CULTURE: SOME DEFINITIONS

Culture has been defined by Giddens as

the way of life of the members of a given society - their habits and customs, together with the material goods they produce.
 (A. Giddens, Sociology, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989 edn.)

The standard sociological definition of "Culture" was given by Ralph Linton as long ago as 1945:

The culture of a society is the way of life of its people; the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share and transmit from generation to generation.
R. Linton, 'Present World Conditions in Cultural Perspective' in R. Linton (ed.), The Science of Man in World Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945, cited Haralambos, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 5th edn., 2000, page 884; 6th edn., 2004, page 791). 

However, culture is not a prime topic for investigation by sociologists of a Functionalist persuasion.

DURKHEIM AND THE STUDY OF CULTURE

According to one view, Functionalism begins in nineteenth-century Europe, with Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)  projected as the most influential figure. Many would see Durkheim as "the father of Functionalism" although Durkheim can equally be seen as a commentator on modernity or as a radical.

In Primitive Classification, their collection of essays published in 1902, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss produced an evolutionary perspective of culture, partly based on Mauss'  fieldwork in Polynesia (islands in the south Pacific Ocean).. This evolutionary perspective was concerned with the origins of human nature.
 [Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) was both Durkheim's nephew and his professional collaborator; as an anthropologist he did fieldwork among the peoples of the islands of the south Pacific.]

Culture is only possible if humans can distinguish between things and classify them. Much of the work of classification is sub-conscious. Humans need to develop classification to identify things. Without classification they cannot make sense of human nature.

Far from being the case .... that social relations of men are based on logical relations between things; in reality it is the former which have provided the prototype for the latter.   ....   ....   The first logical categories were social categories; the first classes of things were classes of men.
(Durkheim and Mauss, Primitive Classification, [originally published 1902], quoted Haralambos, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 5th edn., 2000, page 887; 6th edn., 2004, page 784).

Mauss had distinguished a simple society in the aboriginal inhabitants of the Port MacKay area of Australia' and he found a more complicated system in groups of aboriginal in Queensland.  The first group used a system based on moieties (moiety = half)
 The second group used a system based on four parts.
 In each system the place of something could affect what a person was permitted to eat.
 A modern comparison is the practising Jew who will not eat diary products, e.g. milk, cream or cheese with meat products, e.g. lamb or beef. This rule is strictly applied in public restaurants in the modern state of Israel: coffee is always served away from the dining table. If served at the table it is accompanied by artificial whiteners.
 More complex societies also studied by Mauss, such as the native North American Indians such as the Zuni Sioux have more complex systems of classification.

This may look "primitive" but it is the basis of all classification systems.
 Classification systems
 1. establish a hierarchy.
 2. establish relationships between groups of things.