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In a broad sense culture refers to local human activity; different definitions
of culture reflect different theories for perception, or criteria for
valuing, human activity. Anthropologists use the term to refer to the
human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate
them figuratively.
African culture or civilization, taken in its wide 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 the local society.
Culture can be a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual
and emotional features of society or a social group and that it encompasses,
in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together,
value systems, traditions and beliefs.
Many people today use a conception of "culture" that reflects
the inequalities within European societies, and between European powers
and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture"
with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with
"nature". According to this thinking, some countries are more
civilized than others, and some people are more cultured than others.
Thus some cultural theorists have actually tried to eliminate popular
or mass culture from the definition of culture.
People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements
of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another.
Culture changes dynamically and people can (must?) teach and learn culture,
making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical
conditions. Anthropologists view culture not only as a product of biological
evolution but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation
to the world.
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