Understanding Culture: Definitions, Types, and Social Dynamics

Perspectives on Culture

Alfred G. Smith believes that culture is what we live every day, stating, "Living is largely a matter of communication." The way people communicate reflects how they live; that is their culture.

James Lull, a professor of communication studies at San Jose State University, California, defines culture as a complex and dynamic ecology of people, things, worldviews, activities, and scenarios. It is basically stable but changes through routine communication and social interaction. Culture is a context—it encompasses how we talk, dress, eat, prepare food, create and worship gods, raise our children, and dance. This implies that no culture is superior to another and that cultural wealth is not derived from economic position.

Néstor García Canclini, an Argentine philosopher, examines how people eat, think, dress, imagine, and engage in politics. He defines culture as the set of phenomena that contribute, through symbolic representation or the reworking of material structures, to understanding, replicating, or transforming the social system.

Core Definitions

• Culture: The everyday life of humanity in all its dimensions: political, economic, and social.
• Subculture: The specific culture of a group within a broader society, differentiated by features such as customs, ethnicity, class, or age (e.g., immigrants, youth subcultures, urban tribes).

Classifications of Culture

Literate Culture

During the Renaissance, the term "culture" was used by the intellectual elite who possessed training in arts and techniques. Consequently, cultural manifestations typical of this educated elite, who considered themselves superior to other sectors, became known as literate culture.

Popular Culture

This is the culture characteristic of a people who resist the dictates of the ruling minority and determine the historical continuity of a community. It stands in contraposition to elite culture. According to Eduardo Galeano, popular culture is a complex system of identity symbols that preserves and creates a people. Colombres suggests that popular culture is not just a synthesis, but a sum of various profiles within a country that sometimes share the same symbols. Folklore is constituted by the uses, customs, and dances that shape popular culture.

Mass Culture

These are cultural events created, reproduced, and disseminated by major economic centers of power. This industry produces culture to generate homogenization through mass media. The cultural event becomes a commodity or exchange value, bought and sold, which often leads to the degradation of culture.