The evolution of man throughout history implies the birth of the concept of culture. How to define culture, what is its purpose, what impact does it have on the individual? The definitions of culture are numerous and differ according to the researcher’s angle of analysis. We can say that the culture is the whole of the manners to make, to feel, to think specific to a human community. Whatever the definition, the main thrust is that culture is derived from behavior, it is not innate, it is learned and derives from the individual’s social environment.
From the first moments of his life, the individual is impregnated with this model by a whole system of stimuli and prohibitions formulated, explicitly or not, and once adult, he will conform unconsciously to the fundamental principles of his culture, it is the process of enculturation (Mead,1930) . The author explains that the phenomenon of enculturation is a phenomenon of cultural socialization, that is to say, the means used to transmit culture to children and to allow them to identify with the group in which they evolve. This process is going to influence the whole personality of the individual, it is going to provide him with a model of vision of the world, which is going to accompany him in an unconscious way in all the moments of his life.
So are there cultural specificities in the behavior and personality of individuals? Several scientific studies show that the characteristics of populations change from one cultural group to another. To be understood, human behaviors must be resituated at the heart of the cultures that give rise to them: the events experienced by an individual have a meaning for him or her only insofar as they are reinforced and confirmed by a set of manifestations from the surrounding culture. Obviously there is a considerable part of social learning that must be taken into account in the formation of individual personalities. Culture then becomes an attribute incorporated into the person, inseparable from his identity.According to Journet (2002), it forges the personality.Is what allows the individual to integrate into a society
As explained by C. Camilleri and G. Vinsonneau (1996:44), it is impossible to deny the influence of culture on behaviors: whether they are individual (such as perception, cognition, memorization) or collective (rules of communication, beliefs, customs, values, types of habitat, social distribution between the categories of sex, age) to variable degrees all behaviors are influenced by culture. The hypothesis of anthropologists is that each culture determines a certain style of behavior common to all individuals . Thus, there are concrete behaviors that are specific to each culture.
The notion of culture is dynamic, today it is perceived as a product as well as a resource or a potential at the origin of identity development.this cultural heterogeneity allows an opening and enrichment . Today’s societies have become multicultural. Ethnicity or nationality, age and gender, education, group, association and institutional membership, human and professional skills make each individual a part of a specific culture. But this initial culture tends to evolve and undergo modifications with globalization, and the border between the different cultures is far from being perfectly delimited, as cultures constantly influence each other.
Bibliography
Camilleri C. and Vinsonneau G., Psychology and culture: concepts and methods, A. Colin, Paris,
1996.
Febvre.,Lucien: Fighting for history. Paris, Flammarion, 1953.
Journet N., Culture, From the universal to the particular.published by Sciences Humaines, Auxerre, 2002.