> As a concept, “culture” is notoriously slippery and expansive. The definition I find useful: “Culture is a set of shared preferences among choices.” Your points don’t seem to be altered with this definition swap-in. But if I’m wrong, that would be more interesting.
I think shared is too broad. You like Coke, I like Coke—we share that. But it’s shared because we both have sugar-loving taste buds. To be cultural, you need something more. Hence the biologists’ emphasis on the transmission mechanism via learning.
Does it matter? My argument is that a lot of what gets called “Western culture” is really just “stuff that is appealing to human taste buds”, in a broad sense. So yes, it is spreading, but no cultural learning is required. Coca Cola sells Coke, people in India like it and buy it; but this doesn’t have implications for things that are actually cultural, such as attitudes to gender, political values, etc.
> As a concept, “culture” is notoriously slippery and expansive.
The definition I find useful: “Culture is a set of shared preferences among choices.” Your points don’t seem to be altered with this definition swap-in. But if I’m wrong, that would be more interesting.
I think shared is too broad. You like Coke, I like Coke—we share that. But it’s shared because we both have sugar-loving taste buds. To be cultural, you need something more. Hence the biologists’ emphasis on the transmission mechanism via learning.
Does it matter? My argument is that a lot of what gets called “Western culture” is really just “stuff that is appealing to human taste buds”, in a broad sense. So yes, it is spreading, but no cultural learning is required. Coca Cola sells Coke, people in India like it and buy it; but this doesn’t have implications for things that are actually cultural, such as attitudes to gender, political values, etc.