What Is Culture? Classical Foundations and Contemporary Revisions

What Is Culture? Classical Foundations and Contemporary Revisions Naeema Farooqi, PhD Professor, Humber Polytechnic (Canada) Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies Abstract This paper revisits the concept of culture by examining its classical theoretical foundations and subsequent contemporary revisions. Drawing on early anthropological and cultural studies scholarship, including the work of Tylor and Williams, it conceptualises culture as a dynamic, lived, and continually negotiated process rather than a fixed or homogeneous entity. The paper then explores how later theorists problematised essentialist understandings of culture, foregrounding internal diversity, dissent, and historical change. Building on postcolonial and cultural theory, the analysis highlights how globalisation, migration, and mediated cultural flows further complicate cultural formation, producing identities that are increasingly fluid, layered, and context dependent. By synthesising classical perspectives with later theoretical developments, the paper argues that culture must be understood as adaptive, relational, and historically situated. Such an understanding remains essential for analysing contemporary cultural life in a globalised and interconnected world. 1 Introduction: Why “Culture” Still Matters Culture remains one of the most widely used and least settled concepts in the human and social sciences. It appears in everyday speech as easily as in theoretical debates, invoked to explain identities, conflicts, preferences, values, and ways of life. Yet the very frequency with which we rely on the term often obscures how contested and complex it is. Scholars have long disagreed about whether culture should be understood primarily as a body of shared 1 beliefs and symbols, as a set of practices, as a system of meaning, or as something closer to a whole way of life. In the context of globalisation, migration, and intensifying media flows, these questions take on renewed urgency. Political discourse frequently appeals to culture as if it were a fixed, bounded entity that clearly separates one group from another. At the same time, everyday life shows us that cultural practices are constantly changing, mixing, and being reinterpreted across contexts and generations. This tension between how culture is spoken about and how it is lived sits at the heart of contemporary debates about identity and belonging. This paper returns to the question of what we mean by culture, not to arrive at a single, definitive answer, but to trace the main lines along which the concept has been defined, revised, and contested. Drawing on classical anthropological formulations and later developments in cultural theory, it argues that culture is best understood as a dynamic, internally diverse, and continually negotiated process rather than a stable, homogeneous entity. Such a perspective foregrounds the role of conflict, reinterpretation, and power in shaping cultural life, while still recognising the stabilising force that shared meanings and practices can exert. Revisiting these debates is important for two reasons. First, it offers conceptual clarity in a field where the term culture is often used loosely or uncritically. Second, it provides a necessary foundation for analysing contemporary phenomena including cultural hybridity, diasporic identities, and mediated forms of belonging that depend on how we understand culture in the first place. The discussion that follows therefore lays the groundwork for broader inquiries into identity, hybridity, and global cultural flows by re-situating culture as a processual, relational, and contested concept. 2 Classical Definitions of Culture Early anthropological approaches to culture sought to provide comprehensive, general definitions that could apply across societies. One influential formulation described culture as a “complex whole” encompassing knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, and custom acquired by individuals as members of a society (Tylor, 1871). In this view, culture is learned rather than innate, shared rather than purely individual, and transmitted across generations through socialisation. Such definitions established culture as the central object of anthropological inquiry and distinguished it from biological or purely psychological explanations of human behaviour. 2 Subsequent efforts to refine these early formulations produced a large body of definitional work. Mid-twentieth-century surveys of the concept collected and compared hundreds of definitions of culture, highlighting both common threads and points of disagreement. These compilations underscored that, even among specialists, there was no single, universally accepted meaning of culture. Instead, scholars emphasised different aspects: some focused on values and norms, others on symbols and meanings, still others on practices and ways of life. Despite these variations, classical definitions share several important assumptions. They treat culture as collective, something that belongs to a group rather than to isolated individuals; learned and transmitted, passed on through education, imitation, and participation in social life; and patterned, structured enough that regularities in behaviour, belief, and expression can be observed and analysed. At the same time, these early approaches often implied a degree of coherence and boundedness that later theorists would question. Cultures were frequently associated with particular territories, nations, or peoples, and were sometimes treated as if they were relatively uniform within those boundaries. Such images made it possible to speak of a culture in the singular, but they tended to downplay internal diversity, conflict, and change. It is precisely these limitations that later cultural theorists and practitioners of cultural studies sought to address. By shifting attention from abstract definitions to the lived practices and meanings of everyday life, they opened the way for a more dynamic and less homogenising understanding of culture, one that this paper takes up in the following section. 3 Culture as a “Whole Way of Life” The limitations of early anthropological definitions of culture prompted significant theoretical shifts in the mid-twentieth century, particularly within cultural studies. Rather than treating culture primarily as a bounded system of beliefs or customs, cultural theorists began to emphasise culture as lived experience. This move reframed culture not as something people possess, but as something they do, something enacted, reproduced, and contested through everyday life. One of the most influential contributions to this reconceptualisation is Raymond Williams’s formulation of culture as a “whole way of life.” Williams challenged the separation between “high” culture, art, literature, and elite forms of expression, and the ordinary practices of daily living. For him, culture encompassed not only artistic production and intellectual tradi3 tions, but also habits, routines, language, leisure, work, and social relations. This approach foregrounded the significance of the ordinary and the everyday, insisting that meaning is produced not only in canonical texts but also in the textures of lived social experience. Understanding culture in this way marked an important departure from earlier models that emphasised coherence and stability. Williams’s work highlighted that culture is continually shaped by social struggle, economic conditions, and historical change. Cultural meanings are not passively inherited but actively made and remade through interaction. As such, culture becomes a site of negotiation in which different groups articulate, contest, and redefine shared values and practices. This perspective also made visible the relationship between culture and power. If culture is lived and produced through everyday practices, then it is also shaped by unequal access to resources, representation, and legitimacy. Certain ways of living, speaking, or expressing meaning come to be recognised as normal or authentic, while others are marginalised or rendered invisible. Cultural studies thus positioned culture as a terrain of struggle, where meanings are not merely shared but are also imposed, resisted, and transformed. Importantly, conceiving culture as a whole way of life opened space for recognising diversity within cultural formations. Communities are not culturally uniform; they are internally differentiated by class, gender, generation, education, region, and belief. These internal differences generate multiple, sometimes conflicting, cultural expressions within what might otherwise be described as a single culture. From this viewpoint, cultural coherence is never complete or uncontested. Instead, it is provisional and continuously renegotiated. By shifting attention to everyday practices and lived meanings, cultural studies also blurred the boundaries between culture and other domains of social life. Media consumption, domestic routines, leisure activities, and patterns of communication all became legitimate objects of cultural analysis. This expanded understanding laid the groundwork for later inquiries into identity, hybridity, and mediated cultural experience, as it acknowledged that culture is embedded in ordinary actions as much as in formal institutions or traditions. Seen through this lens, culture is neither static nor purely symbolic. It is an active process through which individuals and groups make sense of their social worlds, drawing on inherited frameworks while responding to new conditions. This conception of culture as lived, negotiated, and historically situated provides a crucial bridge between classical definitions and contemporary debates, particularly those concerned with cultural change, globalisation, and identity formation. 4 4 Culture, Power, and Internal Diversity Understanding culture as a lived and negotiated process necessarily brings questions of power to the forefront. Culture does not exist outside of social structures; it is shaped by relations of authority, access, and inequality that determine whose meanings are recognised and whose are marginalised. Any attempt to define culture must therefore account for the ways in which power operates within and across cultural formations. Cultural systems are rarely homogeneous. Even within communities that appear unified by nationality, ethnicity, language, or religion, there exists significant internal diversity. Differences in class, gender, generation, education, and social position produce varied experiences and interpretations of shared traditions. These differences are not peripheral but central to how culture is lived and understood. Cultural meanings are constantly negotiated among groups with unequal levels of influence and visibility, resulting in ongoing contestation over what counts as legitimate or authentic cultural expression. Scholars have long noted that dominant cultural narratives often present themselves as neutral or universal, while alternative perspectives are framed as deviations. This dynamic reveals how culture can function as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion. Practices associated with dominant groups tend to be normalised and institutionalised, while those associated with marginalised groups may be exoticised, pathologised, or rendered invisible. As a result, culture becomes a site where social hierarchies are reproduced, even as it offers resources for resistance and reinterpretation. Dissent and disagreement play an important role in this process. Rather than signalling cultural breakdown, internal debate and contestation often indicate cultural vitality. Communities continually reinterpret traditions in response to changing social conditions, generational shifts, and external pressures. These reinterpretations may provoke conflict, but they also enable culture to adapt and remain meaningful. In this sense, cultural continuity depends not on rigid preservation but on the capacity to accommodate difference and change. The relationship between culture and power is particularly evident in contexts shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and global inequality. Historical processes of domination have shaped which cultural forms are valued and which are suppressed, leaving lasting imprints on contemporary cultural life. Even after formal structures of domination have ended, their effects persist in symbolic hierarchies, institutional practices, and modes of representation. Recognising this history is essential for understanding why certain cultural expressions continue to carry greater authority than others. 5 At the same time, culture is not simply imposed from above. Individuals and communities actively engage with, reinterpret, and sometimes resist dominant cultural narratives. Everyday practices, language use, artistic expression, and media participation all provide spaces in which alternative meanings can emerge. These practices illustrate that culture is both constrained by power and animated by agency. It is shaped by structural conditions, yet never fully determined by them. By foregrounding power and internal diversity, this section underscores the inadequacy of viewing culture as a singular or unified entity. Instead, culture must be approached as a field of negotiation in which multiple voices, interests, and interpretations coexist. Such an understanding prepares the ground for examining how cultural identities are further complicated by globalisation and increased intercultural contact, a theme taken up in the following section. 5 Culture as Dynamic Process in a Globalising World Processes of globalisation have further complicated how culture is understood, experienced, and theorised. Increased mobility, transnational communication, and the circulation of media and ideas have intensified cultural contact across geographical and social boundaries. These conditions challenge earlier models that associated culture primarily with fixed territories or clearly bounded communities. In a globalising world, culture is increasingly shaped through movement, interaction, and exchange. Globalisation does not result in cultural uniformity, nor does it simply dissolve local traditions. Instead, it produces complex patterns of continuity and transformation. Cultural practices are carried across borders, reinterpreted in new contexts, and reshaped through contact with other traditions. Individuals and communities draw on multiple cultural repertoires, often combining inherited practices with newly encountered influences. This process highlights culture as adaptive rather than static, capable of incorporating change while maintaining meaningful connections to the past. At the level of everyday life, globalisation affects how people relate to language, food, dress, media, and social norms. These influences are rarely experienced as wholesale replacement. Rather, they are selectively adopted, resisted, or reworked. Cultural belonging becomes increasingly situational, shaped by context and interaction rather than by singular origin. As a result, cultural identity often takes on a layered quality, reflecting multiple points of 6 reference rather than a single, unified tradition. Media and communication technologies play a central role in these dynamics. Transnational media flows expose individuals to diverse cultural forms and narratives, expanding the range of symbols and meanings available for identity construction. These encounters can foster new forms of cultural literacy, but they also raise questions about representation, power, and access. Not all cultural expressions circulate equally, and global visibility often reflects existing inequalities rather than neutral exchange. Importantly, understanding culture as a dynamic process does not imply the disappearance of boundaries or differences. Cultural distinctions continue to matter, particularly in contexts shaped by migration, nationalism, and political contestation. What changes is the nature of those distinctions. Rather than being fixed and absolute, cultural boundaries become porous and negotiable. They are continually redrawn through social practice, discourse, and interaction. Viewing culture through the lens of globalisation therefore reinforces the need for a processual understanding. Culture is not a stable entity transmitted intact across time and space. It is produced through ongoing negotiation between continuity and change, local attachment and global influence. This perspective enables a more nuanced analysis of contemporary cultural life, one that recognises both the persistence of tradition and the creative reworking of meaning in response to new conditions. By situating culture within globalising processes, this section prepares the ground for a broader synthesis of the arguments developed throughout the paper. It underscores that defining culture requires attention not only to inherited frameworks but also to the social, political, and communicative environments in which culture is lived and transformed. 6 Discussion / Synthesis The preceding sections collectively underscore the importance of approaching culture as a dynamic, relational, and contested process rather than as a fixed or singular entity. Classical anthropological definitions established culture as a shared and learned framework of meaning, while later developments in cultural studies shifted attention toward everyday practices and lived experience. Together, these perspectives reveal that culture is simultaneously stabilising and mutable, providing continuity while remaining open to reinterpretation and change. 7 A central theme emerging from this discussion is the inadequacy of essentialist models of culture. Attempts to define culture as uniform or bounded obscure the internal diversity that characterises all cultural formations. Differences of class, gender, generation, education, and social position generate multiple cultural interpretations within the same community. Recognising this diversity is not merely a descriptive exercise but a necessary step toward understanding how cultural meanings are negotiated and contested in practice. Power plays a crucial role in shaping these negotiations. Cultural norms and values do not circulate in neutral ways; they are embedded in relations of authority that determine which practices are legitimised and which are marginalised. Dominant cultural narratives often present themselves as universal, while alternative expressions are framed as peripheral or deviant. Yet culture is not solely a mechanism of domination. Everyday practices, forms of expression, and acts of reinterpretation demonstrate that individuals and communities actively engage with cultural frameworks, sometimes reinforcing them and sometimes reshaping them. Globalisation intensifies these dynamics by increasing the frequency and scale of cultural contact. As people, media, and ideas move across borders, cultural identities become more layered and context dependent. This does not signal the erosion of culture, but rather its ongoing transformation. Cultural continuity is maintained not through rigid preservation, but through adaptive processes that allow traditions to be reworked in response to new social conditions. In this sense, cultural change is not opposed to cultural persistence; it is one of its primary mechanisms. Synthesising these strands suggests that culture should be understood less as a set of attributes and more as a framework for meaning making that emerges through interaction. Such a perspective foregrounds process over product and negotiation over stability. It also provides a conceptual foundation for analysing related phenomena such as identity formation, hybridity, and belonging, which depend on how individuals navigate multiple cultural references over time. This synthesis points toward a conception of culture that is neither entirely fluid nor entirely fixed. Instead, culture operates as a flexible structure that both shapes and is shaped by social actors. It constrains possibilities while also enabling creativity and transformation. Approaching culture in this way allows for a more nuanced engagement with contemporary cultural realities, particularly those shaped by globalisation, migration, and mediated communication. 8 7 Conclusion This paper has revisited foundational debates on culture in order to clarify how cultural theory continues to inform contemporary understandings of identity and social life. Drawing on classical anthropological perspectives, cultural studies, and globalisation scholarship, it has argued that culture is best understood as a dynamic and negotiated process rather than a fixed or homogeneous entity. Culture emerges through lived practice, historical change, and social interaction, and is continually reshaped by internal diversity and external influence. By tracing the shift from early definitions of culture to later emphases on everyday life, power, and internal difference, the analysis has demonstrated the limitations of essentialist models. Culture cannot be reduced to static traditions or singular values. Instead, it operates as a flexible framework through which individuals and communities interpret their social worlds. This flexibility allows culture to persist over time, not by resisting change, but by adapting to it. The discussion has also highlighted the central role of power in shaping cultural meaning. Cultural norms are produced and sustained within unequal social structures that privilege certain voices while marginalising others. Yet culture remains an active site of negotiation. Through everyday practices and forms of expression, individuals engage with dominant narratives, sometimes reproducing them and sometimes transforming them. This interplay between structure and agency is fundamental to understanding how culture functions in practice. Globalisation further intensifies these processes by expanding the scale and speed of cultural interaction. Increased mobility, transnational communication, and mediated encounters complicate traditional assumptions about cultural boundaries and belonging. Rather than eroding culture, these conditions generate new forms of cultural adaptation and reinterpretation. Culture continues to provide meaning and continuity, even as it is reshaped by global forces. Taken together, these arguments underscore the continuing relevance of cultural theory for analysing contemporary social life. Understanding culture as a dynamic, contested, and historically situated process offers a robust framework for engaging with questions of identity, belonging, and social change. Such an approach recognises both the persistence of cultural traditions and the creative capacities through which individuals and communities respond to an increasingly interconnected world. 9