Culture as knowledge
If culture is learned, then much of it can be thought of in terms of knowledge of the world. This does not only mean that members of a culture must know certain rules or be able to recognize objects, places, and people. It also means that they must be able to make inferences, understand the world, making inferences and predictions. In a famous statement summing up what we might call the cognitive view of culture, Ward Goodenough wrote: > “…a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning: knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term. By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotions. It is rather an organi...