CULTURE: Analyzing Practical Skills, Values, Norms, and Symbols

This assignment provides a comprehensive exploration of culture, encompassing practical skills, cultural values, and cultural norms. It defines practical knowledge and skills, offering examples from the author's culture, such as playing hockey and marketing skills. The assignment explains cultural values as shared standards and norms as rules for behavior, providing examples of values like equality and norms regarding social interactions. It emphasizes the symbolic nature of culture, illustrating how symbols represent ideas and link people. The assignment also discusses how culture is learned through enculturation, adaptive, integrated, dynamic, and shared, offering examples to illustrate each concept. Finally, it examines how knowledge organization varies by culture, influencing worldviews and values, and references various anthropological studies to support its claims.

Running head: CULTURE
Culture
Name
Institution

CULTURE 2
Written Assignment on Culture
1) Practical skills and practical knowledge
Practical knowledge means knowledge that is acquired through doing things. It is the
knowledge needed to do a specific kind of skill (Habgood-Coote, 2019). For instance, in my
culture, I have the practical knowledge of playing hockey. I gained this practical knowledge by
participating in most of the national events (games). On the other hand, practical skills refer to
skills that may be put to practice (Jones, 2019). For example, in my community, I have
marketing skills. I can generate remarkable customer experiences to most of the entrepreneurs
that are in my community.
2a) Cultural Values
Cultural values are norms as well as ways of behaviour conditioning reactions and
attitudes to events and numerous phenomena within the cultural context. They are commonly
held standards of what remains accepted or unaccepted, workable or unworkable, right or wrong,
important or unimportant, in a society or community (Arensberg & Niehoff, 2017). Also, cultural
values are things that shape our culture. Values shape and influence individuals who reside
within that society. To me, cultural values are set of generic beliefs and values that people
naturally learn through socialization and education and that remain recognized as well as shared
by all the member of a particular society.
An example of values in my culture is that my culture value equality, peace, safety,
nature, respect. Also, my society greatly values humility, tolerance and non-violence.
b) Cultural Norms
Cultural norms remain shared, sanctioned, as well as integrated systems of practices and
beliefs that characterize a particular cultural group. Norms remain culturally defined rules that
illustrate suitable behaviours for all members of a society (Du & Mace, 2018). Norms help

CULTURE 3
individuals to know how they should act in given social circumstances. In my culture, actions
such as bestiality and necrophilia remain considered taboo and are generally dealt with harshly.
An example of folkways: In my culture, women can smile as well as say hello to males
on the street. This is not the same in other culture. For instance, in Egypt, it is not acceptable for
women to smile as well as say hello to their male counterparts on the street.
3) Culture is symbolic
Symbols are both nonverbal and verbal in the form within different cultural systems.
Symbols like signs, gesture, signals, words, and objects remain tangible marks that represent or
stand-in for something else. Symbols offer clues to knowing the underlying statutes, experiences,
states, as well as ideas they express. Symbols have an excellent way of linking people to each
other. Human beings generate meaning between symbols as well as what they indicate; as a
result, various interpretations of a symbol may occur in different cultural contexts. Therefore, a
cultural symbol refers to a physical manifestation that represents the ideology of a particular
culture. In my culture, the police officer has a badge and uniform, which are symbols of law
enforcement and authority.
Other examples of the symbol in my culture: the Tricolor indicates the motherland of our
culture. The Stella Maris, the yellow star, represents the symbol of Mary, our national symbol as
well as patron of the mariners. This symbol remains set on the blue stripe since blue is Mary's
colour. The yellow colour that is fixed on the star indicates the papacy. Our culture also shares
national symbols. Our flag consists of the red, white, and blue flag of France. The flag also has a
golden star.
4) Culture is learned

CULTURE 4
This means the members learn the culture of a particular society. Culture is learned and
acquired from our ancestors. Culture is learned because it is not ingrained in the DNA of human
beings. Culture is not inborn as well as instinctive like racial characteristics that are genetically
transmitted (Delaney & Madigan, 2016). Children do not inherit culture from their fathers and
mothers. Instead, they learn it from peers, families, media, and institutions. This process of
learning culture is called enculturation. Enculturation is the process thru which different people
learn about the culture that they reside in. Through enculturation, people learn what values,
morals, language, and behaviours are acceptable in society. People learn by listening and
observing other members of their society, including their friends, mentors, teachers, and parents.
As for me, during enculturation, I learned some of the morals and values that are accepted in our
culture.
5) Culture is adaptive
Culture is adaptive because it offers behaviour, patterns, techniques, as well as strategies
aimed at helping individuals to adapt in a particular environment. Humans need cultural
knowledge as well as technology to adjust to a certain environment. Human beings indeed need
to adapt the impacts of environmental change, for example, thru technological solution like
changes in consumption habits. It is also true that the development of behavioural outcomes
enable humans to adapt to different environmental changes. These behavioural strategies remain
considered to be created to address adaptive problems like producing food, investing in
offspring, mating, and managing social interactions. It is also true that cultural practice, such as
hunting activities, enable humans to adapt to the environment in that they were able to obtain
food for their daily survival. Also, the beliefs that humans hold remain one of the most critical
factors of identity that may help us from adapting to a new environment. Indeed, beliefs can

CULTURE 5
easily influence the behaviour of human beings. Therefore, there are essential beliefs that can
enable humans to adapt quickly to a new environment.
6 Culture is Integrated
This is called holism, or the different parts of a particular culture are interconnected. To
integrate means to put more than two things together to generate something new. Also, it refers
to the things that are placed together often maintain many of their features or characteristics.
When we mention integrating cultures, we typically mean several combining to create a new
society. Each culture sustains its character as well as many of its values and features.
In my culture, there are different elements of behaviours and beliefs from different
cultures that came together to form a new society. There is respect for the beliefs, practices and
values of my culture.
7) Culture is dynamic:
This simply indicates that culture interacts as well as change. Since many cultures are in
contact with different cultures, they exchange symbols and ideas. A culture has to be relevant for
it to be dynamic. The whole point is that the older generation has to transfer their traditions and
culture to the younger generation (Singer et al. 2016). When the more youthful generation thinks
that the customs are not good, then they shall have to change it. Our culture has to change and
adapt. These are how new generation could absorb the culture as well as make it suit its value.
The pressure of change has indeed taken place in our culture. Over time, the cultural
policies of our culture have changed, continually adapting to different changes in both the global
and the domestic markets. These vast changes, driven by freer trade and technology, have
created both challenges and opportunities for our cultural industries.
8) Culture is shared

CULTURE 6
This means culture is a shared learning experience. Even though you can think of
yourself as one person, you share rituals, beliefs, assumptions, traditions, and ceremonies with
individuals who live or grew up in the same cultural backgrounds (Ramstead, Veissière &
Kirmayer, 2016). Indeed, culture can be shared by individuals of a territory. For instance,
traditions, beliefs, values, customs remain all shared by human beings in a social situation. These
practices and beliefs indeed remain adopted by all people equally. Since we share culture with
my group members, we are capable of acting in socially appropriate ways and predict how other
people shall act. For example, most individuals in Canada accept and welcome new cultures that
form our shared identity of Canadian. Shared culture form an in-group’s dynamic, where
individuals segregate themselves from one another. There are different varieties of cultures from
the society that I live in. We continue to welcome new people with different culture because we
believe that sharing of cultures provide us with a sense of group identity with all members of my
culture.
9) The way people organizes their knowledge varies by culture. This knowledge plays an
essential role in the way human beings view the world- both the social world and the natural
world. Culture may indeed shape our view of the world. Our culture can shape the way we play
and work, and it makes crucial differences in how people view themselves as well as others.
Culture affects the values of the people- what we consider wrong and right. This concept also
demonstrates that culture affects the way human beings recalls, the reference to people
themselves or other individuals and social context.
This concept also illustrates that the geographical location mainly influences culture. For
instance, locations that remain ideal for the farming influence that culture mainly by encouraging
individuals to educate their descendants to practice farming activities. The second example

CULTURE 7
remains the Japanese culture which depends on the attribute of H2O (Water). The fact that H2O
surrounds this nation has influenced its culture of fishing and growing of rice.
To facilitate our understanding of this concept, let us consider the definition of culture
provided by some anthropologists who study culture. Many anthropologists argue that culture is
a system of knowledge that can help communities and people organize thru the construction
process via social interaction. Therefore, it is true that culture can shape the way that individuals
behave to reinforce, consolidate, and maintained the constructed meaningful word over
generations.

CULTURE 8
References
Arensberg, C. M., & Niehoff, A. H. (2017). American cultural values. In Man in Adaptation (pp.
311-329). Routledge.
Delaney, T., & Madigan, T. (2016). Lessons learned from popular culture. SUNY Press.
Du, J., & Mace, R. (2018). Parental investment in Tibetan populations does not reflect stated
cultural norms. Behavioral ecology, 29(1), 106-116.
Habgood-Coote, J. (2019). Knowledge-how, abilities, and questions. Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 97(1), 86-104.
Jones, J. (2019). Year 7 practical skills for inquiry learning-part 2. Science Education
News, 68(2), 59.
Ramstead, M. J., Veissière, S. P., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2016). Cultural affordances: scaffolding
local worlds through shared intentionality and regimes of attention. Frontiers in
Psychology, 7, 1090.
Singer, M. K., Dressler, W., George, S., Baquet, C. R., Bell, R. A., Burhansstipanov, L., ... &
Gravlee, C. C. (2016). Culture: The missing link in health research. Social science &
medicine, 170, 237-246.