#edward tylor

Today I snuck into a first year anthropology lecture (with a friend of mine taking the class) and it was so much fun. I miss going to lectures! The paper is called Endangered Cultures, so one of the first questions addressed to the class was "what is culture?" As everyone shouted out ideas and opinions I realised this isn't a question I consider very often - even though I'm a graduate anthropology student and I take anthro to be the study of culture. It also made me think is this something students and academics alike need to consider more?

One of the first definitions of culture by Edward Tylor is still one of my favourites

"Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, 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." (Tylor 1871:1).

I also love this one from Clifford Geertz

"...an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life" (Geertz 1973:89).