The relationship between culture and societal sustainability has long captivated scholars across disciplines, from sociology and anthropology to political science and economics. While there is broad consensus that culture serves as the bedrock upon which stable, thriving societies are built, defining precisely what we mean by “culture” remains one of the most complex challenges in the social sciences. This definitional ambiguity is not merely an academic concern—it has profound implications for how we understand social cohesion, identity formation, and the mechanisms through which communities perpetuate themselves across generations.
The urgency of understanding culture becomes apparent when we consider the rapid social transformations of our contemporary world. Globalization, technological advancement, and unprecedented human mobility have created new contexts for cultural interaction and evolution. In this environment, the question of what constitutes culture—and how it functions to bind communities together—takes on renewed significance. As we grapple with issues of social fragmentation, political polarization, and the erosion of traditional institutions, a clear understanding of culture’s role becomes essential for those seeking to build and maintain sustainable societies.
What Is Meant By “Culture”?
Culture is core to a sustainable society, but what is meant by “culture” and how do we define the word?
On culture, Francis Fukuyama wrote: “A thriving civil society depends on a people’s habits, customs, and ethics – attributes that can be shaped only indirectly through conscious political action and must otherwise be nourished through an increased awareness and respect for culture.” Max Weber, similarly, wrote, “The significance of the nation is usually anchored in the superiority, or at least the irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group.”
To paraphrase Fukuyama and Weber on culture: The significance of a nation is anchored in the thriving civil society, which depends on the people’s awareness of, and respect for, the irreplaceability of their culture.
In defining “culture” we come to some difficulty: there are as many definitions of “culture” as there are authors on the subject. Let’s aggregate several of these in order to attempt a universal definition. Culture is:
- “… an intergenerational transfer of past experience.” – Elinor Ostrom
- “… a learned meaning system that consists of patterns of traditions, beliefs, values, norms, meanings and symbols that are passed on from one generation to the next and are shared to varying degrees by interacting members of a community.” – Ting-Toomey & Chung
- “… a deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.” – Samovar & Porter
- “… a learned set of shared perceptions about beliefs, values, norms which affect the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.” Lustig & Koester
- “… what gives people a sense of who they are, of belonging, of how they should behave, and of what they should be doing.” – Moran & Harris
Dynamic, ethnocentric, and integrated, “culture” encompasses a range of phenomena transmitted through social learning in human societies. A group’s culture, influenced by internal developments and external interactions, and transmitted through enculturation, acculturation, and assimilation, changes over time, in a process of continuous evolution, from either discovery and innovation, borrowing and diffusion, or acculturation and long-term contact with another culture; as such, it seems obvious and important to note that a culture must adapt with a people in order to survive.
Taking from the above, we can define “culture” thusly:
“Culture” is a dynamic, ethnocentric, integrated, learned, and shared social system of knowledge, traditions, beliefs, ideas, values, roles, norms, meanings, and symbols that defines a group of people and their way of life, represents an intergenerational transfer of past experience, is influenced by internal developments and external interactions, changes over time in a process of continuous evolution, is acquired through individual and group striving, and provides for psychological needs such as belonging and prestige.
Final Thoughts
The comprehensive definition of culture presented here—as a dynamic, ethnocentric, integrated system of shared meanings that evolves through time—offers a framework for understanding one of humanity’s most fundamental organizing principles. By synthesizing insights from multiple scholars, we see that culture is not a static artifact to be preserved in amber, but rather a living system that must continually adapt to remain relevant and vital. This understanding challenges simplistic notions of cultural preservation that seek to freeze traditions in time, instead pointing toward a more nuanced view that recognizes both continuity and change as essential elements of cultural survival.
Perhaps most importantly, this definition highlights culture’s dual nature as both a product of human agency and a force that shapes human behavior. Culture emerges from “individual and group striving,” yet once established, it provides the very framework through which people understand their identity, purpose, and place in the world. This recursive relationship—where culture both creates and is created by its participants—underscores why cultural awareness is a necessity for maintaining cohesive societies.
As we face an uncertain future marked by rapid technological change, environmental challenges, and shifting global dynamics, the adaptive capacity of culture becomes ever more critical. The cultures that will thrive in the coming decades will be those that can maintain their core values and sense of identity – while remaining flexible enough to incorporate new knowledge, respond to changing circumstances, and engage productively with other cultural systems.
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