Every nation or state has its own culture. The concept of culture itself can be understood from several perspectives. One definition says that the term culture can generally refer to a set of community attributes whose achievements people generally regard as signs of “higher” development (e.g., human culture), analogous achievements/attributes of individuals in their expressions, behavior, or activities, in civility and sophistication, but also in art and education. In this sense, based on Clayton and Tomlinson (2000), but also Tushnet (1996), we can claim that culture is an inseparable part of human rights. In the social sciences, it is a set of customs, relationships, institutions, art, and other features that characterize a society or social group. In 2002 UNESCO defined culture as “a complex of specific spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional signs of a society or social group that includes, in addition to art and literature, everyday way of life, lifestyle, value system, traditions, and belief.” (http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml)
From an etymological perspective, Zimmermann (2017) defined the term culture. In this sense, we understand culture as various groups of people in society that are defined by language, religion, food, social customs, music, and art. We note that these characteristics most often change across different territorial units, such as global, national, regional, and so on. Cultures also undergo changes over time that result from the gradual development of global society. These factors influence a broad understanding of customs through which different patterns of behavior and interaction are transmitted from generation to generation, as well as cognitive concepts and ideologies. Another author who defined the concept of culture is Ondrejkovič (2000). He understands culture as a unified whole that has its specific way of organizing, implementing, and developing activities, which is objectified in behavioral outcomes, especially in the outcomes of work. According to Juszczyk and Kim (2017), culture is “a meaningful system shared by the majority of people who live or interact in a particular space, which helps determine how people work together, how they communicate, how they govern, how they interact with the land, and how they educate themselves.” This definition is quite good, but not entirely precise. It contains an element of majority and is therefore more suitable for defining dominant culture, which we introduce below. The last definition of culture we present is Strieženec’s (1996), who defines it as “a sum of the results of human education, material and spiritual values, social values and processes, social relationships shaped during human society, the way they are formed, acquired, preserved, and especially transformed into the person’s internal personal culture.” This definition is very good, especially because it points to the personal, subjective aspect of culture. The significance of this definition is also visible in that the term culture includes, besides the results of human activity itself, the way they are acquired and truly transferred to subsequent generations. In the sense of this definition, the term culture not only answers the question “What?”, but also “How?”, which means it also includes the dimension of sustainability. When we therefore understand culture as a certain set, i.e., system, it follows that it consists of various subsystems.
We can encounter different views on dividing the cultural system into individual subsystems. For example, Mistrík (1999) mentions subsystems of dominant culture, which is based on the dominant lifestyle of mainly middle social strata, and alternative cultures, which we call by this name due to its neutrality, although he suggests that it is an alternative to dominant culture while opening opportunities for further, deeper alternatives. He also adds conservative culture focused on preserving traditional values that are unquestionable for its carriers, and marginal cultures, which turn against dominant culture, and members of these cultures often live at the margins of society as well as at the margins of law. Although this division is relatively apt, it is still not entirely precise because it does not, for example, specify alternative cultures. Therefore, we created a similar, also simple, but somewhat more precise division. Within it we can primarily divide the cultural system into two basic subsystems.
The first is dominant culture, which means the majority culture of a given society, i.e., the culture that is most widespread in society, a standard culture oriented toward easily “consumable” cultural products, such as mainstream popular music, bestsellers, and popular literature. Its basic orientation is of a consumptive nature, which means it does not place as much emphasis on individual creativity, but on the other hand, it does not question generally recognized values. Mass media play an important role in this culture, through which the “standard” (dominant) culture spreads in society.
The second subsystem consists of alternative cultures, which, as their name already suggests, offer various alternatives to dominant culture. These can be further divided into three additional subsystems (or, if we wanted, sub-subsystems). The first are subcultures, which supplement the main culture; they do not reject it and do not try to oppose it as a whole. The second are countercultures, which are already in direct opposition to majority culture (e.g., anarchists). This term was first used to denote a protest against the then-contemporary dominant culture, expressed by youth in the 1960s and 1970s, which manifested in an open rejection of societal values, moral norms, moral ideals of consumer society, the standards and stereotypes of mass culture, and a way of life based on social prestige and material well-being (mainly in the USA). (http://ii.fmph.uniba.sk/~filit/fvk/kontrakultura.html) Today we also understand them as protest, an open struggle, against the dominant culture of a particular society. They act disruptively toward majority culture, showing signs of various socio-pathological phenomena.
In addition to subcultures and countercultures, there are in every society (or a given society, which we will discuss later) also cultures that are dominant in other societies, and therefore are not directly opposed to the dominant culture of our own society, do not try to fully replace it, but suitably complement it. We call them minority cultures (cultures of different nationality and ethnic affiliation in a country). In this context, we would likely imagine that when determining what is dominant and what is alternative culture, we will define dominant culture by state borders. This is not precise and therefore not correct perception. It is more appropriate to view this through a concrete evaluated society. We will illustrate it with the example of Europe’s globalization and our country—Slovakia. The Slovak Republic borders Poland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine. Within its borders, Slovak culture is therefore dominant on Slovak territory and the cultures of Hungarians, Czechs, Austrians, and Poles living in Slovakia are minority cultures. If we perceived the Czech Republic’s borders as the evaluated society, Czech culture would be dominant there, and the culture of Slovaks living in the Czech Republic would be perceived as a minority culture.
The same applies in other cases. If we, however, looked at this globally and took the European Union as the evaluated society, then within it there is dominant European culture, which does contain elements of the cultures of individual member states, but the separate cultures of all member countries are still perceived as minority cultures within it. It is also very important to mention that the cultural system is not static, but very dynamic. The positions of individual cultures in it can change easily. It is common that they exchange places with each other, for example dominant culture and counterculture (e.g., during changes in socio-political order, changes in political systems, monarchies to republics, etc.). The positions of dominant culture and minority cultures can also easily be exchanged (e.g., during the division of joint republics, or the independence of individual countries and nations that previously could not function independently, as in Europe in countries of former Austria-Hungary). We could find cases where, during the life of one person, the cultural system in which they lived changed radically more than ten times.
Although at first glance it seems that defining culture is relatively simple, as we can see in this article, this is not entirely true. The cultural system is fairly complex because it consists of several components that are also in motion. Knowledge of the cultural system, however, is important for its further study and for revealing its aspects, which over time could be risky both for society as a whole and for individual members.
Conclusion
In the article we aimed to define culture from various perspectives and present it as a highly dynamic system. We also tried to describe the individual subsystems of this complex whole. From the perspective of further study of each of these elements, we consider this necessary. Precisely because of that, so that we do not confuse subcultures, for example, with countercultures, and the like. For each of them we must approach in a different way, because even their potential negative impact on youth and society can be diametrically different. We believe we managed to organize this system to a certain degree.
Author: PhDr. Peter Papšo, PhD.
Katedra sociálnej práce PF UMB v Banskej Bystrici
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