Sir Edward Tylor in his book titled "Primitice culture," proposed that cultures are a system of

human behavior and thoughts thay obey natural laws and can be studied scientifically and is

"acquired...as a member of society." (Kottak, p. 18) This is one, of many definitions of society.

How does one know which one is the correct definition? Taking into consideration, all

definitions of culture, it has been found that all definitions of culture share six characteristics.

These are that culture is symbolic, shared, learned, integrated, performed, and adaptive. Vicki

Curtis's, "why manners matter is a great example of this. Her research is trying to take manners,

used in more globalized societies, and teach it to children in zimbabwe in order to facilitate

better hygiene practices. This article shows how manners is all of the characteristica of culture.

Culture is symbolic as humans use different things to represent something else in a society.

For example, in the article referenced above by curtis, she states that the disgust system is not

only a symbol to reference some that is considerd u clean or unhygenic, it is also there to elicit

shame so as to decrease the chances of repeating the same offense. Culture is shared through this

symbolism, without the unique human ability to understand symbols.

From there, the unique human ability to understand symbols allows people to teach their

children culture, either directly or indirectly, for example, through observation. This is through a

process called enculturation, in which a child learns from a young age about the culture which it

is growing up in. It is also shared with others around them by means of symbols by allowing

other cultures to identify what they value.

Culture is intergrated into our life. As are manners. Curtis states, "a set of behaviours that we

make second nature early in life so that we can avoid disgusting others with our parasites and our

antisocial behaviour (angelino, pg. 33)." Culture is also performed. We are largely not even away
because it is so integrated in our lives. As curtis states, "We play out a mannerly dance every

day, getting close, but not too close, offering tokens of goodwill, but not giving away too much,

in every socialinteraction. Yet we do the dance largely unaware of why we do it.( pg. 34)

Curlture is also adaptive. Curtis states that manners is adaptive as she says we evolved that

ability to avoid getting sick (pg. 33).

In all, manners is learned, shared, adaptive, intergrated, performed, and symbolic. Manners is

also a part of culture and maybe curtis will be able to show that children in Zimbabwe can learn

better hygiene through the facilitation of better manners.