ABSTRACT
It is not easy to define what is meant by terms such as culture and context of culture. Culture has been defined in various ways in different disciplines. For instance, one definition says that culture is “a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). Another definition suggests that culture is what people “must know in order to act as they do, make the things they make, and interpret their experience in the distinctive way they do” (Quinn and Holland, 1987, p. 4, emphasis added). Thornton (1988) argues against a static, reified notion of culture and observes that there is not much point in discussing what “culture” is. Rather, what can be useful is to say what culture does. According to Bloch (1991), culture, which is an important area of anthropological research, can be defined as that which people must know in order to function reasonably effectively in their social environment. Social environment consists of social organizations and behaviors that are the instruments through which people relate to each other.
