What is culture? Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations... the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Culture means many different things to different people: the clothing, the food, the values, the laws, the beliefs, the music and dance, the material things, the language, the art, the medicine or healing practices, the shared history, the kinship system (whom you consider to be family), the stories, the hairstyles, the economic system, and much more, of a group of people. Families, neighborhoods, ethnic groups (groups of' people from the same part of the world), religious groups, regions, countries, all have their own cultures.
Culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. Edward B. Tylor, an English Anthropologist, said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." It is not limited to men. Women possess and create it as well. Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. It is constantly changing as people and places change. Our written languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. Culture is taught and learned and shared – there is no culture of one. And yet, culture is not monolithic – individuals exist within a culture. Finally, culture is symbolic. Meaning is ascribed to behavior, words and objects and this meaning is objectively arbitrary, subjectively logical and rational. We live on a small planet with many cultures. Sometimes it is difficult to understand someone from another culture because we have not taken the time to listen to what