Keywords

Introduction

If we are serious about resolving the sustainability crisis, then it is essential to understand how culture operates as both an impediment and a solution. But to achieve this, culture must first become more accessible. It needs to be a concept that community members, businesses and policy agencies can grasp and apply to their own contexts, and which academics and researchers from any discipline can use as an analytical lens. To return to the analogy at the end of Chapter 2, culture must be understood in a way that reflects the whole elephant while still recognising its parts. We need to be able to be clear when we are referring to a particular interpretation of culture, and how this relates to other interpretations. It should be possible to share insights between different theoretical perspectives using a common language. Finally, culture needs to be conceptualised in a way that does not automatically exclude non-Western worldviews, and instead is open and inviting to all knowledge systems.

What if, instead of saying ‘culture is many different things’, we took the starting position that ‘culture is something and there are many different ways of looking at it’? What would the ‘something’ of culture then look like? Does culture have a core set of qualities that are shared by all or most of the interpretations (the features of the ‘elephant’), or is it academically unsound to suggest that there might be similar features across diverse ontologies and epistemologies?

Certainly, each of the nine approaches to culture identified in Chapter 2 reflects a different concept of what culture is, how it is constituted, and what is considered to be reliable evidence about culture. For example, culture-as-product focuses on aesthetic (and other) qualities of a circumscribed group of products of human endeavour; culture-as-meaning concerns itself with interpreting the meanings and symbolism that are conveyed by objects, texts, discourses and actions; while culture-as-nature sees humans as relationally entangled with the natural world. On the face of it, these perspectives seem irreconcilable, as they appear to reflect entirely different phenomena. Many academics would consider it heresy to attempt to draw any integrative lines between them.

I disagree. I believe it is entirely appropriate to seek conceptual commonalities across theoretical approaches even though the approaches themselves may represent different ontologies and epistemologies. In this I am heartened by Elinor Ostrom’s perspective that research in complex fields may require the use of several theories to explore the patterns of relationships between elements, and that, over and above theories, it is useful to identify a general set of variables that can be used to frame and delimit a field of inquiry (Ostrom, 2005).

My intent in this chapter is, therefore, to do the opposite of the previous chapter. Instead of looking at the differences between approaches to culture, I seek qualities of culture that are common to all or most of the interpretations. Drawing from definitions of culture sourced from all nine approaches, I identify features and qualities of culture that are repeatedly referenced. From this, I attempt to sketch out, at a high level, certain shared characteristics of the entire elephant. From this, I propose a vocabulary to support an integrative understanding of culture.

Seeking Common Qualities of Culture

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of definitions of culture and from time to time brave academics have set themselves to review them. In 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn reviewed around 180 academic definitions. They identified six main types: descriptive definitions (enumerations of the content of culture); definitions with an emphasis on social heritage or tradition; normative definitions (relating to rules, values, ideals, behaviour); psychological definitions (learning, habit, problem-solving); structural definitions (referring the pattern or organisation of culture); and definitions relating to the generation of products, artefacts, ideas or symbols (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). Just over half a century later, Faulkner et al. (2006) reviewed around 300 definitions (until their method reached saturation) and came up with seven clusters of definitions: those that emphasised culture as structure (a system of elements); culture as function (a tool for delivering ends); as a process (e.g. ongoing social construction); as products (artefacts with or without deliberate symbolic intent); as individual or group cultivation of refinement; as power or ideology of a group; and as membership relating to a place or group.

I drew from these two reviews and from other definitions sourced from the literature that informs Chapter 2 to identify common characteristics of culture. From the definitions I was seeking two things: descriptions of the features of culture, and descriptions of culture’s qualities, by which I mean its processes or dynamics. Below I discuss representative examples of definitions that relate to each interpretation of culture. My purpose here is not to provide an exhaustive list—that has already been done by others—but to illustrate the range of cultural qualities encompassed by the nine approaches to culture, and to highlight recurring concepts.

Culture-as-nurture, as in agriculture, is defined in the Cambridge English Dictionary as ‘to breed and keep particular living things in order to get the substances they produce’ or more generally ‘the tending of something’ (emphasis in original) (Williams, 1976: 77). Here, at an abstract level, culture is set of practices that involve maintaining living things and ultimately producing valued products.

Culture-as-progress is defined as ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development’ or ‘a standard of perfection’ measured either by material progress or by a set of ‘higher standards’ (Bennett et al., 2005: 80). In this sense culture is a process of change as well as an idealised or sought-after outcome.

Culture-as-product refers to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity’ (Williams, 1976: 80); or in more detail, ‘the sum of all intellectual and artistic works and processes, primarily within literature, visual arts, music, theatre, films and other artforms: genres used for making and using a special type of human artefacts that rose above vernacular usefulness and reached out into a symbolic sphere of imagination and ideality’ (Fornas, 2017: 35). Other definitions have extended culture-as-product to include such things as urban form, architecture, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes (e.g. UNESCO, 1972). With culture-as-product, culture is a specific type of practice, product or place where the symbolic value or meaning is more prominent than its functional value.

An early definition of culture-as-lifeways was already quoted in Chapter 2: ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man [sic] as a member of society’ (Tylor, 1920: 1). A 1940 definition includes physical manifestations of culture: ‘an organized body of conventional understandings manifest in art and artefacts which, persisting through tradition, characterizes a human group’ (cited in Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952: 61). In a recent review of anthropological approaches to culture, it is described as ‘the set of learned routines (and/or their material and immaterial products) that are characteristic of a delineated group of people’ (Brumann, 1999: 6). Consistently across these definitions, culture is a coherent and interactive system involving beliefs, understandings, products, rules and routines that are characteristic of a particular group of people.

The preamble to the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO, 2001) includes aspects of both culture-as-product and culture-as-lifeways, referring to it as ‘…the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and [...] encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs’.

An early exponent of culture-as-meaning defined it as ‘an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men [sic] communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes towards life’ (Geertz, 1973: 89). Other definitions in this conceptual tradition include ‘the symbolic-expressive aspect of human behaviour’ (Wuthnow et al., 1984: 3) and ‘sets of beliefs or values that give meaning to ways of life and produce (and are reproduced through) material and symbolic forms’ (Crang, 1998: 2). Here, culture comprises shared meanings and symbolism that are often conveyed by texts, discourses, practices and artefacts.

Some definitions span culture-as-lifeways and culture-as-meaning, such as this from sociologist Sharon Hays: ‘Culture encompasses language, symbols, rituals, everyday practices, values, norms, ideas, the categories of thought and knowledge, and the material products, institutional practices, and ways of life established by these’ (Hays, 2000: 597). Another definition by a group of sociologists in cultural studies proposes that culture encompasses ‘(1) ideas, knowledge (correct, wrong, or unverifiable belief), and recipes for doing things; (2) humanly fabricated tools (such as shovels, sewing machines, cameras and computers); and (3) the products of social action that may be drawn upon in the further conduct of social life (a dish of curry, a television set, a photograph, or a high-speed train, for example)’ (Hall et al., 2003: 7). Cultural features in these hybrid definitions include tangible elements such as practices, tools and material products as well as symbols, values, ideas, norms, together with shared language and forms of knowledge.

In definitions associated with culture-as-structure, structure is often described in terms of the institutions that shape social life at macro, meso and micro levels, but its fundamental elements are described as the ‘norms, beliefs, and values that regulate social action’ (Bernandi et al., 2006: 163). Sociologist William Sewell describes structure as comprising a number of dynamically interacting qualities which together form ‘cultural schemas’ (Sewell, 1992: 11). These include the rules of social life such as ‘various conventions, recipes, scenarios, principles of action, and habits of speech and gesture’ (Sewell, 1992: 8); human resources such as skills, knowledge, discourses, routines and behavioural patterns; and physical resources that confer value and social power. At a macro-scale, these may form institutions, which in a sociological sense mean established systems of these elements, especially where they acquire a tangible and nameable form, such as marriage, democracy or patriarchy. Here, culture’s qualities include beliefs, conventions, habits, knowledge and skills as well as material items, and the ways in which these form dynamic, powerful and enduring systems.

In the field of culture-as-practice, a practice is ‘a routinized way in which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are described and the world is understood’ (Reckwitz, 2002: 250). The most widely-cited definition, already quoted in Chapter 2, is ‘a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, “things” and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge’ (Reckwitz, 2002: 249). Practice is simultaneously the conjunction of these elements forming an entity, and a performance that carries this conjunction of elements into the future (Shove et al., 2012). Culture here involves bodily routines, ways of thinking, doing and knowing, and how these interact with material items to form enduring patterns.

For culture-as-purpose, where the focus is intentional cultural change, definitions typically include norms, rules and rituals; shared values, ideologies and beliefs; and shared understandings and meanings (Linnenluecke & Griffiths, 2010). Some refer also to behaviours, as in ‘the values, beliefs, and norms or behavioural practices that emerge in an organization’ (Flamholtz & Randle, 2014: 247).

For definitions of culture-as-nature, I turn to Māori knowledge, where the closest equivalent term is ‘tikanga’. Hirini Moko Mead describes tikanga as an interrelated complex of concepts, beliefs, knowledge, practices, rituals and obligations (Mead, 2016). While these elements are not dissimilar to previous definitions of culture-as-lifeways, a key difference is that the underpinning concepts do not locate humans outside of nature, but as part of a constellation of familial relationships that extend to non-human entities. Codes of behaviour, beliefs and knowledge all incorporate aspects of the known natural world as relations for whom one has reciprocal responsibilities and obligations. Culture is, therefore, a relational concept that extends to include the natural world as a cultural actor.

The Commonly Identified Elements of Culture

The first impression from the previous section may be of a bewildering array of concepts. But on closer examination, clusters of similar features and qualities are evident. In this section, I highlight commonly expressed features of culture, and in the following section, I discuss frequently identified cultural processes or dynamics.

Across the definitions of culture that I reviewed, of which a few are quoted above, I found that the following elements are repeatedly identified:

  • Ways that people think, including shared and learned meanings, beliefs, understandings and forms of expression

  • What people do, including performances, routines and behaviours

  • What people have, including products that they make, objects that they acquire, and things with which they interact

I will discuss each in turn.

Ways That People Think

The definitions of culture use a range of terms for phenomena that shape how people think about and understand their world.

Norms: Many of the definitions refer to shared concepts that guide people to think or do things in certain ways that are considered ‘correct’ for that culture group. Terms used to describe these concepts included laws, rules, norms, conventions, obligations, customs, traditions and recipes. I have selected ‘norms’ as an overarching term for this group of attributes as it is a generic term for shared prescriptions about what people should do in a given situation. Generally, if norms are flouted, there is some expectation of disapproval or punishment from the wider cultural group (Patterson, 2014). Norms operate at multiple scales: for example they may be shared by a small group (e.g. a dress code) or may be shared at supra-national scales (e.g. norms relating to democratic processes). Norms may become formalised rules (e.g. laws, regulations) but generally are informal but nonetheless strongly influential.

Values: Some of the definitions use terms like values, value systems, principles and morals to refer to shared concepts about what is important to a given culture group. These are higher-level guides for correct or desirable actions when situations are not covered by norms or rules.

Beliefs: A number of definitions of culture refer to even more abstract sets of mental processes, using terms such as beliefs, ideas, categories of thought and concepts. These generally refer to mental representations that underpin how people perceive and understand the world, including shared understandings about what is true or real.

Knowledge: Most definitions refer to aspects of knowledge, either generically (knowledge, forms of knowledge, cultural knowledge) or specifically (e.g. technical knowledge, institutional knowledge, background knowledge). Knowledge in this sense does not have to meet any validity test—some definitions refer to common sense and conventional understandings. Some definitions also refer to embodied knowledge such as skills, know-how, capabilities and bodily techniques. 

Symbolism: Terms in this cluster include symbols, meanings, symbolic-meaningful systems, symbolic devices and symbolic-expressive aspects of human behaviour. Here, definitions are referring to how abstract meanings (e.g. values, beliefs, norms) are represented and ‘carried’ by particular shared understandings, behaviours, objects or forms of communication.

Definitions within culture-as-meaning tend to focus solely or predominantly on these less tangible qualities of culture. Culture-as-product is interested in the significance and symbolism of particular classes of human creations and practices. Definitions in most other interpretations of culture include at least some of the qualities described above as well as more tangible elements.  Shared norms, values, beliefs, knowledge, language and symbolism are thus commonly understood features in all approaches to culture although more implicit in culture-as-nurture.

What People Do

Although we generally tend to think of culture as exemplified by habitual actions and routines, any human action can be culturally influenced. So while some words and phrases in the definitions relating to ‘doing’ refer specifically to routines, others refer to actions more generally.

Routines: Many definitions included terms that referred to regularly repeated activities, including habits, routines, practices, everyday practices, rituals, traditions, habits of speech and gesture, behavioural patterns and habitual behaviours. A major part of social existence comprises actions or activities that occur repeatedly involving similar actions and sequences. These include such things as daily domestic routines, rituals such as religious ceremonies, or standardised social interactions such as the way formal meetings operate. Many routines are learned in childhood and carried through one’s life, while others are learnt in specific settings such as school or work.

Actions: Some definitions do not differentiate between repeated and rare behaviours, and so by implication include all actions that people undertake. Such terms in the definitions include behaviour, bodily activities, intellectual and artistic practices, and the making of things. These terms reflect that the whole of human behaviour, whether habitual or not, can be both shaped by and conveys shared forms of cognition. For example, activities that might take place only once or twice in a lifetime such as buying a house are strongly influenced by cultural norms, values and beliefs. People may also act in non-routine ways when faced with changing circumstances, and these actions may be strongly culturally influenced or may disrupt routines. While habitual actions are important in the replication of culture, occasional actions are no less cultural and may be critical for action on sustainability issues.

In culture-as-nurture, activities include breeding, keeping and tending. Culture-as-product recognises especially skilled practices with symbolic value. For culture-as-lifeways, actions and practices are seen as intimately tied with how people think, and are often dependent on learned bodily routines. For culture-as-meaning, the focus is on the imputed meaning and symbolism of actions. Routines and behavioural patterns at larger scales are integral to culture-as-structure. Culture-as-practice focuses on routines as part of the bundle of ideas that comprises practice, while culture-as-purpose is interested in changing behaviours along with ways of thinking.

What People Have, Use and Make

In this category are things that are made, acquired and used, regardless of scale and purpose. Terms used in the definitions include artefacts, products, art, intellectual and artistic works, tools, infrastructure, land, technology and things. These may range in scale from objects that are made or owned by individuals to large-scale resources such as urban form, and may include things that have virtually no physical presence such as software.

Such items play different roles in interpretations of culture. In culture-as-product, the focus is on things that are intentionally produced to represent and convey meanings and ideas. In culture-as-meaning, the interest is in what things symbolise. Objects are considered as part of culture in their own right in culture-as-lifeways, as part of cultural assemblages. In culture-as-practice, things are an integral part of routines. In culture-as-structure, material items concretise ideologies and institutions. In culture-as-nature, aspects of the natural world are kin and thus part of one's culture.

The features that appear repeatedly across definitions of culture can thus be clustered into three distinct elements: ways in which people think about and understand the world; what they do both routinely and occasionally; and material items that they have, use and make. Some of the nine perspectives on culture put greater or complete emphasis on just one or two of these elements, but even there, the other elements are rarely absent. For example, culture-as-meaning focuses on beliefs and symbolism but elicits these meanings from studies of what people do and have, including means of communication such as text. Culture-as-product focuses on works of art (things) and performance (activities) in relation to the beliefs, values and symbolism that they convey. Most definitions also pay particular attention to ways in which these elements interact, a topic discussed in the next section.

Table 3.1 summarises this discussion. Common cultural features across definitions can be clustered into three (interactive) elements: how people think (norms, values, beliefs, symbolism, and cognitive and bodily knowledge); what people do (routines and actions); and material items (products and acquisitions). 

Table 3.1 Widely shared features in definitions of culture, clustered into three cultural elements
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Culture’s Dynamic Qualities

Culture is more than just some or all of these elements—in most definitions it is also a dynamic process and/or a distinctive and enduring set of relationships between people. Anthropologist Marvin Harris describes culture as ‘the total socially acquired life-way or life-style of a group of people. It consists of the patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that are characteristic of the members of a particular society or segment of a society’ (Harris, 1975: 144). Sharon Hays describes it as ‘a social, durable, layered pattern of cognitive and normative systems at once material and ideal, objective and subjective, embodied in artefacts and in behavior, passed about in interaction, internalized in personalities, and externalized institutions. […] Culture is both the product of human interaction and producer of certain forms of human interaction’ (Hays, 1994: 65). For sociologist Orlando Patterson, it is ‘a dynamically stable process of collectively made, reproduced, and unevenly shared knowledge structures that are informational and meaningful, internally embodied, and externally represented and that provide predictability, coordination equilibria, continuity, and meaning in human actions and interactions’ (Patterson, 2014: 1). From these descriptions, and drawing also from other definitions as discussed earlier in this chapter, the characteristics that stand out as particularly relevant to our interest in sustainability are cultural membership, cultural learning, culture’s systemic qualities and culture’s durability.

Cultural Membership

The concept of culture is generally associated with membership: the idea that a roughly definable group of people share some cultural elements, such as meanings, objects, practices and/or forms of communication. Similar patterns of cultural elements are adhered to (loosely or strictly) within the group. Terms in the definitions above that reflect this idea of membership include ‘human group’ and ‘social group’.

A culture group can be almost any scale larger than a single individual and smaller than all of humankind. At one extreme, a culture group could comprise a single family with unique aspects to their patterns of interaction and communication. At the other extreme, Western culture with its tendency towards individualism and nuclear family structure is widely (but not universally) shared among people living in Western nations. When we speak of culture groups, they may be at any scale within this continuum.

Culture groups are not necessarily clearly bounded, and cultural membership is rarely static. New people may enter the group and adopt cultural features, while others may drop out, or membership may be fleeting. People’s degree of adherence to cultural elements may vary greatly, and group members may show a ‘greater or less degree’ of sharing (Brumann, 1999: 4). Importantly, culture is not always consciously adopted. It can be so embedded that people do not even recognise that they adhere to cultural norms until they are faced with another cultural experience. Those members who adhere (more or less) to a particular group of cultural elements may change over time. The boundaries of membership may also alter if previously important cultural elements become less important to the group. Cultural membership is thus fuzzy and dynamic.

Individuals can belong to more than one culture group. Many people are accustomed to moving between one set of cultural expectations in their family life, another at work, and maybe others in religious, recreational or educational settings. In this sense, they share some cultural elements—beliefs, practices, etc.—with others in one setting, and share another set of cultural elements in a different setting. As individuals we may thus have membership in several cultures with which we align (consciously or otherwise), but this does not mean that we have an individual culture. Culture is always about something collective.

Membership is a core feature of most interpretations of culture, although not to culture-as-nurture and only tangentially to culture-as-product. Within many Indigenous perspectives, members of one’s culture group may well include features of the natural and/or sacred world with whom one is kin or shares obligations, such as animals, natural features and spirit beings (Harmsworth & Awatere, 2013; Turner & Spalding, 2013; Yunkaporta, 2020).

Cultural Learning

Culture is learned from and reinforced by other people, a process that starts in childhood and continues through life. People develop ‘clusters of common concepts, emotions and practices’ as a result of regular interactions with others (Brumann, 1999: 1). In the modern era we are influenced by other cultural vectors such as advertising, social media and social influencers. Language, including bodily signs, group-specific jargon, dialects, speech patterns and intonations, is often distinctive to a culture group and core to both cultural identity and cultural communication. Social interactions and other forms of messaging convey rules and expectations about what to do, say, think or have in order to be acceptable to the wider culture group. If a culture group is small, some or all of the members may engage in face-to-face interactions, but for larger groups norms and rules may be absorbed from media, entertainment and online interactions, so that even where individuals don’t personally know others in the group, they still adopt particular cultural elements. I discuss processes of cultural learning more fully in Chapter 4 in the section on cultural vectors.

Culture is continuously under active construction as individuals adjust their actions to take into account the actions and reactions of others (Cipolletta et al., 2020; Coleman, 1986). Cultural expectations can be enforced through a range of measures, from disapproving body language through to the enforcement of institutionalised rules such as laws. Although being a member of a culture group can be an affirming experience, it can also be disempowering and hurtful, both within a culture group (for those who fail to live up to the fullest expression of cultural alignment) and between culture groups (where difference may be used as the basis for dismissing, blaming or attacking others).

Cultural Systems

Many of the approaches to culture recognise its systemic qualities. This is reflected in terms used in some of the definitions above, such as ‘complex whole’, ‘organised body’, ‘system’, ‘interrelated complex’, ‘layered pattern’, and ‘dynamically stable process’. These convey how a given culture comprises not just certain distinctive elements, but how these interact and align. For example, shared norms and meanings may strongly influence what objects people aspire to acquire; culturally aligned skills and knowledge may determine the routines that people undertake. These system-like interactions tend to reinforce particular arrangements of cultural elements, here called cultural ensembles, and thus the reproduction of similar cultural patterns over time.

Culture-as-lifeways, culture-as-structure and culture-as-practice take a particular interest in how this system, involving the dynamics within cultural ensembles, maintains cultural stability. Cultural reproduction is a key concept in culture-as-structure, with structuration being particularly focused on how the routinised actions of people, following shared ‘rules’, reproduce those rules. Culture-as practice focuses on how specific practices or clusters of practices are sustained over time through continuous reproduction. In culture-as-meaning, texts and discourses are carriers of cultural meaning and thus part of the process of cultural reproduction. In culture-as-product, artefacts and performances consolidate, create and communicate cultural ideas.

Cultural Endurance

These qualities of culture mean that it has a tendency to endure, with relatively constant members and relatively similar cultural ensembles. This durability arises from the ways in which humans find affirmation in belonging; the ways in which culture is learned and passed on between group members; the existence of shared rules and expectations and the perceived repercussions of flouting these; and the systemic interactions between cultural elements such that they tend to reinforce each other. This combination means that cultural ensembles and memberships can remain relatively stable over long periods of time. This is one of the reasons why culture is such a challenge for the sustainability transition, but also thankfully a reason why some more sustainable cultures have endured. Chapter 5 elaborates on processes of cultural stability using research-based examples.

Despite this, cultures can and do change. Cultural membership can swell or shrink; cultural actors can adopt new ways of thinking, acting and possessing; and changes to context or to specific cultural elements can cause cascading change to cultural ensembles. Processes of cultural change (in the context of sustainability) are the focus of Chapter 6.

Table 3.2 summarises the cultural qualities that have commonly appeared across the nine different approaches to culture. While not all concepts appear in all definitions, and the emphasis varies according to definition, they are sufficiently shared to form the basis of an integrative understanding of culture.

Table 3.2 Widely shared concepts in definitions of culture: cultural qualities
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Conclusion

Three main conclusions can be drawn from this high-level analysis of convergences across approaches to culture.

First, despite its different interpretations, there is a surprising commonality regarding culture’s features and qualities. This was not my expectation when I began the review. Three clusters of features emerged: ways of thinking, ways of doing and material items, which I describe as the core elements of culture. Across definitions, these are generally understood to be dynamically linked such that they shape and are shaped by each other. Most interpretations see culture as specific to a group of people and learned and passed on over time. For all of these reasons, culture has a tendency to endure in a similar form over time.

Although these features and qualities of culture are not all expressed all approaches to culture, they are sufficiently universally shared that any of the approaches would be able to ‘see’ aspects of itself represented. They describe qualities of the whole ‘elephant’ of culture, offering an integrative set of concepts which are inclusive of its different interpretations.

All approaches to culture have the potential to usefully support sustainability endeavours, as I discussed in Chapter 2. At present, however, these possibilities are largely invisible and unavailable unless one is embedded in the relevant discipline or sub-discipline. Given the importance of culture as both a constraint and a pathway to a more sustainable future, my goal is to make it more widely accessible as a framing for thinking, analysis and action. From this perspective, the features and qualities described in this chapter show promise for developing an analytic vocabulary. In the next chapter, I discuss how these ideas have helped with some modifications to the scope and vocabulary of the cultures framework so that it encompasses the range of cultural features and qualities identified here.

A further insight from this review has been that most approaches to culture have been more interested in its durability than in its ability to change. For the most part, explanations of culture are interested in how and why it remains relatively stable over time. Culture-as-meaning, culture-as-lifeways, culture-as-structure and culture-as-practice all bring scholarly insights into why and how culture acts as a constraint against change. From a sustainability perspective, it is certainly important to be able to understand how and why it is so hard to change culture. But it may be even more critical to understand how and why cultures change and how to stimulate cultural change towards more sustainable outcomes. Although some academic work has used cultural theory to illuminate opportunities for change (e.g. Shove & Spurling, 2013), this is far from common.

The cultures framework was originally designed to explore processes of cultural change and appears to help fill a gap in conceptualising and analysing change processes from micro to macro scales. In the next chapter, I introduce the cultures framework, and in subsequent chapters, I describe examples of its application to explore culture’s transformability as well as its durability.