Exploring the Importance of Culture: Societal and Individual Impact

This essay delves into the multifaceted importance of culture, emphasizing its role in shaping societal norms, values, and individual behaviors. It begins by defining culture as a collective term encompassing social behaviors, knowledge, arts, customs, and laws, highlighting how humans learn through socialization and enculturation. The essay explores the benefits of cultural participation, including enhanced quality of life, emotional and intellectual experiences, educational opportunities, and poverty reduction. Furthermore, it examines cultural realism as a tool for understanding and correcting biases, promoting equality, and fostering respect among different cultures, while also contrasting it with ethnocentrism. The essay concludes by underscoring the significance of culture in national unity and development, with references to key anthropological concepts and theorists.

Running head: IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
The word culture is itself a collective term which includes all norms and the social
behaviours that are found in the society (Benedict, 2019). It also includes all the knowledge, arts,
customs, laws , habits that lies in an individual as well as of the group or the community.
Humans tend to learn from the cultures of others through the process of socialization and
enculturation.
The culture tends to increase the quality of life and even increase the general well being
of both the individuals and that of the communities. Participating in cultural programs becomes a
source of delight and it tends to provide emotional as well as intellectual experiences. The
cultural experiences act as opportunities for entertainment and acts as a medium for sharing and
learning experiences with others. The heritage of the culture tends to expand the opportunities
for education and learning which a lifelong process is. It also helps in understanding the history
better. Engagement in culture plays a significant role in the reduction of poverty and risk in the
communities. Culture helps in providing an identity to a community to the way of style in which
they live. One of the most significant features of culture is that it helps in thinking for the nation
as the whole and not individually.
One tends to learn the culture of the other. This concept is called Enculturation. However,
the culture tends to have changed over time with the change in the beliefs, skills, attitudes and
knowledge of the people. This cultural change is similar to the Darwinian process of evolution of
the humankind.
The culture is the best sector through which the development can take place. It tends to
promote the rights and values. It also helps by developing the unity of the nation and by forming
the nationalistic enthusiasm.

2IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
With a wide variety of population, there has been an emergence of different kinds of
culture as well. Cultural realism helps in analyzing as well as correcting the expectations and
biases that individuals tend to have on other cultures. It helps to remove the negative judgement
of society (Forrest, 2013). It also increases equality in society. Respect among people with
different cultures is motivated. Since, sociology is the study of the norms, beliefs and even the
beliefs of the society, the cultural realism helps in knowing the cultures of the others as well as
enhances our knowledge about different society. Our knowledge do not stay limited or confined
to one study only.
On the other hand, ethnocentrism is being discouraged because it tends to increase hatred
and misunderstanding among the different cultures. It tends to divide the society where there is
the presence of diverse people and race. Through ethnocentrism, co-operation and mutual
understanding are limited (Booth, 2014). Pride and arrogance are also produced. Therefore,
ethnocentrism is challenged while social realism is being encouraged to have a better society to
live in.

3IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE
References
Benedict, R., 2019. Patterns of culture. Routledge.
Booth, K., 2014. Strategy and Ethnocentrism (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
Forrest, D., 2013. Social Realism: Art, nationhood and politics. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.