There are two main views on the nature of culture: the behavioral and the ideational.

In the behavioral view, culture is what people do or make that can be observed. In this view, culture is more objective and its knowledge can be represented in statistics. This view assumes that behavior and physical culture represent what goes on in people's heads. Besides, it's an excellent assumption for exploring cultural habits of which people are not conscious; you can look at objects and behavior, and discover norms that people follow.

In the ideational view, culture is essentially about how people think, even though it might be reflected in what people do and the physical environment. Culture involves the kind of knowledge valued by people in a cultural grouping , their identity as individuals and as a group, their view of relationships and society, how they teach and learn, how they interpret new ideas coming into their culture, and their view of the world. Unfortunately, it is difficult to dig out of people's heads.

Etic and Emic

Etic means seeing a culture from the outside. A tourist finds cultural aspects interesting to look at but doesn't take the time to understand them.

Emic means seeing things from the viewpoint of the people in the target culture. Their way of life probably makes perfect sense to them, even if it seems illogical or frustrating to you. There are almost certainly very good reasons why they are like they are.

Surface and Deep Cultures

Some people have thought of culture differently, as surface versus deep culture. Surface culture is what we do and say: the food, the clothes, houses, traffic, rules of etiquette, observable behavior, etc. These are the issues to which people think they must adjust first.

Deep culture refers to how we think and what we assume, and may be very unconscious. This includes identity and loyalties, value systems, subconscious motives, system of logic, and view of world.

Culture is people

In the end, however, culture is not so much about theoretical abstractions, but is about real people. Yes, there is an academic discipline called cultural anthropology, and it is very helpful. But it is too easy to to err on the side of forgetting one is really dealing with people and their feelings, views, and beliefs.

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