What is the difference between a culture and a civilization?

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Accepted answer

A civilization is a culture of a certain scale and complexity. All civilizations are cultures, but only a small subset of cultures are civilizations.

As the Wikipedia article on civilization puts it:

Historically, a civilization was a so-called "advanced" culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures... In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, egalitarian horticultural subsistence neolithic societies or hunter-gatherers... Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade.

All human populations participate in one or more cultural groups regardless of whether they are part of a civilization.

Upvote:3

Culture is a more general notion. "Civilization is characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication etc. (see Wikipedia). So we can speak of a Paleolitic culture, for example but not a civilization.

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