SCOPE, MEANING, AND DEFINITIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to discuss the meaning of concept of culture, to clarify what the culture is, and to examine this concept in terms of context and scope. In this study, considering its broad meaning and scope, its use in daily language and its definitions in dictionaries were examined. The records in dictionaries indicate how rich the Turkish language is in terms of the compound words including the term “culture” as the first or second word, and how the word “culture” is flexible in combining other words in order to construct a new meaning. The word “culture” seems to be adopted by the individuals using the language also in their daily lives and to beused in various meanings and functions. Hence, in order tobetter understand how and in which meanings the concept of culture has been and is being used in the past and present, different definitions of this concept that have been presented in social sciences within the context of historical process were involved in this paper. Moreover, the process of development of the concept of “culture”,especially in the intercultural studies, was discussed from the perspectives of leading researchers in the literature. Different definitions and scientific studies indicated that the culture is nowadaysmainly used in two meanings. From the aspect of first and narrow meaning, it nowadays connotatesthe high culture and art culture such as music, literature, and theater. The culture, from this aspect, is generally consideredas the “aesthetical perfection” gained through the education, science, and art. In terms of second and broad meaning, the culture covers all of the aspects of social life belonging to the environment of and created by the human such as language, legal system, technology, clothes, traditions, eating and drinking habits. In its broad meaning, culture also represents the groups and societies that are considered themselves as the whole with or different from others in terms of the regional, ethnic, religious, and historical aspects.The objective of this study is to discuss the meaning of concept of culture, to clarify what the culture is, and to examine this concept from the aspects of context and scope. Culture is an abstract word having a very broad and high number of meanings. Thus, it is very difficult to define this concept into a single meaning and, it is almost impossiblefor some scientists. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of scientific definitions of culture even in social sciences, the new ones that are continuously added to these meanings is possibly the most important sign of this difficulty. The reason for why the culture couldn’t have a clear meaning is not known in fact. First of all, the culture is a very old concept that never becomes old. For many centuries, the culture has represented various meanings, and the philosophers have suggested their own definitions. Furthermore, there are numerous scientific disciplines studying the culture. In addition to the classical disciplines such as anthropology, history, ethnology, and sociology, also the relatively newer disciplines such as media studies also relate the culture totheir own research universes. Every scientific discipline pays importance and priority to different aspects of the culture. As a result, the meaning of culture significantly varies depending on the scientific discipline, and it gains new meanings through this process. With reference to its broad meaning and scope, the use of concept of culture in daily language and its definitions in dictionaries were investigated in this study. The records in dictionaries indicate how rich the Turkish language is in terms of the compound words including the term “culture” as the first or second word, and how the word “culture” is flexible in combining other words in order to establish a new meaning. The word “culture” seems to be adopted by the individuals using the language also in their daily lives and to be used in various meanings and functions. Hence, in order to better understand how and in which meanings the concept of culture has been and being used in past and today, different definitions of this concept that have been presented in social sciences within the context of historical process were involved in present paper. Furthermore, the process of development of the concept of “culture”, especially in intercultural studies, was discussed from the perspectives of leading researchers in the literature. The word “culture” has been used for different meanings and contexts since the ancient times. This word, which has been initially used in the meaning of agriculture, has been firstly used by Marcus Tullius Cicero (B.C. 106 –43),a Roman politician, philosopher, and author,as “cultura animi”, which means the education of mind, in relation with the human. Kuçuradi has defined the word“cultura animi” as the “whole of activities enabling the development of individuals’ personal resources (processing and cultivation of these resources), and making art and philosophy, and benefiting what is done” (1988: 40). According to the author, cultura animi meets one of thetraditional meanings of culture most widely used in daily language. The use of culture in the meaning of cultura animi has become popular mainly since 18th century, and gained a place in Western thinking for centuries. Since 17th century, with the enlargement of meaning, culture has started to be used as antonym of “nature” concept. “In those years, the ‘culture’was the name given to what the people created in addition to what the nature offers”(Kartarı, 2006: 14). This concept, which has been seen firstly in French language and then in English and German languages, and then conveyed to the other ones from these languages in the course of time, has been used as the synonym of civilization in some of languages,while it has been used in other meanings in other languages. These two words used as synonyms in French are generally used in separate meaning

Özet

Bu çalışmanın amacı kültür kavramının anlamını tartışmak, kültürün ne olduğu konusuna açıklık getirmek ve bu kavramı kapsam ve içerik yönünden incelemektir. Çalışmada, geniş anlam ve kapsamından hareketle kavramın günlük dilde kullanımı ve sözlüklerde yer alan tanımları incelenmiştir. Sözlüklerde yer alan kayıtlar, sözcüğünün günlük yaşamda da dili kullananlar tarafından sahiplenilerek türlü anlam ve Türkçenin ilk ya da ikinci sözcüğü "kültür" ile başlayan söz varlığının ne denli zengin olduğunu ve kültür sözcüğünün yeni bir anlamı karşılamak üzere başka sözcüklerle bir araya gelme konusunda ne denli esnek olduğunu göstermiştir. Kültürişlevlerde kullanıldığı görülmektedir. Dolayısıyla geçmişte ve günümüzde kültür kavramının nasıl ve hangi anlamlarda kullanıldığını daha iyi anlayabilmek için tarihsel süreç içinde bu kavram ile ilgili sosyal bilimler alanında sunulan farklı tanımlarına yer verilmiştir. Ayrıca kültür kavramının özellikle de kültürlerarası çalışmalarda izlediği gelişim süreci, alanın önde gelen araştırmacılarının bakış açılarıyla değerlendirilmiştir. Sunulan farklı tanımlar ve bilimsel çalışmalar, kültürün günümüzde iki temel anlamda kullanıldığını göstermiştir. Birinci temel ve dar anlamıyla kültür günümüzde, müzik, edebiyat, tiyatro gibi yüksek kültürü ve sanat kültürünü çağrıştırmaktadır. Bu anlamdaki kültür genelde eğitim, bilim ve sanat yoluyla kazanılan "estetik mükemmellik" olarak ele alınmaktadır. İkinci temel ve geniş anlamınayla kültür, insanın çevresine ait olan ve kendisi tarafından yaratılan her şeyi, örneğin dil, hukuk sistemi, teknoloji, gelenek- görenekleri, kıyafetleri, yeme içme alışkanlıklarını v.b. sosyal yaşamın tüm yönlerini kapsamaktadır. Kültür geniş anlamıyla, ayrıca kendini bölgesel, etnik, dilsel, dinsel, tarihsel v.b. ölçütlere göre bir bütün olarak gören ve kendilerini bu yönüyle diğerlerinden ayıran grupları ve toplumları da işaret etmektedir