creating a culture

[Aravelle]

What of values and taboos? Each culture has their set of unwritten rules, as to what's okay, what's great, and what's horrible.

Also, clothing is kind of important.

 

[Caliburn]

I tend to work backwards with culture: values and social organisation first, followed by details like habitat, diet, economy etc. I do the same approach with characters and I think the things that make characters believable and interesting are the same things that make cultures believable.
Not a direct answer, but other people have already listed the major themes.

 

[Chilari]

I think one aspect of culture that is easily forgotten is economy. This brushes on geography, politics and religion, but I think is a separate factor itself too.

In terms of geography - what resources does the country possess, including climate? This determines what metals they can mine, whether they can produce or have to import ceramics, what food they eat, what fabrics they use, etc.

In terms of politics - who controls resources? How are they distributed to the wider community? You might have a single elite family which controls everything and gives out food as required by the masses, with careful records kept. Or you might have a more egalitarian culture, where at some point in the past the land was divided up and everyone has enough land to farm their own food - or sell their surplus to whoever they want to trade with. Or there might be this sort of setup, but with a governing body controlling the means of trade, such that those with a surplus don't get much benefit from it. In classical Athens, merchants from outside the Athenian empire had to pay customs taxes when trading at Athenian harbours, while Athenian merchants did not.

In terms of religion - what if a particular resource was commonly used in dedications to the gods. Bronze and marble statues were often dedicated to the gods in classical Greece, so there's an economy in scultuing which is much larger than it would have been if people only wanted statues to decorate their gardens. In Egypt, honey was amongst possible dedications, and thus valuable, and thus widely produced. One Egyptian prime minister of (if I recall correctly from my dissertation) about 1700BCE had scenes involving beekeeping in his tomb; part of his role included recording dedications made to the temple.


Besides economy, there are also myths about the culture's origins, the origins of their gods and heroes, or even the origins of certain monuments. The temple of Apollo at Delphi was said to have several predecessors, including one built of gold by the gods, one of bronze by the heroes of the Bronze Age, and one, older then even the gold one, of wax and feathers by birds and bees sent ahead by Apollo before the gods even got there. In fact animals are often woven into Greek myths like this - I couldn't count on two hands the number of times Zeus slept with some queen or princess in the form of a bull or swan, and bees crop up elsewhere including in a cave where Zeus as an infant was nursed.

 

[Targon]

One major thing people somtimes overlook in my opinion. To me cultures get a lot of their look, attitude and feel is the way they fight. The materials they use, their attitude towards warfare etc. Hope this helps

 

[gilamere]

This is a good sum up of how academics view culture and something to print out for when you think about culture creation to help get you started. From an anthropological stand point, a culture is defined primarily by:

Social structure: gender politics, systems of organization (government, factions, parties, unions), who is kin, how family households are structured (nuclear, extended, compounds of kin, multiple spouses or mates), what marriage contract defines (who does teh baby belong to, who lives where, is there compensation involved, is this for politics or obligation...look up ghosts brides for some fun reading on marriage customs), obligations to greater community vs family/clan/household, and many other systems of how we interact between ourselves and others. War would also fall under this category, who is us and who is "them". Social lass, Social station, caste, clans, blood family all fall under this category.

Belief system: This is not religion, so to speak, but the people's collection of beliefs, secular or religious, or anything in between, like "superstition" and folk beliefs. There are many and varying degrees of what constitutes religion, so what is "religion" and what is not is highly debatable as to where you are from as the author. But there are other things that people believe, perhaps not everyone zealously, which are recognizable to the people from the culture, like the Western European and American love of thin young women in their media. Elite Renaissance European peoples did not prize being thin as highly as we do today. Those are two different belief systems from two different cultures. And there are practices like shamanism, which tend to be more a collection of practices and beliefs than what our culture we tend to think of as religion, and even most modern shamans tend to not classify shamanism as a religion. Taboos, philosophy, mores fall under this category.

Technology: I'm not sure if I would include magic use in this category, it would depend on how it developed in the world you are creating. Technology which survives as a part of culture is based on need. War is always a great impetus for technological advancement or at least matching, because the home party will almost always not want to die from some different or advanced weapon they don't have or have knowledge of. But a society that puts free market high on it's priorities will also have a greater technological advancement than others around them who might be a closed market. Remember to keep technology simple for the needs of the people, few would keep making ultra-death rays at an extremely high cost, when your opponent has a simple projectile shooter, like a gun. But also have fun with it, there might be other water conveyance systems than aqueducts!! In this perspective, things like medicine, even herbal knowledge, would constitute technology. A shaman's rattle could also be considered technology, as he and his patients would certainly attest to the fact that he would need it to heal.

Economy: This is more that just market trends and stock prices. Anthropologically, economy is a about resource acquisition and sustainability. What resources are a high priority? Land, waterways, knowledge, workers, access to ports, pipelines, holy places, these are all types of resources. What forms for currency are there, remember there are still places where you can, for instance, trade sheep for goats. Who supports who, and how, is the main question for looking at economy from this perspective. What is a prize commodity? What would be sold on the black market? What is scarce and what is abundant? What kind economic system do they have? How to do your people get what they need, and secondly, how do they get what they want? How do they compensate others for it or the service?

Now these 4 pillars of culture are not independent of each other, belief effects technology as much as technology effects belief, eg. stem cell therapy and it's application. Economy is effected by technology, social structure and belief, eg. think of the difficulties in having a major name brand restaurant enter the market place on a new continent. If one aspect changes, there will be across all four pillars.They are interdependent, and it is my opinion, this is the kind of detail in a story that lends credibility to the culture creation and interactions. Do you need to address all of these aspects all the time, I don't think so, but little details thrown in here and there can lend more realism to your world and peoples.

 

[gilamere]

My husband just added, "never forget the culture of your target audience for whom you are writing!! If they don't understand the cultural perspective of your people, there may be a problem which will require some delicate writing. To a professional writer, someone who wants to get paid, you have to have buy-in and believability from your audience!"