Towards a More Accurate Understanding of Culture

Abstract

This essay by Roland Kharkrang surveys major anthropological theories of culture—Evolutionism, Diffusionism, Functionalism, Structuralism, and Ethnosemanticism—before developing an original theological-anthropological framework that distinguishes human Nature, understood as the immutable, God-given constant of body, intellect, free will, and conscience shared universally by all persons, from Culture, the mutable, learned, group-specific mould through which that nature is shaped by the environment. Drawing on St John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, alongside illustrative material ranging from royal birth customs to real-life “Mowgli” cases of feral children, the author argues that nature makes all humans equal, while culture differentiates them, and that speech is an inborn human faculty, whereas language—culture’s highest expression—is learned only through group contact and imitation. The essay concludes by examining language and laughter as distinctly human, humanising phenomena that separate man from animal, positioning language as both an intimate window into individual and cultural identity and the most exalted index of a people’s cultural development.