Write short note: Role of culture. (1995)
Culture, in Edward B. Tylor‘s definition (Primitive Culture, 1871), is the “complex whole” of knowledge, belief, art, morals, law and custom acquired as a member of society. Because humans lack fixed instincts for most behaviour, culture acts as social heredity, supplying what biology does not. Its role can be seen at the level of the individual and of society, and it is not always benign.
Role for the individual
- Humanisation. Through language and symbols culture turns a biological organism into a person; children reared in isolation fail to develop a normal self.
- Satisfying needs. Bronisław Malinowski (A Scientific Theory of Culture, 1944) showed culture meeting basic needs (food, shelter, reproduction) through institutions. These create derived needs (economy, law, education) and integrative needs (religion, magic, art).
- A design for living. Culture offers ready-made solutions: how to greet, eat, mourn or marry. Individuals need not invent conduct afresh.
- Defining situations. Following W. I. Thomas, culture tells people what a situation means. Red signifies auspiciousness at a North Indian wedding and white signifies mourning.
- Goals and means. Robert K. Merton showed culture prescribing both the goals worth pursuing and the legitimate means to reach them.
- A toolkit for action. Ann Swidler (“Culture in Action”, 1986) argued that culture works less as fixed values than as a repertoire of habits, skills and styles from which people build strategies.
Role for society
- Integration. Talcott Parsons assigned culture the pattern-maintenance function: shared values hold the social system together. Émile Durkheim saw collective rituals renewing solidarity. The Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj in 2025, officially estimated at over 66 crore visitors, shows this integrative pull at vast scale.
- Social control. William Graham Sumner (Folkways, 1906) distinguished folkways from the more binding mores; both regulate behaviour without formal law.
- Continuity and identity. Culture links generations and marks group boundaries. UNESCO inscribed Deepavali on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in December 2025, recognising it as living heritage.
- Adaptation and change. Technology and knowledge let societies adapt to environments. William F. Ogburn‘s cultural lag shows strain when norms trail material change, as when rules about gender and privacy trail the smartphone.
Critical view: culture and power
- Legitimation. For Karl Marx, ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. Antonio Gramsci‘s hegemony explains consent to domination. Louis Dumont showed purity–pollution values ordering caste hierarchy.
- Reproduction of inequality. Pierre Bourdieu‘s cultural capital explains how elite tastes and speech convert into educational success.
- Resistance. Counter-cultures remake culture from below. Bhakti poetry and Dalit literature challenged caste values, and B. R. Ambedkar‘s turn to Buddhism in 1956 offered Dalits a new cultural identity.
- Dysfunctions. Ethnocentrism breeds prejudice, and practices such as dowry persist long after they are outlawed.
Conclusion
Culture is the medium through which humans survive, cooperate and find meaning. Its role is double-edged: it integrates while legitimating inequality, and conserves while supplying the symbols of change. The sociological task is to see both faces at once.