The Cultural Process

One of the principal aims to identify, categorize, evaluate and finally select market segments.

The objective of this chapter is to clear the definition of culture and its major elements, and an examination of its relationship with nationality (i.e. national character) and individual psychology (i.e. personality/individual character). It is important to understand these concepts, in order to assess the impact of our own culture on our actions. Subconsciously, we use culture as a guide for communication and interaction with others in our own community. Perhaps more consciously, it is also used for interaction with people belonging to other cultural communities.

Defining culture

In French the word culture was first defined by Emile Littré in his nineteenth-century dictionary, as ‘cultivation, farming activity’. Culture is a vague, abstract and elusive concept. Many definitions have been formulated for culture there are many candidates for the ultimate definition.

How does culture link the individual to society?

Ralph Linton definition: ‘A culture is the configuration of learned behaviour and results of behaviour whose component elements are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular society.’

Ralph Linton's definition emphasizes the link between culture and the individual, also emphasizes the limits of cultural programming that society can impose on an individual.

No matter how carefully the individual has been trained or how successful his conditioning has been, he remains a distinct organism with his own needs and with capacities for independent thought, feeling and action. Moreover he retains a considerable degree of individuality.

The unparalleled ability of our species to adjust to changing conditions and to develop responses to familiar ones rests upon the residue of individuality which survives in every one of us after society and culture have done their utmost.

The individual perpetuates the status quo, but when the need arises an individual helps to change the status quo.

What use is culture to the individual?

According to Goodenough culture is "a set of beliefs or standards, shared by a group of people, which help the individual decide what is, what can be, how to feel, what to do and how to go about doing it."

On the basis of this definition; Culture isn't equated with the whole of one particular society. It is, however, related to activities that are shared by a particular group of people.

This lead to Goodenough’s concept of ‘operational culture’ assumes that the individual can choose the culture in which to interact at any