INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

CULTURE

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Prof Rashmi Gaur

Culture

• Culture: Range of human activities

• Way of life; characteristics of particular groups--language, art, literature,
religion, cuisine
• Social beliefs, habits, norms, customs
• Hierarchies, attitudes, values, knowledge systems, meanings, notions
• A sum total of learned human behavior
• Complex, abstract and symbolic system of such knowledge particular to groups

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Culture:
Merriam-Webster
• 1: The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious,
or social group
– also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way
of life) shared by people in a place or time: popular culture, Southern culture
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an
institution or organization
– a corporate culture focused on the bottom line
• The set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular
field, activity, or societal characteristic
– studying the effect of computers on print culture
• The integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends
upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding
generations

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• 2 : Enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic
training
• Acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of
science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills
– a person of culture

Definitions:
• “Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes
the members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense
is a system of collectively held values.” -- Geert Hofstede

• “Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by
members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic
‘taken for granted’ fashion an organization's view of its self and its
environment.” -- Edgar Schein

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Gender: Collins English Dictionary

• Gender is the state of being male or female in relation to the social and cultural
roles that are considered appropriate for men and women
– Some people experience a mismatch between their gender identity and their
biological sex.
• Gender also refers to one of a range of identities that includes female, male, a
combination of both, and neither
– Membership is open to people of all genders.
• Some people refer to the fact that a person is male or female as his or
her gender
– Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.
• Some people refer to all male people or all female people as a particular gender
– ...the different abilities and skills of the two genders.
– Also a grammatical category

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 Culture

Gender Technology

Market
Media
Forces

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• Multi-layered word
• Every layer has contexts
• Raymond Williams
– Processes of perfection in terms of certain absolute or universal values
– Documentary- record of human thought, intellectual and imaginative work, critical
activity
– Descriptions of a particular way of life – implicit and explicit values, structure of
social organizations
• Cultural studies involve multi and cross disciplinary ways to look at formal and
informal cultural activities

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Discussion topic

• Explain the interdependence of culture and gender, by citing some everyday

examples.
• Do lexical definitions explicate diverse connotations of Gender, as we perceive it
today?

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