Forms and Elements of Culture

According to Prof. Dr. Koentjoroningrat, that culture has three forms, namely:

The form of culture as a complex of ideas, ideas, values, regulatory norms and so on. This form of culture is abstract in nature, in the minds of citizens, giving life to the community. This first form can also be said as a cultural system or cultural system. Other terms are customs or customs. 

The form of culture as a complex of activities and patterned actions from humans in society. This second form is commonly referred to as a social system or social system. This social system consists of human activities that interact, relate and interact with one another from time to time according to certain patterns based on customary behavior. This social system is concrete

The third form of culture is physical culture in the form of all the total physical results, from the activities of actions and works of all humans in society; then it is the most concrete because it is in the form of objects or things that can be touched or seen

The three forms of culture above, in reality, people's lives cannot be separated from one another. Ideal culture and customs regulate and give direction to human actions and works so as to produce physical cultural objects. In essence, there are reciprocal community and cultural relations as I explained a few days ago.

Cultural Universal (Universal Culture)

In the Universal Categories of Culture book by C. Kluckhohn, there are seven elements of culture that can be found in all nations of the world. The seven elements that we can refer to as the main contents of each world culture are: language, knowledge systems, social organizations, systems of living and technology, living systems, religious systems, and arts.

Each element of universal culture is certainly also transformed into the three forms of culture that I have described above, namely its form in the form of a cultural system, in the form of a social system and in the form of physical culture. The religious system, for example, has its form as a system of beliefs and ideas about God, gods, spirits, hell, heaven and so on, but has also its form in the form of ceremonies, rituals, worship, and besides that every religious system also has the form of a sacred object and religious objects.

In his book The Study of Man, R. Linton divides cultural universal into even smaller elements, namely Cultural activities, trait-complex, traits and items.

The example of the translation is as follows:

For example a system of agricultural livelihoods can be broken down into elements of irrigation, land management systems with plows, systems of rights to land ownership, and so on. The agricultural livelihood system is an example of a cultural activity, while a land management system with a plow is a trait-complex, while the plow itself is traits, and parts of the plow which are usually plowshares, towers, steering poles, and livestock are items .

The results of the work of the community give rise to material technology or culture that has major uses in protecting the community against its natural environment. Technology, in essence, includes at least seven elements, namely

• Productive tools
• Weapon
• Container
• Food and Drink
• Clothing and jewelry
• Shelter and house
• transportation equipment.

Those are some forms of culture which according to Prof. DR. Koentjoroningrat consists of three forms that I have mentioned above and also some elements of culture that exist in the world community which I have also written above.

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