Culture

Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate")[1] is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions.[2] However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

* Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
* An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
* The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

When the concept first emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture. In the nineteenth century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals. In the mid-nineteenth century, some scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity. For the German nonpositivist sociologist, Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history".[3]

In the twentieth century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Following World War II, the term became important, albeit with different meanings, in other disciplines such as cultural studies, organizational psychology and management studies. [citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

Society

Society or human society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole.[1] Used in the sense of an association, a society is a body of individuals outlined by the bounds of functional interdependence, possibly comprising characteristics such as national or cultural identity, social solidarity, language or hierarchical organization. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Like other communities or groups, a society allows its members to achieve needs or wishes they could not fulfill alone.independent of, and utterly irreducible to, the qualities of constituent individuals; it may act to oppress. The urbanization and rationalization inherent in some, particularly Western capitalist, societies, has been associated with feelings of isolation and social "anomie".

More broadly, a society is an economic, social or industrial infrastructure, made up of a varied collection of individuals. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups. A society may be a particular ethnic group, such as the Saxons; a nation state, such as Bhutan; a broader cultural group, such as a Western society. The word society may also refer to an organized voluntary association of people for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes. A "society" may even, though more by means of metaphor, refer to a social organism such as an ant colony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society

Theory Culture And Society

As the journal Theory, Culture & Society approaches its 25th Anniversary in 2007, members of the TCS editorial board along with colleagues in East and South-East Asia and other parts of the world, have started out on a new ambitious undertaking: the New Encyclopaedia Project. The TCS special issue 'Problematizing Global Knowledge' (volume 23 (2-3) March-May 2007) is our first venture in 'encyclopaedic explorations' which outlines our concern to begin to rethink knowledge under the impact of globalization and digitalization. The issue features 152 entries and supplements on a range of topics gathered under the headings: metaconcepts, metanarratives and meta-sites and institutions. Specific topics covered include clusters on classification, language, time, space, the body, science, aesthetics, culture, technology, networks, media, life, globalization, civilization, religion, modernity, the university, the public sphere.
The issue has been made possible through the tremendous response from scholars in and around TCS (Barbara Adams, Sean Cubitt, Jonathan Friedman, Karin Knorr Cetina, Scott Lash, Stephen Mennell, John Milbank, Roland Robertson, Boaventura Sousa Santos, Bryan Turner, Nigel Thrift, John Urry, Andy Wernick, Pnina Werbner, Vikki Bell, Rob Shields and others), along with social and cultural theorists from the United States (Jeff Alexander, Michael M J Fischer, Mark Hansen, George Marcus, Aihwa Ong, Paul Rabinow Gayatri Spivak and others) as well as scholars from various parts of the world (Chua Beng Huat, Li Shiqiao, Fan Jingua , Shunya Yoshimi, Susantha Goonatilake, Shiv Visvanathan, Maria Esther Maciel, Mackenzie Wark). All of these contributors share our concern to begin the process of rethinking global knowledge for a new generation of scholars, who face very different and much more difficult conditions of intellectual and academic life, but are keen to engage in dialogue.
As we move into the 21st century, it is clear that the boundaries, limits and classification of our world are shifting. Cultures no longer seem to have the same level of stability as before. The uncertainty as to what we should know about an enlarged world has become crystallized through two processes: As we move into the 21st century, it is clear that the boundaries, limits and classification of our world are shifting. Cultures no longer seem to have the same level of stability as before. The uncertainty as to what we should know about an enlarged world has become crystallized through two processes:
* Globalization. One side-effect of the global economy has been the clashing of cultures. It may well be the case that we increasingly live in 'one world,' but many contradictory processes are taking place: not just the extension of English as the language of business, commercial law and international non-governmental organizations, but also the visibility of different cultures and traditions. We are becoming increasingly aware of different accounts of global history and various alternative modernities. Western account of the rise of modern times and the classification systems used in the social sciences and humanities are becoming challenged by counter-knowledges. This suggests we have to abandon many of our universalistic assumptions and instead start from a perspective which emphasises global variability, global connectivity, and global inter-communication .
* Digitalization. The new information technologies can store and retrieve vast amounts of data. Yet to have all the cultural representations and texts of the world immediately at hand in digital format, raises the problem of the structure and classification of the world. Especially so when many different forms and types of knowledge can be put into a vast database which can be traversed through hyperlinks and search engines. Yet who should construct the databases, hyperlinks and search engines: the state, the corporations, the university? A sort of order is emerging with the Internet, yet it is driven by many different and conflicting principles, with the commercial dot.com economy currently in the ascendant. We therefore have a problem, about how to classify, handle and access digital culture.
The title of the volume 'Problematizing Global Knowledge', indicates our commitment to address globalization and digitalization in terms of their consequences for knowledge. The contemporary mood is one of de-classification, as we encounter different systems of knowledge in the new global discursive space, our generalizations are challenged. Yet there is also potential for a re-classification of knowledge, the development of a set of new concepts, to more adequately address not only the new emergent social and cultural phenomena of 'the global age,' but also explore the new genealogies of knowledge as the different traditions clash.

http://www.sagepub.net/tcs/default.aspx?page=encyclopaedia

Society and Culture

The aim of Society and Culture is to develop a student's knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes essential to achieving social and cultural literacy by examining the interactions between persons, societies, cultures and environments across time.
Through the study of Society and Culture, students will develop:
knowledge and understanding about:
• personal, social and cultural identity
• cultures shared by members of societies
• interactions of persons, societies, cultures and environments across time
• continuity and change, personal and social futures and strategies for change
• the role of power, authority, gender and technology in societies and cultures
• the methodologies of social and cultural research.


skills to:
• apply and evaluate social and cultural research
• investigate and engage in effective evaluation, analysis and synthesis of information from a variety of sources
• communicate information, ideas and issues in appropriate forms to different audiences in a variety of contexts.


informed and responsible values and attitudes towards:
• a just society
• intercultural understanding
• informed and active citizenship
• ethical research practices
• lifelong learning.

http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/learning/yr11_12/hsie/sctyculture/index.php