Secular spirituality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality 

Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion. Secular spirituality emphasizes the personal growth and inner peace of the individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution; it considers one's relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one considers to be the ultimate. Often, the goal of secular spirituality is living happily and/or helping others.

According to the American philosopher Robert C. Solomon, "spirituality is coextensive with religion and it is not incompatible with or opposed to science or the scientific outlook. Naturalized spirituality is spirituality without any need for the 'other‐worldly'. Spirituality is one of the goals, perhaps the ultimate goal, of philosophy." Cornel W Du Toit, head of the Research Institute for Theology and Religion at the University of South Africa, suggests secular spirituality is unique in that it adapts so well to modern world views, and is therefore compatible with other modern beliefs and ways of life, building community through shared experiences of "awe". Peter Van der Veer also argues an important aspect of secular spirituality is its promotion of community, creating solidarity through shared universal truth.

This 'universal truth' can be experienced through a secular or non-religious world view, without the need for a concept of 'higher power' or a 'supernatural being'.

Instances of secular spirituality are mediated differently, as instances of awe can be encouraged through a diversity of unique environments and situations. In the 21st century, individuals increasingly connect with the secularly spiritual through technology. As follows, the connection between contemporary spiritual practices and technology is deepening profoundly. Some traditionally religious practices have been adapted by secular practitioners under strictly spiritual understandings, such as yoga and mindfulness meditation. Secular spirituality affects education, relationships to nature, and community togetherness.

Definition

Secular spirituality emphasizes humanistic qualities such as love, compassion, patience, forgiveness, responsibility, harmony and a concern for others. Du Toit argues aspects of life and human experience which go beyond a purely materialistic view of the world are spiritual; spirituality does not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. Mindfulness and meditation can be practiced in order to cherish, foster, and promote the development of one's empathy and manage selfish drivers of behavior, with solicitude and forgiveness. This can be experienced as beneficial, or even necessary for human fulfillment, without any supernatural interpretation or explanation. Spirituality in this context may be a matter of nurturing thoughts, emotions, words and actions that are in harmony with a belief that everything in the universe is mutually dependent. Scholar Daniel Dennett suggests spirituality as connected to "awe and joy and sense of peace and wonder," explaining "people make a mistake of thinking spirituality... has anything to do with either religious doctrines... or the supernatural," instead claiming spirituality can be and is often entirely secular.. However critics  suggest that because 'secular spirituality' does not reference theistic, supernatural or any 'other-worldly' constructs it cannot be truly considered spirituality — without some non-ordinary /supernatural element, the dissenters argue that spirituality boils down to being nothing more than a synonym for humanism.

Theorists

Cornel W Du Toit

Cornel W Du Toit is a professor at the University of South Africa, who completed his studies at the Institute for Theology and Missiology. Du Toit defines "secular spirituality" as a contemporary phenomenon of spirituality experienced in spheres separate from structured, institutionalized religion. Du Toit cites Alister E. McGrath's definition of spirituality in his discussion of the secularly spiritual, arguing that spirituality generally concerns: "the quest for a fulfilled and authentic life, involving the bringing together of the ideas distinctive of ... [some] religion and the whole experience of living on the basis of and within the scope of that religion." Du Toit argues that, as a contemporary phenomenon, secular spirituality is different than earlier spiritualities. A number of changes in prevailing worldviews have affected the concept of spirituality. The concept of spirituality means something different in the current techno-scientific world than it did in a world of phantoms, magic, gods, and demons, in which humans believed themselves to be at the mercy of forces they could not control. Du Toit believes that the increase in scientific explanations for what were previously seen as spiritual, "unexplainable" instances of awe, has increased individuals' tendency to call any experience that seems special "spiritual." Du Toit argues that any realm can evoke an experience of spirituality whether it may be reading a novel, watching a movie or going on a hike.

Secular spirituality is not a new religion, but rather the potential for all experiences to assume a spiritual quality, not limited to any one religious or transcendent realm. Du Toit argues that industrialism has led to an increase in materialism in the West. Du Toit further argues that materialism has contributed to a more individualistic Western culture, which underpins secularism. In saying this, though Du Toit connects secularism to individualism, Du Toit maintains that secular spirituality is inherently communal, as he argues that while instances of awe can be experienced individually, they ultimately contribute to the collective – as these instances of awe can motivate people to influence others and nature. Du Toit argues that if they do not meaningfully contribute to the collective, they can not be considered secular spiritual experiences. Du Toit argues that "the spiritual experiences was never an end in itself... [as] any spirituality that does not produce service is false.

Peter Van der Veer

Peter Van der Veer suggests secular spirituality began with the emphasis on forming group identities, both national and political, and the need for these communities to share a spiritual identity. For Van der Veer, secular spirituality arose in communities through the simultaneous rise of secularism and spirituality, as well as their interaction in the context of nineteenth century globalization. He identifies spirituality, the secular, and religion as three interacting but independent concepts that create frameworks for different systems of belief. For Van der Veer the combination of the spiritual and the secular allows the bridging of discursive traditions in the global-historical context which preserves identities of the communities who share spiritual beliefs across national boundaries.

Van der Veer suggests the phenomenon of secular spirituality develops as many different expressions of belief because of the inconsistent integration of spirituality into secular society within social, market and political spaces. Secular spirituality reflects individualism and self-reflexivity through forming group identities outside of a modern geopolitical context. Secular spirituality does not imply rejecting modern ideas of liberalism, socialism or science, but instead exists as a parallel reading of the discourse with contemporary society. Van der Veer identifies the use of these contemporary ideas to create communities of individuals who share secular interests in a system of awesome belief as instances of secular spirituality.

Kim Knott

Kim Knott focuses specifically on the secular sacred, in her discussion of secular spirituality. More specifically, Knott focuses on the possibility of experiencing the sacred outside the context of institutionalized religion. She believes that the sacred functions both within and outside of a theological context through the beliefs of individual persons. Knott deconstructs the common conceptional separation of the sacred from the profane. She argues that the concept of religion should not be conflated with the concept of the sacred, and that the concept of the secular should not be conflated with the concept of the profane. Throughout the enlightenment this separation between religion and the spiritual has occurred, as wilderness sites, marshes, coves, and other sites have been called sacred or spiritual places, without having religious influence or belonging to a religion. In this understanding, the sacred is based in nature as these sacred sites serve in an individual's spatial sacred experience. In Knott's view, individuals experience the sacred through embodiment, spatiality, and the awareness of one's body and the spaces inside and around it.  As the basis of the sacred it becomes an operative connection within boundary crossing situations taking place inside and outside the human body and the inhabited territory.

Technology

Online spirituality

Religions and religious movements have strong online presence, which are often discussed in the academic study of digital religion under two categories: "religion-online" and "online-religion." As coined by Christopher Helland, "religion-online" is understood as "importing traditional forms of religion online", while "online-religion" is uniquely secularly spiritual, in that it "[creates] new forms of networked spiritual interactions," promoting discussions of ritual and 'awe'-filled moments within a secular, online community. Because of the Internet's ability to "cross social and cultural borders", Helland argues that this has created "non-threatening environment" that is ideal for anonymous users to engage in "spiritual searching." Online spiritual discussion outside of the aegis of any particular religious movement is often thought to have begun with and have been most influenced by "Communitree", a "California-based online social networking system". The "Origins" board on Communitree promoted "open-ended forms of religious discussion", resulting in an unofficial "set of religious and quasi-religious beliefs and practices that is not accepted, recognized or controlled by official religious groups." Scholars often associate Communitree with personal religiosity and individualized spirituality, as this entirely secular platform allowed for conversation to occur without a "set doctrine, code of ethics or group of religious professionals to regulate belief and practices". Outside of Communitree, the Internet contains countless forums, websites, and messaging systems. These platforms allow for information regarding spiritual ideas to be accessed, and connections to be made between those who are offering or seeking spiritual advice.

Techno-spirituality

A defining feature of secular spirituality is that instances of secular spirituality can occur in any realm. In the present techno-scientific age, spiritual practices are increasingly mediated through technology. For many religious people, technology can be seen as an alienating force – "the encapsulation of human rationality" – that competes with religion and spirituality as opposed to mediating or facilitating religion and spirituality. The recognition of a spiritual dimension of technology represents a recent shift in the discussion. According to philosopher Jay Newman, "technology's very success is contributing to the realization of ideals such as freedom, knowledge, happiness, and peace." This may lead people to believe that "technology is a proper successor to religion", but this is certainly not the case in sociological trends. General levels of religiosity in the West have barely declined since the Enlightenment period. The current "attribution of spiritual meaning to the digital realm" represents a remarkable change in how spirituality has traditionally been mediated. Secular spirituality is a phenomenon that recognizes the link between technology and spirituality, as opposed to viewing technology as in competition with spirituality.

Yoga

The popularity of the 'yoga' in the West is integrally linked to secularization. This secularization began in India in the 1930s, when yoga teachers began to look for ways to make yoga accessible to the general public who did not have the opportunity to practice yoga as part of the Hindu faith. As such, yoga began to move from the realm of religion to the realm of secularity, promoting Yoga as a non-Hindu practice both within the West and East. Yoga has undeniably Hindu roots, first mentioned in the Katha Upanisad. Despite these roots, yoga has been secularized, and often referred to as being "ancient Indian," "Eastern," or "Sanskritic," rather than as Hindu due to a desire to avoid any religious connotations. Modern Western yoga is thought to "not require adoption of religious beliefs or dogma," despite Hindu origins. In the West, yoga has been "modernized, medicalized, and transformed into a system of physical culture". This system of physical culture has transformed yoga "into an individualized spirituality of the self", creating an activity that is very popular within secular societies, drawing off portrayals of yoga as "mystical, experiential and individualistic." Western yoga students cite health, fitness, and stress reduction as reasons for yogic practice, rather than traditional Hindu motivations and goals such as enlightenment. However, many practice in order to reach "contemplative states of consciousness and spirituality", a goal that falls within the realm of secular spirituality. In a study of Ashram residents, researchers found residents were more likely to respond they had an "experience of oneness" during or after a yoga class and felt more "in touch with divine or spiritual" after a class than control groups, leaving researchers to believe yoga practice enhances transformational processes, including spiritual states.

Meditation

Meditation has transformed into a secular, spiritual experience that promotes a sense of community.

Meditation was invented by Taoists in the 7th century BC, while Taoism is regarded by many as a secular philosophy, when it arrived in India it branched out and was soon Indianized and mystified, giving religious explanations for the meditation practices. Meditation is considered a "spiritual alternative" to conventional values and goals, such as those found in traditional Western religions.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction, while traditionally linked to the Buddhist understanding of Samadhi, has become medicalized in the secular aim of reducing illness, rather than the traditional Buddhist goal of liberation from the suffering that occurs in worldly experiences. As such, this medicalized, secularized version of meditation has been allowed into secular institutions within Western society, such as hospitals and schools. Research done at Bowling Green State University has shown that mindfulness practitioners who identify as spiritual, as opposed to non-spiritual, benefit more fully from mindfulness practice, and more significantly decreasing their anxiety, increasing the positivity of their moods and increasing their ability to tolerate pain. The Dalai Lama has promoted global exportation of meditation as a "human practice," rather than strictly religious. As such, the secular nature of meditation "for the goal of universal human benefit" is emphasized, allowing for secular, spiritual but non-religious participation. An additional human benefit occurring as a result of meditative practice is a sense of community between practitioners. While meditation is entirely individual, it also relies on and creates social connection, building community through shared spirituality despite secular contexts.

Education

Marisa Crawford points to the importance of including secular spirituality in the Canadian curriculum. Crawford argues that a push for a secular public education system deprives students of the opportunity to explore life's "ultimate questions of heart and soul." Crawford believes that there is a way to integrate spirituality into the secular sphere without indoctrination. She advocates allowing students to investigate how individuals and cultures have addressed spiritual concerns and issues. Public schools in Canada generally exclude the spiritual or transcendent dimension of human life from their explanation of religion and have thus bought into a brand of secularism that has excluded spirituality, giving students the false impression that spirituality has never been an important part of the human experience. Crawford argues that the deflection of students' questions about religion or spirituality is commonplace and contributes to misunderstandings and ignorance about religion and spirituality.

According to Crawford, knowledge about religion and spirituality is essential for understanding and living in a pluralistic society. While textbooks include explanations of the rituals and practices of certain religious groups, textbooks rarely discuss religion's role in shaping human thought and action. In British Columbia, the School Act states that public schools must be conducted on "strictly secular and non-sectarian principles," thereby alienating young people to "questions that both enliven and vex the human spirit." Lois Sweet argues that "public schools must begin to examine ways to include the spiritual dimension of human existence in a non-indoctrinating way," by teaching worldviews that are sensitive to religious differences and by emphasizing the features of religion and spirituality that overlap. Sweet points to the fact that the requirement for secularism in Canadian public schools simply signals the need for "educational decisions and policies, whatever their motivation, to respect the multiplicity of religious and moral views that are held by families in the school community," not to ignore their discussion.

According to a UNESCO report on education: "It is thus education's noble task to encourage each and every one, acting in accordance with their traditions and convictions and paying full respect to pluralism, to lift their minds and spirits to the plane of the universal and, in some measure, to transcend themselves." According to Crawford, excluding religion from the curriculum endorses a passive hostility towards all religious points of view. According to Thomas Groome, by nurturing a sacramental cosmology – an awareness that each aspect of life manifests visible signs of invisible grace – educators can promote an attitude of reverence and gratitude for the world. He argues that doing so can encourage students to "bring light to the thousands of wonders and transcendent signals in the ordinary things of life ...contemplating the world with a gaze of faith that encourages seeking meaning and celebrating instances of awe." Through integrating a sacramental cosmology into the Canadian Public Education system, Groome argues that students will have more opportunities to understand and appreciate the web of humanity – including love, friendship, and "the intricate and consistent designs and patterns of science ... leading to contemplative wonder that is rooted in compassionate and loving relationships that embrace meaningful knowing." Crawford argues that the curriculum will have to avoid promoting one particular religious or irreligious point of view. The curriculum would have to introduce students to a diversity of worldviews and spiritual options "allowing them critical access to alternative traditions so that informed insight and wisdom may flourish through the development of spiritual literacy."

Spirituality and nature

Kathleen Fischer argues secular spirituality is inherently linked to nature, and can be found in the beauty of "the delicate mist that arises from the spray of a waterfall, a hummingbird hovering at a flowering bush, white beaches bordering turquoise waters."

Nurse and researcher Kathleen Fischer notes that nature is a common context for a secular spiritual experience. In her view, individuals can foster a connection to the sacred through experiencing nature with an openness to joy and wonder. According to Fischer, spirituality is the broader reality, the search for meaning and purpose for those who long to discover a deeper dimension to their lives.  She characterizes spiritual experience as being rooted in the feeling of awe in nature, which, in her words, may be inspired by sensing "the intricacy, majesty, and beauty of creation: the delicate mist that arises from the spray of a waterfall, a hummingbird hovering at a flowering bush, white beaches bordering turquoise waters." Fischer's work is intended to affirm that not only that the lives of human beings, but all aspects of nature, are filled with a sacred mystery or power. In Fischer's own experience, the sacred power of spirituality has deepened and extended her spiritual practices, such as meditation or deep reflection to maintain strong mental wellbeing.

Through researching Aboriginal Australian groups, Vicki Grieves has begun using research on their spiritual lives as a method for analyzing and interpreting the contemporary development of Australian Aboriginal groups.  Australian Aboriginal spirituality while diverse seems to attend to similar themes on the sacredness of nature that is seen in Fischer's work. Australian Aboriginals are often taught that life is a sacred hoop in which everything has a place. All elements of nature, whether plants, animals, or insects, should be treated with the same respect as humans. Grieves believes that Aboriginal Australian spiritualities deep connection to nature builds a strong community belief system which has the potential to unite all living beings. Through researching Australian Aboriginal spirituality Grieves has noted how "spirituality stems from a philosophy that establishes the wholistic notion of the interconnectedness of the elements of the earth and the universe, animate and inanimate." As part of her research, Grieves conducted a focus group with an inter-city contemporary Aboriginal group in Australia to better understand the impact spirituality has on their lives. This inter-city group described spirituality as a feeling of interconnectedness to their people's past, of community and a connectedness with land and nature. It is through spirituality that these inter-city aboriginals attained "knowledge, inner strength, and a better understanding of their cultural roots" contributing to feelings of "acceptance, balance and focus" as well as an overall sense of "deep wellbeing".

In communities

Chicano spirituality

Chicano spirituality is a form of Mexicanism; a nationalist spiritual ideology that developed in Mexico and the Southern United States in the 1960s as a response to political and cultural mistreatment by both Mexican and American law. Chicano spirituality uses a combination of rituals from the Mexica, popular Catholic traditions, and secular Mexican traditions to forge an identity for the Chicano people. Chicanos understand their identity to be that of an independent ethnic minority in between Indigenous and Hispanic people, as such blending secular ethnic positionality with a variety of spiritual traditions. The Chicano identify as heirs to the Aztec lineage, and use this genealogy to justify their demands for territory and recognition in civil rights. Aztlán is the imagined territory that is the centre of the Anhuac tribes of whom the Chicano claim to be descendants. Aztlán is identified by the Chicano as the first settlement of the Anhuac people in North America before their southern migration to found the Aztec Empire. Chicano spiritual practice includes the celebration of Mexican civic holidays, and uniquely Chicano-Mexicanist rites of passage. One ritual, called Xilonen, is a rite of passage celebrated by fifteen-year-old Chicano girls that symbolically teaches them the place of women in the social order and in families.

In the context of the modern Chicano movement, the Chicano identity is used to transcend the modern national boundaries of Mexico and the United States as a distinct population. The territory of Atzlán allows the Chicano to justify their separation from other ethnic and cultural groups in these countries by providing them with Aztec ancestors, and a historical connection to territory in what is now the southern United States. The idea of the Aztlán homeland is imaginary, but supported by factors in pre-Hispanic history, allows the Chicano to more firmly stake their position to be recognized as a form of secular spirituality occurring in communities in both Mexico and the United States that desires political recognition of their minority identity as a tool to engage in contemporary society.

The three main arguments that the Chicano use in their fight for a distinct political identity are that the origin of the Chicano ancestors, the Nahua tribes were in North America, that until 1848 the modern national boundaries between Mexico and the United States were not set, and that there is a history of transient Mexican workers in the United States. By claiming a historical link to territory in both countries, the Chicano distinguish themselves as developing a cultural identity separate from either. Chicano spirituality is a combination of American and Mexican encounters with modern politics of human rights.

Indian national spirituality

English rhetorician I.A. Richards has argued that the lack of a word for spirituality in Sanskrit makes it possible for the concept to be used in a nationalist capacity that transcends individual traditions.

 Mohandas Gandhi's principle in establishing Indian National Spirituality was that each person could discover a universal truth in the Indian struggle with British colonialism. His vision of Indian National Spirituality transcended the bounds of individual religious traditions, to enact a shared nationalist fervour in the fight for independence. Gandhi's Indian National Spirituality was an adaption of Hindu tradition in light of Western thought proposed an independent India to operate within. Gandhi used the Hindu principle of Sarva Dharma Sambhava which argues that all religions are equal as a way to invite participation of minority communities in his vision of a politically independent India. Gandhi's national spirituality relied on the entire population of India presenting themselves as a united front against colonialism. After the Lucknow Pact of 1916 Gandhi was forced as an act of Indian congress to give separate political representation to Muslims, and later to Sikhs. Gandhi felt that separating them from the political whole was a "vivisection" of Indian National spirituality as formed a shared ideology for fight for Indian Nationalism.

In addition to arguing for religious equality in India, Gandhi's ideology called for the equality of humankind, a secularly spiritual demand based on peace and kindness for the betterment of all. He believed that Indian National Spirituality would allow the East to be an example to the West in promoting national communities tied by belief. Gandhi saw the endemic oppression of the Dalit or untouchable population by the caste system of Hinduism as a heinous institution. He promoted embracing the Dalit population as also being Harijan or children of God, and the British programs implemented to raise Dalit status through educational and employment opportunity programs.

Responses to Indian national spirituality

Gandhi's proposed universalist national spiritual identity for India faced criticism by both religious and secular nationalist groups. Hindu Nationalists opposed an all-encompassing spiritual tradition that accepted Muslims. They believed that being forced to share an identity with a group of the population that they saw as foreign would be another form of colonial emasculation.

Another response to the universalism of Indian National Spirituality as proposed by Gandhi was by B. R. Ambedkar in the fight for the Dalit. Ambedkar criticized the use of Hinduism as a basis for a universal spirituality because of the implied inequality of the embedded caste system. He saw the lack of mobility between castes and the systematic oppression of the Dalits, the lowest caste in the Hindu system, as necessitating a political separation from their oppressors in a contemporary Indian legal situation. Ambedkar believed that the community of the Dalit had to divorce itself from Hindu tradition in order to escape caste based oppression, explaining that Dalit problem "would never be solved unless [the Dalit] got political power in their own hands." Ambedkar's method for achieving the goals of the Dalit meant that their identity needed to be reimagined as secular, separate from the Hindu caste system.

Ambedkar used conversion to Buddhism as a means to promote the Dalit cause through a different spiritual framework than Gandhi's Indian National Spirituality. In 1956 Ambedkar and a number of his Dalit followers converted from Hinduism to Buddhism. The conversion was symbolic shift for the untouchable community to escape the implications of the Hindu caste system on the Dalit population in a secular realm. The tradition of Buddhism was seen by Ambedkar as "a guide for right relations between man and man in all spheres of life," embodying the egalitarian character missing from Indian society. He hoped that converting the Dalit population to a religion that lacked a caste system would help to create a situation in which they had equal human rights in India as a minority group. Ambedkar's interpretation of Buddhism was based on a secular and this-worldly reading, wherein suffering was defined as the oppression of one culture by another, and freedom from suffering, and nirvana defined as righteous behaviour on earth between all people.

 

Culture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Human symbolic expression developed as prehistoric humans reached behavioral modernity.

 

Religion and expressive art are important aspects of human culture.

 

Celebrations, rituals, and festivities are important aspects of folk culture.

Culture (/ˈkʌltʃər/) is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.

Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.

A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict. In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group.

Description

The Fulani traditional marriage requirements which is flogging of the Groom

Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.

In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the lower classes and create a false consciousness. Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions.

When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. "bro culture"), or a counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture.

Etymology

The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi," using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, "refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human."

In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin colere, 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus, 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly."

Culture described by Richard Velkley:

... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in the writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau's criticism of "modern liberalism and Enlightenment." Thus a contrast between "culture" and "civilization" is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such.

In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor, it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common.

The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired a larger brain.

The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans. However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form.

Change

The Beatles exemplified changing cultural dynamics, not only in music, but fashion and lifestyle. Over a half century after their emergence, they continue to have a worldwide cultural impact.

It has been estimated from archaeological data that the human capacity for cumulative culture emerged somewhere between 500,000–170,000 years ago.

Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution, renovation, reconception, reform, innovation, revivalism, revolution, mutation, progress, diffusion, osmosis, borrowing, eclecticism, syncretism, modernization, indigenization, and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and the notion of progress. Rein Raud, building on the work of Umberto Eco, Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander, has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question.

A 19th-century engraving showing Australian natives opposing the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770

 

An Assyrian child wearing traditional clothing.

Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society.

Full-length profile portrait of Turkman woman, standing on a carpet at the entrance to a yurt, dressed in traditional clothing and jewelry

Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change. (See structuration.)

Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.

Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing," on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.

Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation. The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.

Early modern discourses

German Romanticism

Johann Herder called attention to national cultures.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to the concept of bildung: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: Sapere Aude, "Dare to be wise!" In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung: "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people."

Adolf Bastian developed a universal model of culture.

In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview" (Weltanschauung). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures.

In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" (Elementargedanken); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" (Völkergedanken), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States.

English Romanticism

British poet and critic Matthew Arnold viewed "culture" as the cultivation of the humanist ideal.

In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world."

In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from lat. civitas, city). Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore, which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling social group, and low culture. In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies.

 

British anthropologist Edward Tylor was one of the first English-speaking scholars to use the term culture in an inclusive and universal sense.

Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of cultural evolution. Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects.

Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as "noble savages" living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly stratified capitalist systems of the West.

In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of religion.

Anthropology

Petroglyphs in modern-day Gobustan, Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BCE and indicating a thriving culture

Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology, where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially.  American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and in the United States, archaeology. The term Kulturbrille, or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas, refers to the "lenses" through which we see our own countries. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille, which allow us to make sense of the culture we inhabit, also "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately."

Sociology

An example of folkloric dancing in Colombia.

The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society. For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be any of two types, non-material culture or material culture. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present.

Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie (cultural sociology). Cultural sociology was then "reinvented" in the English-speaking world as a product of the "cultural turn" of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols.

"Culture" has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis. As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science.

nowruz is a good sample of Popular and Folklore culture that is celebrating by people in more than 22 countries with different nations and religions, at the 1st day of spring. It has been celebrated by diverse communities for over 7,000 years

Early researchers and development of cultural sociology

The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) with the growing discipline of anthropology, wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. 

Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.

Cultural studies

In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies. Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified "culture" with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production.

In the United States, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall, who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as "Western civilization" or "globalism."

From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie, created an international intellectual movement. 

As the field developed, it began to combine political economy, communication, sociology, social theory, literary theory, media theory, film/video studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, museum studies, and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, and/or gender. Cultural studies is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices.

Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on a historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice.

In the context of cultural studies, the idea of a text includes not only written language, but also films, photographs, fashion or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of "culture." "Culture" for a cultural-studies researcher not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups) and popular culture, but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach is comparative cultural studies, based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies.

Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later that of Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy.

In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "Cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom. The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts. In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures, such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al.), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.

Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups:

1. The first group covers the variables that represent the "efficiency orientation" of the societies: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance.
2. The second covers the variables that represent the "social orientation" of societies, i.e., the attitudes and lifestyles of their members. These variables include gender egalitarianism, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, and human orientation.

In 2016, a new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud, who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with the tradition of textual theory.

Psychology

Cognitive tools suggest a way for people from certain culture to deal with real-life problems, like Suanpan for Chinese to perform mathematical calculation

Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture, and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive norms, culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people that are raised in a culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation.