Cultural Foundations: Tradition, Subcultures, and Civilization

The Nature and Function of Tradition

Tradition encompasses the knowledge, skills, experiences, beliefs, and policies inherited from our ancestors. These elements collectively form tradition, fulfilling various functions, including instruction in human knowledge, morality, ritual, and folklore.

Traditions are the result of a historical process, providing meaning and ways to deliver essential understanding and possibilities to subsequent generations. While tradition offers immense wisdom, preventing us from starting from scratch repeatedly, it is also limited and conditional.

Understanding the world and our society through tradition allows us to adapt and provides basic foundational knowledge. We must recognize that traditions are fundamental to humanity, though individuals retain the freedom to refuse them.

To grasp the reality of the human form, one must study the history and evolution of cultural fluctuations, alongside basic human drives and passions, such as the drive for knowledge or the sexual drive. These fundamental powers and passions change in accordance with the surrounding culture.

Anthropological Perspectives on Culture

Material vs. Non-Material Culture

Anthropologists typically distinguish between two main types of culture:

• Material Culture: Consists of physical products, materials, and tools.
• Non-Material Culture (or Cultural Imagery): Includes social beliefs, values, and policies.

The first explicit definition of culture, often cited in ethnographic research, states:

Culture or civilization, taking the wide view of ethnographic research, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Culture is a shaping force that extends beyond biology. It is the result of historical processes within human groups and acts as a humanizing factor. It includes various systems of shared symbols that provide meaning, specific guidance in our lives, and a framework for interpreting reality.

Subcultures and Countercultural Movements

Subcultures exist within every major culture, recognizing that not all members think or live in the same way. A movement that actively opposes the main culture is called a counterculture, proposing an alternative culture and society.

Examples of such groups include:

• Urban Tribes: Rockers, punks, skinheads, etc.
• Aggressive Groups: Criminal groups who challenge the established system through violent attacks.
• Alternative Social Groups: Those who view the future darkly, focus on the fleeting present, and often feel a sense of void or alienation.

Distinguishing Culture and Civilization

The term civilization derives from the Latin words Civis (urban/citizen) and Civitas (city). Civilization is often treated as a singular concept representing the cumulative progress of humanity.

Civilization is achieved through the general synthesis of different co-cultures. As Samuel P. Huntington noted, civilization represents the largest cultural grouping. It provides a general, distinctive identity for humanity, often used to identify broad levels, such as Western Civilization.