Introduction

A given group or society's members' shared beliefs, practices, artifacts, and other traits make up
its culture. People and groups define themselves, conform to the shared values of society, and
contribute to society through culture. Language, conventions, beliefs, norms, mores, regulations,
techniques, technology, products, organizations, and institutions are just a few of the societal
factors that make up culture. Institutions are groups of laws and cultural connotations connected
to particular social activities, according to the latter word. Family, school, religion, labor, and
health care are examples of common institutions. According to popular definitions, cultured
people are intelligent, aware of the arts, fashionable, and well-behaved. High culture refers to
classical music, drama, fine arts, and other refined hobbies, which are typically enjoyed by the
upper class.Because they have the professional qualifications, education, knowledge, and verbal
and social skills required to acquire the "property, power, and prestige" to "move ahead" socially,
members of the upper class can pursue high art. Sports, movies, television comedies and soap
operas, and rock music are examples of low culture or popular culture, which is typically
practiced by the working and middle classes. Keep in mind that the way that sociologists
describe culture differs from the ways that they define cultured, high, low, and popular culture.

Sociologists refer to a society as a group of individuals who interact with one another in a way
that creates a shared culture. The cultural connection may be based on shared ethnic or racial
characteristics, gender, or shared attitudes and interests.People who live in a certain location and
have a common culture are referred to as members of that society. People who lived in cold
regions, for instance, evolved different civilizations from those who lived in desert conditions.
Around time, a wide range of human cultures emerged all over the world.

Society and culture are closely intertwined. A society is made up of the "members" who share a
common culture, whereas a culture is made up of the "things" of a society. The majority of
people in the world worked in small groups and resided in the same area when the terms culture
and society first came to have their current definitions.These concepts have less practical
meaning in the 6 billion-person world of today since more people are interacting and sharing
resources on a global scale. Even said, people frequently refer to culture and society in more
conventional ways, as in the case of belonging to a particular "racial culture" inside a larger
"U.S. society."

Methodology

For my primary research, I conducted an interviews among the students of NSU. 5 students
participated in that interview. 3 of them were male and 2 were female. All of them were in
between the age group of 19-25. I presented them a questionnaire consisting of 14 multiple
choice questions with four options. All the questions were related to my topic. There was no
open ended question.

For my secondary research, I used articles from Google. I collected articles from The
Guardians, Dhaka Tribune, The Conversation, The New Times, The Daily Star and different
journals as well. These articles helped me to come to a conclusion.

The History of Culture

Some people have a singular conception of culture, as it was during the 18th and early 19th
centuries in Europe: as something attained via advancement and evolution. In short, it equates
culture with civilization and contrasts both with nature or non-civilization. This concept of
culture reflected inequalities within European societies and their colonial societies throughout
the world. This view of culture holds that certain people are more "cultured" than others because
some nations are more "civilized" than others.

People usually refer to "high culture," which is distinct from the sociological idea of culture,
when they discuss culture in the context of civilization or refinement.High culture describes
exclusive products and pursuits including fine dining, couture clothing, museum-quality artwork,
and classical music. If someone is aware of and engaged in these activities, it may be considered
"cultured" by some individuals. According to someone who views culture in this way, classical
music is more sophisticated than music created by working-class individuals, such as jazz or the
native musical traditions of aboriginal peoples. Contrarily, popular (or "pop") culture is more
mainstream and affected by the media and the general public opinion. High culture typically
doesn't change over time, although popular culture frequently does as tastes and attitudes do.

Although there are still some traces of this high culture today, it has mostly lost favor. Its demise
started during the Romantic Era, when German scholars—especially those who were interested
in nationalism—developed the more expansive idea of culture as a unique worldview. This
method of looking at culture still allowed for contrasts between so-called "civilized" and
"primitive" societies despite being more inclusive. The concept of culture was altered by
anthropologists in the late 19th century to encompass a wider range of societies. This led to the
concept of culture that social scientists use today, which consists of the norms, values, and
beliefs that permeate social life, as well as the objects and symbols that are associated with it.

The evaluative component of the concept of culture has also been eliminated by this new
viewpoint; it distinguishes between various cultures without ranking them. For instance, popular
or pop culture are now contrasted with the high culture of the elite. Since everyone has culture,
the term "high culture" is no longer used to describe the idea of being "cultured." High culture
simply refers to the items, symbols, customs, values, and beliefs of a certain group of people;
popular culture does the same.

Society
Society and culture are closely intertwined. Culture is made up of the ideas, actions, things, and
other traits that all people of a certain society have in common. People who live in a society all
share the same culture. People who live in a certain location and have a common culture are
referred to as members of that society.

Cultural Features
Culture is Learned
The ease with which children absorb any cultural tradition rests on the uniquely elaborated
human capacity to learn. On the basis of cultural learning, people create, remember, and deal
with ideas. They grasp and apply specific systems of symbolic meaning. Anthropologist Clifford
Geertz defines culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols. Cultures have been
characterized as sets of “control mechanisms-plans, recipes, rules, constructions, what computer
engineers call Programs for the governing of behavior”.
Every person begins immediately, through a process of conscious and unconscious learning and
interaction with others, to internalize, or incorporate, a cultural tradition through the process of
enculturation. Sometimes culture is taught directly, as when parents tell their children to say
“thank you” when someone gives them something or does them a favor. Culture is also
transmitted through observation. Children pay attention to the things that go on around them.
They modify their behavior not just because other people tell them to but as a result of their own
observations and growing awareness of what their culture considers right and wrong. Culture is
also absorbed unconsciously.When parents encourage their kids to say "thank you" when
someone offers them something or does them a favor, they are illustrative of how culture may be
taught directly to children. Observation is another way that culture is passed on. Children are
aware of what is happening around them. They alter their behavior as a result of their own
observations and growing understanding of what their culture deems to be proper and bad, not
merely because other people tell them to. Unconsciously, culture is also absorbed.

Culture is Shared
Culture is a characteristic of communities, not of individuals in and of themselves. In society,
culture is transmitted. Don't we learn about other people's cultures through observation, listening,
conversation, and interaction? People who grow up in the same culture are connected by shared
values, memories, and expectations. People are brought together through enculturation by shared
experiences.
Culture is Symbolic

Humans and cultural learning depend on symbolic thought, which is both distinctive and
essential. In a given language or culture, a symbol is a verbal or nonverbal item that comes to
stand for something else. Typically, symbols are linguistic. However, there are other nonverbal
signs that represent nations, such as flags, much to how arches represent fast food restaurants.
The Roman Catholic religion uses holy water as a potent symbol. The relationship between a
symbol (water) and what it symbolizes (holiness), as with all symbols, is arbitrary and
conventional. Unlike milk, blood, or other naturally occurring liquids, water is not inherently
more holy. Holy water is chemically identical to regular water. Within Roman Catholicism, a
component of a global cultural system, holy water is a symbol. Humans have shared the skills
that underpin culture for hundreds of thousands of years. These skills include the capacity to
learn, think symbolically, manipulate language, and organize their lives and cope with their
circumstances using tools and other cultural artifacts. Every modern human population is capable
of using symbols to build and sustain culture. Chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives,
have limited cultural knowledge. However, no other species possesses complex cultural
capacities to the same degree as humans do, including the capacity to learn, communicate, and
retain, process, and utilise information.

Culture and Nature

Culture teaches us how to express certain aspects of the biological drives we have in common
with other animals. People must eat, but culture dictates what, when, and how we should eat.
While the major meal is typically eaten at noon in many cultures, most North Americans prefer a
substantial dinner. While North Americans might like hot cakes and cold cereals, English people
might have fish for breakfast. North Americans add cold milk to a weaker brew of coffee,
whereas Brazilians add hot milk to a strong brew. Spaniards eat dinner at 10, while
Midwesterners eat at 5 or 6. Human nature is shaped in many different ways by cultural customs,
ideas, and innovations.

Culture is All-Encompassing
Anthropologists view culture as encompassing much more than sophistication, taste, education,
and a love of the fine arts. Everyone is "cultured," not just college graduates. The most intriguing
and important cultural influences are those that have a daily impact on people, especially those
that have an impact on children as they go through enculturation. The anthropological definition
of culture includes characteristics that are occasionally seen as unimportant or unworthy of
serious study, such as "popular" culture.

Culture is Integrated

Cultures are not accidental assemblages of practices and convictions. Cultures are complex,
organized systems. When one component of the system, like the economy, changes, other
components follow suit. For instance, the majority of American women intended domestic jobs
in the 1950s, such as being moms and homemakers. Contrarily, the majority of female college
students today anticipate finding employment after graduation. Along with their dominating
economic practices and associated social patterns, cultures are also unified by shared sets of
ideals, concepts, symbols, and judgments. Individual members of cultures are conditioned to
exhibit particular personality traits. Each culture is integrated by a set of distinctive primary or
core principles that serve to set it apart from others.

People Use Culture Actively

Cultures do not only happen to be collections of beliefs and activities. Cultures are intricate,
structured systems. When one part of the system, like the economy, changes, other parts of the
system also alter. For instance, in the 1950s, the majority of American women desired domestic
employment like being mothers and housewives. On the other hand, the majority of female
college students in today's society anticipate getting a job after they graduate. Cultures are bound
together by common sets of ideals, concepts, symbols, and judgments in addition to their
dominant economic activities and accompanying social patterns. People within cultures are
conditioned to display specific personality traits. Each culture has a unique set of primary or core
beliefs that help to unify it and set it apart from others. Many laws are broken, some of them
rather frequently (for example, automobile speed limits). It can be helpful for some
anthropologists to distinguish between ideal and actual cultures. What people say they should do
and what they really do make up the ideal culture. Their actual behavior is what is meant by real
culture.

Culture Can be Adaptive and Maladaptive

Humans can respond to environmental pressures in both biological and cultural ways. In addition
to our biological adaptation mechanisms, we also use "culture adaptive-kits," which include
ritualistic practices and equipment. Human evolution has increasing reliance on social and
cultural adaption strategies even though humans continue to adapt biologically. Although
cultural adaptation plays a critical part in human evolution, some cultural features, patterns, and
inventions can also be unsuitable for the group, endangering its ability to survive (survival and
reproduction). While heaters and furnaces keep us warm in the winter, air conditioners help us
deal with the heat. The ability to commute from home to work thanks to automobiles allows us to
earn a living. However, such "helpful" technology frequently results in additional issues.
Chemical emissions lead to global warming, ozone layer destruction, and increased air pollution.
Overconsumption and pollution are just two examples of cultural practices that seem to be
maladaptive over time.

Levels of Culture

The distinctions between national, international, and subcultural levels of culture are becoming
more important in today's globe. National culture describes the shared values, institutions,
acquired behavior patterns, and beliefs of people living in the same country. The phrase
"international culture" refers to cultural practices that transcend and cut through national
boundaries. Cultural features can spread through borrowing or diffusion from one group to
another since culture is passed down through learning rather than genetics. Subcultures are
distinctive symbol-based behaviors and customs connected to specific social groups within a
complex society. Subcultures develop in a big country like the United States or Canada based on
geography, ethnicity, language, class, and religion.
Ethnocentrism, Cultural Relativism, and Human Rights
Cultural relativism, which contends that behavior in one culture shouldn't be assessed according
to norms from another, is the counterargument to ethnocentrism. Problems may arise in this
position as well. At its most extreme, cultural relativism contends that all moral and ethical
standards should be respected equally and that there is no superior, global, or universal morality.
By implying a domain of justice and morality above and beyond certain nations, cultures, and
faiths, the concept of human rights opposes cultural relativism. Human rights, which are
typically considered as belonging to individuals, include the freedom of speech, the right to
practice one's religion without fear of reprisal, and the right not to be killed, hurt, sold into
slavery, or imprisoned without cause. These rights are not regular laws that are made and applied
by certain governments.Human rights are viewed as universal and inalienable (nations cannot
restrict or revoke them) (larger than and superior to individual nations and cultures).
The necessity to protect cultural rights has become more widely recognized in tandem with the
human rights movement. Cultural rights include a group's ability to uphold its culture, raise its
children according to the customs of its ancestors, maintain its language, and not have its
economic foundation threatened by the country in which it resides.

Universality, Generality, and Particularity

Anthropologists make a distinction between the universal, the generic, and the particular while
researching human variability throughout time and geography. Every civilization shares a few
common biological, psychological, social, and cultural traits. Others are essentially
generalizations that apply to some human groups, but not all of them. Other characteristics are
particularities that are specific to a culture or tradition.

The characteristics that more or less set Homo sapiens apart from other animals are known as
universal features.
Cultural generalizations make up the middle ground between universals and uniqueness (see the
following section). These recurring patterns exist in various eras and locations, but not across all
cultures. Diffusion is one cause for generalizations. Societies might borrow from one another or
receive (cultural) inheritance from a common ancestor that shared the same ideas and traditions.
Particular cultural traditions gain distinction from strange and unusual ideas and activities. Birth,
puberty, marriage, motherhood, and death are universal life-cycle events that are ritually
observed in many cultures. How exactly an event is celebrated differs amongst civilizations. In
America, costly funerals are seen as less socially acceptable than expensive weddings. The
Betsileo of Madagascar, on the other hand, have the other opinion. The couple and a select group
of close family members attend the little wedding ceremony. A funeral, however, which may
draw a thousand people, is a reflection of the departed person's social standing and lifetime
accomplishments. The Betsileo argue that instead of spending money on a home, one should
invest it in a tomb where they will spend all of eternity with their deceased loved ones.

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

How and why do civilizations alter? Diffusion, or the borrowing of features from other cultures,
is one method. Since cultures have never been fully separated from one another, this flow of
ideas and goods has continued throughout human history. There has always been interaction
between nearby communities, which has spread over a considerable area (Boas, 1940–1956).
When two civilizations trade, marry, or engage in conflict with one another, diffusion occurs
directly. When one culture subjugates another and forces its traditions on the dominant group,
diffusion is forced. When anything travels from group A to group C via group B without coming
into direct contact with group C, the diffusion is indirect.

Acculturation, a second mechanism of cultural change, is the transfer of cultural traits that
happens as a result of ongoing direct interaction between groups. This interaction may alter the
cultures of one or both tribes (Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits 1936). Parts of the cultures alter
with acculturation, yet each group retains its unique characteristics.
A third engine of cultural development is independent invention, the method through which
people innovate and problem-solve creatively. Cultural generalizations occur because people
from all cultures have innovated and developed in similar ways in response to similar issues and
challenges.
Particular cultural traditions gain distinction from strange and unusual ideas and activities. Birth,
puberty, marriage, motherhood, and death are universal life-cycle events that are ritually
observed in many cultures. How exactly an event is celebrated differs amongst civilizations. In
America, costly funerals are seen as less socially acceptable than expensive weddings. The
Betsileo of Madagascar, on the other hand, has another opinion. The couple and a select group of
close family members attend the little wedding ceremony. A funeral, however, which may draw
a thousand people, is a reflection of the departed person's social standing and lifetime
accomplishments. The Betsileo argue that instead of spending money on a home, one should
invest it in a tomb where they will spend all of eternity with their deceased loved ones. Particular
cultural traditions gain distinction from strange and unusual ideas and activities. Birth, puberty,
marriage, motherhood, and death are universal life-cycle events that are ritually observed in
many cultures. How exactly an event is celebrated differs amongst civilizations. In America,
costly funerals are seen as less socially acceptable than expensive weddings. The Betsileo of
Madagascar, on the other hand, have the opposite opinion. The couple and a select group of close
family members attend the small wedding ceremony. A funeral, however, which may draw a
thousand people, is a reflection of the departed person's social standing and lifetime
accomplishments. The Betsileo argue that instead of spending money on a home, one should
invest it in a tomb where they will spend all of eternity with their deceased loved ones.

Mechanism of Cultural Change

Particular cultural traditions gain distinction from strange and unusual ideas and activities. Birth,
puberty, marriage, motherhood, and death are universal life-cycle events that are ritually
observed in many cultures. How exactly an event is celebrated differs amongst civilizations. In
America, costly funerals are seen as less socially acceptable than expensive weddings. The
Betsileo of Madagascar, on the other hand, have the other opinion. The couple and a select group
of close family members attend the little wedding ceremony. A funeral, however, which may
draw a thousand people, is a reflection of the departed person's social standing and lifetime
accomplishments. The Betsileo argue that instead of spending money on a home, one should
invest it in a tomb where they will spend all of eternity with their deceased loved ones.Particular
cultural traditions gain distinction from strange and unusual ideas and activities. Birth, puberty,
marriage, motherhood, and death are universal life-cycle events that are ritually observed in
many cultures. How exactly an event is celebrated differs amongst civilizations. In America,
costly funerals are seen as less socially acceptable than expensive weddings. The Betsileo of
Madagascar, on the other hand, have the other opinion. The couple and a select group of close
family members attend the little wedding ceremony. A funeral, however, which may draw a
thousand people, is a reflection of the departed person's social standing and lifetime
accomplishments. The Betsileo argue that instead of spending money on a home, one should
invest it in a tomb where they will spend all of eternity with their deceased loved ones.