what culture means essay

So What Is Culture, Exactly?

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• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• M.A., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• B.A., Sociology, Pomona College

Culture is a term that refers to a large and diverse set of mostly intangible aspects of social life. According to sociologists, culture consists of the values, beliefs, systems of language, communication, and practices that people share in common and that can be used to define them as a collective.

Culture also includes the material objects that are common to that group or society. Culture is distinct from social structure and economic aspects of society, but it is connected to them—both continuously informing them and being informed by them. Common cultures include those shaped by regional traditions, religious beliefs, and historical experiences.

How Do Sociologists Define Culture?

Culture is one of the most important concepts within sociology because sociologists recognize that it plays a crucial role in our social lives. It is important for shaping social relationships , maintaining and challenging social order, determining how we make sense of the world and our place in it, and shaping our everyday actions and experiences in society. It is composed of both non-material and material things.

In brief, sociologists define the non-material aspects of culture as the values and beliefs, language, communication, and practices that are shared in common by a group of people. Expanding on these categories, culture is made up of our knowledge, common sense, assumptions, and expectations. It is also the rules, norms, laws, and morals that govern society; the words we use as well as how we speak and write them (what sociologists call " discourse "); and the symbols we use to express meaning, ideas, and concepts (like traffic signs and emojis, for example). Culture is also what we do and how we behave and perform (for example, theater and dance). It informs and is encapsulated in how we walk, sit, carry our bodies, and interact with others; how we behave depending on the place, time, and audience; and how we express identities of race, class, gender, and sexuality, among others. Culture also includes the collective practices we participate in, such as religious ceremonies, the celebration of secular holidays, and attending sporting events.

What Is Material Culture?

Material culture is composed of the things that humans make and use. This aspect of culture includes a wide variety of things, from buildings, technological gadgets, and clothing, to film, music, literature, and art, among others. Aspects of material culture are more commonly referred to as cultural products.

Sociologists see the two sides of culture—the material and non-material—as intimately connected. Material culture emerges from and is shaped by the non-material aspects of culture. In other words, what we value, believe, and know (and what we do together in everyday life) influences the things that we make. However, it is not a one-way relationship between material and non-material culture.

Material culture can also influence the non-material aspects of culture. For example, a powerful documentary film (an aspect of material culture) might change people’s attitudes and beliefs (i.e. non-material culture). This is why cultural products tend to follow patterns. What has come before in terms of music, film, television, and art, for example, influences the values, beliefs, and expectations of those who interact with them, which then, in turn, influence the creation of additional cultural products.

Why Culture Matters to Sociologists

Culture is important to sociologists because it plays a significant role in the production of social order . The social order refers to the stability of society based on the collective agreement to rules and norms that allow us to cooperate, function as a society, and live together (ideally) in peace and harmony. For sociologists, there are both good and bad aspects of social order.

History of Culture

Rooted in the theory of classical French sociologist Émile Durkheim , both material and non-material aspects of culture are valuable in that they hold society together. The values, beliefs, morals, communication, and practices that we share in common provide us with a shared sense of purpose and a valuable collective identity. Durkheim revealed through his research that when people come together to participate in rituals, they reaffirm the culture they hold in common, and in doing so, strengthen the social ties that bind them together. Today, sociologists see this important social phenomenon happening not only in religious rituals and celebrations like (some) weddings and the Indian festival of Holi but also in secular ones—such as high school dances and widely attended, televised sporting events (for example, the Super Bowl and March Madness, both of which one could consider part of American culture).

Famous Prussian social theorist and activist Karl Marx established the critical approach to culture in the social sciences. According to Marx, it is in the realm of non-material culture that a minority can maintain unjust power over the majority. He reasoned that subscribing to mainstream values, norms, and beliefs keeps people invested in unequal social systems that do not work in their best interests, but rather, benefit the powerful minority. Sociologists today see Marx's theory in action in the way that most people in capitalist societies buy into the belief that success comes from hard work and dedication and that anyone can live a good life if they do these things—despite the reality that a job which pays a living wage is increasingly hard to come by.

Both theorists were right about the role that culture plays in society, but neither was exclusively right. Culture can be a force for oppression and domination, but it can also be a force for creativity, resistance, and liberation. It is also a deeply important aspect of human social life and social organization. Without it, we would not have relationships or society.

What Is Culture?

• Culture is a dynamic and integral aspect of society that encompasses both non-material aspects like values and beliefs, and material aspects such as objects and technology, all of which shape and are being shaped by society.
• Sociologists value culture for its role in maintaining social order and collective identity, as well as its influence on everyday actions and societal norms.
• Influential sociologists like Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx highlighted culture's dual role in fostering social cohesion and perpetuating power dynamics.

Luce, Stephanie. " Living wages: a US perspective ." Employee Relations , vol. 39, no. 6, 2017, pp. 863-874. doi:10.1108/ER-07-2017-0153

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• Introduction

Evolution of “minding”

Evolution of culture, relativist approaches to sociocultural systems, culture and personality, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, evaluative grading, ecological or environmental change, acculturation.

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• Table Of Contents

culture , behaviour peculiar to Homo sapiens , together with material objects used as an integral part of this behaviour. Thus, culture includes language , ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, and ceremonies, among other elements.

The existence and use of culture depends upon an ability possessed by humans alone. This ability has been called variously the capacity for rational or abstract thought, but a good case has been made for rational behaviour among subhuman animals, and the meaning of abstract is not sufficiently explicit or precise. The term symboling has been proposed as a more suitable name for the unique mental ability of humans, consisting of assigning to things and events certain meanings that cannot be grasped with the senses alone. Articulate speech—language—is a good example. The meaning of the word dog is not inherent in the sounds themselves; it is assigned, freely and arbitrarily, to the sounds by human beings. Holy water, “biting one’s thumb” at someone ( Romeo and Juliet , Act I, scene 1), or fetishes are other examples. Symboling is a kind of behaviour objectively definable and should not be confused with symbolizing, which has an entirely different meaning.

The concept of culture

Various definitions of culture.

What has been termed the classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th-century English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor in the first paragraph of his Primitive Culture (1871):

Culture . . . is 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.

In Anthropology (1881) Tylor made it clear that culture, so defined, is possessed by man alone. This conception of culture served anthropologists well for some 50 years. With the increasing maturity of anthropological science, further reflections upon the nature of their subject matter and concepts led to a multiplication and diversification of definitions of culture. In Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952), U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn cited 164 definitions of culture, ranging from “learned behaviour” to “ideas in the mind,” “a logical construct,” “a statistical fiction,” “a psychic defense mechanism,” and so on. The definition—or the conception—of culture that is preferred by Kroeber and Kluckhohn and also by a great many other anthropologists is that culture is an abstraction or, more specifically, “an abstraction from behaviour.”

These conceptions have defects or shortcomings. The existence of behavioral traditions—that is, patterns of behaviour transmitted by social rather than by biologic hereditary means—has definitely been established for nonhuman animals. “Ideas in the mind” become significant in society only as expressed in language, acts, and objects. “A logical construct” or “a statistical fiction” is not specific enough to be useful. The conception of culture as an abstraction led, first, to a questioning of the reality of culture (inasmuch as abstractions were regarded as imperceptible) and, second, to a denial of its existence; thus, the subject matter of nonbiological anthropology, “culture,” was defined out of existence, and without real, objective things and events in the external world there can be no science.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn were led to their conclusion that culture is an abstraction by reasoning that if culture is behaviour it, ipso facto, becomes the subject matter of psychology; therefore, they concluded that culture “is an abstraction from concrete behavior but is not itself behavior.” But what, one might ask, is an abstraction of a marriage ceremony or a pottery bowl, to use Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s examples? This question poses difficulties that were not adequately met by these authors. A solution was perhaps provided by Leslie A. White in the essay “The Concept of Culture” (1959). The issue is not really whether culture is real or an abstraction, he reasoned; the issue is the context of the scientific interpretation.

When things and events are considered in the context of their relation to the human organism, they constitute behaviour; when they are considered not in terms of their relation to the human organism but in their relationship to one another, they become culture by definition. The mother-in-law taboo is a complex of concepts, attitudes, and acts. When one considers them in their relationship to the human organism—that is, as things that the organism does—they become behaviour by definition. When, however, one considers the mother-in-law taboo in its relationship to the place of residence of a newly married couple, to the customary division of labour between the sexes, to their respective roles in the society’s mode of subsistence and offense and defense, and these in turn to the technology of the society, the mother-in-law taboo becomes, again by definition, culture. This distinction is precisely the one that students of words have made for many years. When words are considered in their relationship to the human organism—that is, as acts—they become behaviour. But when they are considered in terms of their relationship to one another—producing lexicon, grammar, syntax , and so forth—they become language, the subject matter not of psychology but of the science of linguistics. Culture, therefore, is the name given to a class of things and events dependent upon symboling ( i.e., articulate speech) that are considered in a kind of extra-human context.

Universalist approaches to culture and the human mind

Culture, as noted above, is due to an ability possessed by man alone. The question of whether the difference between the mind of man and that of the lower animals is one of kind or of degree has been debated for many years, and even today reputable scientists can be found on both sides of this issue. But no one who holds the view that the difference is one of degree has adduced any evidence to show that nonhuman animals are capable, to any degree whatever, of a kind of behaviour that all human beings exhibit. This kind of behaviour may be illustrated by the following examples: remembering the sabbath to keep it holy, classifying one’s relatives and distinguishing one class from another (such as uncles from cousins), defining and prohibiting incest, and so on. There is no reason or evidence that leads one to believe that any animal other than man can have or be brought to any appreciation or comprehension whatever of such meanings and acts. There is, as Tylor argued long ago, a “mental gulf that divides the lowest savage from the highest ape” ( Anthropology ).

In line with the foregoing distinction, human behaviour is to be defined as behaviour consisting of, or dependent upon, symboling rather than upon anything else that Homo sapiens does; coughing, yawning, stretching, and the like are not human.

Next to nothing is yet known about the neuroanatomy of symboling. Man is characterized by a very large brain, considered both absolutely and relatively, and it is reasonable—and even obligatory—to believe that the central nervous system , especially the forebrain, is the locus of the ability to symbol . But how it does this and with what specific mechanisms remain to be discovered. One is thus led to the conclusion that at some point in the evolution of primates a threshold was reached in some line, or lines, when the ability to symbol was realized and made explicit in overt behaviour. There is no intermediate stage, logical or neurological, between symboling and nonsymboling; an individual or a species is capable of symboling, or he or it is not. The life of Helen Keller makes this clear: when, through the aid of her teacher, Anne Sullivan , Keller was enabled to escape from the isolation to which her blindness and deafness had consigned her and to effect contact with the world of human meanings and values, the transformation was instantaneous.

But even if almost nothing is known about the neuroanatomy of symboling, a great deal is known about the evolution of mind (or “ minding ,” if mind is considered as a process rather than a thing), in which one finds symboling as the characteristic of a particular stage of development. The evolution of minding can be traced in the following sequence of stages. First is the simple reflexive stage, in which behaviour is determined by the intrinsic properties of both the organism and the thing reacted to—for example, the contraction of the pupil of the eye under increased stimulation by light. Second is the conditioned reflex stage, in which the response is elicited not by properties intrinsic in the stimulus but by meanings that the stimulus has acquired for the responding organism through experience—for example, Pavlov’s dog’s salivary glands responding to the sound of a bell. Third is the instrumental stage, as exemplified by a chimpanzee knocking down a banana with a stick. Here the response is determined by the intrinsic properties of the things involved (banana, stick, chimpanzee’s neurosensory-muscular system); but a new element has been introduced into behaviour, namely, the exercise of control by the reacting organism over things in the external world. And, finally, there is the symbol stage, in which the configuration of behaviour involves nonintrinsic meanings, as has already been suggested.

These four stages exhibit a characteristic of the evolution of all living things: a movement in the direction of making life more secure and enduring. In the first stage the organism distinguishes between the beneficial , the injurious, and the neutral, but it must come into direct contact with the object or event in question to do so. In the second stage the organism may react at a distance, as it were—that is, through an intermediate stimulus. The conditioned reflex brings signs into the life process; one thing or event may serve as an indication of something else—food, danger, and so forth. And, since anything can serve as a sign of anything else (a green triangle can mean food, sex, or an electric shock to the laboratory rat), the reactions of the organism are emancipated from the limitations that stage one imposes upon living things, namely, the intrinsic properties of things. The possibility of obtaining life-sustaining things and of avoiding life-destroying things is thus much enhanced , and the security and continuity of life are correspondingly increased. But in stage two the organism still plays a subordinate role to the external world; it does not and cannot determine the significance of the intermediary stimulus: the bark of a distant dog to the rabbit or the sound of the bell to Pavlov’s dog. This meaning is determined by things and events in the external world (or in the laboratory by the experimenter). In stages one and two, therefore, the organism is at the mercy of the external world in this respect.

In the third stage the element of control over environment is introduced. The ape who obtains food by means of a stick (tool) is not subordinate to his situation. He does not merely undergo a situation; he dominates it. His behaviour is not determined by the juxtaposition of things and events; on the contrary, the juxtaposition is determined by the ape. He is confronted with alternatives , and he makes choices. The configuration of behaviour in stage three is constructed within the dynamic organism of the ape and then imposed upon the external world.

The evolution of minding is a cumulative process; the achievements of each stage are carried on into the succeeding one or ones. The fourth stage reintroduces the factor of nonintrinsic meanings to the advances made in stages two and three. Stage four is the stage of symboling, of articulate speech. Thus, one observes two aspects of the evolution of minding, both of which contribute to the security and survivability of life: the emancipation of behaviour from limitations imposed upon it by the external world and increased control over the environment. To be sure, neither emancipation nor control becomes complete, but quantitative increase is significant.

The direction of biologic evolution toward greater expansion and security of life can be seen from another point of view: the advance from instinctive behaviour ( i.e., responses determined by intrinsic properties of the organism) to learned and freely variable behaviour, patterns of which may be acquired and transmitted from one individual and generation to another, and finally to a system of things and events, the essence of which is meanings that cannot be comprehended by the senses alone. This system is, of course, culture, and the species is the human species. Culture is a man-made environment, brought into existence by the ability to symbol.

Once established, culture has a life of its own, so to speak; that is, it is a continuum of things and events in a cause and effect relationship; it flows down through time from one generation to another. Since its inception 1,000,000 or more years ago, this culture—with its language, beliefs, tools, codes, and so on—has had an existence external to each individual born into it. The function of this external, man-made environment is to make life secure and enduring for the society of human beings living within the cultural system. Thus, culture may be seen as the most recent, the most highly developed means of promoting the security and continuity of life, in a series that began with the simple reflex.

Society preceded culture; society, conceived as the interaction of living beings, is coextensive with life itself. Man’s immediate prehuman ancestors had societies, but they did not have culture. Studies of monkeys and apes have greatly enlarged scientific knowledge of their social life—and, by inference , the scientific conception of the earliest human societies. Data derived from paleontological sources and from accumulating studies of living, nonhuman primates are now fairly abundant, and hypotheses derived from these are numerous and varied in detail. A fair summary of them may be made as follows: The growth of the primate brain was stimulated by life in the trees, specifically, by eye-hand coordinations involved in swinging from limb to limb and by manipulating food with the hands (as among the insectivorous lemurs). Descent to the ground, as a consequence of deforestation or increase in body size (which would tend to restrict arboreal locomotion and increase the difficulty of obtaining enough food to supply increased need), and the assumption of erect posture were other significant steps in biologic evolution and the eventual emergence of culture. Some theories reject the arboreal stage in man’s evolutionary past, but this does not seriously affect the overall conception of his development.

The Australopithecines of Africa, extinct manlike higher primates about which reliable knowledge is very considerable today, exemplify the stage of erect posture in primate evolution. Erect posture freed the arms and hands from their earlier function of locomotion and made possible an extensive and versatile use of tools. Again, the eye-hand-object coordinations involved in tool using stimulated the growth of the brain, especially the forebrain. It is not possible to determine on the basis of paleontological evidence the precise point at which the ability to symbol (specifically, articulate speech) was realized, as expressed in overt behaviour. It is believed by some that man’s prehuman ancestors used tools habitually and that habit became custom through the transmission of tool using from one generation to another long before articulate speech came into being. In fact, some theorists hold, the customary use of tools became a powerful stimulus in the development of a brain that was capable of symboling or articulate speech.

The introjection of symboling into primate social life was revolutionary. Everything was transformed, everything acquired new meaning; the symbol added a new dimension to primate—now human—existence. An ax was no longer merely a tool with which to chop; it could become a symbol of authority. Mating became marriage, and all social relationships between parents and children and brothers and sisters became moral obligations, duties, rights, and privileges. The world of nature, from the stones beside the path to the stars in their courses, became alive and conscious spirits. “And all that I beheld respired with inward meaning” (Wordsworth). The anthropoid had at last become a man.

Thus far in this article, culture has been considered in general, as the possession of all mankind. Now it is appropriate to turn to particular cultures , or sociocultural systems. Human beings, like other animal species, live in societies, and each society possesses culture. It has long been customary for ethnologists to speak of Seneca culture, Eskimo culture, North American Plains culture, and so on—that is, the culture of a particular society (Seneca) or an indefinite number of societies (Eskimo) or the cultures found in or characteristic of a topographic area (the North American Plains). There is no objection to this usage as a convenient means of reference: “Seneca culture” is the culture that the Seneca tribe possesses at a particular time. Similarly, Eskimo culture refers to a class of cultures, and Plains culture refers to a type of culture. What is needed is a term that defines culture precisely in its particular manifestations for the purpose of scientific study, and for this the term sociocultural system has been proposed. It is defined as the culture possessed by a distinguishable and autonomous group (society) of human beings, such as a tribe or a modern nation. Cultural elements may pass freely from one system to another (cultural diffusion), but the boundary provided by the distinction between one system and another (Seneca, Cayuga; United States , Japan) makes it possible to study the system at any given time or over a period of time.

Every human society, therefore, has its own sociocultural system: a particular and unique expression of human culture as a whole. Every sociocultural system possesses the components of human culture as a whole—namely, technological, sociological, and ideological elements. But sociocultural systems vary widely in their structure and organization. These variations are attributable to differences among physical habitats and the resources that they offer or withhold for human use; to the range of possibilities inherent in various areas of activity, such as language or the manufacture and use of tools; and to the degree of development. The biologic factor of man may, for purposes of analysis and comparison of sociocultural systems, be considered as a constant. Although the equality or inequality of races, or physical types, of mankind has not been established by science, all evidence and reason lead to the conclusion that, whatever differences of native endowment may exist, they are insignificant as compared with the overriding influence of the external tradition that is culture.

Since the infant of the human species enters the world cultureless, his behaviour—his attitudes, values , ideals, and beliefs, as well as his overt motor activity—is powerfully influenced by the culture that surrounds him on all sides. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the power and influence of culture upon the human animal. It is powerful enough to hold the sex urge in check and achieve premarital chastity and even voluntary vows of celibacy for life. It can cause a person to die of hunger, though nourishment is available, because some foods are branded unclean by the culture. And it can cause a person to disembowel or shoot himself to wipe out a stain of dishonour. Culture is stronger than life and stronger than death. Among subhuman animals, death is merely the cessation of the vital processes of metabolism, respiration, and so on. In the human species, however, death is also a concept; only man knows death. But culture triumphs over death and offers man eternal life. Thus, culture may deny satisfactions on the one hand while it fulfills desires on the other.

The predominant emphasis, perhaps, in studies of culture and personality has been the inquiry into the process by which the individual personality is formed as it develops under the influence of its cultural milieu . But the individual biologic organism is itself a significant determinant in the development of personality. The mature personality is, therefore, a function of both biologic and cultural factors, and it is virtually impossible to distinguish these factors from each other and to evaluate the magnitude of each in particular cases. If the cultural factor were a constant, personality would vary with the variations of the neurosensory-glandular-muscular structure of the individual. But there are no tests that can indicate, for example, precisely how much of the taxicab driver’s ability to make change is due to innate endowment and how much to cultural experience. Therefore, the student of culture and personality is driven to work with “modal personalities,” that is, the personality of the typical Crow Indian or the typical Frenchman insofar as this can be determined. But it is of interest, theoretically at least, to note that even if both factors, the biologic and the cultural, were constant—which they never are in actuality—variations of personality would still be possible. Within the confines of these two constants, individuals might undergo a number of profound experiences in different chronological permutations. For example, two young women might have the same experiences of (1) having a baby, (2) graduating from college, and (3) getting married. But the effect of sequence (1), (2), (3) upon personality development would be quite different than that of sequence (2), (3), (1).

Cultural comparisons

Ethnocentrism is the name given to a tendency to interpret or evaluate other cultures in terms of one’s own. This tendency has been, perhaps, more prevalent in modern nations than among preliterate tribes. The citizens of a large nation, especially in the past, have been less likely to observe people in another nation or culture than have been members of small tribes who are well acquainted with the ways of their culturally diverse neighbours. Thus, the American tourist could report that Londoners drive “on the wrong side of the street” or an Englishman might find some customs on the Continent “queer” or “boorish,” merely because they are different. Members of a Pueblo tribe in the American Southwest, on the other hand, might be well acquainted with cultural differences not only among other Pueblos but also in non-Pueblo tribes such as the Navajo and Apache.

Ethnocentrism became prominent among many Europeans after the discovery of the Americas, the islands of the Pacific, and the Far East. Even anthropologists might characterize all preliterate peoples as being without religion (as did Sir John Lubbock) or as having a “prelogical mentality” (as did Lucien Lévy-Bruhl) merely because their ways of thinking did not correspond with those of the culture of western Europe. Thus, inhabitants of non-Western cultures, particularly those lacking the art of writing, were widely described as being immoral, illogical, queer, or just perverse (“Ye Beastly Devices of ye Heathen”).

Increased knowledge led to or facilitated a deeper understanding and, with it, a finer appreciation of cultures quite different from one’s own. When it was understood that universal needs could be served with culturally diverse means, that worship might assume a variety of forms, that morality consists in conforming to ethical rules of conduct but does not inhere in the rules themselves, a new view emerged that each culture should be understood and appreciated in terms of itself. What is moral in one culture might be immoral or ethically neutral in another. For example, it was not immoral to kill a baby girl at birth or an aged grandparent who was nonproductive when it was impossible to obtain enough food for all; or wife lending among the Eskimo might be practiced as a gesture of hospitality, a way of cementing a friendship and promoting mutual aid in a harsh and dangerous environment, and thus may acquire the status of a high moral value.

The view that elements of a culture are to be understood and judged in terms of their relationship to the culture as a whole—a doctrine known as cultural relativism—led to the conclusion that the cultures themselves could not be evaluated or graded as higher and lower, superior or inferior. If it was unwarranted to say that patriliny (descent through the male line) was superior or inferior to matriliny (descent through the female line), if it was unjustified or meaningless to say that monogamy was better or worse than polygamy, then it was equally unsound or meaningless to say that one culture was higher or superior to another. A large number of anthropologists subscribed to this view; they argued that such judgments were subjective and therefore unscientific.

It is, of course, true that some values are imponderable and some criteria are subjective. Are people in modern Western culture happier than the Aborigines of Australia? Is it better to be a child than an adult, alive than dead? These certainly are not questions for science. But to say that the culture of the ancient Mayas was not superior to or more highly developed than the crude and simple culture of the Tasmanians or to say that the culture of England in 1966 was not higher than England’s culture in 1066 is to fly in the face of science as well as of common sense.

Cultures have ponderable values as well as imponderable, and the imponderable ones can be measured with objective, meaningful yardsticks. A culture is a means to an end: the security and continuity of life. Some kinds of culture are better means of making life secure than others. Agriculture is a better means of providing food than hunting and gathering. The productivity of human labour has been increased by machinery and by the utilization of the energy of nonhuman animals, water and wind power , and fossil fuels. Some cultures have more effective means of coping with disease than others, and this superiority is expressed mathematically in death rates. And there are many other ways in which meaningful differences can be measured and evaluations made. Thus, the proposition that cultures have ponderable values that can be measured meaningfully by objective yardsticks and arranged in a series of stages, higher and lower, is substantiated . But, it should be noted, this is not equivalent to saying that man is happier or that the dignity of the individual (an imponderable) is greater in an industrialized or agricultural sociocultural system than in one supported by human labour alone and sustained wholly by wild foods.

Actually, however, there is no necessary conflict between the doctrine of cultural relativism and the thesis that cultures can be objectively graded in a scientific manner. It is one thing to reject the statement that monogamy is better than polygamy and quite another to deny that one kind of sociocultural system contains a better means of providing food or combating disease than another.

Cultural adaptation and change

Every sociocultural system exists in a natural habitat, and, of course, this environment exerts an influence upon the cultural system. The cultures of some Eskimo groups present remarkable instances of adaptation to environmental conditions: tailored fur clothing, snow goggles, boats and harpoons for hunting sea mammals, and, in some instances, hemispherical snow houses, or igloos. Some sedentary, horticultural tribes of the upper Missouri River went out into the Great Plains and became nomadic hunters after the introduction of the horse. The culture of the Navajos underwent profound change after they acquired herds of sheep and a market for their rugs was developed. The older theories of simple environmentalism, some of which maintained that even styles of myths and tales were determined by topography , climate, flora, and other factors, are no longer in vogue. The present view is that the environment permits, at times encourages, and also prohibits the acquisition or use of certain cultural traits but otherwise does not determine culture change. The Fuegians living at the southern tip of South America , as viewed by Charles Darwin on his voyage on the Beagle , lived in a very cold, harsh environment but were virtually without both clothing and dwellings.

“Culture is contagious,” as a prominent anthropologist once remarked, meaning that customs, beliefs, tools, techniques, folktales, ornaments, and so on may diffuse from one people or region to another. To be sure, a culture trait must offer some advantage, some utility or pleasure, to be sought and accepted by a people. (Some anthropologists have assumed that basic features of social structure, such as clan organization, may diffuse, but a sounder view holds that these features involving the organic structure of the society must be developed within societies themselves.) The degree of isolation of a sociocultural system—brought about by physical barriers such as deserts, mountain ranges, and bodies of water—has, of course, an important bearing upon the ease or difficulty of diffusion . Within the limits of desirability on the one hand and the possibility of communication on the other, diffusion of culture has taken place everywhere and in all times. Archaeological evidence shows that amber from the Baltic region diffused to the Mediterranean coast; and, conversely, early coins from the Middle East found their way to northern Europe. In aboriginal North America , copper objects from northern Michigan have been found in mounds in Georgia; macaw feathers from Central America turn up in archaeological sites in northern Arizona. Some Indian tribes in northwestern regions of the United States had possessed horses, originally brought into the Southwest by Spanish explorers, years before they had ever even seen white men. The wide dispersion of tobacco, corn (maize), coffee, the sweet potato , and many other traits are conspicuous examples of cultural diffusion.

Diffusion may take place between tribes or nations that are approximately equal in political and military power and of equivalent stages of cultural development, such as the spread of the sun dance among the Plains tribes of North America. But in other instances, it takes place between sociocultural systems differing widely in this respect. Conspicuous examples of this have been instances of conquest and colonization of various regions by the nations of modern Europe. In these cases it is often said that the culture of the more highly developed nation is “imposed” upon the less developed peoples and cultures, and there is, of course, much truth in this; the acquisition of foreign culture by the subject people is called acculturation and is manifested by the indigenous populations of Latin America as well as of other regions. But even in cases of conquest, traits from the conquered peoples may diffuse to those of the more advanced cultures; examples might include, in addition to the cultivated plants cited above, individual words ( coyote ), musical themes, games, and art motifs.

One of the major problems of ethnology during the latter half of the 19th and the early decades of the 20th centuries was the question “How are cultural similarities in noncontiguous regions to be explained?” Did the concepts of pyramid building, mummification, and sun worship originate independently in ancient Egypt and in the Andean highlands and in Yucatán or did these traits originate in Egypt and diffuse from there to the Americas, as some anthropologists have believed? Some schools of ethnological theory have held to one view, some, to another. The 19th-century classical evolutionists (which included Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H. Morgan , among others) held that the mind of man is so constituted or endowed that he will develop cultures everywhere along the same lines. “Diffusionists”—those, such as Fritz Graebner and Elliot Smith , who offered grand theories about the diffusion of traits all over the world—maintained that man was inherently uninventive and that culture, once created, tended to spread everywhere. Each school tended to insist that its view was the correct one, and it would continue to hold that view unless definite proof of the contrary could be adduced.

The tendency nowadays is not to side categorically with one school as against another but to decide each case on its own merits. The consensus with regard to pyramids is that they were developed independently in Egypt and the Americas because they differ markedly in structure and function: the Egyptian pyramids were built of stone blocks and contained tombs within their interiors. The American pyramids were constructed of earth, then faced with stone, and they served as the bases of temples. The verdict with regard to the bow and arrow is that it was invented only once and subsequently diffused to all regions where it has been found. The probable antiquity of the origin of fire making, however, and the various ways of generating it—by percussion, friction, compression (fire pistons)—indicate multiple origins.

Evolution of culture—that is, the development of forms through time—has taken place. No amount of diffusion of picture writing could of itself, for instance, produce the alphabetic system of writing; as Tylor demonstrated so well, the art of writing has developed through a series of stages, which began with picture writing, progressed to hieroglyphic writing , and culminated in alphabetic writing. In the realm of social organization there was a development from territorial groups composed of families to segmented societies (clans and larger groupings). Sociocultural evolution, like biologic evolution, exhibits a progressive differentiation of structure and specialization of function.

A misunderstanding has arisen with regard to the relationship between evolution and diffusion. It has been argued, for example, that the theory of cultural evolution was unsound because some peoples skipped a stage in a supposedly determined sequence; for example, some African tribes, as a consequence of diffusion, went from the Stone Age to the Iron Age without an intermediate age of copper and bronze. But the classical evolutionists did not maintain that peoples, or societies, had to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development, but that tools, techniques, institutions—in short, culture—had to pass through the stages. The sequence of stages of writing did not mean that a society could not acquire the alphabet without working its way through hieroglyphic writing; it was obvious that many peoples did skip directly to the alphabet.

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2 What is Culture?

Taylor Livingston

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Define culture.
• Compare cultural relativism, moral relativism, and ethnocentrism with examples of each.
• Describe emic vs etic perspective.
• List and explain the six aspects of culture.

Culture Some Definitions:

The first widely accepted notion of what exactly is culture was compiled by Edward B. Tylor. Tylor, a Quaker, school dropout, and British man who kept a fantastic beard throughout his life (see image), is often considered the father of cultural anthropology. He became interested in other cultures because he was encouraged to travel to warm climates for his tuberculosis. While this did nothing for his tuberculosis, it did a great deal for anthropology. Tylor traveled to Mexico and wrote about its peoples ( Lowie, 1917 ). From his experiences in Mexico and studies of other societies as a professor at Oxford (though he had no degrees), he compiled a definition of culture : “A complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by people” (Tylor, 1871, p. 1).

From this first definition, the concept of culture has been expanded to include:

• Learned behaviors and symbols that allow people to live in groups.
• The primary means by which humans adapt to their environments.
• The way of life characteristic of a particular group of humans.

Examples of the first bullet include that official language (a collection of symbols) of the United States is English, which allows us to communicate. We share common symbols, such as a bright, red octagon that we have learned means “stop” that enables us not to crash our cars into each other. While an example of the second bullet is that we do not adapt to winter in Nebraska by increasing our stores of brown fat like other animals do, nor do we develop thicker hair on our bodies, like our cats and dogs do. We adapt by cultural means: we put on a coat, scarf, and mittens for outside and turn on the heat in our homes. The final bullet is a little trickier. What is “a way of life”? It’s all the bullet above, plus the knowledge and beliefs Tylor mentions. If we take football fans of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a particular group of people, what might be some of their “ways of life”? Perhaps, it would include: wearing red or black clothing on game days with the word “Nebraska” or the symbol “N” on it, tailgating (consuming alcohol for those over 21 and eating all the things dipped in ranch dressing) in the parking lot of Memorial Stadium, gathering in the Railyard to watch the game, cheering when the players take a diamond-shaped ball across a large field into the opponent’s territory, and hearing a cannon sound when they do.

The Concept:

While definitions and examples of the parts of the definition may be easy to understand, the concept of culture can be difficult to grasp. Most likely because unless you have ever travelled out of the country or to a vastly different area of the country, you have not spent much time thinking about how the way you believe and how you do things are unique to a specific part of the world. This leads some Anthropology textbooks to compare the concept of culture to the water in which a fish swims. Sure, this is an apt analogy as most of us are unaware of the extent culture surrounds us and shapes our lives and we cannot live without it. But, culture has moral and historical underpinning that are not quite captured by the fish in water analogy. As a result, the example of American barbeque to illustrate the concept of culture and its six aspects:

Six Aspects of Culture

• Learned—taught by someone to someone else, usually parent to child. This process is called enculturation.
• Shared—groups share norms—the way things ought to be done—and values—what is true, right, and beautiful
• Symbolic—culture creates meaning; it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves
• Patterned—practices make sense; culture is an integrated system—changes in one area, cause changes in others
• Adaptive—culture is the way humans adapt to the world; current adaptations may be maladaptive in the long term
• Changes—culture constantly shifts and transforms; it is not static

Barbeque: More American than Apple Pie

When referring to American barbeque, it is not hamburgers and hotdogs cooked on a gas grill, but meat cooked “low (over an indirect flame) and slow” (at least eight hours and as long as 18!). Legend has it the term “barbeque” comes from an Indigenous group, the Tainoused, from the Caribbean who likely cooked fish for an extended time over a wooden pit made with green wood (so as not to catch on fire) called a “barabicu” (or “sacred pit” in the Taino language). Christopher Columbus observed the practice and took stories of it back to Spain where the term became “barbacoa” ( KM, no date ; Suddath, 2009 ). Another Spaniard, De Soto, notes that around 1540 near what is now known as the state of Mississippi, he observes the Chickasaw roasting a pig over a “barbacoa.” Eventually, the practice of cooking meat “low and slow” makes its way to the American colonies and becomes known as “barbeque” ( Geiling 2013 ; Suddath, 2009) . This way of cooking meat lasts longer than British rule, as parties serving barbeque were held for several days, celebrating the conclusion of the Revolutionary War ( KM, no date ).

The practice of barbequing meat becomes most popular in the Southern states. Pork was the first meat used in this cooking practice, as pigs could be left free to roam and feed in the temperate Southeastern forest, while cows needed large amounts of cleared land, enclosures and feed. It is thought that barbeque would have been the preferred method to cook pigs because of the lean, tougher meat forest living and foraging would engender. By barbequing the pigs, the meat would become “fall of the bone” tender ( Gieling, 2013 ).

The South’s immigrants largely influenced the seasoning and dressing flavors of the meat. Early British settlers to the Colonies taste for tart seasoning likely influenced the vinegar-based seasoning of barbeque in Virginia and North Carolina, known as Carolina-style barbeque today (Gieling, 2013). This was likely the type of barbeque eaten at the celebrations following the winning of Revolutionary War and mentioned by George Washington as taking place on his plantation ( KM, no date ). In South Carolina, the large number of German and French immigrants influenced the addition of mustard to the vinegar sauce of barbeque. While in Memphis, access to a large port on the Mississippi River, created the “Memphis style” of barbeque, known for tomato-based barbeque sauce sweetened with molasses, which was imported from the Caribbean. Westward expansion brought the practice of barbequing to Texas, where German immigrants used the practice on their vast supplies of cattle, creating the Texas style of barbeque still around today. The Kansas City style of barbeque, which is the most common style of barbeque (what most people consider barbeque sauce—think about what you would receive at McDonalds, Burger King, or Chick fil A if you asked for barbeque sauce—it’s that style), blends the Texas tradition of using beef with the Memphis style of a sweet and tangy sauce (Gieling, 2013). Kansas City owes its unique blending of styles to Henry Perry, an African American man from Memphis who adapted his home city’s style of barbeque to the large beef meat packing industry in Kansas City when he moved to the area in 1907 ( Gieling, 2013 ).

Indeed, people of African descent have a long connection to the practice of barbequing as the likely cookers of much of the pork-based barbeque consumed in the Southern Colonies and later states were enslaved Africans. Later, many African Americans, like Mr. Perry, took this cooking tradition with them as they migrated out of the rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities during the Great Migration. By the middle of the 20th century, every city in the US had an African American owned and operated barbeque restaurant, cementing the connection between barbeque and African American culture ( Suddath, 2009 ).

Which style of barbeque one prefers is very contentious, especially in the American South, and often a result of what style is most familiar. For example, I am from South Carolina and have been eating mustard-based barbeque for most of my life. When I attended graduate school in North Carolina, I did not understand how people were referring to the  almost pure vinegar concoction the shredded meat was in as “sauce.” This was decidedly “wrong” in my opinion. Vinegar is an ingredient to a sauce, not THE sauce. Plus, a sauce is closer to a solid than a liquid! Similarly, when visiting Birmingham, Alabama, I was severed their version of barbeque sauce. While closer to an actual sauce than North Carolina style, it was mayonnaise-based! Surely, one cannot get more wrong than THAT!

The story of barbeque tells the story of America. From its origins in the Caribbean, witnessing in Indigenous cuisines to sauces based on immigrants’ tastes, and finally, it’s popularization through African American-owned restaurants, barbeque symbolizes the melting pot of America and illustrates the concept of culture. The practice is rooted in history, and what style of barbeque one believes to be the best depends on from which region they hail. Further, the story of barbeque illustrates the six aspects of culture:

Barbeque and the Six Aspects of Culture

Barbeque practices are learned :

Like culture, what iteration of barbeque is THE type of barbeque (Carolina, Memphis, Texas, or Kansas City style) is learned by children through the cooking or consumption practices of their parents.

Barbeque is also shared:

Whether you are in Newberry, SC or Charleston, SC, you know that when someone is serving barbeque, it is mustard-based.

Barbeque practices are patterned:

The Texas style of barbeque using beef instead of pork makes sense due to the large number of cattle ranches in the area; what happens in one area (economic) is also found in another (foodways).

 Barbeque is symbolic:

For many African Americans during the Great Migration, barbeque was a symbol (a short hand call back) to home and family–way to keep family and regional traditions alive in a new area.

Barbeque is adaptive:

The first Southern Colonists used pigs for barbeque because they were readily available in the area, applying the barbeque technique made this meat edible and a useful resource.

Barbeque practices change:

The addition of mustard to the sauce by South Carolina French and German immigrants changed the barbeque recipe to fit their pallet, based on the cuisine of their countries of origin.

Finally, my last paragraph on mustard-based barbeque sauce being the best and the standard by which other styles should be measured, is related to another aspect of culture— ethnocentrism , the idea that your culture’s way is the best way and every other way is wrong. This concept is what anthropologists try to argue against. Instead, anthropologists argue for us to practice cultural relativism when exposed to new ideas or practices. Cultural relativism is the opposite of ethnocentrism . Cultural relativism argues that the beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that culture’s reasoning and history, and not be judged against the criteria of another culture. Using our barbeque example, a cultural relativist would try all the different types of barbeque and attempt to understand the different styles based on the history and practices of the region. They can have a favorite style, but they do not think their favorite style is the best or only way to prepare meat.

Another form of relativism is moral relativism , which argues there is no universal system of right and wrong. What is considered “right” or “wrong” depends on the context (is relative) that that particular culture or historical time period. A moral relativist would argue there is no such things as universal human rights. Using a barbeque example, a moral relativist would argue the best and only way to prepare barbeque is whatever that region thought was the best, even if they murdered people to make the barbeque. If people in that region did not seeing murder and cannibalism as morally or ethically wrong, then it was not wrong. Anthropologists are not moral relativists, as all ascribe to a code of ethics (links to external site) that guide their practice based on the idea of universal human rights (links to external site) as set forth by the United Nations. While anthropologists may study groups, who practice cannibalism or female genital cutting, they do not believe these practices are morally or ethically correct. Instead, they attempt understand the culture’s reasons for such practices and not use their own culture’s standards and values in their evaluation.

The differences in ways of understanding cultural practices, whether from a perspective of someone of that culture or from someone outside of that culture bring us to the concepts of emic and etic perspectives. An emic perspective is the insider’s (how members of the culture) view and understanding of that culture’s practices, while an etic perspective is the outsider (how people who are not members of that culture) view and understand that culture’s practices. Consider these tweets from two different news sources:

Both are about banning the halal and kosher practice of slaughtering animals without stunning, but use different images with different connotations to illustrate this point. Why might that be? First, more information on the differences in animal slaughter is necessary: The halal method of slaughter requires an observant Muslim (someone who practices Islam) to slaughter the animal using a sharp knife to cut the arteries in the animal’s neck to maximize blood loss and swiftly kill the animal. The practitioner must say a blessing before the slaughter. The animal’s head must be facing toward Mecca. The kosher method is similar, also requiring a sharp knife to cut the arteries of the animal’s neck and the stating of a blessing by someone who is Jewish ( Aghwan and Regenstein 2019 ). The stunning method shocks the animal into unconsciousness before slaughter and uses different bleeding and cutting techniques to maximize blood loss. So which of these different methods is considered less harmful to the animal—stunning before slaughter or a swift cut to the main arteries? For many years, animal rights supporters have argued stunning is a more humane method, which led Belgian to pass a law excluding the religious exemptions of halal and kosher slaughter methods. While most halal slaughters do stun the animal before cutting, most slaughters making the meat kosher require that the animal not be stunned. Thus, the issue arises for the minority of halal slaughters not stunning the animal prior and most Jewish slaughters requiring the animal to not be stunned for the meat to be deemed kosher.

The tweets use of different images, one of a meat market and the other of sheep being slaughtered, speak to the different perspectives on this issue. Al Jazeera is a Middle Eastern based news media company, many of their audience practicing Islam, while the BBC is a European-based news media company, with many of their audience not practicing Islam. Al Jazeera may be demonstrating an emic perspective, portraying the court’s ruling of the ban with the image of a meat market to signal the normalcy of halal practices, while the BBC displays a gorier photo of halal slaughter to possibly signal brutality of the non-stunning methods, an etic perspective.

Another example of the etic perspective comes from a tweet by Patrick Gathara, a Kenyan reporter, cartoonist, and satirist:

As Gathara is not American, he reports on the American cultural practice of inauguration from an outsider, etic, perspective, referring to Joe Biden as an “opposition leader” and the ceremony as a “religious oathing ritual” and Washington DC as “home to sacred monuments to revered ancestors.” Nonetheless, Gathara’s description is not technically incorrect: Biden won the Presidency by defeating the incumbent, Donald Trump, making him the opposition; inauguration does have a religious element as US Presidents swear the Oath of Office on a Bible; and the National Mall does contain monuments to ancestors like the Lincoln Memorial, honoring Abraham Lincoln. However, the description does depict the ceremony of inauguration as strange, using terms (“opposition”, “religious”, “revered ancestors”) usually reserved for describing the practices of faraway, remote, Indigenous peoples, not practices of most powerful country in the world. This is not how someone who was American would describe the swearing in of the new President of the United States. This exactly Gathara’s objective as his Twitter account presents US and other Western nations’ news using the etic perspective (which is often derogatory and distancing/othering—see the BBC tweet’s image above to non-Western nations). How one views certain practices, depends on the perspective they are taking, be that emic or etic, ethnocentric, or culturally relative.

An anthropological perspective seeks to combine the emic and etic perspectives. It understands culture practices in a culturally relative way, which views culture as patterned, learned, shared, symbolic, adaptive, and ever-changing.

Key Takeaways

• What anthropologists call “culture”, knowledge, beliefs, and practices of a group of people, is all around us, but it can be difficult to see and understand because it shapes how we see the world.
• Viewing cultural practices from the insider’s perspective with a knowledge of context and history like that of a fish in water, is taking an emic view. Believing that your culture’s way of doing things is the only and best way to do things is called ethnocentrism.
• Culture is learned—taught by someone to someone else, usually parent to child. This process is called enculturation.
• Culture is shared—groups share norms—the way things ought to be done—and values—what is true, right, and beautiful
• Culture is symbolic—culture creates meaning; it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
• Culture is patterned—practices make sense; culture is an integrated system—changes in one area, cause changes in others.
• Culture is adaptive—culture is the way humans adapt to the world; current adaptations may be maladaptive in the long term.
• Culture changes—culture constantly shifts and transforms; it is not static.
• Anthropologists use all these aspects of culture to try to understand the practices of another culture, which is called cultural relativism.

Geiling, N. (2013, July 18). The Evolution of American Barbecue. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-evolution-of-american-barbecue-13770775/

KM (no d). The History of Barbecuing. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2019/6/the-history-of-barbecuing

Lowie, R. (1917). Edward B. Tylor. American Anthropologist, 19 (2), new series, 262-268. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/660758

Suddath, C. (2009, July 03). Barbecue: A Brief History. Retrieved December 18, 2020, from https://time.com/3957444/barbecue/

Aghwan, Z. A., & Regenstein, J. M. (2019). Slaughter practices of different faiths in different countries.  Journal of animal science and technology , 61 (3), 111–121.  https://doi.org/10.5187/jast.2019.61.3.111

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art and custom (Vol. 2). J. Murray.

cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people

evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.

the notion that the beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that culture’s reasoning and history, and not be judged against the criteria of another culture

the concept that argues there is no universal system of right and wrong. What is considered “right” or “wrong” depends on the context (is relative) that that particular culture or historical time period

the insider’s (how members of the culture) view and understanding of that culture’s practices

the perspective of the outsider (how people who are not members of that culture) view and understand that culture’s practices

An Introduction to Anthropology: the Biological and Cultural Evolution of Humans Copyright © by Taylor Livingston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Guide to Writing a Culture Essay: Example Topics and Tips

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Read our crash-course guide on writing an essay about culture with basic dos and don’ts, actionable tips, and topic suggestions on various essay types.

Culture can be too big and vague a concept to comprehend, let alone explore in a short academic assignment. The trick is to establish limits within which you are going to operate. If your prompt has given you nothing to go by apart from the word count, fear not. We have created this quick primer to kickstart your paper-writing process. It’s super short and general, but it should give you an idea of how to approach this task.

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Writing College Essay about Culture

College essays about culture are as diverse as the culture itself. Let’s break them into broad categories and give more focused tips for each type depending on its purpose and intended audience.

How to approach “What is culture” essays

This type of essay is less of a cultural analysis and more of a definition. You will have to define culture. It may be your original take, especially if the prompt asks you, “What culture means to you?” However, it also must ring true for others and be relatable enough.

— Read several definitions and compare them. What is common in their understanding of culture, and what differs?

— Choose the general approach . For example, will you be defining culture from an aesthetical, anthropological, social, psychological, political, or some other perspective? Would you describe it as arts and intellectual achievements, as customs and social behaviors, as values and norms accepted by a group, etc.?

— Come up with your perspective , the one you think is the most relevant for you, your peers, and your colleagues within the context of your essay.

— Accept limitations . You should understand that your definition may work wonderfully in some contexts but may be lacking essential properties in others. For example, your understanding of culture fits public discussions about cultural appropriation but would not necessarily fit archeological research. As much as we strive for universality, it’s important to acknowledge those limitations.

Tips on writing a culture shock essay

Culture shock essay has strong elements of narrative and personal essays. Even if you are writing a definition of culture shock, it begs some anecdotal evidence to illustrate those experiences. Here are some rules of thumb for essays on culture shock.

— Don’t just list the things you have found baffling in another culture and leave it at that. Although culture shock is by definition a conflict, your essay should be rooted in empathy and seeking to reconcile cultural differences based on shared humanity.

— Contextualize things that induce the shock. Explain the beliefs, history, or rituals behind those things. Do your research.

— Use parallels or reverse the situation to elicit empathy and understanding from your audience. For example, “In his culture, sneezing in public is inappropriate, so he felt compelled to leave the classroom each time he felt he was about to sneeze. Not unlike us, when we have to, say, burp.”

Writing culture identity essay

Cultural identity is one of the most popular topics for personal statements. For many young people applying to college, it’s a touchstone for reflecting on who they are as a person in this big world. For some scholarships, a cultural identity essay is a compulsory component. Here are a few tips on writing impactful cultural essays about your identity:

— Avoid clichés . Concentrate on unique experiences — childhood memories, family traditions, an aspect of identity that is particularly meaningful to you. Remember that your essay’s purpose is to stand out among others.

— Put an original spin on this topic by subverting the expectation and ending a seemingly predictable story with a twist. Alternatively, address one aspect of your culture, one issue that might not be widely discussed outside of it (for example, colorism within your community and your experience with that.)

— End on a positive note . If you are talking about your struggles to fit in or difficulties with learning a new language, focus not on the challenges but on the ways you have conquered them, on things you’ve learned, and on the character traits that helped you triumph over the adversity.

Advice on approaching “My Culture” essay

This essay is somewhat different from the cultural identity essay discussed above. It’s less personal and more representative. Here, you act as a guide showing your friends around the place you know better than they do. There are several ways to approach this topic:

— Highlights . Your short essay on culture cannot possibly give a comprehensive view of such a complex thing as lifestyle, folklore, and knowledge of the entire ethnic group. Concentrate on the several things you believe are the most interesting, lesser-known, misunderstood, or most representative of your culture.

— One thing . Physical objects can be very relatable points of entry into other cultures.

— Choose an object (alternatively, a ritual or a custom) and explain its significance in your culture. Of course, it’s just one facet of your world, but it can reflect many things like a drop of water.

— Debunk stereotypes . If your culture is routinely represented in media in simplified, reduced ways, addressing those depictions can be a great take on the topic. Debunk myths or explain the historical context for how those misconceptions originated and proliferated.

Identity and Culture Essay Topics

If, after reading the guidelines above, you still struggle to come up with the topic, here are some suggestions for inspiration:

Indian culture essay

— How appropriations of Indian culture by American yoga enthusiasts make me feel

— Caste bias in the American Indian community

— Mixing tradition and trends in the brown beauty industry

— Arranged marriages, their role in a community, and personal dilemmas

— Things about Bollywood people misunderstand

African American culture essay topics

— Soul sisters: how race segregation split music genres in XX century America

— The true meaning behind “black-sounding” names

— Nourishing with love: health trends in soul food

— Harlem Renaissance Fashion and its Significance in Contemporary Culture

— Misogyny in hip hop and the real tension of gender relationships in the African-American community

Asian American culture topics

— Harmful real-life consequences of Lotus Blossom and Dragon Lady stereotypes in modern media

— Japanese “picture brides” of the early 20th century and their role in community building

— Healing narratives of Cambodian American authors

— Chinese-American adoptees’ struggle for identity

— Vietnamese American war babies

Mexican culture essay topics

— Spicy Latina fetishization in romantic comedies

— Frida Kahlo’s authenticity and constructed identity

— The visual narrative of Mexican history in the Muralist movement

— Indigenous languages of Mexico

— Pre-Columbian elements in Dia de los Muertos

Art and Popular Culture Essay Topics

The word “culture” conjures up museums, symphonic orchestras, theaters, libraries, and universities. However, everything that surrounds us is our culture. How we dress, where we live, how we greet each other, how we entertain ourselves. Yes, arts and history often take center stage, but it doesn’t mean you have to limit your culture essays to those! This time, let’s start with topics for popular culture essays for a change.

Pop culture essay topics

— The rise and fall of high school movies

— The appeal of K-dramas: the secret of global popularity

— How “Netflixing” as a consumer habit changes the narratives in the series

— “Good” monsters vs. “bad”: visual language in films

— Quest for meaning in Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods”

Art and music topics

— Protest music of the 20th century

— Finding a contemporary divide between art and craft

— Space-age discoveries and their influence on music

— Transgression and reliability in performance art

— Narrative techniques of fake-fiction documentaries

Culture history topics

— Written word vs. spoken word: shifting perceptions throughout history

— Gender and sexuality in Cassone’s paintings of Renaissance

— Baroque music and its role in the community

— The part of book printing in witch hunt trials

— Land attainment mythology in Irish culture

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Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It Essay

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Introduction

Evidence of competing understanding of culture, reasons for the need of culture discussion, reference list.

Culture is defined as peoples thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is the significant package of inner values, and norms basically believed by groups of people in the world or regions and the recognizable effect those values and norms have on individuals outward characteristics and the surroundings. In the book by Arnold (1993) culture is meant to unite people in a community, but not to separate them and is associated with the esthetic and intellectual scarcity only in its elitists form. Culture is considered by some writers to be among the most complicated words in English language and difficult to define in any other languages (Arnold 1993).

The main problem in our culture is the unsolved case of going beyond minority prose especially when addressing most urgent political and social issues. Lack of many voices during the historical development of this form of extended communication makes it become difficult; therefore, the central issue is democracy in culture. For instance, general values may seem obvious in some areas in the world with different history of social class. It is said that every person has right to be heard, but in realty, only few voices are heard. The culture and writings of the educated elites are the ones that matter a lot. This indicates that we have cultural and social differences that are divided according to class of people such as the educated and illiterates. The distinct intellectuals read books as well as attend seminars, and watch little television.Therefore, they assume that television does not matter very much in the culture. But the idea is not favorable to the rest, because television is the form of media that reaches majority. It is actively defining the period and shaping issues in away that is not happening in other mass media like the films or the newspapers.

Another evidence of culture is experience of watching drama. Drama used to be a special activity in local halls some times back, but it has become an everyday event for majority. This is true because in most film and television studios, drama has now taken the center stage and by watching drama, most societies have been transformed. The need for a society to view itself in a complex and puzzling social system has been replaced by television. This means that, the world has been shaped through the coverage of television especially in cases of wars where majority of individuals do not experience directly, but become part of it when they watch on the television. The book by Williams (1985) argues against the idea that, generalizing technology in away creates a global village. Instead, it’s used for many cultural forms, which existed before television, these include; news, discussions on public affairs, education, and drama. Therefore, television brings in changes, though the continuities from earlier forms of communication still exist. For example, today, in music television, the channels of music videos use similar fast –moving sequences, this is an indication that they are responding with curiosity and openness to a more mobile kind of society. There are also new forms like drama-documentaries where the camera shows a documentary format live, while at the same time, there is use of actors, which are enhanced by the camera.

According to Williams (1983) social change is driven by changes in material productive forces like the construction of factories.These changes are understood through ideological superstructures, such as religious ethic of hard work or the program of political party. The version that divides society into two areas, social production, and cultural superstructure is absolutely insufficient, because people do not leave aside their experiences when entering in a factory, school or hospital, and what is being labeled as ideologies superstructure is not simply a set of ideas, but of practices and institutions (Raymond 1983).

These cultural discussions were important because many issues concerning the society were discussed. Through the analysis of modernism in art, artists and writers no longer depend on their teachers, but work for the market, art galleries, and publishers.Theferore, this indicates that society has made a step on improving its culture as many people are educated and able to work independently without supervision. It also shows that, through this modernism, people bring their own sense and possibilities, with the specific kinds of cultural capital; thus compete favorably in market field.

Modernist movements in art, drama, and literature are a response to city life, migration, exile, and the terrible experience of terrorism. Artists respond to take place in relation to the dominant class that has little interest in financing revolutionary art. This shows the new changes that have developed in the area of communication (Raymond 1985).

Culture is a very important aspect in peoples life because it modifies our thoughts, feelings, and our actions.Therefore,different cultures should unite and work together as one so as to improve different communities and be at the same levels in terms development. All cultures are totally unique, constructed from within and must be understood on their own terms and preferably by individuals who are either members of the group or completely familiar with the groups history or language. Culture exerts such a strong force on the behavior and thought of all sentient individuals that to disregard it runs the risk of having a narrow and incomplete psychology. There is social and economical differences experienced in different cultures and these differences leads to problems. For instance, it is said that every person has right to be heard, but in realty, only few voices are heard. The culture and writings of the educated elites are the ones that matter a lot. This indicates that we have cultural and social differences that are divided according to class of people such as the educated and illiterates. The distinct intellectuals read books as well as attend seminars, and watch little television. While the illiterate suffer from being discriminated.Therefore,it is advised that different cultures settle their differences and work together as one group for a better tomorrow.

Arnold, M., 1993. Culture and anarchy and other writings. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Raymond, W., 1983. Culture and society. USA: Columbia University Press.

Raymond, W., 1985. Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. USA: Columbia University Press.

• Brecht’s views on Drama
• Responsibility of Educated People to the Society
• Beginning Film Studies: Drama
• The Igbo Culture: Use of Proverbs, Folktales and Song
• People’s Culture and Ethics Relations
• The Importance and Obstacles Related to Culture
• Italian Stereotypes in the Modern Culture
• Cultural Influence by Chinese: Kung Fu
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, December 30). Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It. https://ivypanda.com/essays/culture-what-it-means-and-why-to-discuss-it/

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IvyPanda . (2021) 'Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It'. 30 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It." December 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/culture-what-it-means-and-why-to-discuss-it/.

1. IvyPanda . "Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It." December 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/culture-what-it-means-and-why-to-discuss-it/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Culture: What It Means and Why to Discuss It." December 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/culture-what-it-means-and-why-to-discuss-it/.

The Importance of Culture

11 January, 2019

11 minutes read

Author:  Richard Pircher

Culture can be defined as “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” It can also be understood as the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society. Therefore, it’s the shared patterns of our behavior and interaction which are learned through socialization. People of the same culture share a group identity that is fostered by social patterns unique to the group. Culture encompasses for example values, beliefs, symbols, norms, and patterns of behavior. It has a far-reaching impact on our everyday actions, on how we talk and think, what we wear, what we believe, how we sit at the table, and how we behave among other people. But what is the importance of culture in our society? And which components constitute our conception of culture?

Components of culture

• Patterns of behavior

What defines culture?

All cultures are characterized by constant change. As a dynamic phenomenon, cultures are under constant change and they must adapt to environmental changes. This is one of the universal features of a culture. After globalization, the world became more interconnected and today most societies consist of ethnically diverse populations. This has given rise to conflicts associated with ethnicity, religion, and ethical beliefs which are all central concepts in cultures. More than ever before, culture is no longer fixed but rather in constant motion. At a time when cultures adapt and become more fluid, a need has been identified to protect and preserve the past. There are organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) whose objectives include conserving and protecting cultural and natural heritage along with the promotion of international cooperation, peace, and security.

To answer the question about the importance of culture, one has to consider its role in people’s everyday lives. Because culture affects how people behave and interact with each other, it helps you build relationships with others when you understand other cultures and perspectives. It’s also good to understand how much in common we have with other people even if at first glance their cultures might seem completely different. We are all humans and have similar needs, hopes, fears, and things that make us happy. It doesn’t mean, however, that our cultural differences don’t matter at all. A better strategy is to acknowledge that differences exist and to fight against discrimination. The world is becoming more and more diverse as different languages, religions, economic and cultural groups blend together. We need to appreciate and understand different cultures and establish relationships with people from other backgrounds. This is the only way to build successful communities, improve our living conditions, and solve problems.

If we take a closer look at the characteristics of culture, we can identify five basic traits that define the concept of culture.

Five characteristics of culture

• Based on symbols

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Culture is learned

Culture is learned because it’s not biological or ingrained in our DNA. Children don’t inherit culture from their parents. Instead, they learn it and much of this learning occurs subconsciously without us paying any attention to it. We learn our culture not only from our families but also from institutions, other people, and the media. This process of learning is called enculturation. All humans share the same biological needs, for example, food, water, sleep, shelter, and sex, but the way we choose to fulfill those needs varies across cultures.

Culture is shared

Culture is shared because we share our culture with other members of our group. We know how to interact with these other members and we can predict their behavior based on our knowledge and expectations. The shared nature of culture doesn’t mean, however, that cultures are homogenous.

Culture is integrated

Because the various parts of a culture are interconnected, culture is also integrated. All components of culture are connected to one another and to gain a comprehensive understanding of a culture, one must learn about these different components.

Culture is dynamic

Culture is dynamic because cultures interact with each other. Cultures share ideas and symbols and they adapt to changes in the environment. Since cultures are also integrated, it means that if one component of a culture changes, it will affect all the other components, too, forcing the entire system to adapt.

Culture is based on symbols

Symbols are an integral part of every culture and they vary across different cultures. Cultures not only use symbols but they are also based on them. Symbols get their meaning when people in the same culture agree on how they should be used. Language is the most obvious example of the use of symbols within a culture but other things such as art, clothing, and money can also be defined as symbols.

It should also be pointed out that not all cultural adaptation is positive. Not all cultural practices are adaptive, and there are many examples of cultural adaptation that have been detrimental such as fast food, pollution, and climate change. But due to their dynamic nature, cultures have the ability to adapt and find solutions to these problems.

How does geography affect culture?

What influences our cultures then? One of the most profound of these factors is geography. The development of a culture is largely dependent on its geographical location. For example, locations that are ideal for hunting influence that culture by encouraging people to teach their descendants to hunt, tell hunting stories, and organize ceremonies that celebrate hunting skills. A factor such as hunting can thus become a defining characteristic of that culture. Another good example is the Japanese culture which relies heavily on the attribute of water. The fact that Japan is an island surrounded by water has influenced its culture from its creation myth to natural resources such as fish and growing of rice. Even more so, Japan as an island has historically been limited because of its geography, and this has given rise to art forms such as haiku poems and bonsai trees which are characterized by their limitations. Geography affects cultures from the number of languages spoken in a given area to the clothes people wear, their political ideas, and even religions. For example, on the island of Guinea, people speak more than 800 languages. This is because New Guinea is mountainous and it’s difficult for people from one area to come into contact with people from other areas. These different groups, therefore, learned to keep to themselves and developed their own languages. Culture also has its impact on the clothes that people wear, and this has historically been determined by geography, too. People in the Arctic whose culture relies on hunting whales and seals wear several layers of warm clothes, usually manufactured from animal skin. In contrast, tribes in the rainforests wear very little clothing and their economies are centered around plant life. In terms of government and religion, the ancient Greeks, for example, developed a political culture centered around city-states because their geography was mountainous and it was thus difficult for large kingdoms to arise. The Mesopotamian and Egyptian religions, on the other hand, differed in the fact that Mesopotamian gods were considered less kind than the Egyptian gods. This is believed to be the result of unpredictable floods in the Mesopotamian rivers and rather consistent and predictable floods in the Nile.

How does culture affect business?

When looking at modern cultures, we can see the many effects that cultures have, for example, on business. During a business meeting where people from different cultures are communicating with one another, cultural differences have to be taken into account. There is more than merely a language barrier that needs to be overcome. These differences can concern people’s sensitivity to time, the way of communicating, risk-taking, decision-making, and thinking of others, all of which need to be addressed. Cultural differences can often impact the success or failure of multicultural business negotiations. When segmenting target groups for a product or service, businesses have to spend time on examining the cultural expectations and values of different groups. Culture influences people’s tastes and preferences, and the same strategies will not work for all audiences. Americans, for example, have very different expectations from advertising and marketing than Asian consumers. Business owners must account for differences throughout the product’s life cycle, from its design to marketing and beyond.

Culture affects our every facet of life. Most societies these days have become multicultural as more and more people migrate across countries and continents. We live around, socialize and work with people from different cultural backgrounds and different parts of the world. While their values and beliefs might be different from ours, we should accept these differences and broaden our own views in order to attain harmony in these culturally diverse environments. We should acknowledge the importance of culture in communication and in contributing to our identity and sense of belonging as part of a social group. Culture can be seen as a uniting force that is part of our daily lives and an integral part of our being, defining the way we treat other people and ourselves.

• Caplan, L. (2018): “What Factors Influence Culture? What are the Characteristics of Culture?” eNotes. https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-factors-influence-culture-98429
• Community Tool Box (2018): “Understanding Culture and Diversity in Building Communities.” The University of Kansas. https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/culture/cultural-competence/culture-and-diversity/main
• eNotes (2015): “How Does Geography Affect Culture?” https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-geography-affect-culture-474205
• Nowaczyk, J., (2018): “The Five Basic Characteristics of Cultures.” Study.com https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-five-basic-characteristics-of-cultures.html
• OpinionFront (2018): “Why is Culture Important and How Does it Influence People?” https://opinionfront.com/why-is-culture-important
• Oxford Dictionaries (2019): “Definition of Culture.” Oxford University Press. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/culture
• Zimmermann, K. A. (2012): “What is Culture.” Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html

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Democratic societies are often characterized by extensive pluralism of religions, cultures, ethnicities, and worldviews, on the basis of which citizens make claims against their state. Democratic states are additionally characterized by a commitment to treat all citizens equally, and so they require fair and just ways to wade through and respond to these claims. This entry considers cultural claims in particular.

Cultural claims are ubiquitous in political and legal spaces. Not only do individuals and groups both make cultural claims against the state, often for legal or political accommodations, but the state often explains its choices in terms of protecting particular aspects of its culture. This entry will first examine the ways in which “culture” is defined by political and moral philosophers: culture-as-encompassing group, culture-as-social-formation, culture-as-narrative/dialogue, and culture-as-identity. Over the course of this discussion, the “essentialist” challenge will be introduced: an essentialist account of culture is one that treats certain key characteristics of that culture as defining it and correspondingly all of its members must share certain key traits in order to be treated as members (for more, see Phillips 2010). In particular, the entry goes on to note that early conceptions of culture-as-encompassing groups are criticized for being essentialist, and later conceptions are attempts to reformulate culture in ways that avoid the essentialist challenge.

Following an articulation of these main ways of understanding culture, the entry turns to an assessment of distinct (though occasionally overlapping) types of cultural claims that are pressed against the state by minority groups: exemption claims, assistance claims, self-determination claims, recognition claims, preservation claims (and claims against coerced cultural loss), defensive claims in legal settings, and exclusive use claims (claims against cultural appropriation). There are both justifications for, and objections to, these claims, and they often hinge on how “culture” is understood. In many cases, the disputes about the justifiability of these claims hinge on competing understandings of what culture is, and especially, how valuable it is to those who are members, as will be shown below. Finally, the entry will close with an assessment of cases where a majority community makes cultural claims to justify actions, mainly in the context of controlling immigration and, in some cases, refusing entry to potential migrants all together, as well as the cultural demands it makes of those who are admitted, and the range of justifications and objections offered in these cases. This section considers the content of the majority culture, to which newcomers are asked to adhere, as well as how forcibly they can be “asked” to do so.

1.1 Culture-as-encompassing-group

1.2 culture-as-social-formation, 1.3 culture-as-dialogue, 1.4 culture-as-identity (or identity rather than culture), 2.1 exemption rights, 2.2 assistance rights, 2.3 self-determination rights, 2.4 recognition rights, 2.5 cultural preservation rights, 2.6 rights against cultural loss, 2.7 cultural defense rights, 2.8 exclusive cultural use rights (or rights against cultural appropriation), 3.1 cultural continuity and exclusion rights, 3.2 cultural continuity and integration enforcement rights, 4. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. defining culture.

Defining the term “culture” is very challenging: it has been described as both a “notoriously overbroad concept” (Song 2009: 177) and a “notoriously ambiguous concept” (Eisenberg 2009: 7). It is deployed in multiple ways: as the entry will go on to consider in more length, the term “culture” can refer to the set of norms, practices and values that characterize minority and majority groups, for example by noting that the Hasidic Jewish communities in New York practice a unique “culture”, or by describing Italian or Senegalese culture. But it is also used in other ways, for example, to refer to “bro” culture or “hipster” culture, or the culture of British football fans. Moreover, any one person can be a member of multiple cultures—someone (like this writer!) can be a member of the Canadian culture, the Ottawan culture, the Jewish culture, and the academic culture at the same time. Contextual considerations will explain why the norms, practices, and values that define each of these cultures become relevant at a particular moment. Moreover, only some of these cultures have political and legal relevance; only those that do are the focus of this entry.

In the political and legal spheres, there is widespread disagreement about what culture is , and the next section is focused on elaborating these distinct views of culture. There is however considerable agreement that whatever it is, it matters to people and the meaning and value it provides to the lives of individuals are among the most important reasons, if not the most important ones, to defend and protect it in legal and political spaces. This value is why it is important to attempt to discover what culture is and correspondingly why, and which aspects of it in particular, should or should not be protected in the public sphere. Notice that the observation that cultures are valuable to people, and indeed that they bring value to the lives of individuals, is not the same as saying that individual cultural practices are all good. Any defensible account of culture must take seriously the importance of culture in general without defending all of its instantiations. There are four main ways in which culture has been interpreted: as an encompassing group, as social formation, in dialogic terms, and in identity terms.

One way to think about culture is as a kind of all-encompassing whole, which shapes all or most dimensions of our lives. It is perhaps Will Kymlicka’s formulation of a “societal culture” that is most responsible for generating serious reflection on the nature of culture understood in this way. A societal culture

provides its members with meaningful ways of life across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres. (Kymlicka 1996: 76)

Kymlicka explains that a vibrant societal culture provides a “context for choice”, i.e., it provides the resources that individuals rely on to make sense of their world and the choices it offers. On this account, nation-states are well-described as having a societal culture, as are Indigenous groups and sub-state national minority groups (for example, the Catalans or the Tibetans); immigrant groups which sustain a range of cultural practices and norms even as they integrate into a larger “societal culture” are not.

Kymlicka is not alone in offering an encompassing account of culture. Michael Walzer too offers such an account, proposing that we understand political communities as “communities of character”, in which members are bound by a “world of common meanings” (Walzer 1983: 28). Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz also describe so-called “encompassing” groups, in which their members

find in them a culture which shapes to a large degree their tastes and opportunities, and which provides an anchor for their self-identification and the safety of effortless secure belonging. (Margalit & Raz 1990: 448)

Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal say of an encompassing group that its culture “covers various important aspects of life”, and in so saying, they offer as an example the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture:

it defines people’s activities (such as Torah study in Ultra-Orthodox culture), determines occupation (such as circumciser), and defines important relationships (such as marriage). It affects everything people do: cooking, architectural style, common language, literary and artistic traditions, music, customs, dress, festivals, ceremonies…the culture influences its members’ taste, the types of options they have and the meaning of these options, and the characteristics they consider significant in their evaluation of themselves and others. (Margalit & Halbertal 1994: 498)

Whereas Kymlicka emphasizes the freedom that is offered by a robust societal culture, Margalit and Halbertal speak of its role in securing members’ “personality identity” (Margalit & Halbertal 1994: 502) and Walzer of its importance in shaping a “collective consciousness”. Although these scholars justify the protection of a robust culture for many reasons, they agree that what culture does, fundamentally, is offer a background value system that helps members select among options and interpret their value, including for example with respect to certain forms of employment, or education, or family structure and child-rearing. Walzer captures the way in which culture informs how even the most basic of things are understood:

a single necessary good, and one that is always necessary—food, for example—carries different meanings in different places. Bread is the staff of life, the body of Christ, the symbol of the Sabbath, the means of hospitality, and so on. (Walzer 1983: 8)

Much is illuminated by these accounts of culture, including especially why depleted societal cultures may be less able to provide the context for choice that Kymlicka emphasizes, or why one’s “personality identity” may thereby be threatened: if a cultural group’s educational, political, or economic systems are weakened, their capacity to support members to make sense of the world, and choose among options, is likewise weakened. Moreover, this account illustrates the wrong of undermining the cultures of others: if a culture is undermined, the choices available to its members are thereby reduced. We can see this with respect to Indigenous culture in many states: where states have actively attempted to erase Indigenous culture, the result has been severe social dislocation and alienation among Indigenous peoples whose context for choice has been substantially weakened.

However, multiple objections have been launched at this way of understanding culture, most of which are variants on what is termed the “essentialist” objection; notice, though, that the views described above are not believed by their holders to be essentialist. The essentialist objection targets what it sees as an assumption that members of a culture will hold the same set of practices, norms, and values to be important, and in the same measure. But, say critics, this assumption does not hold: in any actual culture, members will be differently committed to its defining practices and norms, and indeed, there will necessarily be disagreement around which of its practices and norms are defining in the first place. The essentialist objection says, roughly, that treating culture as encompassing wrongly does one of the following things: 1) it proclaims that certain features of a culture are at its core and therefore immutable, on pain of dissolving the culture (Eisenberg 2009: 120), and correspondingly that cultures are necessarily bounded and determinate rather than contested and fluid (Moore 2019; Patten 2014: 38); 2) having identified these features as at a culture’s core, it excludes those who believe themselves to be members but do not  conform to, display, or respect these features (Parvin 2008: 318–19); and, 3) it ignores the reality that most people in a liberal society “draw their identity from a multiplicity of roles and communities and memberships at any one time” (Parvin 2008: 321), which can variously have social salience, depending on the context, both independently of, and sometimes in conjunction with, cultural identities (Moore 2019). In summary, a too-encompassing account of what culture is for its members runs the risk of treating the boundaries of a culture as if they are determinate, unshifting, and as though its members display no variance (and perhaps cannot display variance) in their commitment to the culture as a whole and its defining practices.

The alternative accounts of culture that are considered below are all, at least in part, intended to respond to the essentialist challenge; their objective is, in other words, to generate a plausible account of what culture is , and correspondingly what it means to be a member of a particular cultural group, that can be deployed to make sense of legal and political controversies, and ideally adjudicate among them, without succumbing to the essentialist challenge. A caveat: the views of culture treated below should be understood as “ideal types”, characterized so as to understand its key features, how it is differentiated from other views, and why it does not fall victim (in its own estimation) to the essentialist challenge.

One attempt to reconceive culture in a way that responds to the essentialist challenge, but which retains a view of culture as largely encompassing, proposes that cultures are defined by their members’ shared experience of social formation (Patten 2014: 39). On this “social lineage” account of culture, what makes a culture is that its members are subject to a “set of formative conditions that are distinct from the formative conditions that are imposed on others” (Patten 2014: 51). The experience of being subjected to common institutions, understood broadly to include shared educational spaces, languages, media, as well as shared historical traditions and stories, overlapping familial structures, and so on, shapes a sense among cultural group members that they share a distinct way of seeing the world, and that certain assumptions that they possess are shared by, or at least understood by, others. This view emphasizes a culture’s historical trajectory, but does not require that its defining norms, values and practices are unchanging over time. On the contrary,

internal variation is possible because subjection to a common set of formative influences does not imply that people will end up with a homogeneous set of beliefs or values. (Patten 2014: 52)

As a result, cultures are sites in which members can contest and deliberate their meaning with enough shared assumptions about the way the world works that they can recognize each other as engaged in the same project.

Patten writes of the institutions to which cultural group members are subject that they are at least to some degree “isolated from the institutions and practices that work to socialize outsiders” (Patten 2014: 52), and thus serve to distinguish one culture from another. On this view, significant emphasis is placed on who is controlling the levers of the institutions that shape members’ formation: that is, it matters that members are in control of the institutions to which they, themselves, are subject, so that they can plausibly shape their own social experience, and the experience of younger members, in fundamental ways. Where the control over this social formation is denied, a culture’s members are thereby harmed; when it is coercively denied, there is very likely an injustice demanding remedy.

By focusing on the shared experience of subjection to common cultural institutions, this account avoids the accusation that what defines a culture is the stability of its basic norms and values over time: culture is not, on this view, a static entity. Instead, what matters is that cultural group members believe themselves to be members of a cultural group, and that this belief’s foundation is in the experience of common cultural institutions, rather than in the specific practices that are central to the group. These central practices can change fundamentally, without the cultural group itself dissolving. However, this view is subject to criticism by scholars who worry that those who control the levers of formation do not represent the views of all members (Phillips 2018), that instead they are using their relative positions of power to create and enforce cultural norms and practices that do not command (or would not command, without coercion) widespread agreement.

The latter objection—that a so-called culture is the product of some but not all of its members leads some scholars to rearticulate culture in terms of the ways in which it is constructed via dialogue among members and their engagement with each other. The purpose of emphasizing that a culture’s members are the source of its main practices, values and norms, is to emphasize that a culture is not “given” to its members from above, as a fixed and unalterable entity. Rather, members of a culture are, in a fundamental way, its authors. Here is James Tully explaining this: cultures are

continuously contested, imagined and reimagined, transformed and negotiated, both by their members and through their interactions with others. (Tully 1995: 11)

Seyla Benhabib similarly emphasizes the narrative aspect of cultures, noting that insiders

experience their traditions, stories, rituals and symbols, tools, and material living conditions through shared, albeit contested and contestable, narrative accounts. (Benhabib 2002: 5)

That there is contestation among members, and that its main elements are under constant negotiation, does not render a culture any less meaningful for its members. What may seem confusing is the idea that a contestable and constantly shifting culture warrants protection; perhaps protection means artificially halting the natural changes that a culture would undergo, by protecting elements of it at a moment in time. But defenders of this view demand protection in the form of ensuring that the forums in which culture is negotiated, shared and transmitted, are sustained in robust and inclusive ways, and without unwanted interference by forces external to the culture. As with the culture-as-formation account, the emphasis is on the capacity of group members to shape the norms and practices that are central, rather than with the norms and practices themselves.

How does this view respond to the worry about asymmetrical power distribution within a cultural group? Focusing on the ways in which a culture’s central characteristics are determined via negotiation among members is an attempt to be attentive to the power structures that shape whose voice is heard during these negotiations, in minority and majority cultures (Dhamoon 2006). In many, and indeed perhaps in most, cultures, historically the dominant voices have been male, and one impact of that has generally been a gendered view of the how best to organize cultural life, that has reduced the rights of women (and other minorities) in myriad ways, often to their disadvantage as well as against their will. For some, the oppression of less powerful members by those who hold the levers of power generates at least partial skepticism about the value of protecting or accommodating culture in liberal, democratic states, especially in cases where it may seem that “multiculturalism is bad for women” (Okin 1999). On this view, cultural practices that undermine the rights of women (and other minorities) should not be tolerated in liberal democratic states.

The recognition that many cultural practices are disadvantageous to women (and other minorities) does not propel all political theorists to adopt a skeptical attitude towards them in all cases. For some, it is an opportunity to see that cultures can be valued even by those who are putatively oppressed, even as they work from the inside to influence the direction of their culture, towards less oppressive norms and practices. For example, although often sidelined from their centres of power, many women value their cultures in ways that press them not to exit, but rather to engage in processes of reforming inegalitarian practices and norms, from within (Deveaux 2007). This way of thinking about culture and its contents celebrates, and encourages, moves to “democratize” the mechanisms by which a cultural group’s main norms, values and practices are adopted, and defends public cultures that are genuinely open to multiple voices (Lenard 2012).

This narrative or dialogic account of culture thus responds well to the essentialist challenge, by denying that the defining features of a culture must be static and equally valuable to all members of a cultural group. But, it must respond to another challenge, namely, the individuation challenge (Moore 2019). If an account of culture is going to be robust enough to define the entities that should be entitled to additional political and legal consideration in various ways, including with respect to additional rights protections or exemptions from certain legal and political requirements, it must also be able to identify with some specificity the boundaries of a particular, discrete, culture and who legitimately counts as a member for the purposes of respecting the political and legal claims made as a result. But this can be a challenge to accomplish.

To see why, consider Benhabib’s account of the ways in which cultures are observed from the outside, and the way they are experienced from the inside. The observer is largely responsible, she says, for imposing “unity and coherence on cultures”, whereas from the inside, its participants

One effect of understanding the culture in this way is that while many of its members will hold deeply to the central values and take deep satisfaction in participating in the central cultural traditions, many others will dip in and out of its central practices, and pick and choose among its central values and norms. So, just who counts as a member is blurry, and this blurriness may appear to be a problem when membership is said to confer rights and privileges that are not available to non-members. There is an inevitable tension between the need to individuate cultures for political reasons and the boundaries of cultures which are inevitably poorly demarcated. Only context will enable us to resolve the political questions that will thereby emerge.

To answer the challenge of how to identify a culture, and its members, one proposal focuses on the subjective component associated with belonging to a cultural group. Take this example, described by Margaret Moore: although there is deep division in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, the differences are neither religious (the conflict is not about distinctive interpretations of a religious text, and religious figures are not targeted for violence), nor cultural, since surveys of cultural values of both communities reveal considerable overlap among the values that competing communities hold (Moore 1999: 35). She says, rather, a focus on shared identities among rival groups makes more sense of the conflict.  A largely or partly identity-focused view highlights that one key dimension of culture is the way in which it shapes the identity of cultural group members. As well, such a view highlights that culture is a thing to which many people will have important connections, but which will be defining for them in multiple and distinct ways. An identity-focused view has clear merits: for example, it can explain why individuals remain nominally attached to a culture, even though its centrally defining features shift historically over time, and even if they do not engage with some of its more traditional aspects.

Additionally, an identity-focused view can accommodate identities that are not obviously culturally based, for example, including LGBTQ+ identities (Eisenberg 2009: 20; for a discussion of cultural/identity claims in an LGBTQ+ context, see Ghosh 2018: chapter 4). Indeed, an identity-focused view aims to circumvent the difficulty of identifying what specific material is legitimately cultural material. As noted above, scholars of minority cultures frequently note that there is a wide variety of claims made by a wide variety of groups, and these groups are defined by an assortment of distinct characteristics, including race, ethnicity, religion and sexuality. Say its defenders, a focus on identity rather than culture may be preferable because

the term identity covers more ground in the sense that it can refer to religious, linguistic, gendered, Indigenous and other dimensions of self-understanding. (Eisenberg 2009: 2)

2. Minority Cultural Rights Claims

The four views of culture described above inform the cultural claims that both individuals and groups make against the state. The specific threats that individuals and groups face, and which demand a kind of protection, are distinct, as are the responses that states may have in response to the claims made by individuals and groups (Eisenberg 2009: 20–21). In some cases, claims are made for accommodations for all members of a group qua group; in others, claims are made with respect to particular individuals; and there may well be connection among these. For example, a group may demand language protection policies, or an individual may claim a right to speak her mother tongue in legal proceedings. These rights are related to each other, and may be in some cases derived from one another: one reason an individual has a right to speak her mother tongue in legal proceedings may be because the state has recognized her language as an official language either of the state, or of a sub-state jurisdiction, for example. As a matter of accommodation , it will be important in what follows to notice when claims are made for accommodations that apply to individuals and when they are accommodations that apply to groups; although some philosophers are keen to assess whether cultural rights are best understood as individual or group rights (Casals 2006), the analysis below proceeds by assuming that they can be both (following Levy 2000: 125).

Notice as well that the term “accommodation” is a kind of catch-all to include the wide range of claims an individual or group can make against a state on the basis of culture. Political philosophers have attempted to distinguish among these claims in myriad ways, in order to make sense of them. Many such rights are claimed by immigrant groups (typically) to a state, who require certain accommodations from the state in order to better integrate into that state. In the larger debate around the value of multiculturalism, there is considerable discussion about which sorts of accommodations encourage the integration of, especially, culturally distinct newcomers, and which sorts permit or even encourage their separation from the larger society (e.g., Sniderman & Hagendoorn 2007). Some scholars worry, as well, that a focus on how best to accommodate cultural minority groups travels with ignoring (perhaps wilfully) more important questions of redistribution to those who are less well off (Barry 2001; Fraser 1995). In general, however, multicultural theorists agree that accommodation rights are most defensible when they support the integration of minorities in general, and newcomers in particular, as well as when they are aimed at remedying persistent inequalities between majority and minority groups.

It is worth noting that not everyone readily agrees that “culture” should be treated as a source of distinct legal and political claims, however. For example, Sarah Song points out that so-called “multicultural” claims are often in fact claims to accommodate a wide range of groups, including racial, religious and ethnic groups. Many political theorists of cultural rights appear to believe that there are distinct and recognizable cultural groups, making distinctive cultural claims, whereas in their example-giving they rely on a “wide range of examples involving religion, language, ethnicity, nationality, and race” (Song 2009: 177). Rarely is “culture” alone the basis for a claim against a state. Rather, says Song, so-called cultural claims are in fact often demands for other well-understood and defensible democratic goods. Most such demands are for religious accommodations, well-defended by standard liberal defenses of freedom of conscience; others are demands for reparations for past and ongoing wrong, in the form of affirmative action; others yet are demands for democratic inclusion, often rooted in a morally problematic history of deliberate exclusion. Once the reasons for these “cultural” demands are revealed clearly, we will often find democratically defensible reasons to respect and accommodate them, without needing to resort to relying on culture as a distinct entity, giving rise to a distinct set of rights-claims. The result is that the controversy associated with properly defining cultures and identifying their members can be avoided in many instances. However, this analysis can make it difficult to treat cases where something called “culture” interacts with, or supplements, religious, ethnic, and racial claims.

Take the case of the choice, made by referendum, to ban minarets on mosques in Switzerland. The defensibility of the ban has been the subject of deliberation among political philosophers, and one key point of contention has been whether and to what extent minarets are religiously required by Islam. Many interpreters propose that, since minarets are not obligatory according to Islamic religious requirements, the choice to ban them is regrettable (because of what it says about the public place of Islam in Switzerland), but it does not violate the religious freedom of practising Muslims in Switzerland, and as a result is permissible (Miller 2016). In making this claim, however, what is ignored is the cultural significance of minarets. Without a recognition of the distinct place of culture in certain claims, a full understanding of the minaret case cannot be reached. The same challenge can be seen in deliberations around whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear face coverings in public spaces. Some commentators suggest that, because (according to some interpretations) Islamic texts do not appear to require face coverings, women can be denied the right to engage in this practice, without violating their religious freedom. In making this argument, its defenders notice that the choice to cover faces is in effect a (mere) cultural interpretation of Islamic requirements, as evidenced by the fact that only some communities of practising Muslims engage in the practice. For some scholars, it is essential to separate religious from cultural claims—liberal democratic states take religious claims very seriously as matters of conscience, and have a long history of zealously protecting religious freedom. So, having determined that a claim is not one of religious freedom, such scholars believe they can comfortably deny the request for permission to cover faces in public spaces. However, ignoring the cultural dimensions of the claim—or treating them as though they are obviously of less significance than the underlying religious claim—fails to treat the case properly. In particular, it fails to take seriously that religious obligations necessarily have cultural interpretations, that a full recognition of religious freedom entails recognizing their cultural interpretations, and that specifically cultural legal and political accommodation (of a religious commitment) will thereby be called for.

In what follows, distinct types of cultural claims, made against a state’s major institutions, will be examined. These claims are, as will be seen, sometimes made by individuals and sometimes by groups. Where relevant, the analysis will highlight whether the concept of culture that is being deployed is culture-as-encompassing group, culture-as-social-formation, culture-as-narrative, or culture-as-identity. The analysis will not always be neat. In some cases, there will be multiple defenses of a cultural right, which rely on distinct understandings of culture.

Perhaps the most familiar type of cultural claim made against the state is in the form of request for exemptions from rules and regulations that typically apply to all citizens. Exemption rights respond to the fact that, in liberal democracies, laws and practices are meant—genuinely—to treat all citizens equally, but that there are some which inadvertently impose disadvantage on certain minorities. The worry to be resolved is that minority citizens are unintentionally or accidentally burdened by the normal application of certain laws (Levy 2000: 130), in ways that treat them unfairly, which can be resolved by exemptions from certain laws and normal practices (Quong 2006; Gutmann 2003). The extension of exemption rights then is understood as a

a recognition of that difference, as an attempt not to unduly burden the minority culture or religion en route to the laws’ legitimate goals. (Levy 2000: 130)

For example, some Sikhs request exemption from laws that require wearing motorcycle or construction-site helmets. Although Sikhism is a religion, Sikhs describe the requirement that they wear a turban not quite as a religious requirement, but rather as a symbol of their faith and commitment to Sikh values, as well as an expression of their identity (Sikh Faith FAQs in Other Internet Resources ). Without exemption from these laws, Sikhs would be excluded from taking advantage of opportunities that are meant to be available to all citizens on an equal basis. The same is true of Indigenous communities, who have requested exemptions from generally applicable laws that limit hunting and fishing, explaining that such limits undermine their traditional way of life, or make it hard (or impossible) for them to sustain themselves (Levy 2000: 128). Before Sunday-closing laws were abandoned in Canada and the United States, religious minorities were occasionally granted exemptions from them. In these cases, as described above and without legally provided exemptions, people (usually minorities) must choose between participating in opportunities that should be available to all citizens on an equal basis or to respect their (cultural) understanding of what their religion requires of them.

The request for exemption can be lightly distinguished from the request for rule modification. As indicated, exemption requests are, as they sound, requests that individuals be exempted from certain requirements that are meant to apply to all citizens equally; modification requests ask for changes in existing, majority, practices to accommodate certain other, minority, practices. Sikhs sometimes request exemption from laws that would, otherwise, require them to remove their turban as above; in other cases, they request uniform modifications, so that turbans are treated as one among several available head coverings for those carrying out a specific role. The same is true of uniform modification requests made by Muslim women who cover their faces or heads, and Jewish men who wear yarmulkes, where uniforms have traditionally required an uncovered head or face, or where they have required particular head coverings (as in the Sikh case, they may also be presented as requests for exemptions). Similarly, when observant Muslims request short breaks in their work day to pray at specific times of day, or when Jewish and Muslim students ask for changes in the provision of foods (to accommodate kosher and halal obligations) in school cafeterias, the request is for modification rather than exemption.

In most cases, the early failure of a legitimate law to modify or exempt new practices is unintentional. That is, the laws or practices in place were not adopted intentionally with the purpose of excluding, but were rather adopted under the assumption that they treat the existing population fairly. But widespread immigration has diversified many populations in substantial ways. Immigrants often travel with practices and norms that are, when they arrive, unfamiliar to the states they are joining, and as a result states are asked to modify certain laws, and exempt newcomers from certain others. There may be cases where there are legitimate public reasons to persist in applying certain laws in spite of the disadvantage they generate for newcomers. As well, there are cases where states persist in demanding obedience to laws and practices that clearly disadvantage newcomers attempting to integrate, but where there are no good mitigating factors to justify persisting in the imposing of disadvantage (as when the Danish town of Randers passed a law requiring that pork be served “on an equal footing with other foods” in school cafeterias). In these latter cases, the exclusionary impact of the laws is no longer inadvertent, and they are generally condemnable for perpetuating unnecessary and unjustified exclusion from political, economic and social spaces.

It is not always the case that individuals or groups claiming cultural rights to exemption and modification are immigrants, but that is often the case. Indigenous communities ask for exemptions, as do certain orthodox religious communities. These cases will be discussed below in the section focused on cultural preservation.

Demands for assistance call on the state to preserve the conditions under which various elements of a culture can persist and even thrive, especially minority languages, or to promote and protect cultural associations in various ways, including by offering financial support to artists from within these cultural groups, or by providing resources to permit the production and distribution of ethnic-language media. The justification for assistance rights is the same as for exemption and modification requests: it is to prevent persistent unfairness in access to rights or goods that are meant to be available for all citizens on an equal basis. In the case of assistance rights, cultural minority groups argue that the majority group has access to these goods already, for example to a robust language or media space, and so they request state resources to secure these goods for cultural minorities as well. Here, whereas the justification overlaps with the one offered to defend exemption and modification rights—to generate fairness—the understanding of culture that underpins the demand for these rights is distinct. Typically, exemption and modification claims treat culture-as-identity or dialogue, whereas in the case of assistance claims, the background understanding of culture is often culture-as-social-formation or culture-as-encompassing group; the culture is treated as a whole that requires assistance to protect each of its central parts, in order to do the job of shaping members well.

Self-determination rights are those that confer substantial control to sub-state jurisdictions over a particular territory and in particular the right to run the major institutions on that territory. A self-determining community is one that, because of control over major institutions in a territory, is capable of making and enforcing decisions, without interference by outsiders, in multiple policy spaces (I. M. Young 2004). The justification for self-determination rights is sometimes based on reparation or corrective justice, for example where past state actions have undermined the capacity for a particular cultural group to be self-determining in the first place (Song 2009: 184). In other cases, the demand for self-determination is justified with respect to the importance of protecting the autonomy of a culturally distinct sub-state jurisdiction, that is, its capacity to run its own affairs in ways that are consonant with its particular cultural preferences. The right to self-determination typically relies on an understanding of culture-as-encompassing group, or culture-as-social-formation, suggesting that without significant control over the major institutions that govern the lives of citizens, the relevant group will not be able to be self-determining.

The right to self-determination is typically attributed to states, so its meaning in the context of minority communities operating at the sub-state level is not always clear. Among sub-state jurisdictions, the right is often claimed by Indigenous groups as well as sub-state national groups, like the Basques and the Scottish, whose “societal culture” is manifestly distinct from the majority’s societal culture. The demand for self-determination is a demand to make choices about how children are educated, what language is spoken by the relevant political authorities, and how the public space should be organized. The right claimed has at least three manifestations: 1) the right, at a minimum, to “maintain a comprehensive way of life within the larger society without interference”; 2) the right to recognition by the majority for its way of life, and 3) the right to active backing by the majority to affirmatively support the relevant way of life so that “the culture can flourish” (Margalit & Halbertal 1994: 498). These three interpretations make distinct demands on the state, running from simple non-interference to active participation in sustaining the conditions for self-determination. As a result, the larger state is sometimes tasked with assessing the extent to which it wants to direct its resources to supporting a particular request for self-determination, focused on whether associated claims to cultural preservation are warranted. These will be considered below.

The demand for formal recognition in legal and political documents often travels with the demand for self-determination, and is grounded in a desire to have the majority mark its commitment to the full and equal respect of a cultural minority group (Mcbride 2009). In the Canadian case, the Québécois have long fought for recognition as a nation, with a “distinct society”. Attempts to recognize Québec’s status in the Canadian constitution have repeatedly failed, though a motion that read “That this House recognize that the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada” was approved (with considerable controversy, however) by the House of Commons in 2006. The demand for recognition in this case is a demand for respect as an equal, national, founding partner of the Canadian state.

In the case of Indigenous communities as well, the right to self-determination often includes not only the demand to exercise authority over specific jurisdictions, but also for recognition. They seek recognition, for example, as original inhabitants of a particular state, or as nations in their own right, or as having been the victims of various crimes at the hands of colonizers, including the violation of early treaties between them, as well as demands for state support in sustaining and, in many cases, rebuilding communities that were actively devastated by colonizing/settler governments. In Canada, and other colonizing states, for example, it has become common to read land acknowledgement statements in advance of events (including as part of the “announcements” read at the beginning of a school day), recognizing that events and proceedings are taking place on unceded Indigenous land. Similarly, Australian Indigenous communities have long argued for official recognition in the Australian constitution. From the perspective of Australian Indigenous communities, the hope, and indeed the expectation, is that official recognition will give rise to additional rights and benefits, for example to greater voice and political access to members of the minority. The hope for additional rights and benefits is present in some, but not all, cases of recognition claims (for example, it largely was not present in the case of Québec).

Recognition comes in other forms beyond acknowledgement in legal and political documents, that are intended to confirm respect for minority groups. In some states, the languages of minority groups can be officially recognized as national languages. For example, the Romansh language in Switzerland is officially recognized as a national language, even though its speakers make up less than 1% of the country’s total population. By contrast, Turkish laws that banned the speaking of Kurdish in public spaces were an attempt to deny recognition to a national minority (lifted finally in 1991). As with demands for official recognition in binding constitutional documents, these sorts of recognition demonstrate respect for minority communities as well as a commitment to treating them as full and equal members of the larger state.

Cultural preservation rights are those that groups claim as key to sustaining a cultural group as a cultural group. This right is sometimes described as a right to the “survival of a culturally-specific people” (Gutmann 2003: 75). In some cases, the justification is based on the claim that certain forms of exposure to and engagement with the wider community will result in the erosion of a culture that is valued by its members. In others, the justification is historical, as in where orthodox religious groups, fleeing religious persecution in Europe, agreed to settle new land in Canada and the United States in exchange for religious freedom. In others, the central justification is that cultural diversity is valuable and worth preserving, in and of itself (Parekh 2000). (In some cases, cultural preservation rights are claimed as recompense for past wrong; this claim is considered separately, below.) Demands for cultural preservation are most controversial where they are made by illiberal groups, as will be detailed shortly.

It is worth dwelling here for a moment to notice that there are two ways to interpret cultural preservation: it could mean the preservation of a group as a distinct cultural entity or it could mean the preservation of certain practices and values that are believed, at a moment in time, to be central to the culture. Rights to cultural preservation come in multiple formats, including demands for exemption, parental autonomy, respect for internal conflict resolution mechanisms (in family law, mainly), and control over membership. These rights are justified with respect to preserving culture, and typically rely on an understanding of culture-as-encompassing groups or culture-as-social-formation, just as does the more general right to self-determination with which they often travel.

Many minority illiberal groups ask only for rights of forbearance against the state in which they live (Spinner-Halev 2000). In response, a state may permit an illiberal cultural group to be “left alone”, on the idea that so long as it can persist without state support of any kind, it may do so. A state may be asked to do more, however, to preserve the culture.

For example, a state may be asked to exempt community members from certain requirements that are typically demanded of all citizens, including mandatory schooling and child labour laws. Consider this example: many orthodox Amish communities live a life that is largely segregated from the wider community. They live a religiously structured way of life which dictates whom members marry, how they raise children, how they produce an economy that permits their way of life to continue. In most cases, they demand neither recognition nor additional financial support in order to protect their communities’ way of life. They had previously demanded only non-interference, for the most part. But, in the 1970s, some American Amish communities demanded, and were granted, the right to withdraw their children from mandatory education at the age of 14, arguing that where their children were required to remain in school until the age of 16, they were more likely to exit the community. This high rate of exit would, they argued, result in the failure of the Amish way of life to persist over time (Burtt 1994). The right of exemption the Amish claimed was, in this case, derivative of the larger demand for cultural self-preservation; without the exemption, they said, the culture itself might fade away.

A state may also be asked to respect certain domains of legal authority, perhaps most frequently in the domain of family law. Minority communities often regulate the conditions of marriage, and custody of children, as well as divorce, and request the legal authority to do so. Respecting the legal authority of minority communities to exercise jurisdiction in family law is the kind of request that often troubles critics of cultural minority rights, since it may entrench disadvantages to women, for example in divorce settlements or custody agreements (Shachar 2001; Bakht 2007). In general, then, states that acknowledge the legal authority of minority communities in the space of family law also demand that those who are participating in these adjudication proceedings do so willingly; majority states therefore often retain permission for themselves to interefere in these proceedings, in support of those who may be inadequately protected. The state must attempt a balance here, between offering its support to the most vulnerable members of a minority group (for example to ensure that their constitutional rights are protected) and interference of a kind that is inattentive to the rightful claims of minority groups to persist over time, in part by exercising its authority in key spaces.

Another common form of cultural preservation rights are exclusion rights, that is, the right of a cultural group to refuse to admit others to territory or membership, because of a worry that more generous terms of admission threatens to undermine it by, in effect, diluting it. Just as states have the putative right to control their borders (discussed below in section 3), and who can claim membership rights even after admission, so do some sub-state jurisdictions claim this double right of exclusion, citing the importance of cultural preservation. Indigenous communities have sometimes claimed the right to exclude non-Indigenous individuals from settling on their territories or the right to exclude others (for example non-Indigenous spouses of Indigenous persons) from certain membership benefits, including the right to vote (or otherwise have a say) for those who will govern. State courts have been asked to adjudicate the rightful authority of Indigenous communities to make these determinations (see Song 2005).

The cultural preservation rights described above pose a difficult challenge, connected to the critiques of treating culture as an encompassing group: any claim for cultural preservation, say some critics, translates in effect into problematic claims of control over members, which, moreover, are typically most restrictive for women and LGBTQ+ members of a cultural group. This is a challenge posed most forcefully where rights of cultural preservation are demanded by so-called illiberal groups like the Amish, and where they are (in the eyes of critics) imposed on children against their will. Illiberal groups are those which deny certain key liberal values, like autonomy and equality; in many cases, these communities are supported by educational systems that discourage autonomous choice-making, by avoiding the teaching of skills and capacities that typically enable it, and by enforcing hierarchical rules that elevate some members over others in ways that egalitarians find uncomfortable. The worry is that the community wants not only to preserve itself as a distinct cultural group, but also that it wants to protect a kind of cultural homogeneity that leaves no room for contestation or dissent over its central values and practices. These latter hierarchical rules often render women vulnerable to more powerful men, who may demand various forms of sexual subservience to them, who relegate them to the home to care for children, and who impose rigid codes of behaviour on them, for which harsh penalties are meted out in cases of violation. These kinds of so-called “cultural practices” are, for some critics, such that they render any form of state support in protecting minority cultural groups largely indefensible (Okin 1999). 

A worry that runs through objections to these many cultural preservation rights is that women may not be willing participants in these cultures, and therefore that respecting cultural preservation rights consigns women to lives they would not choose, do not want, and cannot escape. But for many it is a mistake to assume that women members are such only under duress, since many will deeply value the community itself and respect the norms and values that it seeks to protect, even if they reject certain among them. In these cases, and where political theorists consider them, there is an attempt to move from treating culture in encompassing terms towards treating it in dialogic and narrative terms. Cultures, even oppressive (to liberals) minority cultures, are subject to change, and perhaps the best source of change is deeply committed members who willingly endorse key values but reject others, including those that do not respect the equal rights of women. Monique Deveaux’s account of female adult participants in customary marriages in South Africa, who accept some elements of their culture, but who aim to gain a voice at the table to shift others, treats culture in dialogic terms (Deveaux 2007). Here, the key motivating thought is that cultures can and do shift over time, in response to how its members engage in it, and what matters is not the change itself, but who or what is its source. On this view, the objective of cultural preservation rights is not to preserve culture per se , a challenge that would prove impossible in any case, but rather the right to protect the ability of group members to shape their culture and to protect it against unwelcome sources of change.

Others argue that so long as women, and any others subject to rigid cultural demands, possess a right (or the capacity) to exit the community, their choice to remain should be treated as such (Kukathas 1992). For those who hold this view, efforts to render the right to exit genuinely exercisable are tremendously important (Kukathas 2012; Holzleithner 2012). In so doing, a state must make a choice about the resources it provides to those members who may desire to exit, but who do not have the means to establish themselves in the larger society. In some orthodox religious communities, property is owned in common and individual members do not have any personal property or resources; as a result, exiters have nothing on which to rely while they establish their new lives. In others, members are poorly educated, and unfamiliar with life outside of their own communities, and so exit without the capacity to sustain themselves in the larger society.  So, receiving states can offer support to exiters in various ways, for example by providing shelters to exiting women (and men), in which education is provided so that they may eventually attain self-sufficiency as a member of mainstream society. The choice to support exiters may seem to undermine a culture’s capacity for self-preservation. But supporting exiters is not well-understood as denying cultural preservation rights; rather, the choice to do so stems from a state’s commitment to protecting the rights of all of its members, including the most vulnerable, as best as it can do.

The right to cultural preservation described above should be distinguished from the slightly different right against coerced cultural loss, which focuses on preservation in cases where the potential loss is the result of coercion by outside forces against which a cultural group is relatively powerless. Of course, cultural change  is inevitable in some form, as highlighted above, and especially if one holds a culture-as-dialogue view, cultures are in fact never static. Rather, practices, norms, and values that are defining of a culture at one time may cease to be centrally defining of that culture, for a whole range of reasons including economic, environmental, and political. So, in fact, some amount of cultural loss is inevitable, and moreover, it is not always to be regretted. Sometimes, it is a normal response to external factors that are beyond a culture’s control, and sometimes it is welcome because the changes result in the better protection of human rights or more inclusive cultural traditions and practices. A cultural group may choose to shift their central modes of production in response to changing environmental factors, for example. So, as Samuel Scheffler has argued, the strong preservationist view of culture—that cultures should be insulated from all forms of change—must be rejected (Scheffler 2007).

Yet, especially minority cultures may sometimes have a reasonable claim that they are not able to protect themselves against unwanted cultural change, or that they are not able to control the pace of change. They may thereby be entitled to forms of state support, to help them create the conditions under which they can resist unwanted cultural change.  When linguistic minorities request state support to persist in educating children in a minority language, for example, sometimes the justification is in the name of protecting against the erosion of the language in the face of pressure to adopt or become fluent in the majority language.

In other cases, majorities are actively focused on undermining minority cultures, often over years and even decades. Colonial states have pursued genocidal policies against Indigenous communities for example, with the expressed purpose of undermining their capacity to survive as distinct peoples. In assessing cases of cultural loss, then, a key factor is whether the shift is forced upon minority groups, not necessarily by changing environmental or economic conditions, but by agents who intend to undermine the culture, by actively disvaluing it and thereby acting so as to undermine the conditions for its robust continuity. External, malicious, factors that engender cultural change that would not otherwise be expected, make the change not only regrettable, but generate a case for reparations, for example with respect to Indigenous communities, where there is “evidence of a history of dispossession, discrimination, or subordination” (Phillips 2018: 97).

In legal environments, wrong-doers sometimes deploy a cultural defense, explaining that minority cultural norms and values, which are in tension with those of the majority, are causally relevant in explaining why they committed a wrong. A cultural defense has, thereby, sometimes been treated as a relevant mitigating factor in assigning punishment. The right to offer a cultural defense is typically justified with respect to the importance of recognizing that minorities do not always operate according to the same values and norms that are represented in the majority’s legal system, and that these differences are entitled to some consideration in legal spaces. Earlier court decisions accepted explanations that, for example, men who murdered their unfaithful partners were moved to do so by a combination of shame and rage associated with cultural norms. For example, men who claimed that “gang rape” (known culturally as marriage by capture) was mandated by Hmong culture as a way to secure a wife, in which women were not only complicit but in fact willing partners, are no longer understood to have a defense in legal suits accusing them of rape (Song 2005). However, the power of “cultural” explanations in mainstream legal spaces has decreased over time, as states have come to see how many of these defenses are in fact cover for patriarchal, misogynist attitudes that persist, both in some minority communities and in the wider community.

“Cultural” defenses of crime often amount to treating culture as though it were a homogeneous whole, and as though perpetrators of crime rather than its victims have a lock on its interpretation. But “respect for culture cannot mean deference to whatever the established authorities of culture deem right” (Gutmann 2003: 46). Additionally, a generic imperative to “respect culture” in legal spaces can ignore the differences among types of cultural expectations, which can range from permissible acts, to encouraged acts and required acts, only some of which may justifiably be treated as legally relevant (Vitikainen 2015: 162). As well, it can permit and encourage the representation of minority (especially non-western) cultures as stereotypes, and “mobilizes culture in ways that encourage absurdly large generalizations about people from particular cultural groups” (Phillips 2007: 81 & 99). The danger represented by an uncritical acceptance of the cultural defense is in a treatment of culture as so encompassing that it treats its members as incapable of autonomous decision-making. But, say critics of the cultural defense, this is a mistake—along with many other factors, culture can be part of an explanation for engaging in wrong-doing, but should “never be mistaken for the whole truth” (Phillips 2007: 98).

A final cultural right that is claimed by some is the right to control cultural artifacts or expressions, or the use of cultural content in general (Matthes 2016). This is the right that is at issue in recent controversies focused on cultural appropriation, defined as the use, by a non-member, of “something of cultural value, usually a symbol or a practice, to others” (Lenard & Balint 2020). Familiar examples of actions that have been accused of engaging in cultural appropriation include the wearing of dreadlocks by whites; the donning of Indigenous clothing as Halloween costumes; the use of turbans in high fashion; the teaching of yoga by instructors who do not have South Asian backgrounds. In all of these cases, a non-member is accused of “appropriating” a particular cultural practice or symbol that is not their own. On this view, cultures have exclusive rights to use their cultural “products” as they see fit, often because that practice is understood to be central to their identity. This perspective is controversial, and often mocked, by those who observe that history just is the mingling and sharing of cultural practices and symbols, including in the spaces of cuisine, the arts, dress and spiritual practices; their mocking treats the rights claim as relying on an understanding of culture that is unchanging and immutable over time, which is historically inaccurate and, furthermore, undesirable. Correspondingly, key cultural artifacts are best understood as belonging to “humanity”: “it isn’t peoples who experience and value art: it’s men and women” (Appiah 2009).

The right claimed—to full or exclusive use of defining cultural practices or symbols—is perhaps not best enforced by the state, though states can and do engage in practices that are attentive to the harms allegedly caused by cultural appropriation. For example, centralized support for the arts, in the form of grants to produce artistic endeavours, can be sensitive to who is asking for support to produce what , and can direct funding towards artists from a particular tradition who aim to produce culturally specific products, and correspondingly refuse (unless very good reason is offered) to support endeavours by cultural outsiders to produce “insider” art (Rowell 1995; J. O. Young 2008). The right claimed is relatively stronger where a particular cultural community is the victim of a power imbalance, where the cultural community has expressly requested that a particular practice or symbol be “left alone” by a majority community, and where members of the majority community are  profiting on the basis of its use of the particular symbol or practice (Lenard & Balint 2020). As in other cases, the right claimed by a cultural group is strongest where there are persistent inequalities between the minority claimant and the majority group.

3. Majority Cultural Rights Claims

Section 2 considered the cultural rights claims that are, usually, made by minority groups. Majority groups make cultural claims as well, in particular with respect to excluding others from their territory as well as with respect to what can be demanded of those who are admitted.

One domain in which majority communities claim a cultural right is in the space of immigration. For some, the right of states to shape their culture can legitimately serve as a reason to exclude others, in general and sometimes specific others. This view is often attributed to Michael Walzer, who argues that the right of a state to control its borders is intimately connected to its capacity to

defend the liberty and welfare, the politics and culture of a group of people committed to one another and to their common life. (Walzer 1983: 39, emphasis added)

The right of a state to control its culture is therefore an essential one to protect its “collective consciousness”, as noted in Section 1.

This claim has encountered pushback from many scholars, for multiple reasons. One reason is that the claim that a state may exclude would-be migrants for cultural reasons has too often been, in fact, an attempt to enact discriminatory legislation aimed at excluding migrants whose beliefs and practices are said to be incompatible with, or even undermining of, the values and norms that define the majority’s culture. Exclusion based on so-called cultural reasons has often been a claim that a state prefers to remain culturally, religiously, ethnically, and racially homogeneous. Historically, states engaged explicitly in such discriminatory practices, which have now been repudiated, including for example variants of Asian Exclusion Acts which were in operation in North America in the early 1900s.

The same accusation is also merited in several recent cases, such as the implementation of the so-called Muslim Ban in the United States, or with respect to proposals during the height of the crisis in Syria (2015) in some countries to prioritize Christian over Muslim refugees (Song 2018). Among political theorists of immigration, there is however widespread repudiation of discriminatory immigration policies, both explicitly and implicitly, even among those who defend the general right of states to exclude would-be migrants and refugees, for many reasons including to preserve culture (Miller 2005).

A second source of pushback stems from a more general skepticism that a majority’s culture, even if genuinely valuable to its members, should be treated as sufficiently so to warrant excluding migrants, especially necessitous ones (the language of necessity is borrowed from Song 2018). Even if it is conceded that culture is valuable to a majority, many scholars believe that its protection cannot warrant excluding those in severe need of safety or subsistence.

Yet, say those who defend the view that culture can, at least in some cases, serve to exclude migrants, there is a case to be made for treating the state as possessing the right to cultural continuity (Miller 2005). This claimed right looks very much like the right to cultural preservation (or against cultural loss) described above, and it highlights not so much the sentimental dimensions of a majority’s attachment to its culture, but rather its pragmatic interpretation. On this view, any particular state is defined by a “shared public culture” which, because shared, underpins the trust that democratic states rely on to pursue political and social objectives in common. No particular value that makes up a shared public culture is valuable in and of itself. Rather, it is the combination of a set of values, norms, and practices, that produces “our” culture that is valuable, and in its presence, trust is higher; as a result, so is the willingness to cooperate to support policies that require some sacrifice, including for example, commitment to redistributive social policies that are especially to the benefit of those who are least well-off (e.g., see the essays in Gustavsson & Miller 2019). So, according to those who defend these views, a state that seeks to exert control over admission citing “cultural” reasons is neither racist nor discriminatory, but rather is seeking controlled admission (rather than closed borders) so that newcomers can, over a sufficient time period, come to adopt enough of the set of defining values, norms, and practices, to be able to warrant and extend the trust that underpins the policies that instantiate these objectively valued goods.

States that defend the right of cultural continuity at the level of admission to a state typically also deploy the right to adopt and enforce “integration” policies that encourage newcomers to adopt majority norms and values, arguing that the faster such adoption happens, the more rapid admission itself can be. Integration policies ask newcomers to adopt the norms and practices of the majority community, whereas accommodation policies ask the majority to accommodate practices that are distinct from those that define the majority’s culture. On this conventional multicultural view, the process by which migrants are admitted to the territory, and then to membership, is a “two-way” street, requiring that both newcomers and the host state adapt in response to each other (Kymlicka 1998).

Is the demand that newcomers integrate culturally reasonable? Is it reasonable, that is, to ask immigrants to adopt the norms, values, and practices that are central to the culture they have joined (l will leave aside the question of economic and political integration, here)? Notice that in the political and sociological literature in immigration incorporation, integration (culturally) is typically distinguished from assimilation, where the former focuses on welcoming newcomers with the distinct sets of norms and values that travel with them (and so accommodating them where possible), and the latter demands that immigrants adopt as fully as possible the set of norms and values that are central to the host society (Brubaker 2001; see also Modood 2007). In the political theory literature on multiculturalism, however, it is widely accepted that a demand for full assimilation is normatively problematic (it requires too much of immigrants, to abandon their histories and identities, as part of joining a new community), but that some form of encouragement to integrate is permissible.

Whether the integration demands are permissible depends on at least two connected things, however: first, on the content of the shared public culture and, second, on the accessibility of the venues in which the content of this public culture is deliberated. The space in which a culture is deliberated is amorphous as well as expansive. The source of key norms, practices, and values is multi-fold: some are historical, some are deliberately adopted through political processes, some are accidentally adopted in response to contingent circumstances. The demand that newcomers integrate, in the sense of adopt the norms and practices of the majority culture to at least a reasonable extent is more defensible in cases where access to spaces in which they are deliberated is public and therefore open to many voices. The precise meaning of “accessibility” to spaces that are not clearly defined, and entry to which is not monitored or policed in any formal way, is challenging to pin down. But the key point is that to the extent that cultures welcome and take seriously new voices—in public media, in political spaces, and so on—they can be described as publicly accessible. So, there is a connection between the legitimacy of demanding adherence to majority culture norms and practices, as part of the process of integration, and the genuine access that newcomers have to the spaces in which they are deliberated.

In considering the second question, with respect to the content of a majority’s shared public culture, I borrow from the literature in the political theory of nationalism (though I do not believe that the language of nationalism itself is essential to appreciate its relevance to the discussion here). A culture can be defined by features that are more or less inclusive. Where cultures are defined by characteristics that are typically used to describe ethnic nations, including shared history, religion, ethnicity/race, newcomers are less easily able to join them and be recognized as full members. Where cultures are defined by characteristics that are typically used, on the other hand, to describe civic nations, including shared commitment to political institutions and, usually, a commitment to liberal democratic principles, then they are more welcoming for newcomers. In the language adopted earlier in this entry, cultures that are defined by exclusive features are more likely to treat culture as encompassing, whereas cultures that adopt inclusive features, and emphasize accessibility to the forums in which its content is deliberated, treat culture in dialogic or identity terms. This need not be the case, though, since those who treat culture in dialogic terms may nevertheless believe that key elements of history or religion are central to it (though they are open to deliberation about the appropriateness of these elements as central) and similarly identities can be formulated on the basis of exclusionary features.

Another way to define inclusivity focuses attention on the extent to which a culture’s main norms, practices, and values can be adopted by newcomers without their giving up something they value (Lenard 2019). Key here is to define the permissible contours of an inclusive culture that, at the same time, can serve to distinguish it from others in ways that resolve what philosophers have called the “particularity” problem. If cultures are defined only by commitment to liberal democratic principles and the institutions that instantiate them, then a person will necessarily be committed to any state that is so defined. But this conclusion does not make sense of the reality that many citizens are attached to their state’s interpretation of these values—fundamental, abstract, liberal democratic principles are adopted, respected, and instantiated, in other words, in a culturally specific way. It is important, then, to delineate the boundary of permissible cultural content, which can include recognition of key historical moments, or political conversations, or cultural icons. No state can demand of newcomers that their emotional commitment be to their new state; but it can reasonably impart information about learnable key cultural markers, encourage newcomers to adopt the associated practices and norms, and hope that over time their emotional identification shifts to the host state, at least partially (Carens 2005). Under the condition that the public cultural content of a host state is reasonably accessible, and that the forums in which it is deliberated are likewise reasonably accessible, then the host state can permissibly encourage the integration of newcomers. This right is perhaps best understood as derivative of the right to cultural continuity that states claim in relation to immigration, which can permissibly be claimed if and only if the accessibility conditions described above are met.

Not all scholars agree on this point, of course, and some reject entirely the suggestion that newcomers can be asked to make accommodations to the culture of the state that they have joined. Those who adopt variants on this view treat the majority’s culture as nearly always homogeneous and oppressive in ways that are disrespectful of newcomers, and treat the demand for integration along at least some dimensions as “cleaned up” variations on the discriminatory and racist immigration policies of the past (Abizadeh 2002). This is a real worry. When the Netherlands demanded that potential migrants from majority Muslim countries watch a video and pass a test merely to gain entry to its territory—a video that showed gay men kissing and a topless woman—it was widely excoriated for its discriminatory intent, rather than (as was claimed) an attempt to ensure that migrants could adopt the liberal values that supposedly characterized the country’s culture. More generally, the mechanisms of encouraging the learning and adoption of the majority culture’s values, in addition to its actual content as delineated above, as well as the consequences for failure to do so, must be scrutinized for their reasonableness. This assessment is a tricky business, certainly, made trickier because in many (if not most) immigration situations, the potential newcomer is in a situation of vulnerability in relation to the host state: their interest in gaining entry is very strong and so in many cases, they will accept heavy-handed attempts to coerce their integration without complaint.

Both minority groups (many of which are immigrant groups) and majority groups claim that “culture” is important and deserving of accommodation in multiple ways. This entry began with an examination of the multiple ways in which culture has been understood, to unpack the ways in which it is deployed when specific cultural rights are claimed. It is important to notice that these cultural claims, on both sides, are often made in relation to each other: a minority group demands a particular cultural right and the majority responds by claiming a different cultural right. In many cases, the choice to respect or ignore claimed cultural rights is framed in terms of the impact that doing so will have on the culture of the majority, for example, by stating that a particular practice for which accommodation is requested is incompatible with the majority culture in general, or sometimes more specifically with a particular practice or norm that is believed to be particularly important. The latter claim was made, for example, in France, during “l’affaire du foulard”—the right to cover one’s head as a manifestation of Islamic (or Jewish) religious commitment was denied for the way in which it compromised the French’s commitment to laicity (Laborde 2008; Benhabib 2004).

This entry has attempted to offer the resources that are essential to adjudicating these conflicts, in ways that take seriously both those who demand cultural rights and those who resist respecting them. Hopefully, future political theory can make use of this taxonomy to identify satisfactory conclusions to these conflicts when they arise.

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• Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 2009, “Whose Culture Is It, Anyway?”, in Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legacy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce , edited by James A. R. Nafziger and Ann Nicgorski, Leiden: Brill, 207–21.
• Bakht, Natasha, 2007, “Religious Arbitration in Canada: Protecting Women by Protecting Them from Religion”, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law , 19(1): 119–144.
• Barry, Brian, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Benhabib, Seyla, 2002, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2004, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens , Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511790799
• Borchers, Dagmar and Annamari Vitikainen (eds.), 2012, On Exit: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Right of Exit in Liberal Multicultural Societies , Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110270860
• Brubaker, Rogers, 2001, “The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States”, Ethnic and Racial Studies , 24(4): 531–548. doi:10.1080/01419870120049770
• Burtt, Shelley, 1994, “Religious Parents, Secular Schools: A Liberal Defense of an Illiberal Education”, The Review of Politics , 56(1): 51–70. doi:10.1017/S0034670500049500
• Carens, Joseph, 2005, “The Integration of Immigrants”, Journal of Moral Philosophy , 2(1): 29–46. doi:10.1177/1740468105052582
• Casals, Neus Torbisco, 2006, Group Rights as Human Rights: A Liberal Approach to Multiculturalism , (Law and Philosophy Library 75), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. doi:10.1007/1-4020-4209-4
• Deveaux, Monique, 2007, Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289790.001.0001
• Dhamoon, Rita, 2006, “Shifting From ‘Culture’ to ‘the Cultural’: Critical Theorizing of Identity/Difference Politics”, Constellations , 13(3): 354–373. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2006.00406.x
• Eisenberg, Avigail, 2009, Reasons of Identity: A Normative Guide to the Political and Legal Assessment of Identity Claims , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291304.001.0001
• Fraser, Nancy, 1995, “Recognition or Redistribution? A Critical Reading of Iris Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference ”, Journal of Political Philosophy , 3(2): 166–180. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.1995.tb00033.x
• Ghosh, Cyril, 2018, De-Moralizing Gay Rights: Some Queer Remarks on LGBT+ Rights Politics in the US , Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-78840-1
• Gustavsson, Gina and David Miller (eds.), 2019, Liberal Nationalism and Its Critics: Normative and Empirical Questions , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198842545.001.0001
• Gutmann, Amy, 2003, Identity in Democracy , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Holzleithner, Elisabeth, 2012, “Interrogating Exit in Multiculturalist Theorizing: Conditions and Limitations”, in Borchers and Vitikainen 2012: 13–33. doi:10.1515/9783110270860.13
• Kukathas, Chandran, 1992, “Are There Any Cultural Rights?”, Political Theory , 20(1): 105–139. doi:10.1177/0090591792020001006
• –––, 2012, “Exit, Freedom and Gender”, in Borchers and Vitikainen 2012: 34–56. doi:10.1515/9783110270860.34
• Kymlicka, Will, 1996, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1998, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada , Toronto: Oxford University Press.
• Laborde, Cecile, 2008, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199550210.001.0001
• Lenard, Patti Tamara.,2012, Trust, Democracy and Multicultural Challenges , University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University State Press.
• –––, 2019, “Inclusive Identities: The Foundation of Trust in Multicultural Communities”, in Gustavsson and Miller 2019: 155–171. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198842545.003.0009
• Lenard, Patti Tamara and Peter Balint, 2020, “What Is (the Wrong of) Cultural Appropriation?”, Ethnicities , 20(2): 331–52. doi:10.1177/1468796819866498
• Levy, Jacob, 2000, Multiculturalism of Fear , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198297122.001.0001
• Margalit, Avishai and Moshe Halbertal, 1994, “Liberalism and the Right to Culture”, Social Research: An International Quarterly , 61(3): 491–510.
• Margalit, Avishai and Joseph Raz, 1990, “National Self-Determination”:, Journal of Philosophy , 87(9): 439–461. doi:10.2307/2026968
• Matthes, Erich Hatala, 2016, “Cultural Appropriation Without Cultural Essentialism?”, Social Theory and Practice , 42(2): 343–366. doi:10.5840/soctheorpract201642219
• Mcbride, Cillian, 2009, “Demanding Recognition: Equality, Respect, and Esteem”,  European Journal of Political Theory , 8(1): 96–108. doi:10.1177/1474885108096962
• Miller, David, 2005, “Immigration: The Case for Limits”, in Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics , Andrew Cohen and Christopher Wellman (eds), Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 193–207.
• –––, 2016, “Majorities and Minarets: Religious Freedom and Public Space”, British Journal of Political Science , 46(2): 437–456. doi:10.1017/S0007123414000131
• Modood, Tariq, 2007, Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea , Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
• Moore, Margaret, 1999, “Beyond the Cultural Argument for Liberal Nationalism”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 2(3): 26–47. doi:10.1080/13698239908403282
• –––, 2019, “Liberal Nationalism and the Challenge of Essentialism”, in Gustavsson and Miller 2019: 188–202. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198842545.003.0011
• Okin, Susan Moller, 1999, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Parekh, Bhikhu, 2000, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory , Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
• Parvin, Phil, 2008, “What’s Special About Culture? Identity, Autonomy, and Public Reason”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 11(3): 315–233. doi:10.1080/13698230802276447
• Patten, Alan, 2014, Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Phillips, Anne, 2007, Multiculturalism without Culture , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2010, “What’s Wrong with Essentialism?”, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory , 11(1): 47–60. doi:10.1080/1600910X.2010.9672755
• –––, 2018, “What Makes Culture Special?”, Political Theory , 46(1): 92–98. doi:10.1177/0090591717696023
• Quong, Jonathan, 2006, “Cultural Exemptions, Expensive Tastes, and Equal Opportunities”, Journal of Applied Philosophy , 23(1): 53–71. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2006.00320.x
• Rowell, John, 1995, “The Politics of Cultural Appropriation”, Journal of Value Inquiry , 29(1): 137–142.
• Scheffler, Samuel, 2007, “Immigration and the Significance of Culture”, Philosophy & Public Affairs , 35(2): 93–125. doi:10.1111/j.1088-4963.2007.00101.x
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• Sniderman, Paul M. and Louk Hagendoorn, 2007, When Ways of Life Collide , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Song, Sarah, 2005, “Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality”, American Political Science Review , 99(4): 473–489. doi:10.1017/S0003055405051828
• –––, 2009, “The Subject of Multiculturalism: Culture, Religion, Language, Ethnicity, Nationality, and Race?”, in New Waves in Political Philosophy , Boudewijn de Bruin and Christopher F. Zurn (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 177–197. doi:10.1057/9780230234994_10
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• Spinner-Halev, Jeff, 2000, Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship , Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Tully, James, 1995, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in the Age of Diversity , Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Vitikainen, Annamari, 2015, The Limits of Liberal Multiculturalism: Towards an Individuated Approach to Cultural Diversity , London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1057/9781137404626
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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Matthias Hoesch, Margaret Moore, and Stéfanie Morris for comments on an earlier draft of this entry.

Copyright © 2020 by Patti Tamara Lenard < Patti . Lenard @ uottawa . ca >

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3.1 What Is Culture?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Differentiate between culture and society
• Explain material versus nonmaterial culture
• Discuss the concept of cultural universals as it relates to society
• Compare and contrast ethnocentrism and xenocentrism

Humans are social creatures. According to Smithsonian Institution research, humans have been forming groups for almost 3 million years in order to survive. Living together, people formed common habits and behaviors, from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques for obtaining food.

Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage, is learned. In the U.S., marriage is generally seen as an individual choice made by two adults, based on mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families. In Papua New Guinea, almost 30 percent of women marry before the age of 18, and 8 percent of men have more than one wife (National Statistical Office, 2019). To people who are not from such a culture, arranged marriages may seem to have risks of incompatibility or the absence of romantic love. But many people from cultures where marriages are arranged, which includes a number of highly populated and modern countries, often prefer the approach because it reduces stress and increases stability (Jankowiak 2021).

Being familiar with unwritten rules helps people feel secure and at ease. Knowing to look left instead of right for oncoming traffic while crossing the street can help avoid serious injury and even death. Knowing unwritten rules is also fundamental in understanding humor in different cultures. Humor is common to all societies, but what makes something funny is not. Americans may laugh at a scene in which an actor falls; in other cultures, falling is never funny. Most people want to live their daily lives confident that their behaviors will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety, that is, there are a lot of expected behaviors. And many interpretations of them.

Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether people are commuting in Egypt, Ireland, India, Japan, and the U.S., many behaviors will be the same and may reveal patterns. Others will be different. In many societies that enjoy public transportation, a passenger will find a marked bus stop or station, wait for the bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, Egypt, passengers might board while the bus is moving, because buses often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. In Dublin, Ireland, bus riders would be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, India, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behavior might be considered rude in other societies, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.

Culture can be material or nonmaterial. Metro passes and bus tokens are part of material culture, as are the buses, subway cars, and the physical structures of the bus stop. Think of material culture as items you can touch-they are tangible . Nonmaterial culture , in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society. These are things you cannot touch. They are intangible . You may believe that a line should be formed to enter the subway car or that other passengers should not stand so close to you. Those beliefs are intangible because they do not have physical properties and can be touched.

Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture, namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture symbolizing education, but the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.

As people travel from different regions to entirely different parts of the world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar. What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between others and our own. If we keep our sociological imagination awake, we can begin to understand and accept the differences. Body language and hand gestures vary around the world, but some body language seems to be shared across cultures: When someone arrives home later than permitted, a parent or guardian meeting them at the door with crossed arms and a frown on their face means the same in Russia as it does in the U.S. as it does in Ghana.

Cultural Universals

Although cultures vary, they also share common elements. Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. One example of a cultural universal is the family unit: every human society recognizes a family structure that regulates sexual reproduction and the care of children. Even so, how that family unit is defined and how it functions vary. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In the U.S., by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit that consists of parents and their offspring. Other cultural universals include customs like funeral rites, weddings, and celebrations of births. However, each culture may view and conduct the ceremonies quite differently.

Anthropologist George Murdock first investigated the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter, or around shared human experiences, such as birth and death or illness and healing. Through his research, Murdock identified other universals including language, the concept of personal names, and, interestingly, jokes. Humor seems to be a universal way to release tensions and create a sense of unity among people (Murdock, 1949). Sociologists consider humor necessary to human interaction because it helps individuals navigate otherwise tense situations.

Sociological Research

Is music a cultural universal.

Imagine that you are sitting in a theater, watching a film. The movie opens with the protagonist sitting on a park bench with a grim expression on their face. The music starts to come in. The first slow and mournful notes play in a minor key. As the melody continues, the heroine turns her head and sees a man walking toward her. The music gets louder, and the sounds don’t seem to go together – as if the orchestra is intentionally playing the wrong notes. You tense up as you watch, almost hoping to stop. The character is clearly in danger.

Now imagine that you are watching the same movie – the exact same footage – but with a different soundtrack. As the scene opens, the music is soft and soothing, with a hint of sadness. You see the protagonist sitting on the park bench with a grim expression. Suddenly, the music swells. The woman looks up and sees a man walking toward her. The notes are high and bright, and the pace is bouncy. You feel your heart rise in your chest. This is a happy moment.

Music has the ability to evoke emotional responses. In television shows, movies, commercials, and even the background music in a store, music has a message and seems to easily draw a response from those who hear it – joy, sadness, fear, victory. Are these types of musical cues cultural universals?

In 2009, a team of psychologists, led by Thomas Fritz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, studied people’s reactions to music that they’d never heard (Fritz et al., 2009). The research team traveled to Cameroon, Africa, and asked Mafa tribal members to listen to Western music. The tribe, isolated from Western culture, had never been exposed to Western culture and had no context or experience within which to interpret its music. Even so, as the tribal members listened to a Western piano piece, they were able to recognize three basic emotions: happiness, sadness, and fear. Music, the study suggested, is a sort of universal language.

Researchers also found that music can foster a sense of wholeness within a group. In fact, scientists who study the evolution of language have concluded that originally language (an established component of group identity) and music were one (Darwin, 1871). Additionally, since music is largely nonverbal, the sounds of music can cross societal boundaries more easily than words. Music allows people to make connections, where language might be a more difficult barricade. As Fritz and his team found, music and the emotions it conveys are cultural universals.

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Although human societies have much in common, cultural differences are far more prevalent than cultural universals. For example, while all cultures have language, analysis of conversational etiquette reveals tremendous differences. In some Middle Eastern cultures, it is common to stand close to others in conversation. Americans keep more distance and maintain a large “personal space.” Additionally, behaviors as simple as eating and drinking vary greatly from culture to culture. Some cultures use tools to put the food in the mouth while others use their fingers. If your professor comes into an early morning class holding a mug of liquid, what do you assume they are drinking? In the U.S., it’s most likely filled with coffee, not Earl Grey tea, a favorite in England, or Yak Butter tea, a staple in Tibet.

Some travelers pride themselves on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, like the late celebrated food writer Anthony Bourdain (1956-2017). Often, however, people express disgust at another culture's cuisine. They might think that it’s gross to eat raw meat from a donkey or parts of a rodent, while they don’t question their own habit of eating cows or pigs.

Such attitudes are examples of ethnocentrism , which means to evaluate and judge another culture based on one’s own cultural norms. Ethnocentrism is believing your group is the correct measuring standard and if other cultures do not measure up to it, they are wrong. As sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, it is a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric.

A high level of appreciation for one’s own culture can be healthy. A shared sense of community pride, for example, connects people in a society. But ethnocentrism can lead to disdain or dislike of other cultures and could cause misunderstanding, stereotyping, and conflict. Individuals, government, non-government, private, and religious institutions with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to “help” its people, because they see them as uneducated, backward, or even inferior. Cultural imperialism is the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture.

Colonial expansion by Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, and England grew quickly in the fifteenth century was accompanied by severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in these new lands as uncultured savages who needed to adopt Catholic governance, Christianity, European dress, and other cultural practices.

A modern example of cultural imperialism may include the work of international aid agencies who introduce agricultural methods and plant species from developed countries into areas that are better served by indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches to the particular region. Another example would be the deforestation of the Amazon Basin as indigenous cultures lose land to timber corporations.

When people find themselves in a new culture, they may experience disorientation and frustration. In sociology, we call this culture shock . In addition to the traveler’s biological clock being ‘off’, a traveler from Chicago might find the nightly silence of rural Montana unsettling, not peaceful. Now, imagine that the ‘difference’ is cultural. An exchange student from China to the U.S. might be annoyed by the constant interruptions in class as other students ask questions—a practice that is considered rude in China. Perhaps the Chicago traveler was initially captivated with Montana’s quiet beauty and the Chinese student was originally excited to see a U.S.- style classroom firsthand. But as they experience unanticipated differences from their own culture, they may experience ethnocentrism as their excitement gives way to discomfort and doubts about how to behave appropriately in the new situation. According to many authors, international students studying in the U.S. report that there are personality traits and behaviors expected of them. Black African students report having to learn to ‘be Black in the U.S.’ and Chinese students report that they are naturally expected to be good at math. In African countries, people are identified by country or kin, not color. Eventually, as people learn more about a culture, they adapt to the new culture for a variety of reasons.

Culture shock may appear because people aren’t always expecting cultural differences. Anthropologist Ken Barger (1971) discovered this when he conducted a participatory observation in an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. Originally from Indiana, Barger hesitated when invited to join a local snowshoe race. He knew he would never hold his own against these experts. Sure enough, he finished last, to his mortification. But the tribal members congratulated him, saying, “You really tried!” In Barger’s own culture, he had learned to value victory. To the Inuit people, winning was enjoyable, but their culture valued survival skills essential to their environment: how hard someone tried could mean the difference between life and death. Over the course of his stay, Barger participated in caribou hunts, learned how to take shelter in winter storms, and sometimes went days with little or no food to share among tribal members. Trying hard and working together, two nonmaterial values, were indeed much more important than winning.

During his time with the Inuit tribe, Barger learned to engage in cultural relativism . Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. Practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values, norms, and practices.

However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Even the most culturally relativist people from egalitarian societies—ones in which women have political rights and control over their own bodies—question whether the widespread practice of female genital mutilation in countries such as Ethiopia and Sudan should be accepted as a part of cultural tradition. Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural relativism, then, may struggle to reconcile aspects of their own culture with aspects of a culture that they are studying. Sociologists may take issue with the practices of female genital mutilation in many countries to ensure virginity at marriage just as some male sociologists might take issue with scarring of the flesh to show membership. Sociologists work diligently to keep personal biases out of research analysis.

Sometimes when people attempt to address feelings of ethnocentrism and develop cultural relativism, they swing too far to the other end of the spectrum. Xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own. (The Greek root word xeno-, pronounced “ZEE-no,” means “stranger” or “foreign guest.”) An exchange student who goes home after a semester abroad or a sociologist who returns from the field may find it difficult to associate with the values of their own culture after having experienced what they deem a more upright or nobler way of living. An opposite reaction is xenophobia, an irrational fear or hatred of different cultures.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for sociologists studying different cultures is the matter of keeping a perspective. It is impossible for anyone to overcome all cultural biases. The best we can do is strive to be aware of them. Pride in one’s own culture doesn’t have to lead to imposing its values or ideas on others. And an appreciation for another culture shouldn’t preclude individuals from studying it with a critical eye. This practice is perhaps the most difficult for all social scientists.

Sociology in the Real World

Overcoming culture shock.

During her summer vacation, Caitlin flew from Chicago, Illinois to Madrid, Spain to visit Maria, the exchange student she had befriended the previous semester. In the airport, she heard rapid, musical Spanish being spoken all around her.

Exciting as it was, she felt isolated and disconnected. Maria’s mother kissed Caitlin on both cheeks when she greeted her. Her imposing father kept his distance. Caitlin was half asleep by the time supper was served—at 10 p.m. Maria’s family sat at the table for hours, speaking loudly, gesturing, and arguing about politics, a taboo dinner subject in Caitlin’s house. They served wine and toasted their honored guest. Caitlin had trouble interpreting her hosts’ facial expressions, and did not realize she should make the next toast. That night, Caitlin crawled into a strange bed, wishing she had not come. She missed her home and felt overwhelmed by the new customs, language, and surroundings. She’d studied Spanish in school for years—why hadn’t it prepared her for this?

What Caitlin did not realize was that people depend not only on spoken words but also on body language, like gestures and facial expressions, to communicate. Cultural norms and practices accompany even the smallest nonverbal signals (DuBois, 1951). They help people know when to shake hands, where to sit, how to converse, and even when to laugh. We relate to others through a shared set of cultural norms, and ordinarily, we take them for granted.

For this reason, culture shock is often associated with traveling abroad, although it can happen in one’s own country, state, or even hometown. Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1960) is credited with first coining the term “culture shock.” In his studies, Oberg found that most people are excited at first to encounter a new culture. But bit by bit, they become stressed by interacting with people from a different culture who speak another language and use different regional expressions. There is new food to digest, new daily schedules to follow, and new rules of etiquette to learn. Living with this constant stress can make people feel incompetent and insecure. People react to frustration in a new culture, Oberg found, by initially rejecting it and glorifying one’s own culture. An American visiting Italy might long for a “real” pizza or complain about the unsafe driving habits of Italians.

It helps to remember that culture is learned. Everyone is ethnocentric to an extent, and identifying with one’s own country is natural. Caitlin’s shock was minor compared to that of her friends Dayar and Mahlika, a Turkish couple living in married student housing on campus. And it was nothing like that of her classmate Sanai. Sanai had been forced to flee war-torn Bosnia with her family when she was fifteen. After two weeks in Spain, Caitlin had developed more compassion and understanding for what those people had gone through. She understood that adjusting to a new culture takes time. It can take weeks or months to recover from culture shock, and it can take years to fully adjust to living in a new culture.

By the end of Caitlin’s trip, she had made new lifelong friends. Caitlin stepped out of her comfort zone. She had learned a lot about Spain, but discovered a lot about herself and her own culture.

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Cultural Diversity Essay & Community Essay Examples

If you’ve started to research college application requirements for the schools on your list, you might have come across the “cultural diversity essay.” In this guide, we’ll explore the cultural diversity essay in depth. We will compare the cultural diversity essay to the community essay and discuss how to approach these kinds of supplements. We’ll also provide examples of diversity essays and community essay examples. But first, let’s discuss exactly what a cultural diversity essay is. 

The purpose of the cultural diversity essay in college applications is to show the admissions committee what makes you unique. The cultural diversity essay also lets you describe what type of “ diversity ” you would bring to campus.

We’ll also highlight a diversity essay sample for three college applications. These include the Georgetown application essay , Rice application essay , and Williams application essay . We’ll provide examples of diversity essays for each college. Then, for each of these college essays that worked, we will analyze their strengths to help you craft your own essays. 

Finally, we’ll give you some tips on how to write a cultural diversity essay that will make your applications shine. 

But first, let’s explore the types of college essays you might encounter on your college applications. 

Types of College Essays

College application requirements will differ among schools. However, you’ll submit one piece of writing to nearly every school on your list—the personal statement . A strong personal statement can help you stand out in the admissions process. 

So, how do you know what to write about? That depends on the type of college essay included in your college application requirements. 

There are a few main types of college essays that you might encounter in the college admissions process. Theese include the “Why School ” essay, the “Why Major ” essay, and the extracurricular activity essay. This also includes the type of essay we will focus on in this guide—the cultural diversity essay. 

“Why School” essay

The “Why School ” essay is exactly what it sounds like. For this type of college essay, you’ll need to underscore why you want to go to this particular school. 

However, don’t make the mistake of just listing off what you like about the school. Additionally, don’t just reiterate information you can find on their admissions website. Instead, you’ll want to make connections between what the school offers and how you are a great fit for that college community. 

“Why Major” essay

The idea behind the “Why Major ” essay is similar to that of the “Why School ” essay above. However, instead of writing about the school at large, this essay should highlight why you plan to study your chosen major.

There are plenty of directions you could take with this type of essay. For instance, you might describe how you chose this major, what career you plan to pursue upon graduation, or other details.

Extracurricular Activity essay

The extracurricular activity essay asks you to elaborate on one of the activities that you participated in outside of the classroom. 

For this type of college essay, you’ll need to select an extracurricular activity that you pursued while you were in high school. Bonus points if you can tie your extracurricular activity into your future major, career goals, or other extracurricular activities for college. Overall, your extracurricular activity essay should go beyond your activities list. In doing so, it should highlight why your chosen activity matters to you.

Cultural Diversity essay

The cultural diversity essay is your chance to expound upon diversity in all its forms. Before you write your cultural diversity essay, you should ask yourself some key questions. These questions can include: How will you bring diversity to your future college campus? What unique perspective do you bring to the table? 

Another sub-category of the cultural diversity essay is the gender diversity essay. As its name suggests, this essay would center around the author’s gender. This essay would highlight how gender shapes the way the writer understands the world around them. 

Later, we’ll look at examples of diversity essays and other college essays that worked. But before we do, let’s figure out how to identify a cultural diversity essay in the first place. 

How to identify a ‘cultural diversity’ essay

So, you’re wondering how you’ll be able to identify a cultural diversity essay as you review your college application requirements. 

Aside from the major giveaway of having the word “diversity” in the prompt, a cultural diversity essay will ask you to describe what makes you different from other applicants. In other words, what aspects of your unique culture(s) have influenced your perspective and shaped you into who you are today?

Diversity can refer to race, ethnicity, first-generation status, gender, or anything in between. You can write about a myriad of things in a cultural diversity essay. For instance, you might discuss your personal background, identity, values, experiences, or how you’ve overcome challenges in your life. 

However, don’t feel limited in what you can address in a cultural diversity essay. The words “culture” and “diversity” mean different things to different people. Above all, you’ll want your diversity essays for college to be personal and sincere. 

How is a ‘community’ essay different? 

A community essay can also be considered a cultural diversity essay. In fact, you can think of the community essay as a subcategory of the cultural diversity essay. However, there is a key difference between a community essay and a cultural diversity essay, which we will illustrate below. 

You might have already seen some community essay examples while you were researching college application requirements. But how exactly is a community essay different from a cultural diversity essay?

One way to tell the difference between community essay examples and cultural diversity essay examples is by the prompt. A community essay will highlight, well, community . This means it will focus on how your identity will shape your interactions on campus—not just how it informs your own experiences.

Two common forms to look out for

Community essay examples can take two forms. First, you’ll find community essay examples about your past experiences. These let you show the admissions team how you have positively influenced your own community. 

Other community essay examples, however, will focus on the future. These community essay examples will ask you to detail how you will contribute to your future college community. We refer to these as college community essay examples.

In college community essay examples, you’ll see applicants detail how they might interact with their fellow students. These essays may also discuss how students plan to positively contribute to the campus community. 

As we mentioned above, the community essay, along with community essay examples and college community essay examples, fit into the larger category of the cultural diversity essay. Although we do not have specific community essay examples or college community essay examples in this guide, we will continue to highlight the subtle differences between the two. 

Before we continue the discussion of community essay examples and college community essay examples, let’s start with some examples of cultural diversity essay prompts. For each of the cultural diversity essay prompts, we’ll name the institutions that include these diversity essays for college as part of their college application requirements. 

What are some examples of ‘cultural diversity’ essays? 

Now, you have a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the cultural diversity essay and the community essay. So, next, let’s look at some examples of cultural diversity essay prompts.

The prompts below are from the Georgetown application, Rice application, and Williams application, respectively. As we discuss the similarities and differences between prompts, remember the framework we provided above for what constitutes a cultural diversity essay and a community essay. 

Later in this guide, we’ll provide real examples of diversity essays, including Georgetown essay examples, Rice University essay examples, and Williams supplemental essays examples. These are all considered college essays that worked—meaning that the author was accepted into that particular institution. 

Georgetown Supplementals Essays

Later, we’ll look at Georgetown supplemental essay examples. Diversity essays for Georgetown are a product of this prompt: 

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you. 

You might have noticed two keywords in this prompt right away: “diverse” and “community.” These buzzwords indicate that this prompt is a cultural diversity essay. You could even argue that responses to this prompt would result in college community essay examples. After all, the prompt refers to the Georgetown community. 

For this prompt, you’ll want to produce a diversity essay sample that highlights who you are. In order to do that successfully, you’ll need to self-reflect before putting pen to paper. What aspects of your background, personality, or values best describe who you are? How might your presence at Georgetown influence or contribute to their diverse community? 

Additionally, this cultural diversity essay can be personal or creative. So, you have more flexibility with the Georgetown supplemental essays than with other similar diversity essay prompts. Depending on the direction you go, your response to this prompt could be considered a cultural diversity essay, gender diversity essay, or a college community essay. 

Rice University Essays

The current Rice acceptance rate is just 9% , making it a highly selective school. Because the Rice acceptance rate is so low, your personal statement and supplemental essays can make a huge difference. 

The Rice University essay examples we’ll provide below are based on this prompt: 

The quality of Rice’s academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What personal perspective would you contribute to life at Rice? 

Breaking down the prompt.

Like the prompt above, this cultural diversity essay asks about your “life experiences,” “cultural traditions,” and personal “perspectives.” These phrases indicate a cultural diversity essay. Keep in mind this may not be the exact prompt you’ll have to answer in your own Rice application. However, future Rice prompts will likely follow a similar framework as this diversity essay sample.

Although this prompt is not as flexible as the Georgetown prompt, it does let you discuss aspects of Rice’s academic life and Residential College System that appeal to you. You can also highlight how your experiences have influenced your personal perspective. 

The prompt also asks about how you would contribute to life at Rice. So, your response could also fall in line with college community essay examples. Remember, college community essay examples are another sub-category of community essay examples. Successful college community essay examples will illustrate the ways in which students would contribute to their future campus community. 

Williams Supplemental Essays

Like the Rice acceptance rate, the Williams acceptance rate is also 9% . Because the Williams acceptance rate is so low, you’ll want to pay close attention to the Williams supplemental essays examples as you begin the writing process. 

The Williams supplemental essays examples below are based on this prompt: 

Every first-year student at Williams lives in an Entry – a thoughtfully constructed microcosm of the student community that’s a defining part of the Williams experience. From the moment they arrive, students find themselves in what’s likely the most diverse collection of backgrounds, perspectives, and interests they’ve ever encountered. What might differentiate you from the 19 other first-year students in an Entry? What perspective would you add to the conversation with your peer(s)?

Reflecting on the prompt.

Immediately, words like “diverse,” “backgrounds,” “perspectives,” “interests,” and “differentiate” should stand out to you. These keywords highlight the fact that this is a cultural diversity essay. Similar to the Rice essay, this may not be the exact prompt you’ll face on your Williams application. However, we can still learn from it.

Like the Georgetown essay, this prompt requires you to put in some self-reflection before you start writing. What aspects of your background differentiate you from other people? How would these differences impact your interactions with peers? 

This prompt also touches on the “student community” and how you would “add to the conversation with your peer(s).” By extension, any strong responses to this prompt could also be considered as college community essay examples. 

Community Essays

All of the prompts above mention campus community. So, you could argue that they are also examples of community essays. 

Like we mentioned above, you can think of community essays as a subcategory of the cultural diversity essay. If the prompt alludes to the campus community, or if your response is centered on how you would interact within that community, your essay likely falls into the world of college community essay examples. 

Regardless of what you would classify the essay as, all successful essays will be thoughtful, personal, and rich with details. We’ll show you examples of this in our “college essays that worked” section below. 

Which schools require a cultural diversity or community essay? 

Besides Georgetown, Rice, and Williams, many other college applications require a cultural diversity essay or community essay. In fact, from the Ivy League to HBCUs and state schools, the cultural diversity essay is a staple across college applications. 

Although we will not provide a diversity essay sample for each of the colleges below, it is helpful to read the prompts. This will build your familiarity with other college applications that require a cultural diversity essay or community essay. Some schools that require a cultural diversity essay or community essay include New York University , Duke University , Harvard University , Johns Hopkins University , and University of Michigan . 

New York University

NYU listed a cultural diversity essay as part of its 2022-2023 college application requirements. Here is the prompt:

NYU was founded on the belief that a student’s identity should not dictate the ability for them to access higher education. That sense of opportunity for all students, of all backgrounds, remains a part of who we are today and a critical part of what makes us a world class university. Our community embraces diversity, in all its forms, as a cornerstone of the NYU experience. We would like to better understand how your experiences would help us to shape and grow our diverse community.

Duke university.

Duke is well-known for its community essay: 

What is your sense of Duke as a university and a community, and why do you consider it a good match for you? If there’s something in particular about our offerings that attracts you, feel free to share that as well.

A top-ranked Ivy League institution, Harvard University also has a cultural diversity essay as part of its college application requirements: 

Harvard has long recognized the importance of student body diversity of all kinds. We welcome you to write about distinctive aspects of your background, personal development, or the intellectual interests you might bring to your Harvard classmates.

Johns hopkins university.

The Johns Hopkins supplement is another example of a cultural diversity essay: 

Founded in the spirit of exploration and discovery, Johns Hopkins University encourages students to share their perspectives, develop their interests, and pursue new experiences. Use this space to share something you’d like the admissions committee to know about you (your interests, your background, your identity, or your community), and how it has shaped what you want to get out of your college experience at Hopkins. 

University of michigan.

The University of Michigan requires a community essay for its application: 

Everyone belongs to many different communities and/or groups defined by (among other things) shared geography, religion, ethnicity, income, cuisine, interest, race, ideology, or intellectual heritage. Choose one of the communities to which you belong and describe that community and your place within it. 

Community essay examples.

The Duke and Michigan prompts are perfect illustrations of community essay examples. However, they have some critical differences. So, if you apply to both of these schools, you’ll have to change the way you approach either of these community essays. 

The Duke prompt asks you to highlight why you are a good match for the Duke community. You’ll also see this prompt in other community essay examples. To write a successful response to this prompt, you’ll need to reference offerings specific to Duke (or whichever college requires this essay). In order to know what to reference, you’ll need to do your research before you start writing. 

Consider the following questions as you write your diversity essay sample if the prompt is similar to Duke University’s

• What values does this college community have? 
• How do these tie in with what you value? 
• Is there something that this college offers that matches your interests, personality, or background?  

On the other hand, the Michigan essay prompt asks you to describe a community that you belong to as well as your place within that community. This is another variation of the prompt for community essay examples. 

To write a successful response to this prompt, you’ll need to identify a community that you belong to. Then, you’ll need to think critically about how you interact with that community. 

Below are some questions to consider as you write your diversity essay sample for colleges like Michigan: 

• Out of all the communities you belong to, which can you highlight in your response? 
• How have you impacted this community? 
• How has this community impacted you?

Now, in the next few sections, we’ll dive into the Georgetown supplemental essay examples, the Rice university essay examples, and the Williams supplemental essays examples. After each diversity essay sample, we’ll include a breakdown of why these are considered college essays that worked. 

Georgetown Essay Examples

As a reminder, the Georgetown essay examples respond to this prompt: 

As Georgetown is a diverse community, the Admissions Committee would like to know more about you in your own words. Please submit a brief essay, either personal or creative, which you feel best describes you.

Here is the excerpt of the diversity essay sample from our Georgetown essay examples: 

Georgetown University Essay Example

The best thing I ever did was skip eight days of school in a row. Despite the protests of teachers over missed class time, I told them that the world is my classroom. The lessons I remember most are those that took place during my annual family vacation to coastal Maine. That rural world is the most authentic and incredible classroom where learning simply happens and becomes exponential. 

Years ago, as I hunted through the rocks and seaweed for seaglass and mussels, I befriended a Maine local hauling her battered kayak on the shore. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had found a kindred spirit in Jeanne. Jeanne is a year-round resident who is more than the hard working, rugged Mainer that meets the eye; reserved and humble in nature, she is a wealth of knowledge and is self-taught through necessity. With thoughtful attention to detail, I engineered a primitive ramp made of driftwood and a pulley system to haul her kayak up the cliff. We diligently figured out complex problems and developed solutions through trial and error.

After running out of conventional materials, I recycled and reimagined items that had washed ashore. We expected to succeed, but were not afraid to fail. Working with Jeanne has been the best classroom in the world; without textbooks or technology, she has made a difference in my life. Whether building a basic irrigation system for her organic garden or installing solar panels to harness the sun’s energy, every project has shown me the value of taking action and making an impact. Each year brings a different project with new excitement and unique challenges. My resourcefulness, problem solving ability, and innovative thinking have advanced under her tutelage. 

While exploring the rocky coast of Maine, I embrace every experience as an unparalleled educational opportunity that transcends any classroom environment. I discovered that firsthand experience and real-world application of science are my best teachers. In school, applications of complex calculations and abstract theories are sometimes obscured by grades and structure. In Maine, I expand my love of science and renourish my curious spirit. I am a highly independent, frugal, resilient Mainer living as a southern girl in NC. 

Why this essay worked

This is one of the Georgetown supplemental essay examples that works, and here’s why. The author starts the essay with an interesting hook, which makes the reader want to learn more about this person and their perspective. 

Throughout the essay, the author illustrates their intellectual curiosity. From befriending Jeanne and creating a pulley system to engineering other projects on the rocky coast of Maine, the author demonstrates how they welcome challenges and work to solve problems. 

Further, the author mentions values that matter to them—taking action and making an impact. Both facets are also part of Georgetown’s core values . By making these connections in their essay, the author shows the admissions committee exactly how they would be a great fit for the Georgetown community. 

Finally, the author uses their experience in Maine to showcase their love of science, which is likely the field they will study at Georgetown. Like this writer, you should try to include most important parts of your identity into your essay. This includes things like life experiences, passions, majors, extracurricular activities for college, and more. 

Rice University Essay Examples

The Rice University essay examples are from this prompt: 

The quality of Rice’s academic life and the Residential College System are heavily influenced by the unique life experiences and cultural traditions each student brings. What personal perspective would you contribute to life at Rice? (500-word limit)

Rice university essay example.

Like every applicant, I also have a story to share. A story that makes me who I am and consists of chapters about my life experiences and adventures. Having been born in a different country, my journey to America was one of the most difficult things I had ever experienced. Everything felt different. The atmosphere, the places, the food, and especially the people. Everywhere I looked, I saw something new. Although it was a bit overwhelming, one thing had not changed.

The caring nature of the people was still prevalent in everyday interactions. I was overwhelmed by how supportive and understanding people were of one another. Whether it is race, religion, or culture, everyone was accepted and appreciated. I knew that I could be whoever I wanted to be and that the only limitation was my imagination. Through hard work and persistence I put my all in everything that I did. I get this work ethic from my father since he is living proof that anything can be accomplished with continued determination. Listening to the childhood stories he told me, my dad would reminisce about how he was born in an impoverished area in a third world country during a turbulent and unpredictable time.

Even with a passion for learning, he had to work a laborious job in an attempt to help his parents make ends meet. He talked about how he would study under the street lights when the power went out at home. His parents wanted something better for him, as did he. Not living in America changed nothing about their work ethic. His parents continued to work hard daily, in an attempt to provide for their son. My dad worked and studied countless hours, paying his way through school with jobs and scholarships. His efforts paid off when he finally moved to America and opened his own business. None of it would have been possible without tremendous effort and dedication needed for a better life, values that are instilled within me as well, and this is the perspective that I wish to bring to Rice. 

This diversity essay sample references the author’s unique life experiences and personal perspective, which makes it one example of college essays that worked. The author begins the essay by alluding to their unique story—they were born in a different country and then came to America. Instead of facing this change as a challenge, the author shows how this new experience helped them to feel comfortable with all kinds of people. They also highlight how their diversity was accepted and appreciated. 

Additionally, the author incorporates information about their father’s story, which helps to frame their own values and where those values came from. The values that they chose to highlight also fall in line with the values of the Rice community. 

Williams Supplemental Essay Examples

Let’s read the prompt that inspired so many strong Williams supplemental essays examples again: 

Every first-year student at Williams lives in an Entry—a thoughtfully constructed microcosm of the student community that’s a defining part of the Williams experience. From the moment they arrive, students find themselves in what’s likely the most diverse collection of backgrounds, perspectives and interests they’ve ever encountered. What might differentiate you from the 19 other first-year students in an entry? What perspective(s) would you add to the conversation with your peers?

Williams college essay example.

Through the flow in my head

See you clad in red

But not just the clothes

It’s your whole being

Covering in this sickening blanket

Of heat and pain

Are you in agony, I wonder?

Is this the hell they told me about?

Have we been condemned?

Reduced to nothing but pain

At least we have each other

In our envelopes of crimson

I try in vain

“Take my hands” I shriek

“Let’s protect each other, 

You and me, through this hell”

My body contorts

And deforms into nothingness

You remain the same

Clad in red

With faraway eyes

You, like a statue

Your eyes fixed somewhere else

You never see me

Just the red briefcase in your heart

We aren’t together

It’s always been me alone

While you stand there, aloof, with the briefcase in your heart.

I wrote this poem the day my prayer request for the Uighur Muslims got denied at school. At the time, I was stunned. I was taught to have empathy for those around me. Yet, that empathy disappears when told to extend it to someone different. I can’t comprehend this contradiction and I refuse to. 

At Williams, I hope to become a Community Engagement Fellow at the Davis Center. I hope to use Williams’ support for social justice and advocacy to educate my fellow classmates on social issues around the world. Williams students are not just scholars but also leaders and changemakers. Together, we can strive to better the world through advocacy.

Human’s capability for love is endless. We just need to open our hearts to everyone. 

It’s time to let the briefcase go and look at those around us with our real human eyes.

We see you now. Please forgive us.

As we mentioned above, the Williams acceptance rate is incredibly low. This makes the supplemental essay that much more important. 

This diversity essay sample works because it is personal and memorable. The author chooses to start the essay off with a poem. Which, if done right, will immediately grab the reader’s attention. 

Further, the author contextualizes the poem by explaining the circumstances surrounding it—they wrote it in response to a prayer request that was denied at school. In doing so, they also highlight their own values of empathy and embracing diversity. 

Finally, the author ends their cultural diversity essay by describing what excites them about Williams. They also discuss how they see themselves interacting within the Williams community. This is a key piece of the essay, as it helps the reader understand how the author would be a good fit for Williams. 

The examples provided within this essay also touch on issues that are important to the author, which provides a glimpse into the type of student the author would be on campus. Additionally, this response shows what potential extracurricular activities for college the author might be interested in pursuing while at Williams. 

How to Write a Cultural Diversity Essay

You want your diversity essay to stand out from any other diversity essay sample. But how do you write a successful cultural diversity essay? 

First, consider what pieces of your identity you want to highlight in your essay. Of course, race and ethnicity are important facets of diversity. However, there are plenty of other factors to consider. 

As you brainstorm, think outside the box to figure out what aspects of your identity help make up who you are. Because identity and diversity fall on a spectrum, there is no right or wrong answer here. 

Fit your ideas to the specific school

Once you’ve decided on what you want to represent in your cultural diversity essay, think about how that fits into the college of your choice. Use your cultural diversity essay to make connections to the school. If your college has specific values or programs that align with your identity, then include them in your cultural diversity essay! 

Above all, you should write about something that is important to you. Your cultural diversity essay, gender diversity essay, or community essay will succeed if you are passionate about your topic and willing to get personal. 

Additional Tips for Community & Cultural Diversity Essays

1. start early.

In order to create the strongest diversity essay possible, you’ll want to start early. Filling out college applications is already a time-consuming process. So, you can cut back on additional stress and anxiety by writing your cultural diversity essay as early as possible. 

2. Brainstorm

Writing a cultural diversity essay or community essay is a personal process. To set yourself up for success, take time to brainstorm and reflect on your topic. Overall, you want your cultural diversity essay to be a good indication of who you are and what makes you a unique applicant. 

3. Proofread

We can’t stress this final tip enough. Be sure to proofread your cultural diversity essay before you hit the submit button. Additionally, you can read your essay aloud to hear how it flows. You can also can ask someone you trust, like your college advisor or a teacher, to help proofread your essay as well.

Other CollegeAdvisor Essay Resources to Explore

Looking for additional resources on supplemental essays for the colleges we mentioned above? Do you need help with incorporating extracurricular activities for college into your essays or crafting a strong diversity essay sample? We’ve got you covered. 

Our how to get into Georgetown guide covers additional tips on how to approach the supplemental diversity essay. If you’re wondering how to write about community in your essay, check out our campus community article for an insider’s perspective on Williams College.

Want to learn strategies for writing compelling cultural diversity essays? Check out this Q&A webinar, featuring a former Georgetown admissions officer. And, if you’re still unsure of what to highlight in your community essay, try getting inspiration from a virtual college tour . 

Cultural Diversity Essay & Community Essay Examples – Final Thoughts

Your supplemental essays are an important piece of the college application puzzle. With colleges becoming more competitive than ever, you’ll want to do everything you can to create a strong candidate profile. This includes writing well-crafted responses for a cultural diversity essay, gender diversity essay, or community essay. 

We hope our cultural diversity essay guide helped you learn more about this common type of supplemental essay. As you are writing your own cultural diversity essay or community essay, use the essay examples from Georgetown, Rice, and Williams above as your guide. 

Getting into top schools takes a lot more than a strong resume. Writing specific, thoughtful, and personal responses for a cultural diversity essay, gender diversity essay, or community essay will put you one step closer to maximizing your chances of admission. Good luck!

CollegeAdvisor.com is here to help you with every aspect of the college admissions process. From taking a gap year to completing enrollment , we’re here to help. Register today to receive one-on-one support from an admissions expert as you begin your college application journey.

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Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — What is Culture

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What does the future look like in Indigenous hands?

National Geographic Explorer Keolu Fox says the key to harnessing the technology of tomorrow is centering traditions of the past.

Water and wealth are constructed from the same word in Hawaiian. These terms— wai and waiwai, respectively—are an indelible part of who I am, and who Native Hawaiians are. They’re reminders that we’ve always valued the abundant natural beauty and life-giving resources of our homelands. There is perhaps no better example of this than ahupua‘a land divisions, a socio-economic and geological system that Hawaiian communities designed more than a thousand years ago to apportion the islands into seasonally responsive slices that ran from the mountains to the sea. These land divisions fed snowmelt along irrigation routes to terraced taro patches. They provided valuable bacteria and phytonutrients to fishponds. Those fish then populated the inner reefs and, once mature, the Pacific Ocean. The system itself was highly organized and politically complex. It supported a huge labor force and provided a sustainable supply of food for the entire population.

( Discover the ahupua‘a system in our interactive story. )

Across the world, Indigenous communities have long been incubators of sustainable systems. Pueblo and other Native architects developed ingenious multistory housing uniquely crafted for the deserts of North America. Aboriginal communities in Australia perfected the ecologically enriching land management practice known as cultural burning . These systems, like our land divisions, reflect a union of the local culture and environment, one that keeps the needs of a community and the planet in balance.

( Aboriginal women are reclaiming their relationship with cultural fire. )

As we all strive to imagine the future, the inevitability of extractive capitalism should not be assumed. Rather, it’s important to think deeply about how to build an alternative reality—one where Indigenous perspectives on relationships to land, sea, sky, and cosmos are the guiding force. We should all ask, What would our planet look like in Indigenous hands?

Charting an Indigenous future will require a shift in our consciousness. We can optimize landscapes for exponential growth, profit, and, eventually, failure, or we can optimize for harmony and balance. To quote an ancient Hawaiian chief, “He ali‘i ka ‘āina, the land is a chief; he kauwā ke kanaka, humans are its servants.”

Rather than focus on short-term gains, we must prioritize future generations.

I once stumbled upon an elder balancing the books of a casino in the Pacific Northwest. I was surprised to find that this gentleman was not using a model based on quarterly, or even annual, returns; his spreadsheet’s financial plan extended 10 generations into the future.

Over the past several decades, Indigenous communities have seen various economic drivers come and go, from natural resource extraction—oil, gas, and coal—to gaming and casinos. It’s clear that data is next. Is there a more valuable resource today on the planet?

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To be in control of their assets, Indigenous peoples should build their own data centers—but in such a way that they would be not only sovereign but also sustainable, in harmony and balance with nature. Rather than follow the example of titan chipmaker TSMC, which chose the sweltering expanses of Phoenix for two planned factories, we could situate these critical infrastructures in cool climates abundant in natural water resources and reduce the energy consumption needed to keep them from overheating. Companies and countries too should think beyond tax incentives and weak labor markets when deciding where data centers should be built. Indigenous communities might offer their own examples for the design and implementation of these centers, powered by renewable energy sources that respect the Earth’s rhythms and acknowledge that resources aren’t just resources—they’re ancestors.

( Deb Haaland: A new era of partnership between tribal nations and the federal government )

To realize a world that revolves around these shared values, all of us must think further into the future.

Imagine Indigenous scientists using the tools of synthetic biology to heal the Earth by genome-editing bacteria to metabolize plastic in the ocean into biofuel . Gaping holes left festering from the violent pursuit of critical minerals, such as lithium , cobalt , and tantalum , are remediated and transformed into pristine freshwater aquifers—poison sucked out like a snakebite. Imagine storing data in the genomes of indigenous photosynthesizing plants , an idea that already is more science than fiction: In 2017 researchers announced that they had used the gene-editing system Crispr to encode a digital movie into the DNA of a population of E. coli bacteria. Imagine the roots of these carbon-negative “data centers” simultaneously encouraging biodiversity, treating soil that has been polluted for centuries, and providing fruits and vegetables for local farmers to sell.

Rather than cities all converging on the same look of Ikea-brochure apartments and placeless, copy-and-paste office towers, our built environment might reflect local innovation, heritage, and culture. Imagine that homes are once again living ancestors: Ancient, local soil is repurposed into bio-concrete infused with genome-editing bacteria that seal cracks by calcifying into new limestone. Imagine building materials with photosynthetic properties that draw energy from the sun, or bioluminescence that might dim our harsh, urban glare and restore the view of the night sky our people once knew. Imagine 3D-printing urban structures into ancient shapes, like the tangled, twisting, living bridges that the Khasi and Jaintia people in India wove from the roots of trees.

One vision of Indigenous futurism is alternative history. A time line where Captain Cook never makes it to Hawai‘i, Cortés never arrives at Tenochtitlan in search of gold, and the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María are still trees planted in the earth. Where would Indigenous peoples be? What would they have become? But there’s another time line we should consider—one that doesn’t require us to change the past, just the future: Land and ancestors returned. Cities and rural landscapes where technology and nature coexist. Community networks thriving on decentralized digital platforms that empower local decision-making and facilitate a barter-based economy rooted in shared resources and knowledge. Matriarchy restored . Education systems that immerse students in Indigenous histories and cultures, fostering a global citizenship that respects and celebrates both the ancient and the futuristic.

Charting this Indigenous future—shifting our consciousness—will mean adopting a shared vision where the wisdom of the past guides us for generations to come. One where technology serves humanity’s deepest values and aspirations. Where the guardianship of the Earth and the equitable distribution of its resources define progress.

( This Hawaiian geneticist works to empower Indigenous peoples. )

Related Topics

• MODERN HISTORY
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• INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

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Hayek, the Accidental Freudian

By Corey Robin

In November, 1977, on a still-sticky evening along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek boarded a flight bound for Chile and settled into his seat in first class. He was headed to the Valparaíso Business School, where he was scheduled to receive an honorary degree. Upon arrival in Santiago, the Nobel laureate was greeted at the airport by the dean of the business school, Carlos Cáceres. They drove toward the Pacific Coast, stopping for a bite to eat in the city of Casablanca, which had a restaurant known for its chicken stew. After their meal, they steered north to Viña del Mar, a seaside resort city in Valparaíso, where Hayek would take long walks on the beach, pausing now and then to study the stones in the sand.

To the casual observer, it seemed like a typical autumnal recessional, the sort of trip that illustrious scholars enjoy at the end of their careers. This one had a wintrier purpose. In addition to being a fan of Hayek, Cáceres sat on a special board of advisers to the military dictator Augusto Pinochet , who had overthrown Chile’s democratically elected Socialist leader, Salvador Allende , in a violent coup four years earlier. Cáceres would go on to serve as Pinochet’s central banker, finance minister, and interior minister. He helped design the country’s 1980 constitution, which nested a neoliberal economy in the spikes of an authoritarian state. Like many of his market-minded colleagues in the regime, Cáceres wanted the world to see the dictatorship—steeped in kidnapping, torture, and murder—as he saw it: on the road to freedom. A visit from Hayek, an internationally renowned theorist of capitalism and liberty, might help.

If Hayek had any qualms about his role, he did not express them. To the contrary: after a personal meeting with Pinochet, the philosopher told reporters that he had explained to the tyrant that “unlimited democracy does not work.” Pinochet “listened carefully” and asked Hayek to send his writing on the topic. Hayek had his secretary mail a chapter from his forthcoming book, the third volume of “ Law, Legislation and Liberty, ” which included a discussion of emergency rule. After commending the dictatorship for not “being obsessed with popular commitments or political expectations of any kind,” Hayek reported to the media that “the direction of the Chilean economy is very good,” and “an example for the world.” The regime, Cáceres later told Hayek, welcomed his words.

In the following years, Hayek continued to defend the regime, describing its leaders as “educated, reasonable, and insightful men” and Pinochet as “an honorable general.” To a doubting public, Hayek explained that dictators can cleanse democracies of their “impurities.” He reassured critics that he had “not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende.” It was one of the rare instances when his perception of the country matched reality; as a respondent pointed out, “such absolute unanimity only exists when those who disagree have been imprisoned, expelled, terrified into silence, or destroyed.”

Hayek made his voyage to Santiago more than a quarter century after the years covered in “ Hayek: A Life ,” the first half of Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger’s projected two-volume biography. The trip is naturally not discussed in this volume, which ends in 1950, yet it is embedded in virtually every sentence of Hayek’s developing thought and being. Decades before he set foot on Chilean soil, Hayek envisioned economic freedom as a form of élite domination. His economy required no intervention of an authoritarian state to be coercive and unfree. It was already coercive and unfree, by design. The question we’re left with, at the end of 1950, is not how Hayek, theorist of liberty, could have come to the aid of Pinochet but, given his theory of the economy, how could he not?

Friedrich August Edler von Hayek was born on May 8, 1899, in his parents’ apartment in Vienna. Two miles away, Sigmund Freud was putting the finishing touches on “ The Interpretation of Dreams .” “ Fin-de-siècle Vienna ” invokes a century-straddling city whose violent metamorphosis, from the crown jewel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the capital of the Austrian Republic, released into the world a distinctive swirl of psychoanalysis and logical positivism, fascism and atonal music. Though often omitted from the city’s syllabus, Hayek’s writings are among its lasting texts.

His family story reads like a novel by Joseph Roth or Thomas Mann. Hayek’s paternal great-great-grandfather, a textile manufacturer in Moravia, was ennobled at the end of the eighteenth century; his son squandered his wealth in the course of the nineteenth. Hayek’s maternal great-grandfather was knighted for service to the Emperor at the siege of Arad. Both sides of the family were beneficiaries of a century’s creative accounting that, by the collapse of the Empire in 1918, had bestowed a “von” upon eight thousand members of the bourgeoisie. Though the Republic abolished the use of titles in 1919, Hayek continued to use his until 1945, when it became a liability in his arguments with the left.

A high-minded liberalism is often attributed to these branches of the Austrian bourgeoisie, but fascist and proto-fascist ornaments adorn the Hayek family tree. His grandfather ran for political office, twice, as a follower of Karl Lueger, whom Adolf Hitler claimed as an inspiration. Hayek’s father helped found a racially restrictive association of physicians to oppose the increasing number of Jews in the medical profession. His mother pored over “Mein Kampf” and welcomed the Anschluss. His brother Heinz, who had moved to Germany for a job in 1929, joined the S.A. in 1933 and the Nazi Party in 1938, for reasons of conviction and career, then underwent a de-Nazification trial after the war.

Whatever hold Hayek’s family had upon him in his youth, it loosened during the First World War. While serving at the Italian front, he briefly fell under the spell of the writings of the German Jewish industrialist Walther Rathenau. Upon returning home, Hayek enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he studied with the author of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen, a Jewish social democrat. When capitalism became his passion and economics his profession, Hayek helped found a discussion group of students and faculty, most of them Jewish or of Jewish descent. Exposed “to the best type of Jewish intelligentsia . . . who proved to be far ahead of me in literary education and general precociousness,” Hayek planted his flag of free markets in the field of enlightenment and cosmopolitanism.

Its perimeter extended only so far. In 1923, he travelled to the United States, believing that an “acquaintance” with the country was “indispensable for an economist.” Already primed by Oswald Spengler ’s “ The Decline of the West ,” which he read in 1920, Hayek was appalled by what he saw. The culture was lowbrow, its tastes crass and banal. The women were “horrible . . . walking paint pots.” New York City was crowded and noisy. Americans cared too much about money. Good living required inordinate wealth. Like a socialist who can’t abide the working class, Hayek couldn’t bear the reality of commercial civilization. He chose enchantment instead.

The task of psychoanalysis, Freud wrote in 1917, is “to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind.” Despite his animus toward Freud, whom he called “probably . . . the greatest destroyer of culture,” Hayek launched a similar strike at the “economic man” of mainstream analysis. Against the idea of the “quasi-omniscient individual” who operates in a “perfect market in which everybody knows everything,” Hayek created what he would later call an “anti-rationalistic” approach to economics and social life.

Before 1937, Hayek, by his own account, was a conventional thinker. He had joined the London School of Economics in 1931, where he hewed to the conservative maxims of Austrian economics. He argued for tight money and the gold standard, supported wage cuts and austerity, and tried to assemble a theory of prices and the business cycle from pieces he had been collecting since his dissertation days in Vienna. With his articles “Economics and Knowledge” (1937) and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945), Hayek broke free of these strictures and started his “own way of thinking.” It was “the most exciting moment” of his career, generating a “feeling of sudden illumination, sudden enlightenment.”

Hayek believed that what we see in the economy, what we can know, is limited and constrained. We know small facts: how to jiggle the handle of a machine in our office; who’s available on the weekend to fix that part that always breaks just so; which supplier will replace it when it’s beyond repair. If we, or a limited group of us, were alone in the world with those facts, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, we might know the whole of the economy. But we’re not. We share the economy with a great many others, scattered across the globe. We can’t know their infinitesimal facts any more than they can know ours. Straitened by time and place, each of us possesses only a “special knowledge of circumstances of the fleeting moment not known to others.”

These fragments of economic knowledge are often unconscious; we can’t render them as propositions or in words. A skilled manager can inspire his employees to do excellent work without being able to explain what he did to inspire them.

But if all this knowledge is local and unique, if much of it is unspoken and inferred, how do we produce and consume on a global scale? How does my knowledge get registered by buyers and sellers thousands of miles away? And if the facts of my economic situation change, as they invariably do, how do those buyers and sellers learn of those changes and respond in kind?

For Hayek, the answer lay in the movement of prices. Imagine the global market in lithium, which is crucial to batteries. One day, the price of lithium increases. Maybe demand has gone up: an affordable electric car has rolled off the assembly line, or an efficient energy grid has come online. Maybe supply has come down: a vein of ore in Australia has been thoroughly mined, or workers at a salt flat in Chile have gone on strike. The source of the scarcity is irrelevant to us. Not only does it not matter, Hayek says, “it is significant that it does not matter.” All we know and need to know is the facts of our economic situation. The higher price of lithium raises the price of a new cell phone, so I hold off on upgrading my phone. When the price of lithium goes back down—the Chilean workers settle with management or suppliers find a new source in Australia—I get my phone.

Hayek marvelled at this concert of unknowingness. Like a psychoanalytic symptom, prices condense and communicate fragments of knowledge that are obscure to the conscious mind. The movement of prices effects a change in our “dispositions”—what we want, how much of it we want, what and how much we’re willing to give up to get it—again, without our knowing why, or that we even had such a disposition in the first place. Hayek called this a sort of “social mind”—though, unlike the Freudian mind, he thought it must remain inaccessible. We are all prisoners of a knowledge that allows us to move in dimly lit corridors, bumping into one another, our weight shifting ever so slightly as we try to keep moving in line.

Hayek’s market seems to conjure a wondrous democracy of unreason. No one has comprehensive vision; we coöperate without supervision or sight. But it also invites a question: Where does something like innovation come from? It can’t be from the masses or the majority, the wageworkers whose horizons are limited. Conforming to their values would probably “mean the stagnation, if not the decay, of civilization.” For innovation to occur, he wrote, a few “must lead, and the rest must follow.”

It turns out that knowledge is distributed unequally across Hayek’s market. “Only from an advanced position does the next range of desires and possibilities become visible,” he wrote. A few men, of discrete outline and distinctive purpose, occupy that position, imposing themselves on the many. “The selection of new goals” is made by an élite “long before the majority can strive for them.” There is much unreason but little democracy. There is also little freedom. Hayek cares a great deal about freedom, but he believes that it, too, does its most important work in exclusive quarters. “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million,” he wrote, “may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.”

Hayek’s contortions—his attempts to preserve commitments both to freedom and to élitism—are most evident in his concept of coercion. Coercion, Hayek tells us in the first chapter of “ The Constitution of Liberty ,” his magnum opus on free societies, is “such control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another that, in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to serve the ends of another.” By way of example, let’s say an investor pulls his money out of a company that I work for, forcing me to lose my job. Thanks to my salary and benefits, I’d taken out a mortgage, started a family, and enrolled my children in school. I had a plan and a purpose for my life. Because of that investor, both are now threatened. His actions have rendered “the alternatives before me . . . distressingly few and uncertain.” Because of him, I may be “impelled” by the threat of starvation “to accept a distasteful job at a very low wage,” which leaves me “ ‘at the mercy’ of the only man willing to employ me.” Even so, Hayek insists that I have not been coerced.

How can that be? Hayek suddenly introduces a new element to his analysis, which is scarcely mentioned in that opening chapter on freedom. “So long as the intent of the act that harms me is not to make me serve another person’s ends,” he writes, “its effect on my freedom is not different from that of any natural calamity.” The investor didn’t seek to harm me, to make me give up my plans and purposes, in the service of his ends. He just happened to harm me in the service of his ends. He’s like a monster wave. Monster waves aren’t coercive; they’re simply telling us to take our surfboard elsewhere.

Hayek’s is an economy in which a few can act, with all the power of nature, while the rest of us are acted upon. That domination is directly derived from his vision of the economy and his conception of freedom. It is a commitment obscured by Hayek’s readers, not only his right-wing defenders but also his left-wing critics. The latter tend to focus on other sources of domination or unfreedom: the cruel and carceral state that enforces Hayek’s neoliberal order; the remote global institutions that put that order beyond the reach of democratic citizens; the patriarchal family that offers tutorials in submission to the market; and the construction of the enterprising self that is so emblematic of contemporary capitalism.

Persuasive as these readings are, they don’t quite capture that moment of élite domination in the Hayekian market, when the “innovations” of a seeing and knowing few have “forced a new manner of living” on the unseeing and unknowing many, whose function is neither to invest nor amass but to yield, not to the economy or the state but to their superior. It was a moment that Hayek came to know all too well in his personal life.

The great trial of Hayek’s life was his twenty-four-year marriage to Helena (Hella) Fritsch, much of which he spent trying to get out of. Caldwell and Klausinger devote the last three chapters of their biography to the divorce—and for good reason, even if they can’t see it. In Hayek’s anguished bid to end his marriage, we find, just as Freud would have anticipated, the private pathology of the public philosophy, the knowledge problem in practice. That we should discover those pathologies in a marriage is less remarkable than it might seem. From the treatises of antiquity to the novels of Jane Austen to the economics of Thomas Piketty , writers of all sorts have understood the overlap between unions of soul and contracts of need.

Before Hella, there was Lenerl—Helene Bitterlich, a distant cousin whom Hayek fell in love with after the First World War, and who shared his feelings. Sexually inexperienced and hopeless around women, Hayek didn’t make a move. Eventually, another man did, and Lenerl accepted his proposal. Hayek began seeing Hella, and they married in 1926. Within a decade, he confessed to Hella that he had married her on the rebound from Lenerl. He secretly arranged to be with Lenerl at a future point and asked Hella for a divorce. She refused the divorce and any further discussion of it.

After the Second World War, Hayek resumed his efforts. Because he intended to support Hella and their children after the divorce, he resolved to get a higher-paying job in America. For two years, he crisscrossed the Atlantic, sometimes without telling Hella the purpose of his trips. By 1948, he had an offer from the University of Chicago. When he disclosed his plan to Hella, she again refused to grant him a divorce. He had his attorney scour the country’s various divorce laws, including Reno’s. Hella, too, spoke with a lawyer, who made clear that Hayek could not divorce her without her consent.

That Hayek and Hella should have found themselves in the marital equivalent of a Hayekian market—uncertain about each other’s plans, ignorant of each other’s moves, captive to each other’s tacit knowledge—did not give him perspective or pause. Instead, he did what victims, and left-wing critics, of the market often do. In a letter to Hella, he insisted on the objective facts of the situation and asserted the rationality and right of his position. He forgot the first rule of Hayekian economics, that all data is subjective. Hella told him that if he left her, she would have a nervous breakdown, forcing him to return to take care of their children. Then she resumed her silence.

Hayek tried a different tack, drawn from another page of his economic writing. In “The Meaning of Competition,” Hayek had taken issue with the economist George Stigler’s claim that “economic relationships are never perfectly competitive if they involve any personal relationships between economic units.” Hayek countered that the corollary of imperfect knowledge in a competitive market is the trust that we must invest in other individuals, who supply us with goods and services. We depend on our personal connections—and connections to those connections—to send us to the best doctor, restaurant, or hotel. Personal networks, and the reputations that move along them, make markets work and give market actors a competitive edge.

Seeking to alter the terms of his contest with Hella, Hayek leveraged his power and connections to get a better vantage, to see further than Hella and to make the world work for him. He knew he couldn’t take the job at Chicago without resolving his divorce, but he couldn’t put Chicago off indefinitely. With his network of academic friends and private donors, he secured a temporary appointment at the university for the winter quarter of 1950. That bought him time. It also involved considerable subterfuge, toward his wife, friends, and colleagues and supervisors at the London School of Economics, who were led to believe that he would return to Britain.

To get a divorce in America, Hayek needed to establish residence in a state other than Illinois, which had restrictive divorce laws. There could be no whiff of his using the state simply to get the divorce; he’d have to get a job there and give up his appointment at L.S.E. He secured a temporary post at the University of Arkansas for the spring quarter of 1950. He arranged for his mother to move to London, if necessary, to help take care of the children and make sure Hella made no sudden moves.

“The choreography was precise,” Caldwell and Klausinger write. In the course of two days in February, while he was in America, Hayek resigned from L.S.E. and informed Hella that he was leaving her. If she wanted him to support her and the children, she had to grant him the divorce. On the advice of a lawyer, Hayek gathered more evidence of their incompatibility. He hired a handwriting expert from Vienna, who determined, from letters written by Hella and Hayek, that she was “remote from the facts of life” and he “prevails in life and knows how to master it.” In July, they were divorced. A month later, he was married to Lenerl.

The story has a final Hayekian twist. Responding to the Labour government’s drastic devaluation of the pound, Hella’s attorneys had wisely stipulated that Hayek’s alimony payments be set out in dollars. Hayek agreed, though not without sniffing that her lawyers “were interested solely in their fees.” Hayek’s L.S.E. colleague, the economist Lionel Robbins, tussled with him over whether he had got a raw deal. Robbins, once Hayek’s best friend, had sided with Hella during the divorce and become one of her close advisers. He dismissed Hayek’s complaints: “Your conception of justice is very different from mine.” ♦

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A Historical and Theological Description of Jesus Christ

This essay is about the historical and theological description of Jesus Christ. It discusses his life as a Jewish preacher in first-century Judea, his teachings on love and forgiveness, and his role in founding Christianity. The essay highlights the absence of a physical description in biblical texts, the belief in Jesus as both divine and human, and the significance of his crucifixion and resurrection. It also touches on his influence on ethical principles and his broader spiritual significance across different religions. The essay underscores Jesus’ lasting impact on history, culture, and religion.

How it works

Jesus Christ is truly a big deal in human history, respected by billions worldwide. His life and teachings are the bedrock of Christianity, shaping everything from culture to philosophy and religion. To talk about Jesus means digging into both the history of his life and the beliefs about him held by believers.

Historically, Jesus was a Jewish preacher from Nazareth, living in Judea around 2,000 years ago. The stories we have about him mostly come from the New Testament in the Bible, which tells us he was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth.

His parents, Mary and Joseph, were devout Jews. Jesus started preaching about the Kingdom of God when he was about 30, doing miracles and gathering a big group of followers.

We don’t have a clear picture of what Jesus looked like from the Bible, so artists and early Christian writings imagined him with a beard and long hair, fitting in with how people looked back then. They often showed him as caring and serious, matching his teachings and personality.

In terms of belief, Christians think Jesus is God’s Son and the promised Messiah (Christ) from the Old Testament. The big idea in Christianity is the Incarnation, which says Jesus is fully God and fully human. This mix is a big mystery that’s at the heart of what Christians believe, showing how Jesus connects God and people in a special way.

One of the most important times in Jesus’ life was his crucifixion, a harsh Roman punishment. Christians believe he died to make up for everyone’s sins. Then, three days later, he came back to life—this is a huge deal in Christianity, showing that sin and death don’t win, and people who believe get to live forever.

Jesus’ teachings, written down in the gospels, are all about love, forgiveness, and being humble. The Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew’s gospel, is super famous for saying things like, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and talking about how to live in a good way. He also told stories called parables, like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, which teach deep lessons about life and how to treat others.

Jesus didn’t just teach—he did amazing things, too. According to the gospels, he healed sick people, made blind folks see again, and even brought dead people back to life. These miracles showed his power and his love for people, making folks pay attention to what he had to say.

Beyond the miracles and teaching, Jesus cared a lot about everyone, especially those who were left out by society, like tax collectors, prostitutes, and sick people. His message was pretty radical for his time, shaking up how people thought about rules and religion. It’s why he got in trouble with the authorities and ended up arrested and killed on a cross.

Jesus’ impact goes way past his own time. Christianity, based on his life and teachings, is the world’s biggest religion today. His ideas about what’s right and wrong have influenced things like laws, human rights, and how we fight for fairness. He’s also a big figure in Islam, where he’s seen as a prophet, and in other religions, showing just how important he is to many people.

In the end, describing Jesus Christ means looking at both the history and what people believe about him. He’s a figure who’s made a huge impact, inspiring and challenging folks all over the world. Whether you see him as a historical figure or a religious leader, Jesus keeps showing us what love, sacrifice, and making things right are all about.

Remember, this is just a start for your own thinking and learning. If you need more help, think about talking to experts at EduBirdie—they’re great at making sure your work meets all the rules for school and helping you understand things better.

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What is queer food? We asked LGBTQ foodies and chefs to define it

It’s unlikely that two LGBTQ people will give you the same definition of “queer food.” 

The term has become increasingly popular with the rise of queer restaurants, including The Ruby Fruit , a restaurant and wine bar for the “sapphically inclined” in Los Angeles, and HAGS, a fine dining restaurant “by queer people for all people” in New York City. Specific foods and drinks have also been claimed by or marketed to the LGBTQ community, such as vodka sodas and sourdough bread .

For some, queer food is simply food made by queer people. Others say it’s about sharing food in queer community, while there are those who believe it should include serving marginalized people who have been excluded from fine dining spaces. 

So what is queer food, aside from a term slowly gaining traction in certain corners of the LGBTQ community? The question was the subject of the Queer Food Conference at Boston University in April, with workshops such as “Queer Food and Fundraising as Resistance” and “Nonbinary Botany: Cultivating Pollinator Community Workshop.” 

One of the founders of the conference, Megan Elias, the director of the university’s gastronomy program, declined to give a rigid definition, because, she noted, it can mean so many different things. “Which is lovely, right?”

For Elias, the term brings back memories of a restaurant she went to in the 1990s in San Francisco’s Castro District, one of the country’s first gay neighborhoods, called Hot N’ Crusty. 

“I was like, ‘That’s gay food,’” Elias recalled. “It’s funny and it’s tasty and it’s messy. But it was because it was being presented to me in the Castro, right? If Hot N’ Crusty had been out by the baseball stadium, it would have had a different feel to it, a different meaning.” 

What queer food means for Elias “is circumstantial,” she said, “and it’s up for conversation.”

NBC News asked a variety of LGBTQ academics, chefs and foodies across the country what queer food means to them. Though the definition of the term can vary widely, they all agreed that queer food in any form requires one nonnegotiable ingredient: community. 

Vanessa Parish

Executive director, queer food foundation.

Vanessa Parish co-founded the Queer Food Foundation in 2020 as a mutual aid fund to support food service workers who were being laid off at the start of the pandemic. Today, the group also conducts research and hosts events and educational panels. 

“We like to say queer food is us existing in spaces,” Parish said. “If you’re queer, your food is queer; that’s pretty much it. It’s not a rainbow cupcake or bagel type of situation. That’s fun, but that’s not what queer food is.” 

A rainbow cake, Parish added, isn’t inherently more queer than a regular cake created by a queer person.  

“If the person that curated it, their hands and their energy and their community building, is queer, then it’s queer food,” she said.

John Birdsall

Award-winning food and culture writer.

John Birdsall started writing about queer food when “nobody I knew or read remotely talked about queer food,” he said. In 2013, he wrote an article for Lucky Peach magazine titled “ America, Your Food is So Gay ” about three gay men — James Beard and Richard Olney, both chefs and cookbook authors, and restaurant critic Craig Claiborne — who Birdsall argued were architects of modern American food in the mid- to late 20th century. The article went on to win a James Beard Award for food and culture writing. 

“For me, queer food isn’t necessarily focused on dishes or recipes,” said Birdsall, who is based in Tucson, Arizona. “It’s focused on those voices and those individuals who transformed cookbooks, for instance, transformed restaurant spaces, transformed how queer people could be visible in public spaces.”

Birdsall cited James Baldwin as one such transformational figure. Baldwin, a gay civil rights activist and one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, wrote about “shared hospitality being a queer virtue,” he said. Birdsall added that Baldwin’s distinctly queer philosophy of “complete acceptance” around a table marked “a really significant evolution in American food.” 

“James Baldwin had this sense of the specific food not mattering — it’s how you come to the table, who’s invited to the table, who’s considered family around the table,” Birdsall said, adding that Baldwin would host dinners at his home in France with a rotating cast of cultural icons, including dancer and singer Josephine Baker and singer-songwriter Nina Simone.

Elizabeth Blake

Assistant english professor, clark university in massachusetts .

Elizabeth Blake, a professor specializing in gender and sexuality studies, food studies and global modernist literature, said her book about depictions of queerness in modernist literature was inspired in part by “The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book,” written by the longtime partner of Gertrude Stein, a legendary lesbian novelist. Toklas published the cookbook in 1954, after Stein’s death, to support herself. 

“It’s this kind of very gossipy memoir, where she knew that a lot of people who would buy it would buy it not to make her recipes, but to get the dirt on [Pablo] Picasso,” who was friends with Stein and painted a portrait of her, Blake said. 

The recipes, Blake added, “are also totally over the top.” It has a famous recipe for hash brownies and a recipe for fish with three sauces arranged to mimic cubism that Toklas served to Picasso. Blake described the text as a “totally radical” and queer take on the cookbook. 

Alex Ketchum

Co-founder, queer food conference .

Alex Ketchum, a professor at McGill University’s Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies and a co-founder of the Queer Food Conference, said she asks three questions when she’s deciding whether something should be categorized as queer food: Who’s creating it? Is it community-centered? Does it have roots in queer history? 

Ketchum pointed to Mary Rathbun’s brownies as an example. Rathbun was a medical cannabis rights activist who became known in the 1980s as “ Brownie Mary ” for a weed brownie recipe she made for AIDS patients who experienced loss of appetite and severe weight loss.

Ketchum is also the author of “Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses,” which is the first history of more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants and coffeehouses in the U.S. from 1972 to the present. She said queer community spaces that serve or provide food create unique spaces for both joy and political organizing. 

“I think food allows us this way to take on the challenging and the difficult and yet kind of reaffirm our own community and then create a space that reinvigorates us and literally nourishes us,” she said.

Founder, Queer Soup Night

Chef and cookbook author Liz Alpern founded Queer Soup Night in Brooklyn, New York, after the 2016 election. At the first Queer Soup Night, Alpern made the soup. Now, Queer Soup Night invites local LGBTQ chefs to make soup to help elevate their public profiles. 

The group has 13 active chapters across the U.S. that Alpern said are guided by the importance of connecting with local queer communities and the collective power of those communities, as Queer Soup Nights raise money for local nonprofit organizations.

“In my heart, for me, queer food is food eaten and enjoyed and produced in queer community,” she said. “Everything about queerness to me is about community. It’s about identity within community. When I think about being queer, I think about being queer with others. So if I think about queer food, it’s about eating with others.”

Founder of T Party: BBQ and potluck social in Texas

Lou Weaver, 54, a queer transgender man living in Houston, recently started T Party, a trans and nonbinary barbecue and potluck inspired by popular monthly socials that a local trans center used to host before it closed about a decade ago. Weaver said 12 people attended his first barbecue at Frost Town Brewing in April, which jumped to 30 in May. 

Weaver said queer food “is about the company.”

“Being in community with people who accept you for who you are,” he said. “Like being vulnerable and at peace while breaking bread together.”

Ludwig Hurtado 

Co-editor, play.

Ludwig Hurtado, a writer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, started working on a queer cookbook zine in October. When he first told people about it, he said, they would ask whether it was related to gay sex. 

“The first place everyone goes is very sexual, and that was a bit upsetting for me,” said Hurtado, a former NBC News producer. “I just felt like queerness is so much more than that.”

Hurtado and co-editors Colleen Hamilton and Gabriella Lewis curated a new zine, titled PLAY , out this month, with a selection of recipes and art from LGBTQ chefs and artists. The zine will benefit two nonprofit organizations: Intransitive , one of the only trans rights groups in Arkansas, and The Okra Project , a mutual aid organization that supports Black trans people. 

He said one of the projects he was inspired by was “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” a cooking column for people with HIV/AIDS that ran in an AIDS humor zine called Diseased Pariah News from 1990 to 1999. 

“The name of the column itself is very indicative of what we’re trying to say, like eat, have fun, let’s play with our food,” Hurtado said. 

For Hurtado, queer food needs to mean more than food made by an LGBTQ person: It has to be “either radically made or radically served.”

“Either it’s challenging a paradigm or it’s feeding someone who isn’t normally fed,” he said. “To me, queer food is nourishment that goes against the grain, goes against power.”

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Jo Yurcaba is a reporter for NBC Out.

What the Success of Inside Out 2 Means for Hollywood

The movie industry is still recovering from 2023’s dual strike, but there are clear signs of life.

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The big new character in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 is Anxiety, which makes sense, given how much pressure was being loaded onto the film before its release. In a Time feature, Pixar’s creative head, Pete Docter, candidly admitted as much: “If this doesn’t do well at the theater, I think it just means we’re going to have to think even more radically about how we run our business.” Hollywood at large—the executives, producers, financiers, and other assorted figures whose feelings affect which movies get made, and for what reasons—was similarly biting its fingernails, after years of post-COVID anticipation for movies to be fully and simply “back.” Following the underwhelming performances of big-budgeted 2024 releases such as The Fall Guy and Furiosa , panic was growing that audiences had lost interest in seeing anything at the theater, even from a brand as previously recession-proof as Pixar.

Everyone needn’t have worried. Inside Out 2 opened to $155 million, almost doubling industry expectations and posting the second-highest opening of all time for an animated movie. Last weekend, it made $101 million, the highest second weekend for an animated movie ever , and even higher than the second weekend of 2023’s biggest box-office phenomenon, Barbie . Surely now Anxiety can be packed away—and the sunny Joy, another Inside Out character, can become the box office’s summer mascot. But why was everyone so anxious in the first place?

The waves of worry emanating from the industry—through columns by insiders, off-the-record hand-wringing by executives, and the like—only sometimes acknowledged that 2024 was going to be an awkward bridge year for films . The long dual writer and actor strikes of 2023 gummed up production for countless movies, causing numerous delays—which, bluntly, meant that fewer finished products were ready for release this year. That placed even more expectations on big blockbusters to succeed so that chains such as AMC and Regal would stay afloat before the release schedule rebounded in 2025.

But here’s the thing: Those movies are coming, just not this year. In general, studios are pivoting back to releasing their movies in theaters, given that the straight-to-streaming approach never generated much in terms of profit (unless you’re Netflix). One reason studios are pivoting is that, last year, movies such as Barbie and Oppenheimer proved that audiences of all demographics would flock to films that weren’t just franchise sequels, and that people were still excited about the communal moviegoing experience. Last July , I wrote that Hollywood was catastrophically fumbling the accomplishment of those movies by playing hardball with the writers’ and actors’ unions (and eventually losing ), and this mediocre 2024 release calendar is the result. But it’s not permanent.

Yes, something as visually dazzling as Furiosa should have performed better, at least in the eyes of critics like me. Still, it’s clear that audiences just weren’t that intrigued by a prequel to a nine-year-old film in a series that’s always had niche commercial appeal. The Fall Guy , a goofy, self-referential comedy about a stuntman on a film set, has made about $90 million domestically, which is solid—but the movie was crushed under expectations stemming from its budget. At a slightly smaller scale, it would have invited less scrutiny and possibly done just as well.

The year in film has, in fact, had plenty of hits. Dune: Part Two was an out-and-out smash. Grown-up dramas such as Civil War and Challengers generated major buzz and ticket sales; franchise movies such as Godzilla x Kong , Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , and Bad Boys: Ride or Die all played to expectations. But the industry definitely needed a movie to massively outperform all predictions—and Inside Out 2 is that winner, reassuring Hollywood that families (once the most reliable audience of all) are still willing to flood multiplexes for the right film.

Read: How Pixar lost its way

That brings us to Pixar, which was somewhat pilloried following a recent Bloomberg feature that said the company would be prioritizing sequels, following a string of commercial flops. But things were never so unexplainably dire for the studio. Although Pixar has largely put out original films of late— Soul , Luca , Turning Red , and Elemental among them—only Elemental was given a theatrical release, because of concerns over audience willingness to risk getting COVID-19 and a desire to pump up Disney+’s subscriber numbers. Meanwhile, Lightyear , a misguided spin-off of the Toy Story franchise, was pushed to theaters, where it was financially disappointing. Elemental started slow but became a sleeper success, suggesting that a reliance on old glories might actually be foolish.

The massive triumph of Inside Out 2 will rebut that thinking. On top of the already-announced Toy Story 5 , Bloomberg reported that new Incredibles and Finding Nemo entries may soon find their way to the top of Pixar’s development slate. But the success of Inside Out 2 is also good news for Pixar in that making money will ease the pressure on its creative teams. Yes, they’ll make more sequels, but people such as Pete Docter know that new ideas have to flourish to keep the company moving forward—just as theatrical hits only help build out the streaming catalogs Disney wants people to sign up for.

As Docter put it to Time , a rising tide lifts all boats: “The better [a movie] does at the theater, the more successful it has been on Disney+. Initially you’d think if it does really well in the theater, nobody’s going to watch it on Disney+ because we’ve seen it already. It’s actually the opposite.” Although he was talking about Pixar, it’s a lesson that Hollywood needs to internalize from this summer, as it tries to hope that brighter times are ahead.

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Guest Essay

Today’s Teenagers Have Invented a Language That Captures the World Perfectly

By Stephen Marche

Mr. Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War.”

My son just completed high school and when he leaves for college in the fall my life will change in ways I’m still struggling to contemplate. Among the things I’ll miss most are his lessons in teenage slang. My son has always been generous with me, and I’ve found the slang of his generation to be so much better and more useful than any that I’ve ever used. His slang has also offered me an accidental and useful portrait of how he and his generation see the world.

The primary value of slang has been to create linguistic shibboleths, a way to differentiate yourself quickly from other people. Sometimes the distinction was generational, sometimes it was racial, and sometimes it was ideological, but the slang itself was ultimately a form of social etiquette. From one generation to the next, the terms changed, but the meanings typically didn’t. New words were routinely adopted to express familiar concepts: one generation’s “cool” becomes another’s “dope” and so on.

Members of my son’s generation have a vastly superior approach to slang. They’ve devised a language that responds to the new and distinct reality they face.

Anyone with children, especially ones on the cusp of adulthood, has to reckon with the shameful fact that the world we’re leaving them is so much worse than the one we brought them into. My son’s slang reflects that: It’s a distinct language created for a society that’s characterized, online and off, by collapsing institutions, erosions in trust and a loss of faith in a shared sense of meaning.

“Mid” is an obvious example. I don’t think it even qualifies as teenage slang anymore — it’s too useful and, by now, too widespread. In my son’s usage, things that are mid are things that are essentially average or slightly below. You can’t really complain about them, but they produce no joy. They’re often the result of the refinement of market research to the exact level that tepid consumer acceptance is achieved. Everything in Starbucks falls into the category of “mid.” So does everything in an airport. It’s a brilliant, precise word for a world full of mild disappointments, where the corner bakery that used to do some things well and other things poorly has been reliably replaced by yet another Le Pain Quotidien.

“Glazed” has a similarly impressive precision. When my son describes something as glazed, it’s meant to signify not lying, exactly, or even exaggerating, but the act of positively spinning a judgment. “Glazed” indicates a gilding of information; sports commentary, for example, is 90 percent glaze. When Stephen A. Smith, the quintessential glazer, likens Anthony Edwards to Michael Jordan , a proper response might be “The Ant glazing is crazy.” But glaze is also the perfect description of the way social media works: The world you encounter online is perpetually glazed, with everything taking on an artificially positive, unreal and not entirely trustworthy gloss.

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