Defining Culture

“Culture is the learned and shared way that communities do particular things.”

Often when you think about community, the notion of culture is introduced. The term “culture” is dependent on community, as culture relates more to the behaviours manifested by the community. People bound together around a common cause create a community, and the minute they begin to establish behaviours around their common cause, they develop a culture. Culture is the learned and shared way that communities do particular things.

This basic approach to community and culture blends three features. One is the fact that community is a network of people and, often, these people may have great differences or even distances (diversity) between them. They can be different in age, background, ethnicity, religion, or many other ways, but in spite of their differences, their commonality or common cause pulls them together. The similarity of the common cause or celebration (commonality) is the second key feature of community and the glue that creates the network. Regardless of who the members of the network are as people, their common cause overrides whatever differences they may have and creates a powerful connection.

Finally, as the collection of people continues to meet and celebrate on a regular basis (regularly) they begin to frame behaviors and patterns and become a culture, the third key ingredient. These regular meetings bond the community members as they discover other ways that they are similar.