What is meant by "culture"? It is usual to find the term "culture" used without furtherexplanation or clarification. I have also been using it so far as thoughit were a self-evident concept which needs no explicit discussion or clarificationof its nature, i.e. a definition of what it means. But in fact that is highlynecessary and I will do so before I turn to ways of making it operationalso that it can be used in analysis or design. The term is recent and was first used in its current anthropologicalsense in 1871 (by Tylor) who defined it as "that complex whole whichincludes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilitiesand habits acquired by man as a member of society."5 This usage isvery different to its more common meaning (still found) where it refersto high culture as opposed to other products of human life and where itis seen as analogous to "civilization," whereas in the presentsense all human groups possess culture. Anthropologists agree about the centrality of "culture" indefining humanity but tend to disagree about definitions. In 1952, two prominentAmerican anthropologists, Kroeber and Kluckhohn, reviewed numerous definitionsof culture.6 There have been many more definitions and conceptualizations of culturesince then. Various classifications have been proposed for grouping thesevarious definitions (Kroeber and Kluckhohn propose six classes). Using adifferent set of categories it can be argued that for purposes of EBS itis useful to think that all definitions fall into one of three general viewsof culture. One defines it as a way of life typical of a group; the secondas a system of meanings, symbols, and schemata transmitted through symboliccodes; the third as a set of adaptive strategies for survival related toecology and resources. These are complementary rather than conflicting.Thus particular cultures began as a group's adaptive strategies within theirecological setting. These become encoded in cognitive schemata, symbols,and some vision of an ideal, which are passed on to new generations. These,in turn, lead to particular ways of living and behaving, including designedenvironments as settings for the kind of people a particular group seesas normative, and the particular lifestyle which is significant and typical,distinguishing this group from others. Recently there has been a tendency of a variety of fields to suggestthat in making inferences about unobservable entities (which "culture"most certainly is, being a definitional concept subsuming the myriad thingspeople do) it may be more useful to ask what they do rather than what theyare (and then how they do these things). One can apply this approach to"culture", asking what culture does rather than what it is. Onceagain, at least three answers can be found. The first is that culture may be regarded as the distinctive means wherebycultures maintain their identity, i.e. its purpose is precisely to createthe "pseudo-species" mentioned earlier. A second answer is thatculture acts as a control mechanism, it carries information that directshow behavior and artifacts are to be created. It has been compared metaphoricallyto both a blueprint and to DNA, and described as a design for living. Athird answer is that a major role of culture is to act as a structure orframework that gives meaning to particulars. 7 Again, these types of answersare complementary rather than conflicting. In fact, all six of the approachesto culture reviewed above can be shown to be complementary. Different types of definitions and conceptualizations are useful forparticular types of questions and problems, of different degrees of generality,at different scales, and consequently for different disciplines and fields.Even within EBS (and, by extension, environmental design) various formulationsmay be found to be useful for different types of questions and problems.There is, however, another way of addressing the issue of the role of culturein EBS and of dealing with the question of why, despite so much talk aboutculture, it has not been used very much. Various reasons for this can begiven, but I will discuss one here, suggesting that to become useful, "culture"must be made more operational.