Question 1. What I think of when I hear the word 'culture' ?
Answer. The word 'culture' connotes a set of norms, practices, beliefs, and opinions of a particular person or community. I feel that 'culture' represents activities pertaining to a particular nation, community, or religion. For example, the term 'Western culture' may represent a certain way of eating habits, clothing, and behaving. I have heard parents complaining about the ill-effects of Western culture on kids. Fast-food, tight-fitted clothing, and independent thinking are usually taken as bad in Eastern nations. It is here the cultural difference lies.
Further, I think that parents and society automatically transfer cultural practices to offspring. Hardly I hear that a person is feeling at odds with the culture native to him. Nonetheless, this condition may arise when he/she is too obsessed with other cultures.
I also feel that culture sharply varies across families. Though some common standards( example: language, religion) remain same in a broader community, there occur a great deal of variations in trivial matters. It is the reason girls often find it difficult to adjust post-marriage in the case they have to stay with their in-laws.
Last but not the least, I do feel that culture is a common thread that binds the people of a specific type. For example, 'drug culture' represents people who are excessively infatuated with drugs. Similarly, organizational culture tells us about the way an organization intends to behave. There can be a culture of almost any thinking, opinion, or activity.
Question 2. How I view culture now?
Answer. My views regarding 'culture' have gone substantially enriched and refined after reading the chapter. Earlier, my notion was just restricted to taking it as a set of norms and activities. Never I tried to ponder over its origin, way of transfer and usage in the language. I never noticed culture it in terms of 'cultivation' and 'manners'( cultured). The chapter, indeed, has made me realize the multidimensionality of culture.
Like most of the people, I wrongly assumed culture as something that comes 'automatically' to people as they take birth and grow up. Little I realized the importance of learning it. The author, having cited the hypothesis of birth and adoption, has appropriately pinpointed that people learn the culture, though the process of education is often overlooked. Most of the learning process taken place in early childhood, in the age of toddlers and infants. The process, though, is so automatic that nobody feels doing an extra effort to it.
However, there do occur differences in this learning and they pop up as the child matures. Refinement in learning makes some people more cultured than others. Culture people, as the author says, are the ones who have learned their cultural practices with more fine-tuning than others.
The anthropological and biological senses presented by the author have further added to the multidimensionality. Previously, I had never thought of gene-culture and bacteria culture. It is quite surprising, yet convincing, to comprehend the culture in terms of cultivation. Human beings manipulate natural processes to culture(cultivate) something. In the same manner, we manipulate ourselves, and cultivate our talents to feel more skilled.
Last but not the least, the linguistic tinge highlighted in the chapter makes the information almost absolute. The author has discussed culture as an outcome(noun) and also as the process(verb). It has greatly helped me in understanding the origin and the way of using this word in the language.
In the nutshell, the chapter in exemplary in finding out the unearthed meanings and senses of the term culture. I have cherished reading it and feel content to have increased my knowledge.
