Health Information Systems Project in Andhra Pradesh-Experiences from phcs in Kuppam

Properties of culture:

• Culture has several properties:
• shared (it is a social phenomenon)
• learned (culture is learned not biologically inherited); how culture is taught & reproduced is also crucial
• symbolic (speech is a symbolic element of human language)
• transmitted cross-generationally (Kroeber 1917 and Leslie White 1949 treat culture as a ‘superorganic entity’.
• adaptive, and integrated.

Different interpretations of culture

• From the different definitions it is known that there is much disagreement about the word and concept of culture.
• So, an ongoing negotiation and conversation about what culture should mean is continuing.