Culture

Christopher Jencks (1993) defines culture as ‘the whole way of life of a society’.
From this point of view, culture refers to the sum of knowledge, beliefs, language,
values, norms, customs, traditions, mores, cuisine and the arts and music shared
by a particular society. At birth, you joined a social world with a distinct culture that
has been in existence for thousands of years.

It is important at this stage to clearly differentiate between culture and society. As

Anthony Giddens (1997) argues, the concept of ‘culture’ cannot exist without the
concept of ‘society’ because they are inter-dependent ideas. Giddens suggests that
without culture, there would be no such thing as self-consciousness or ‘identity’
which sociologists argue separate human beings from other animals.

A society constitutes a group of people who live alongside one another in a more
or less ordered community. Sociologists argue that society is made up of all the
formal and informal social institutions that people create by interacting with one
other. These institutions include marriage and the family, the peer group,
education, government (sometimes referred to as the state), religion, the
workplace, traditional forms of media such as newspapers and television and new
forms of media such as the internet and social platforms such as Facebook.

Sociologists argue that culture is mainly responsible for shaping how societies
work in practice. Culture sets out the key values that need to be instilled in the
individuals that belong to the social institutions that make up society. For
example, members of families are strongly encouraged to value marriage and the
nurturing of children, while legal institutions such as the law and the police are
expected to value and deal with all members of society equally. Culture is also
responsible for putting values into practice by providing norms or guidelines for
behaviour which regulate how people should act or behave in specific social
contexts.