CHINESE CULTURE

Chinese Culture

Chinese Culture

Every nation possesses a culture, identity, and distinctive values of its own. Through the presence of such variables, the countries are known and administered for their people. It is the elements like culture and norms that shape the social structure and societal institutions of a place. This paper will discuss the culture of China along with the basic concept of culture, its historical background and other concepts related to it.

Culture

In the current era, the term "culture" is the mixture of feelings, thoughts, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behavior patterns that a social, racial, religious, or ethnic, groups of people share with one another. Moreover, the people are not only born into social or ethnic cultures, but, they are also allowed to choose to belong to a particular culture. Thus, culture is a dynamic term and not static. The cultures of various places can also be taken to be broader than including only religion, race or ethnicity. The cultural orientations may be influenced by various factors such as mental and physical abilities, gender, class, sexual orientations.

Historical Background

The word Culture is one of the many modern concepts founded on the term which was first used by Cicero, the Roman orator, in traditional antiquity: "culture animi". The concept of "culture" was used for the first time in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and then, it had connoted a method of improvement or cultivation, or as horticulture in agriculture. The terms 'culture, was also used in the 19th century, when it was developed to indicate the meaning of individual's refinement or betterment, particularly with the help of education. It was also used to fulfill the ideals or national aspirations. Later, in the middle of 19th century, the terms were utilized by various scientists in order to pertain to human capacity at a universal level. Georg Simmel, the German nonpositivist sociologist described culture as "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history" (Levine, Donald, 1980).

'Culture' aroused as a focal concentration in anthropology in the 20th century, and comprised of variety of human phenomena that cannot be attributed to genetic inheritance. it evolved into a meaning of a distinguishing factors of various nations and includes the intangibles like customs, language, attitudes, gender roles, space/proximity, familial roles, taboos, grooming and presence, etc (Shelley, Elizabeth, 2005). These are known as the main elements ...