Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be understood as systems of symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another Different definitions for culture reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity.
Culture is usually manifested in music, literature, lifestyle, painting and sculpture, theater and film and similar things. Although some people identify it in terms of consumption and consumer goods anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded. For them the word culture thus includes art, science, as well as moral systems.
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