1. Previous Student Team Definitions of Culture.
These are your teams’ definitions of ‘Culture’ AFTER you had created a definition and then enhanced
it by considering definitions offered by specialists and theorists. All I have done to them is to tidy up
the English expression a fraction where needed (not very often, I am glad to say!) and made things
occasionally a little ’tighter’ without changing your meaning. I dropped sentences posed as questions
and examples as they are not really needed in a definition.
• Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented,
discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration. Culture is the different way of life and
mentality, behaviours, feelings within a country or continent. These explicit and
tacit assumptions or understandings are learned and passed on to new members of
the group through social interaction. Culture is dynamic – it changes over time.
• Culture is a way of learning all the different languages, values, beliefs and habits
that constitute a society. It helps people fill in a kind of lack of knowledge. Each
country has its own traditions with a specific meaning for its inhabitants. Culture
is a mean of communication. It enables people to perpetuate their knowledge and
behaviour in their everyday-life. People acquire culture most significantly in early
childhood, since they are more capable of learning and assimilating when they are
young. Culture is different from one generation to another: it evolves.
• Culture is all the behaviours, knowledge, values and beliefs based on the daily
patterns of life and habits. It is created and perpetuated by the collective actions of
individuals to maintain the stability of a society. Culture is an essential but
intangible feature of social life, it's like the air around us, we can not see it, but we
can feel it.
• Culture is all the distinctive values and customs shared by a group of people.
These people have the same way of life, which is influenced by their common
past. Language allows them to perpetuate this culture, which is transmitted by
symbols, meaning, premises and rules.
• Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented,
discovered or developed and operates across society. It represents the sum total of
the shared knowledge and experiences that vary from person to person. This
knowledge is developed in order to be understood by the present generation and
transmitted to future generations.
A brief, yet hopefully reasonably comprehensive working definition I came up with
BEFORE we looked at this together, was:
“A broadly-accepted, yet dynamic pattern of certain received wisdoms of life (or
aspects thereof) operating within a collective and influenced by individual
affiliates/members, which is facilitated, over time, by means of all forms of
communication and learning, such that individuals may find acceptance, meaning,
identity and security within the group and that the group may be distinguished from
others in the eyes of both group members and those beyond its ‘borders’”. T Jolley
(2008)
Key: ... = What ... = Where ... = How ... = Why ... = When ... = Who
Do I need to change this / add / improve to synthesis all your ideas on the matter?

2. Features of Previous Definitions of ‘CULTURE’
Student definitions offered many features which are closely related or held in common. I have
tried to arrange these under meaningful headings or ‘dimensions’ below which I hope will help
you think about culture …. As you will be doing a lot of this both on your course and in your
future tourism career!
Components
• Behaviours
• Basic assumptions
• Knowledge
• Habits
• Values
• Beliefs
• Customs
• Common past
• Culture is communication (& vv)
Characteristics
• Intangible
• Experienced
• Dynamic
• Shared
• Common
• Individually variable
Arrangement
• Patterns
• Country / region / sub-group specific
Participants
• Individuals
• Collectives (Groups / sub-groups etc)
Transmission
• Learning
• Languages
• Social interaction
• Invention / discovery / development
• Symbols and recognisable patterns
Raison d’etre
• Gives meaning
• Fill in lack of knowledge
• Stability for society
• Meets ‘belonging needs’ for the individual
• To perpetuate
• To evolve
• To give group personality / identity / recognition
• To cope with problems of external / internal differentiation