What is Culture? Part Four: Conventions

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Last time we noted that culture describes the arbitrary choices of human life — i.e. behaviors where alternatives could serve the same purpose. But this fact is confusing on its own: If our behaviors are so arbitrary, why aren't we constantly alternating between different ways of doing things. We could greet people with handshakes one day, bows the next, and high-fives every third Thursday. By contrast, most cultural phenomena – habits, customs, traditions, and even fashions – demonstrate the repetition and consistency only possible when individuals are attached to a particular choice and reject its equally-plausible alternatives. There is one additional concept that we need to explain culture: conventions. This word is unfortunately a bit clinical, and mostly only used to discuss stylistic and artistic conventions. But conventions are the atomic units of culture, and to understand culture as a macro-phenomenon, we must understand the mechanism that pushes humans into conventions. So w

If culture describes the arbitrary aspects of life, conventions explain why communities repeatedly make the same arbitrary choices over so many alternatives Last time we noted that culture describes the arbitrary choices of human life — i.e. behaviors where alternatives could serve the same purpose. But this fact is confusing on its own: If our behaviors are so arbitrary, why aren't we constantly alternating between different ways of doing things. We could greet people with handshakes one day, bows the next, and high-fives every third Thursday. By contrast, most cultural phenomena – habits, cu

What is Culture? Part Four: Conventions

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