This article provides information about the meaning, characteristics, and functions of culture !The customs, traditions, attitudes, values, norms, ideas and symbols govern human behaviour pattern.The members of society not only endorse them but also mould their behaviour accordingly. They are the members of the society because of the traditions and customs which are common and which are passed down from generation to generation through the process of socialisation. These common patterns designate culture and it is in terms of culture that we are able to understand the specific behaviour pattern of human beings in their social relations. Cultural ideas emerge from shared social life.Meaning of Culture:Sometimes an individual is described as “a highly cultured person”, meaning thereby that the person in question has certain features such as his speech, manner, and taste for literature, music or painting which distinguish him from others. Culture, in this sense, refers to certain personal characteristics of a individual. However, this is not the sense in which the word culture is used and understood in social sciences.Sometimes culture is used in popular discourse to refer to a celebration or an evening of entertainment, as when one speaks of a ‘cultural show’. In this sense, culture is identified with aesthetics or the fine arts such as dance, music or drama. This is also different from the technical meaning of the word culture.Culture is used in a special sense in anthropology and sociology. It refers to the sum of human beings’ life ways, their behaviour, beliefs, feelings, thought; it connotes everything that is acquired by them as social beings.Culture has been defined in number of ways. There is no consensus among sociologists and anthropologists regarding the definition of culture. One of the most comprehensive definitions of the term culture was provided by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor. He defined culture as ” that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.There are some writers who add to this definitions some of the important” other capabilities and habits” such as language and the techniques for making and using tools. Culture consists of all learned, normative behaviour patterns – that is all shared ways or patterns of thinking and feeling as well as doing.Some of the thinkers include in culture only the nonmaterial parts. For instance, Sutherland and Wood word say, “If culture exists only where there is communication then the content of culture can be ideas or symbol patterns. Culture is then an immaterial phenomenon only, a matter of thoughts and meanings and habits and not of visible and touchable material things or objects”.The “material elements that are made and used in accordance with socially inherited tradition” should be called culture objects. Others include in culture all the major social components that bind men together in society. For instance, the British anthropologist Malinowski included ‘inherited, artifacts, implements and consumer goods’ and ‘social structure’ within his definition of culture.It is, Cooley, Argell and Car say,

“The entire accumulation of artificial objects, conditions, tools, techniques, ideas, symbols and behaviour patterns peculiar to a group of people, possessing a certain consistency of its own, and capable of transmission from one generation to another.”Some of the other important definitions of culture are as follows. “Culture is the expression of our nature in our modes of living and our thinking. Intercourse in our literature, in religion, in recreation and enjoyment, says Maclver.According to E.A. Hoebel,“Culture is the sum total of integrated learned behaviour patterns which are characteristics of the members of a society and which are therefore not the result of biological inheritance.”

“Culture is the complex whole that consists of everything we think and do and have as members of society”, says Bierstedt. “Culture is the total content of the physio-social, bio-social and psycho-social universe man has produced and the socially created mechanisms through which these social product operate”, According to Anderson and Parker.Mlinowlski defines culture” as the handiwork of man and the medium through which he achieves his ends.According to H.T. Mazumadar,

“culture is the sum total of human achievements, material as well as non-material, capable of transmission, sociologically, i.e., by tradition and communication, vertically as well as horizontally”.

Combining several of these definitions, we may define culture as the sum-total of human achievements or the total heritage of man which can be transmitted to men by communication and tradition. It is a way of life of the people in a certain geographical area. Life style and social pattern of a society being the direct consequence of the accumulated heritage of ages past distinguish and differentiate one community from another.Culture therefore, is moral, intellectual and spiritual discipline for advancement, in accordance with the norms and values based on accumulated heritage. It is imbibing and making ours own, the life style and social pattern of the group one belongs to. Culture is a system of learned behaviour shared by and transmitted among the members of the group.Culture is a collective heritage learned by individuals and passed from one generation to another. The individual receives culture as part of social heritage and in turn, may reshape the culture and introduce changes which then become part of the heritage of succeeding generations.