THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERM AND IDEA OF CULTURE

THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERM AND IDEA OF CULTURE

Abstract: The way in which it was created the notion of culture show us its linguistic transformations and the specific of the culture that created the word western culture. In order to understand the position of the actual studies in social sciences, that are referring to culture, and to form a part of our cultural convictions, we need to know the evolution of the term culture, till the XXI century.

Key words: culture, anthropology, function, knowledge, beliefs

The culture, as a social science, is approached from many prospects, meaning the object of sociological, anthropological, ethnological, political, psychological concerns etc. Culture is usually treated either as a whole, when the effort of knowledge aims to highlight it`s internal structure, the constitutive elements, it`s configurations, either from the angle of other aspects of social life when the behavior patterns, a community`s own worth, its traditions etc. are used to explain processes and social, political or economical phenomena. The differences between culture is defined and understood do not depend only on the scientific positions after which they are formulated (if they are of culture`s sociology or cultural anthropology), but especially on the way the outlooks regarding the nature of human society, the diversity of humans beliefs and habits, the differences between behavior patterns from one society to another are articulated.

In social sciences the term of culture is much more permissive than in ordinary speech, having a wider range of applicability and it can also represent culture through everything that is transmitted rather socially than biologically. The common sense of this term is usually linked to arts expressing on the other hand the ensemble of establishments which promote artistic manifestations but also a lifestyle, characterized by some cultural products consumption (literature, theatre, music etc.).

Generally speaking, culture embodies and perpetuates symbolical learned aspects of human society being an exclusively human attribute.

The ideas of social anthropology about culture are based more on Edward Tylor`s definition from 1871. According to this definition culture is an accustomed complex of knowledge, beliefs, art, morality, justice and common laws^[1]. Although Tylor is among the first thinkers who scientifically valued the notion of culture, he had chosen a definition which underlines no difference between culture and civilization.

Considering the evolution of the European debates regarding the relation between culture and civilization, Tylor`s beliefs have been heard only in French and English literature, the roles of the German thinkers developing in the opposite direction between Kultur and Zivilisation. Thus, culture refers to simbols or worths and civilization can be found in the ways of organizing society.

There is an approach that brings together the content of culture and civilization which, from an archeological perspective, although it admits the human societies` character as a whole, it makes a distinction between material culture (or artifacts), practices and beliefs, non-material culture or adaptive, transmitted through learning and tradition.

In the 19^th century Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan founded the idea of culture as a product or aware creation of the human judgment. The raising of the reason and the existence of the creative spirit were thought to be superior expressions of civilization and culture. The morally superior worth`s trend of progress was associated only to certain societies, which offered the possibility for the Victorian spirit to build a hierarchy of cultures and civilizations in order to justify the colonial activities of the Western civilizations, apparently of a higher status.

The modern ideas concerning culture appear between centuries in the work of field anthropologists as Franz Boas and tend to relativism. The aim is to describe, compare and put in opposition the cultures, more than establishing a kind of order among them, even though Boas and some further social anthropologists have also been interested in the process in which cultural transformations can be borrowed or transmitted between  societies. This led to the development of ideas about cultural areas and North America`s cultural ethnography, both absent from the British social anthropology. For the latter one, culture signified a collection of ideas and symbols which distinguishes from the social structure, this distinction having also a central spot in the European and North-American perspective of understanding the term.

In U.S.A. it is asserted that the concept of culture can furnish means of explaining and understanding human behavior, systems of beliefs, values and ideologies using cultural types of personality. Ruth Benedict is an exponent of this theory.

In cultural anthropology the analysis of the culture is made on three levels:

learned behavior patterns;

aspects of culture which operate under the level of consciousness (as the hidden level of grammar and syntax in language of which the speaker of a native language is rarely aware of);

thinking and perception patterns which are cultural determined.

From a sociologic point of view, through culture we understand the ensemble of the models of thought, order and behavior that characterize people or a society and also the processes through which patterns materialize in objects.

Culture contains a set of standard answers to interact with the other members of the society. It explains how should a person behave with the family members, neighbours, strangers; what attitude should have when he or she attends to a funeral or a wedding; how should the person react when he is flattered or insulted etc.

For the members of a society culture represents something natural, but they cannot realize that until they interact with different cultures. No man can be seen as a social being, member of a society if he does not belong to a culture. The link between culture and society is so strong that some experts consider them equal. Though,there is a distinction from the concept point of view.

By culture we understand the ideal and material products of a group and by society we understand a relative independent group which occupies the same territory and has a common culture. So there is no culture out of a society and no society without a certain culture.

The many definitions given to the concept of culture highlight the culture`s functions in social life and the most important are:

the adaptive function meant to assure the survival and adjustment of human beings to the environment conditions. This function helps humans to differentiate themselves from animals and, at the same time, to self-define by relating to the own nature and to the external one;

the acquisition and information stocking function consists in achieving and creating technical or scientifical knowledge, economical, moral or other types, necessary to every society;

the function of community reproduction, by handing down the cultural patrimony of human communities from one generation to another;

the function of social cohesion meant to bring together the members of the collectivity, to gather them around some common objectives or symbols and images;

the function of identity with the purpose to make some individuals recognize their membership to the social group, establish conventions and social codes in order to interact one with the other;

the function of socialization the transformation of each born or adopted by the community individual into a member by assimilating, learning and applying the norms, conventions, codes, systems of specific values;

the function of social distinction has in view to differentiate the individuals who belong to distinct environments, groups or classes, ethnic groups, minorities or cultural communities.

Words have their own history and at the same time write history to a certain extent. If this is true for all words, in the case of the term culture it is easy to check. The weight of the words is strongly linked to history which created them and then words themselves create history^[2].

The manner in which the notion of culture was invented draws our attention upon it`s linguistic changes, pointing out at the same time, by covering every evolutive stage, the nature of the culture that created the word - the western culture. Another significant matter from a linguistic point of view is generated by the reality that, in many of the societies studied by ethnologists, there is no word to express culture (the way Europeans understand it). This doesn`t mean that these communities have no culture, but it`s members tend not to have a critical concern towards their personal culture, it`s essential features or to define it.

In order to understand the current studies of the social sciences, dedicated to culture and also to clarify some of our cultural beliefs, we need to know the pathway that culture had until the 21^st century.

First, we have to examine the origin of the word and secondly it is necessary to scientifically investigate the significance of cultural facts. Establishing the origin and the semantic evolution of culture will allow us to define the connection between the history of the word culture and that of ideas associated with culture along time.

In the social sciences the significance of culture is limited being colligated to the social life, in opposition with field culture, microbian culture, physical culture etc.

We will concentrate upon the value of the term culture in French language because it seems that it`s semantic evolution that will later allow the inovation of the concept took place in the French language during the renascentist century and then the word spread by linguistic exchange with other languages as English or German.

The term culture was registrated at the end of the 18^th century being associated (in accordance with it`s Latin ethymological definition) with the crop cultures and the breeding of animals. In contrast with this significance the term will be improved starting with the 18 ^th century^[3].

At the begining of the 16^th the word it didn`t have the significance of something cultivated but that of an action meaning cultivating the field. The figurative sense appears in the middle of the 16<sup>th</sup> century, by culture understanding the cultivation (developing) of an ability and the work done for it`s improvement. This figurative sense was hardly used until the end of the 17 ^th century and it wasn`t academically acknowledged, not being included in most of the epoch`s dictionaries. Until the 18 ^th century the evolution of the semantic contect of the word is different from the evolution of ideas and it rather follows the natural evolution of language through metonimy (from culture as a state to culture as an action) and metaphor (from field cultivating to spirit cultivating), imitating in this context the Latin pattern of culture .

The term of culture with it`s figurative meaning began to impose itself in the 18th century. It was introduced with this meaning in the French Academy`s Dictionary (1718 edition). At that time, the word was usually followed by an explanation of the objective: thus we will talk about culture of arts, culture of letters, culture of science, as if it`s necessary to mention the field.

The term belongs to the Enlightenment vocabulary, without being used too much by the philosophers. The Encyclopedia, where we can find a large paragraph to the culture of lands, does not talks about the figurative meaning of culture. With all these, it is not ignored because we can find it in other paragraphs (Education, Spirit, Letters, Philosophy, Sciences). Step by step, culture lost it`s annexes and ended by being used only to express the moulding, the education of the spirit. Then, using an opposite orientation , it went from culture as an activity (of teaching) to culture as a state of mind (frame of mind cultivated by teaching, the mood of the individual which has culture). This use of the term is acknowledged at the end of the century by the French Academy`s Dictionary, that blames the natural spirit and lack of culture. This expression underlines the opposition between the nature and culture concepts. This opposition is organical in the illuminist thinkers` view, who perceive culture as a distinct feature of human species`. For them, culture represents the sum of earn and transmitted knowledge by the entire humanity, along it`s history.

In the 18^th century the word culture was always used at the singular number, which reflects the philosopher`s universalism and humanism: culture is defining for the Human Being beyond any distinction applied to countries and classes. Thus Culture is entirely subscribed to the Iluminism`s ideology: the term is associated with progress, evolution and education ideas, that are common for the epoch`s way of thinking. Even though the renascentist movement was born in England, it formed it`s language and vocabulary in France. The movement has easily extended in the all Western Europe, especially in metropoles, such as Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon, Sankt Petersburg etc. The idea of culture reflects the moment`s optimism, based on the trust in the perfectible future of the human being.

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