What is culture?
This essay is written to identify and discuss three theories regarding to culture. The three theories that will be discussed are absolutism, relativism and soft relativism. In order to discuss these theories regarding culture is to first, look at the definition of culture. There is more than one definition of culture in regards of society; the main definition is “the ideas, customs, and special behaviour of a particular people or society.” (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.) The origin of ‘culture’ is that it is Middle English, “where the noun came from the French word culture or directly from the Latin word cultura, whereas the verb came from the outdated French word culturer or from the Latin word culturare, which both is based on…show more content… Like relativists, soft relativists believe that it can be wrong to one culture judge one culture with the standards of another, but unlike the relativists, they do not accept that there is no objective ‘truths’. As many ‘truths’ may be subjective, others are dependent on scientific evidence, like the belief that the Earth is flat for example, would not be accepted as ‘truth’ as it is a belief that can be easily disproved by scientific evidence. Even though they do not like accusing cultural beliefs as false, they do instead, use the concept of ideology to show that certain beliefs, could twist or hide the ‘truth’, with ideology, sociologists could suggest that some cultural beliefs exist to serve the interests of one sector of society, usually at the expense of another. Such as Marxism for example, is based on the view that the capitalist ideology favours the ‘ruling classes’; as they exploit and oppress the ‘working classes’. This is the work of Karl Marx that is about examining the capitalist beliefs and systems and also show how subsequent ‘Marxists’ fit into this ideology. Feminism, as another example, uses the patriarchal ideology to show how society is a male-dominated world and where men are ideal and how women are ignored or denied the same importance. ‘Feminists’ study areas of social and working life, and to show how it fits into the patriarchal…show more content… As people, culture is needed to help individuals survive within a society; culture can give a stable structure through having laws and jobs, give hope through religion, and give a future to individuals and to also help the success and growth of a society through the combination of all