Society or Culture?

By Roger Colins

When put next to each other one can plainly see that these are two very different things and yet they appear to have become so interchangeable that neither fully constitutes it's own definition, any more.

The great thing with languages is that they evolve. The meanings change, the pronunciation, the spelling. From one day to the next you can find a word in any language that has lost it's gills and grown a pair of legs, in the blink of an eye. Over the course of a decade you may find a brand new dictionary on the shelf for a whole language that popped up out of a corner of psychology or computing.

Last week, 'Web 2.0' was hailed the millionth official word added to the dictionary. It stands for the revolution from old internet language to the brand new stuff. Great! But what happens when words start merging together? Surely this goes against the idea of evolution and sounds more like interbreeding.


Cultural Society? Surely Not... 

Louis Armstrong and Grace Kelly on the set of 'High Society' (1959)

Society is of course a terrible word. It summons up all that it low and deplorable in our world and we're only waiting for the day that we can finally have it snuffed out for something more appealing. Culture perhaps.

Culture, used-to mean growth, art, a niche for which people came together and made something new to add to the positive side of, society. The cultures of music, art, literature and academics all have their own private arena in every quarter of the world. They change, they grow and develop into something new, promising and bright.

The word has fallen on hard times and while this definition still exists, it is being over ridden by people replacing it with the degenerate, 'society'. 


Another Dog Analogy

A dog in many a household is a part of the family. A man's best friend, loyal companion and protector of the home.

In other places the dog is known to be food. Some places, the dog is a demon of Satan and somewhere, I expect people think dogs are aliens from outer space. Of all these different places, is their particular perspective of domesticated mutts a culture or a society?


Thailand thinks of dogs as sort of both friend and foe. While locals will usually have a couple in their garden, some will happily lock them up in cages. Those in the street roam around in packs, having fights, occasionally sporting the latest T-shirt donation during the rainy season.

Thai dogs are however most certainly of a lower class. We've all heard the phrase 'to kick the dog'. There is even a book written of the same name entitled 'Kicking Dogs' that's set in the country.

In this instance, the term stems from the firm layman belief that all animals are inferior to humans. The devoutly Buddhist Thai has every right to boot the crap out of one should they feel the need to do so and pass on some annoying karma.

Now, what would you call that? (besides other adjectives and collectives that may come to mind)

Some call it a society; Everyone else does it, everyone else I've ever known has always done it and if I didn't do it then I'd get some funny looks.

Some call it a culture; comes from wise teachings of wise men over the course of two and a half thousand years and really, genuinely does give you good luck.

'It's just their culture.'

Let's have some definitions.

society

Line breaks: so|ci¦ety

Pronunciation: /səˈsʌɪɪti 

noun (plural societies)

• 1 [mass noun] the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community: drugs, crime, and other dangers to society
• 1.1the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations: the ethnic diversity of British society [count noun]: modern industrial societies
• 1.2 [with adjective] a specified section of society: no one in polite society uttered the word
• 1.3 (also high society) the aggregate of people who are fashionable, wealthy, and influential, regarded as forming a distinct group in a community: [as modifier]: a society wedding
• 1.4 [count noun] a plant or animal community: the analogy between insect society and human city is not new

• 2 an organization or club formed for a particular purpose or activity: [in names]: the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
  3 [mass noun] the situation of being in the company of other people: she shunned the society of others 
  
  
  Rather a lot for society but they all appear to be, more or less, a group of people. Let's see what culture has to say.

culture

Line breaks: cul|ture

Pronunciation: /ˈkʌltʃə

noun

[mass noun]

• 1 the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively: 20th century popular culture
• 1.1a refined understanding or appreciation of culture: men of culture

• 2 the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society: Afro-Caribbean culture [count noun]: people from many different cultures
• 2.1 [with modifier] the attitudes and behaviour characteristic of a particular social group: the emerging drug culture

• 3 Biology the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc. in an artificial medium containing nutrients: the cells proliferate readily in culture
• 3.1 [count noun] a preparation of cells obtained by culture: the bacterium was isolated in two blood cultures

• 4 the cultivation of plants: this variety of lettuce is popular for its ease of culture

verb

[with object] Biology maintain (tissue cells, bacteria, etc.) in conditions suitable for growth: several investigators have attempted to culture biliary cells


Custom

Even more definitions but low and behold, there we have it in the second usage. It's not quite society but goes so far as, behaviour thereof or custom.

Custom, would certainly be something closer to a cultural thing than a society thing. You can't really have one without the other but to say that a culture is just the behaviour of a group of people, aren't you talking about their society?

The thing is, if you were to use the word 'custom' in place of 'culture' then it would become pejorative where culture seems immune to the semantic switch. It's okay to have gun culture and drug culture and bum fight culture and sex culture because the culture can just shrug it's shoulders.

While replacing culture with custom would be more accurate, the following denominator would no longer be something freindly and wouldn't be able to get away with it. The same goes for society.

Gun society, drug society, bum fight society, sex society. The meaning really has changed and we're not shrugging our shoulders any more.

By marrying these two words we've essentially given such groups of people a free pass, and abused the meaning of one of our finest human traits at the very same time.

Perhaps it was society that forced us to start using culture in it's place and if so, I would like to know if it can be done the other way around.

#society #culture #language