Culture

To follow up on my last post, I thought I should quickly give you a definition of culture. As an anthropologist, and a cultural one at that, this word holds a world of meaning. To use the most basic understanding, I could argue that culture is the result of a group of people sharing most if not all of the following traits:
1. language
2. religious practices and/or spiritual beliefs
3. moral or ethical system
4. social practices and rituals
5. consuming practices
6. understanding of symbolism and symbolic meanings

Caution must be used when comparing cultures, especially when people begin to use the term "civilization" and the word's other forms (civilized, civil, civility) since these can be used to indicate a form of ethnocentrism.