of slavery. In the Caribbean there was a development of new cultures within the new African heritage and Creole