Definiton of Culture Qualities of Culture

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4. Culture

This sub chapter is going to explain the definition of culture, qualities of culture, values, and American culture. The American culture then is explained into three parts that are history of American culture, characteristics of American culture, and values of American culture.

a. Definiton of Culture

Tylor as quoted by Merrill 129 defines culture as a complexity which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, habits and capabilities obtained by man as a member of society. Another definition of culture is proposed by White quoted in Merrill 129. She states that Culture is an organization of phenomena- acts patterns of behavior; objects tools, things made with tools; ideas belief, knowledge; and sentiments attitudes,’values’ – that is dependent upon the use of symbols. Culture began when man as an articulate, symbol-using primate, began. Because of its symbolic character… culture is easily and readily transmitted from one human organism to another. The history of culture, then, becomes the history of human being. From time to time, culture has been transmitted to the next generation. In so doing, some symbols in culture have been changed by adding and losing them. This constitutes an ongoing process. As human beings, we live in a culture. We obtain knowledge, belief, morals, and custom from the previous generation in the society. We apply habits that are applied as well by our surroundings. We also learn about the art and the law as parts of a culture. These components of a culture, then, will be transmitted to our next generations. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 13

b. Qualities of Culture

Adapted from Murdock, Merrill 135-136 suggests that culture has its characteristics that have a role in understanding the concept of culture. Merrill also has clarified the characteristic of the culture in terms of its qualities. They are the learned quality, the transmissive quality, the social quality, the ideational quality, the gratifying quality, the adaptive quality, and the integrative quality. The first quality is the learned quality. This quality suggests that culture is not endowed to human being. Instead, culture needs to be learned. Culture itself constitutes expected behaviors from society and is learned by a man so that uniformities of behavior are created. The uniformities of behavior are called culture. The second quality is the transmissive quality. This quality clarifies that culture is able to be transmitted from one generation to other generations. The transmission process of culture is cumulative. It means that a man in one generation may develop what has already been existing from the previous generation. Another quality, the third quality, is the social quality. In this quality, culture is explained to have a normative quality. The normative quality constitutes behavior expected by people in society. This normative expectations yield uniformities behavior. The fourth quality is the ideational quality. This quality explains that the uniformity behavior which becomes habits and constitutes the culture has to be an ideal for the society, so that the society may view, learn, and adapt themselves to the culture. The fifth quality is the gratifying quality which means culture is able to satisfy the human needs. The needs may be biological, such as thirst and hunger, but it may PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 14 also be the sociocultural needs such as falling in love and marrying. The next quality is the adaptive quality. This quality means that culture has to be able to adapt itself to its different aspect that may be changed, that is the geographical aspect. This quality has to exist to defend the presence of the culture itself. The last quality is the integrative quality. This quality suggests that culture has inclination to form a consistent whole. Every culture has its quality although this quality may seems obvious or not in any culture. The integrative quality of a culture is very obvious in a simple society where the people do not change significantly. On the contrary, integration is not really obvious in a complex and heterogeneous culture where the people are change constantly.

c. Values in a Society