CULTURE AND

CIVILISATION
 Culture and Civilization

Culture and civilization are often used synonymously.

A Culture cannot be separated from its civilization
Culture:
Is the way we live, the language we speak, the food
we eat, the clothes we wear and the manners in
which we think.
Civilization
The term ‘civilization’ is derived from a Latin
term ‘civis’ which indicates ‘someone who lives in a
town’.
It means having better ways of living conditions:
food, dress, means of transports, technology and
democratic system of gouvernance
 orientalism

The term is linked to the Palestenian intellectual

living in the U.S.
 It is the Western discoure (novel, travel narratives…
etc) about the orient based on knowledge and power.
It construct the oriental people as inferior, and
irrational and their cultures as low, exotic and
barbaric
 ‘The Binary oppositions’

It is a key concept in structuralism, used by ferdinand

De Saussure in his theory of sign (signified/signifier)
In culture, it is used to differentiate between
cultures/people black/white
inferior/superior
margin/centre

The purpose of binary opposition is dividing cultures

into two contradictory entities and previleging one
element over the other
 ‘Mission Civilisatrice’

‘Civilizing Mission’ the concept is used by the

French colonialism. It was founded on the idea that
the Europeans came to the Orient (Africa/ Middle
East/far East) to civilize its residents
 Other related concepts

Subculture, and Coculture

Subculture:is a term sometimes used to
refer to racial and ethnic minority groups that share both a
common nation-state with other
cultures and some aspects of the larger culture.

Example: AfricanAmericans,ArabAmericans,
Asian Americans, Native Americans, Latinos
The term subculture is often stereotypical

and pejorative because it suggests
subordination and inferiority to the
larger European American culture

Coculture: means other cultural groups


(lations, arabs…etc live together (co-exist)
withthe main culture (American) it is also
refered to as Amalgamation: (different
culture blended in one)
Acculturation 
Definition of acculturation
1: cultural modification of an individual, group, or
people by adapting to or borrowing traits from
another culture.
the acculturation of immigrants to European life

is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires

and adjusts to a new cultural environment.
Examples:
 Some migrants living in europe celebrate christams
Foreigners trying Moroccan culture
 Multi-culturalism

Multi-culturalism:
Is the co-existence of different cultures, races,
ethnicites in one community. All societies we live in
nowadays are multicultural
1-The Melting Pot theory:
of multiculturalism assumes that various immigrant
groups will tend to “melt together,” abandoning their
individual cultures and eventually becoming fully
assimilated into the predominant society.
2-The Salad Bowl Theory:
This theory describes a heterogeneous society in
which people coexist but retain at least some of the
unique characteristics of their traditional culture.
London and Paris are melting pots