culture

Culture is the shared set of beliefs, practices, norms, values, languages, and artifacts that characterizes a social group. It includes non-material elements such as worldviews, rituals, social roles, and shared meanings, as well as material elements like tools, clothing, and built environments. Culture provides frameworks for interpreting experiences, guiding behavior, and shaping identities.

Culture is learned and transmitted across generations through language, education, family, and social institutions. It influences how people perceive the world, relate to others, and organize social life. It is dynamic, varying between societies and evolving over time as people innovate, interact, and adapt to new circumstances.

Two broad aspects are often distinguished: material culture (tangible objects and technologies) and non-material culture (norms, beliefs, languages, and values). Within a society, subcultures and countercultures may emerge around particular interests, identities, or ideologies. Cultural change occurs through diffusion, migration, globalization, and acculturation, while efforts to preserve heritage seek to maintain traditional practices and artifacts.

Analysts emphasize cultural universals—elements common to most human groups, such as family structures, language, and rites of passage—while recognizing substantial variation in how these elements are expressed. Cultural relativism advocates understanding practices within their own context rather than judging them by external standards, helping to avoid ethnocentrism. Culture remains a dynamic force that both stabilizes communities and enables adaptation to changing environments.