A System or a Practice? Maybe a Combination of Bot

Who doesn’t know about New Year’s resolutions in today’s American society? It would be rare for someone to say no. Why? Because it is part of our culture and is just one of the many rituals practiced in our society, whom which illustrate our common values when a New Year begins. I am sure if you took just 60 seconds to think, you could come up with many different rituals that we practice in today’s society.

It’s all about culture today, folks! And my New Year’s resolution example demonstrates how one can view culture as a system, which I will soon be explaining. 

Today’s main reading, Culture, Media and Communication by Eric Klinenberg gave the audience some insight into how modern sociologists are trying to define culture, one of the three most complex words in the English language (p 114). I would like to focus on the two ways culture is defined in the text.

Initially defining it, Klinenberg says that culture is “either a shared system of beliefs and knowledge (which is often called a system of meaning) shared among a group and transmitted to individuals through social interactions; or a set of tools for social action-a “tool kit” of assumptions and behaviors for daily life…culture is a system and culture is a practice” (p 115).

Symbols represent the central idea of how culture can function as a system, because “whether simple or complex, [symbols] are things that communicate implicit meaning about an idea, [and] taken together, a group’s symbols can be considered its culture” (p 115). One obvious example to texters would be the common emojis available as a means of more emotional communication that can occur while texting. For those who are not so familiar with them, here is just a sample of facial expressions:

Overall, different symbols can be used in a variety of contexts and social situations, because everything doesn't mean the same thing in varying cultures. The overarching idea to this part of the definition of culture is that meaning is not only being given to identity anymore, but to objects and ideas as well.

Secondly, culture is defined as a practice, as it plays a larger role than we think it can on our decision making process, guiding our behavior to set certain goals for ourselves. Because we are in different social settings all the time, culture is also thought about as being our handy dandy tool kit. What is in that tool kit, you may be thinking? They are “a set of symbolic skills or devices that we learn through the cultural environment we live in and apply to practical situations in our own lives” (p 117). Reflecting on this definition immediately made me think about the ways in which I act when I meet certain people. For me, it’s the way I show my comfortableness with someone, whether I hug them, shake their hand or not exchange any kind of physical contact at all. I act accordingly. It is just something that I learned when I was younger to avoid awkward situations and have only slightly altered them over time.

Whether one chooses to look at culture as a system or a practice, both demonstrates means of communication, which is an everyday practice that we engage in. Being that language is a cultural universal [a cultural trait common to all humans (p 118)], it just shows the intertwining that coexists between communication and culture.

This complex topic is ever changing, and I expect nothing less than for it to keep doing so as time goes on. More technology advances will come along; more in-depth interpretations and observations will be made through ethnography, and we will continue to do our best to understand our human species in terms of culture.