Culture (Ethnographic)
Each unit (collection) in eHRAF World Cultures usually represents
a culture, by which is commonly meant the learned behaviors, ideas,
beliefs, attitudes, and values typically shared by a society. A society
usually refers to group of people who speak a language not usually
understood by neighbors who occupy some contiguous (or at least some
core) territory. Our list of culture units comes largely from the
Outline of World Cultures (Murdock 1983) which we update where needed.
However, note that some eHRAF World Cultures collections consist of more
than one cultural unit. Sometimes this is because the ethnographic
literature describes people speaking different languages within a
usually small territory and therefore we have no choice but to consider
them together. And sometimes peoples speaking the same language are so
widespread (such as Arab speakers) that ethnographers describe different
geographical regions as having different cultures. HRAF takes the
position that all cultures will have subcultural differences and change
over time; therefore, we try to include information about different
communities or regions at different time periods. We recommend that when
researchers collect information they focus on a community or region at a
particular point in time.