Handwritten newspaper content about traditional culture

It is too narrow to understand "culture" only as spiritual culture, and the latter definition is too broad and too abstract. Since culture in general is such an abstract concept, the result is that everyone seems to know what culture is and everyone can talk about culture. However, once the specific meaning of culture is discussed, the original culture will be discovered. Definition is a vague, formless concept that seems elusive and intangible.

After the mid-19th century, anthropology, cultural anthropology, ethnology, sociology and other related disciplines that focused on human research appeared in Western social sciences. From this, we noticed that "culture" This concept is a basic category in these disciplines—anthropology, ethnology, and sociology.

In the view of Western anthropologists, culture is a very specific thing. In every society and every nation, people live in a certain area. They form a substantial society, establish a certain social system, and have a certain ideology. People's behavior follows a certain pattern and they obey consciously or unconsciously. Based on certain behavioral rules, these aspects form a social cultural system.

In other words, culture refers to a morphological and specific thing. Culture is a regional and regional national and social phenomenon. It is a structured entity that can be divided into four levels.

First, the social economic system, which is the productivity and production relations that Marxism often talks about.

Second, it is the social relationship network formed by people in this society, and the institutionalized form these networks take. For example, the kinship relationship that connects people, the relationship between leadership and being led, and other legal and political relationships. This is the institutionalized aspect of culture.

The culture that everyone understands in daily life mainly refers to culture as an ideological form, focusing on the spiritual aspect of culture. For example, the books we read, our knowledge, education, etc., we call them culture, but this culture is different from the concept of culture proposed by anthropologists since the 19th century.

There is also a common definition of culture found in popular textbooks: "Culture is the sum of all material and spiritual wealth created by human beings." Although there is nothing wrong with this definition, it is also different from the concept of "culture" understood by modern anthropologists and cultural scientists.

1. From the content point of view, culture is the sum of various activities, processes, and achievements of human beings in conquering nature, society, and themselves, while civilization mainly refers to the essence of cultural achievements.

2. From a time perspective, culture exists throughout human existence. Human beings have produced primitive culture before civilized society, and civilization is a certain stage of the development of human culture.

3. From the perspective of expression, culture is a dynamic, gradual and uninterrupted development process, while civilization is a relatively stable, static and leap-forward development process.

4. Culture is a neutral concept, while civilization is a positive concept. The activities, processes and results of the transformation of human beings in the process of human beings conquering nature and society are an objective existence, which include both excellent results and dross, content that is beneficial to human beings, and factors that are detrimental to human beings. They are all cultural . Civilization is related to certain values. It refers to the positive achievements and progress of culture. As a value judgment, it is a commendatory concept.