The Global Diversity Desk Reference: Managing an International Workforce

1.5. DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE

In one of the first modern definitions of culture, E.B. Tylor (1877) defined it as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."^[] A century later, anthropologist Victor Barnouw wrote in Culture and Personality that "A culture is a way of life of a group of people, the configuration of all of the more or less stereotyped patterns of learned behavior, which are handed down from one generation to the next through the means of language and imitation."

In cataloging more than 150 definitions of culture, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn provided this comprehensive definition: "Culture consists of patterns, explicit ...