Introduction to Literature and Visual Culture The Concept of Culture

Approaches / definitions 1: Traditional humanist approach (eg. Matthew Arnold): „The best that has been thought and said in the world.” Culture is an ideal of human refinement, development. (Bildung in German philosophy.) Thus, culture is to be learned, acquired. 2: Modern Cultural Studies Approach: A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. Thus, culture can be questioned, analysed, compared to other cultures

Some key concepts Cultural determinism: The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of society determine human nature. People are what they learn.  Cultural relativism: Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no scientific standards for considering one group as intrinsically superior or inferior to another. Cultural ethnocentrism: The belief that one's own culture is superior to that of other cultures. It is a form of reductionism that reduces the "other way" of life to a distorted version of one's own.