Cultural determinism is the belief that the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels. This supports the theory that environmental influences dominate who we are instead of biologically inherited traits.
Yet another way of looking at the concept of cultural determinism is to contrast it with the idea of environmental determinism. The latter is the idea that the physical world- with all its constraints and potentially life-altering elements-is responsible for the make-up of each existing culture. Contrast this with the idea that we (humans) create our own situations through the power of thought, socialization, and all forms of information circulation.
It is also used to describe the concept that culture determines economic and political arrangements. It is an idea which has recurred in many cultures over human history, from ancient civilizations through the present.
Read more about Cultural Determinism: Cultural Determinism As A Political and Economic Influence
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or determinism:
“All cultural change reduces itself to a difference of categories. All revolutions, whether in the sciences or world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”
—William James (1842–1910)