Minkov indb

1.5. Conclusions About 
the Conceptualization 
of Culture 
It is possible to integrate and reconcile 
some, though not all, of the above-men-
tioned positions on the nature of culture 
and its definitions. The scientific study of 
culture should have a practical orientation 
but this cannot be achieved without defin-
ing culture; therefore discussions on the 
concept of culture are not quite useless. 
The goal of such discussions should not 
be to arrive at one right and commonly 
accepted definition that will once and 
for all lay the issue to rest. Rather, we 
should stay open to diverse conceptualiza-
tions of culture, provided they are clearly 
explained by their proponents and make 
sense to others. 
Consequently, the question of whether 
culture is a system of behaviors, meanings, 
mental characteristics, or artifacts, or of all 

---

The Concept of Culture
◆
17
of these, cannot and need not be answered 
categorically. It can be conceptualized one 
way or another. All approaches can lead 
to useful results in cross-cultural analysis. 
“Culture” is a construct. In the words of 
Levitin (1973), a construct is “not directly 
accessible to observation but inferable from 
verbal statements and other behaviors and 
useful in predicting still other observable 
and measurable verbal and non-verbal 
behavior” (p. 492). A construct can also be 
thought of as a complex mental idea that 
reflects objectively existing phenomena. 
There are many subjective ways of think-
ing of and describing an objective reality. 
Constructs are not the reality itself but 
imaginary models that we build in order to 
organize it in a way that makes sense to us 
and, we hope, to other people. 
How culture is conceptualized and 
studied may depend on the constraining 
effect of a researcher’s cultural back-
ground. This form of ethnocentrism has 
been recognized by authors of general 
treatises on scientific inquiry (Kuhn, 1962; 
Merton, 1949/1968), and cultural experts 
(Boyacigiller & Adler, 1991; Hofstede, 
1980, 2001; Hofstede, Hofstede, & 
Minkov, 2010). 
5
Extreme forms of that 
phenomenon are undesirable, but we have 
to learn to live with moderate manifesta-
tions of it and accept the idea that there is 
no culture-free social science just as there 
is no absolutely unbiased journalism. Even 
the choice of a particular topic and the dis-
regard for another theme by a scholar or 
a journalist may suggest individual prefer-
ences that are associated with values. The 
fact that these investigators will present 
their own selection of stories, told in their 
own manner, should be viewed as normal 
as long as other voices are also allowed 
to be heard. Which of these is the true or 
real one is a meaningless question. It is like 
asking whether a description of grief by a 
Russian is more real than a description of 
sorrow by an Arab. Thus, culture can be 
construed in different ways, depending 
on a researcher’s cultural background, 
professional affiliation, or idiosyncratic 
preferences, as well as a currently pre-
dominant fashion or other social factors. 
One popular approach to the concep-
tualization of culture is the onion meta-
phor (Hofstede, 2001). This is a simplified 
didactic tool for beginners in the field. Like 
an onion, culture can be seen as having dif-
ferent layers: visible and invisible. At the 
surface are various practices that can be 
observed and compared. At the core of the 
onion is the mental software that people 
are not fully aware of. It normally takes 
a significant scientific effort to extract the 
contents of that core and understand how 
they relate to those of the outer layers. 
At a more advanced level, culture could 
be viewed as an amalgamation of poten-
tially related and relatively durable societal 
characteristics that describe an identifiable 
human population, such as a nation or 
ethnic group. More restrictive definitions 
are possible, yet impractical. For instance, 
conceiving of culture as something shared 
by the members of a particular population 
that distinguishes them from another popu-
lation creates serious practical problems for 
researchers (see 2.1. and 2.6.1.). On the 
other hand, analyses of national indicators 
are required by the reality of the world that 
we live in, never mind that nations are not 
homogeneous and discrete entities in terms 
of values, beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors (see 
2.6.1.). Ultimately, the concept of culture 
may be replaced by the concept of “societal 
indicators,” whereas the search for a precise 
definition of what exactly culture is or is not 
can be replaced by a search for useful indi-
cators for analysis in order to understand 
and explain practically important issues. 
■