Discuss the meanings and significance of culture in Human Society. Critically bring out the role of Culture in the Development of personality. (2003)
Edward B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, 1871) defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Culture is what humans add to biology, and personality is where that addition settles in the individual. The link is strong, but never complete.
Meanings of culture
- Anthropological: a total way of life or “design for living” (Clyde Kluckhohn, Mirror for Man, 1949), learnt, shared, symbolic, cumulative and transmitted.
- Material and non-material: tools and technology versus norms, values and beliefs. William F. Ogburn (Social Change, 1922) showed that non-material culture often lags behind material change.
- Functionalist: Talcott Parsons treated the cultural system of values as what integrates social action.
- Conflict: Antonio Gramsci‘s hegemony and Pierre Bourdieu‘s cultural capital reveal culture as an instrument of domination as well as consensus.
Significance in human society
- Adaptation. Bronisław Malinowski (A Scientific Theory of Culture, 1944) saw culture as an instrumental apparatus meeting biological and derived needs.
- Order and integration. Shared values and rituals renew Émile Durkheim‘s collective conscience. The Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj in 2025, officially estimated at over 66 crore visitors, is an example.
- Identity and continuity. UNESCO’s inscription of Deepavali on its intangible heritage list in December 2025 recognised a tradition sustained across generations and diasporas.
- Meaning and control. Culture defines what is sacred, pure, shameful or honourable. In India, purity–pollution norms long ordered caste interaction.
Role of culture in personality development
- Configurations. Ruth Benedict (Patterns of Culture, 1934) saw each culture as rewarding a selected set of traits, producing restrained Zuñi and assertive Kwakiutl personalities.
- Basic personality. Abram Kardiner traced a chain from child-rearing (primary institutions) to personality to religion and folklore (secondary institutions).
- Mechanism. George Herbert Mead‘s generalized other is culture internalised: the child takes on the community’s attitudes as its own “me”.
- Indian self. Sudhir Kakar (The Inner World, 1978) linked prolonged maternal indulgence and joint-family life to a relational identity, where the self is defined through family bonds.
Critical assessment
- Over-determinism. Dennis Wrong (1961) attacked the oversocialised view of the person. Mead’s “I” responds creatively and can resist cultural demands.
- Weak methods and stereotyping. Derek Freeman (1983) disputed Margaret Mead‘s Samoan findings. National-character studies, such as Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), written without fieldwork in Japan, turned whole peoples into types.
- Variation within culture. Class, caste, gender and temperament yield different personalities under one culture, which Ralph Linton‘s status personality acknowledges.
- Culture is plural and contested. Dominant culture can injure subordinate selves. B. R. Ambedkar‘s mass conversion to Buddhism in 1956 showed individuals rejecting a culture that denied them dignity.
- Globalised culture. ASER 2023 found 90.5% of rural youth aged 14–18 had used social media in the reference week. Personalities now form in hybrid local-global cultures.
Conclusion
Culture is the indispensable raw material of personality: it supplies language, values and models of the self. It is not a mould. Personality is the individual’s selective, sometimes rebellious synthesis of plural cultural influences, shaped by biology and biography, which is also how culture itself changes.