Culture is a process of creating and transforming reality, not an environment.
Evidence
When the idea of culture enters communications research, it emerges as the environment of an organism or a system to be maintained or a power over the subject. Whatever the truth of these views—and there is truth in all of them— culture must first be seen as a set of practices, a mode of human activity, a process whereby reality is created, maintained, and transformed — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323
Categorization
- DEFINE: Carey’s key definition of culture as creative process rather than power or environment over the subject.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 323
- XREF: connects to: TCK identity is unconventional, not defined by geophysical places or nationality, race, ethnicity, language, or religion, but by relational bonds from shared transitory cultural experiences. — 2025-Su-Third Culture Kid Identity; Popular culture theory requires conceiving persons as fundamentally cultural beings. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 318; A people’s survival in struggle depends on its own cultural terms, not borrowed abstractions — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 106 (+20 more)
Broader Connections
- Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them
#qualifies(0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837 - Objective and subjective culture are distinct measurable phenomena
#expands(0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 564 - Popular culture theory requires conceiving persons as fundamentally cultural beings.
#expands(0.60) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 318