DOES CULTURE MATTER IN THE EXISTENCE OF SOCIETY ?
By Rehman Asif
rehmanaseef@yahoo.com
There are many people who are allergic to use the word of culture. It is an existing phenomenon of today’s man that all those notions and practices which are not regarded as useful considered as unwanted constituents in their life.People hate culture because, for them, culture is a wastage of time, place and society. We are passing life in hurry, having no time to spend with classics and ancients. Focusing on our own priorities, created our own means of recreation and enjoyment where culture bears no more space.
Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, follow the society’s shared values, and contribute to society. Thus, culture contains many societal features: language, customs, values, norms, mores, rules, tools, technologies, products, organizations, and institutions. It further refers to clusters of rules and cultural meanings associated with specific social activities. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.
Today, this is an important question; should culture be given any significanceat all in this fast life despite of people’s carelessness towards it? If we look around, it is observed that serenity and seriousness is losing life whereas comics and likes are occupying space swiftly.Poets and philosophers do not enjoy that distinguished place in society which was reserved for them a hundred years ago. On the other hand, impracticality and non-seriousness is given more room and significance nowadays. This age is the age of comics as described by E M Forster. Culture is the past heritage of an age and culture is something serious. We should learn to appreciate, acknowledge and imbibe it in our lives. Being central concept of anthropology, culture transmits through social learning in human societies.
Culture has great importance. Culture is the identity of the nation, without culture the society is impossible. We can say about the importance of culture that it is the set of transmitted and learned behavioral patterns encompassing all the aspects of human life, so the only representative of the particular community or population is the culture. Culture is the basic root of any community which gives them the ways of life. The culture provides solution to the critical problem that is faced by the community. Culture teaches us to think for the whole nation not individually, it provides the concept of family, nation etc.
The point to focus is; whether we are indebted to our cultural norms? Do we want to inculcate the true spirit of cultural norms laced up with traditions to our upcoming generation?Do the relationship of society and culture should be strengthen in the transference mode of religiosity? These questions are important to address and to answer.
Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.
The culture is like a religion or creed. Therefore, the change in culture can misrepresent the very inner of religion. The change in culture refers to the practice when values, beliefs and behaviors may be falsified. The devotees and supporters of culture are required to go on struggling for the propagation of what they have found best in the past, i.e. culture. A society devoid of culture will be disintegrated. It affects the life cycle of people. It pushed them back into the darkness of alienation and aloofness in the fields of work, sports and leisure. Finally, it is realized that life has become the projection of distancing and estrangement leaving the organic whole in abeyance.
Culture is the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of meanings), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological aspects of culture with the tradition. It is wise to remain busy and to keep up with the pace of modern world in propagation of culture. Culture has the equal significance in our lives as religion fixes. The role of culture occupies a main lead in the construction of society. Its significance cannot be denied and our attitudes and behaviors ought to take the stance of culture on serious notes.It should be passed on generations after generation, like it has been done until now. Our cultural background should never fade into oblivion and we have to make sure of that. A world without diverse cultural will not be as colorful as it is now.
