CULTURE DEFINITIONS
"Culture is a mold in which we are all cast, and it controls our daily lives in many unsuspected ways...that part of human nature which we take for granted-the par we dont't think about, since we assume it is universal or regard it as idiosncratic....Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants" (Hall, 1990, p. 29).
Hall continues "The ultimate reason for such study [ studying other cultures] is to learn more about how one's own system works. The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness-an interst in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference" (Hall, 1990, p. 30)."Culture is communiction and communication is culture" (Hall, 1990, p. 186).Hall, E. (1990). The silent language. New York, NY: Doubleday.
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Joseph Abeyta's definition of culture: "A total way of life of a people. The environment in which the people live-their language, their philosophy, their standard of behavior, their beliefs and their aspirations."Our friends-the Navajos: Papers on Navajo culture and life. (1976). Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College.
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"the everchanging values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion...culture is complex and intricate; it includes content or product (the what of culture), process (how it is created and transformed), and the agents of culture (who is responsible for creating and changing it)....everyone has a culture because all people participate in the wolrld through social and political relationships informed by history as well as by race, ethnicity, language, socila class, gender, sexual orientation, and other circumstances related to identity and experience."Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes. New York, NY: Teachers College, p. 48._____________________________
Culture is "the dynamic feature of relationships, of how human beings fill the space between themselves and other people. This space can be filled with basic respect, admiration, playfulness, touching; or it can be filled with disregard, suspicion, anxiety, holding back. It virtually is always filled with language and gesture." Tice, T. (1993). The Education Digest, p. 39—_____________________________
“Culture is almost indistinguishable from language” for “language is both a shaper and a reflection of culture and written oral literatures are the primary means by which it does its work.”
Walker,J. (1997) That the People Might Live, pp. 12-13.
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“Oral traditions have not been static. Their strength lies in their ability to survive through the power of tribal memory and to renew themselves by incorporating new elements” Penny Petrone (Walker, 1997 in That the People Might Live, p. 21).
