Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/) is the social behavior and norms found in human societies.

Culture is considered
a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted
through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies;
these include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool
usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical
expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of
culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organizationand
social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise
the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which
they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners.
The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been seen to distinguish civilizations from
less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-
based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk
culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital. In common
parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to
distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass
culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in
the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that
culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the lower classes and create
a false consciousness, and such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the
wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic
culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for
physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biologicaldispositions.

Cultural groups
 Community – social unit of any size that shares common values. Communities range in size and
scope from neighborhoods to national communities to international communities. They can be
physical (face-to-face) or virtual (on-line).
 People – plurality of persons considered as a whole, as is the case with an ethnic group or
nation. Collectively, for example, the contemporary Frisians and Danes are two related
Germanic peoples, while various Middle Eastern ethnic groups are often linguistically
categorized as the Semitic people. See the list of contemporary ethnic groups for more
examples.
 Ethnic group – socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on
common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience. Membership of an ethnic
group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history,
homeland, language and/or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and
ritual, cuisine, dressing style, physical appearance, etc.
 Society – group of people involved in persistent interpersonal relationships, or a large social
grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political
authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of
relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and
institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its
constituent members.
 Civilization – any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification,
symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from
and domination over the natural environment.
Types of cultures
 Organizational culture – behaviour of humans within an organization and the meaning that
people attach to those behaviors. An organization's culture includes its vision, values, norms,
systems, countries, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits.
Cultures by aspect
 Consumer culture – a society based on consumerism
 High context culture – a culture with the tendency use high context messages, resulting in
catering towards in-groups
 Low context culture – culture with a tendency not to cater towards in-groups
 Remix culture – a society which allows and encourages derivative works
 Participatory culture – a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers
only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers)
 Permission culture – a society in which copyright restrictions are pervasive and enforced to the
extent that any and all uses of copyrighted works need to be explicitly leased
 Traditional culture – a community that chooses to remain focused on subsistence as a major
cornerstone of their economic behavior, as well as, adheres to their ancestral belief-systems and
mannerism. [9]
Cultural cross-sections
 Children's culture – cultural phenomena pertaining to children
 Children's street culture – cumulative culture created by young children
 Coffee culture – social atmosphere or series of associated social behaviors that depends heavily
upon coffee, particularly as a social lubricant
 Culture of capitalism – the lifestyle of the people living within a capitalist society, and the effects
of a global or national capitalist economy on a population
 Cyberculture –
 DIY culture – refers to a wide range of elements in non-mainstream society, such as grassroots
political and social activism, independent music, art, and film
 Dominant culture – the established language, religion, behavior, values, rituals, and social
customs of a society
 Drinking culture – the customs and practices of people who drink alcoholic beverages
 Folk culture – traditional culture; traditional cultural traits of a community
 Low culture – non-transcendent; not worth studying or researching
 High culture – transcendent in two ways: internationally and timeless
 Official culture –
 Political culture –
 Civic political culture –
 Popular culture – totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena
that permeate the everyday lives of a given society, especially those heavily influenced by mass
media.
 Print culture –
 Safety culture – the way in which safety is managed in the workplace, which often reflects
"the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and values that employees share in relation to safety."