ABSTRACT
Communities can have a single culture which includes nearly all the inhabitants, or they can have several cultural groups within them. Culture includes symbols and values, which are expressed through artifacts and behavior. All human beings have culture. A community's culture can affect how social problems are defined and what solutions are considered acceptable. Communities with high solidarity often externalize problems, defining problems as externally caused and then uniting against the external agent. They may also define problems as individual rather than social. Such a definition allows the community to ignore the problem and insist that individuals solve their own problems. In multicultural communities, such as Eatonton, McDowell County, and Mammoth Lakes, sub-groups within the community gain identity and, on that basis, can come together with a variety of cultural backgrounds and a common appreciation of each other that gives the community a unique culture.
