Abraham
Culture is made up of the ideas, beliefs, customs or traditions, means and methods of survival, provision of security and
protection, individual and collective relationships, institutional organisation and administration, general and dissemination of
knowledge, maintenance of health and treatment of sicknesses, production and distribution of foods and goods, clothing and
housing, reproduction and socialisation as well as rewards of punishments. These cultural components or ways of life are
collectively shared and accepted by an ethnic group or people in a society (9) For a long time, these two concepts-culture and
modernity meant the same thing and were infact used interchangeably. In the West, if you said, someone was a man of culture,
you meant a polished man, a refined man, an enlightened man or a well educated man. When the British Philosopher and
Literary theorist, Mathew Arnold wrote his 19th century classic, Culture and Anarchy he was actually contrasting modernity
with primitivity. He meant that Western civilization which was meant to introduce orderliness and stability in an otherwise
confused universe, had rather aggravated it by unbridled merchantalism, godlessness and moral decadence. It was then the lot
of Arnold and other intellectuals of Europe in the 19th and early part of the 20th century to rescue the disintegrating moral
fabrics of society through high culture, polished living and controlled behaviour.
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