The Function of Culture in Society
Culture is inseparable from society. Where there is society, there is culture. Culture is a pillar of people's survival. Culture has a certain function in society. We can understand this function from the standpoint of sociology theory.
According to functional-structural theory, culture functions to maintain the whole process in society. First of all, culture functions to unite the community and create stability. This was realized through the willingness of the community to accept core values as a guide to living together. Furthermore,
culture allows people to meet various needs of life, both physical and non-physical needs.
As discussed above, culture consists of four forms. All four forms of culture are all the needs of the community.
The first form of culture is physical objects, mainly functioning to meet the physical needs of the community.
The second form of culture is in the form of a social system, mainly functioning to fulfill the need to organize a life together.
The third form of culture in the form of a cultural system functions to meet emotional-spiritual needs (meaning of life)
The fourth form of culture in the form of cultural values. or primarily serves to meet the needs of self-identity or community groups.
Meanwhile, from the standpoint of social conflict theory, culture mainly functions to maintain social inequalities. in other words, culture actually functions to maintain the dominance of certain groups in society over other groups. The dominance of these groups will lead to dissatisfaction with other groups. This in turn will encourage the emergence of social change. When examined, both viewpoints have their respective truths. Therefore. both have complementary views in understanding the function of culture. On the basis of these two views. it can be concluded that culture has at least the following functions.
Of the three functions. the cultural function of being able to 'unite the community' is generally more problematic. That's because today's society tends to be a diverse cultural society. Not rarely happens. culture does not unite the community, but instead divides the community. Therefore, the challenge of society now is how to make culture work to unite the community amidst the conditions of cultural diversity. udaya or culture comes from the Sanskrit language that is Buddhism, which is a plural form of Buddhism (mind or reason). Interpreted as matters relating to human reason and reason.
In English, culture is called culture, which comes from the Latin word colere, which is processing or working. Can also be interpreted as cultivating land or farming. Kataculture is also sometimes translated as "culture" in Worldn.
Culture as the creation, publishing and processing of human values. This includes the efforts to cultivate raw natural materials and their products. In the natural material, the natural self and the natural environment both physical and social, values are identified and developed so that they are perfect. Cultivating nature, humanizing humans, perfecting human relations are inseparable unity (in Pelly and Waiting, 1994: 22).