SHWEDER et LEVINE (ed.), Culture Theory

"There are, at present, at least three major views about the nature of culture. One is a notion of culture as knowledge, as the accumulation of information (...) A second view is that culture consists of "conceptual structures" that create the central reality of a people, so they "inhabit the world they imagine" (Geertz 1983) (...) A third view of the nature of culture falls between the "culture as knowledge" and the "culture as constructed reality" positions. It treats culture and society as almost the same thing - something made up for institutions, such as the family, the market, the farm, the church, the village, and so on, that is, systems or clusters of norms defining the roles attached to various sets of statuses." (Roy G. D'Andrade, 115)