Tentative Definitions of Culture refers to the cumulative

Tentative Definitions of Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.

Culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.

Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.

Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Conceptual clarification questions Probing assumptions Probing rationale, reasons and evidence Questioning viewpoints and perspectives Probe implications and consequences Questions about the question

MANIFESTATIONS OF CULTURE Cultural differences manifest themselves in different ways and differing levels of depth. Symbols represent the most superficial and values the deepest manifestations of culture, with heroes and rituals in between.

Symbols, heroes, and rituals are the tangible or visual aspects of the practices of a culture. The true cultural meaning of the practices is intangible; this is revealed only when the practices are interpreted by the insiders.

Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning which is only recognized by those who share a particular culture. New symbols easily develop, old ones disappear. Symbols from one particular group are regularly copied by others. This is why symbols represent the outermost layer of a culture.

Heroes are persons, past or present, real or fictitious, who possess characteristics that are highly prized in a culture. They also serve as models for behavior.

Rituals are collective activities, sometimes superfluous in reaching desired objectives, but are considered as socially essential. They are therefore carried out most of the times for their own sake (ways of greetings, paying respect to others, religious and social ceremonies, etc. ).

values The core of a culture is formed by values. They are broad tendencies for preferences of certain state of affairs to others (good-evil, right-wrong, natural-unnatural). Many values remain unconscious to those who hold them. Therefore they often cannot be discussed, nor can they be directly observed by others. Values can only be inferred from the way people act under different circumstances.

Althusser’s re-consideration of the Marxist line of thought would fit more for my identity approach since it defines ideology as a system of representations (images, myths, ideas, or concepts) endowed with a specific historical context and functioning within a given society. It is related to the culture (in its sociological rather that humanistic sense), of that society, and to the sum of its prejudices and preconceptions. In most cases 'ideology' is transmitted on a preconscious level, since it is usually taken for granted, considered as 'natural', hence neither repressed (unconscious) nor intentionally propounded (conscious). 21 (Emphasis mine)

Ideology According to Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary, "ideology" is "visionary theorizing. " Alternatively, it is "a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture, " or "a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture. " Malcolm Hamilton, in his article "The Elements of the Concept of Ideology, " offers a more scholarly formulation, writing that ideology is "a system of collectively held normative and reputedly factual ideas and beliefs and attitudes advocating and/or justifying a particular pattern of political and/or economic relationships, arrangements, and conduct. "

The historian Michael Hunt, meanwhile, views ideology in more specific terms as performing a particular function: it is "an interrelated set of convictions or assumptions that reduces the complexities of a particular slice of reality to easily comprehensible terms and suggests appropriate ways of dealing with that reality. " These are just a few examples of scholars' many efforts to define ideology.

Socialization Process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, language, social skills, and value to conform to the norms and roles required for integration into a group or community. It is a combination of both self-imposed (because the individual wants to conform) and externallyimposed rules, and the expectations of the others.

Types Primary socialization occurs when a child learns the attitudes, values and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture. For example if a child saw his/her mother expressing a discriminatory opinion about a minority group, then that child may think this behavior is acceptable and could continue to have this opinion about minority groups. Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is appropriate behavior as a member of a smaller group within the larger society. It is usually associated with teenagers and adults, and involves smaller changes than those occurring in primary socialization. eg. entering a new profession, relocating to a new environment or society.

Resocialization refers to the process of discarding former behavior patterns and reflexes accepting new ones as part of a transition in one's life. This occurs throughout the human life cycle (Schaefer & Lamm, 1992: 113). Resocialization can be an intense experience, with the individual experiencing a sharp break with their past, and needing to learn and be exposed to radically different norms and values. An example might be the experience of a young man or woman leaving home to join the military, or a religious convert internalizing the beliefs and rituals of a new faith.