Operationalizing the Concept of Culture I suggest that as it stands the concept of culture is not very usefulin EBS - in fact it is essentially unusable. There are two reasons for this. The first concerns the nature of statements about the relation betweenculture and environments. These tend to assume implicitly that culture anddesigned environments are equivalent units, in the sense that they are equalin "scale." That is not the case. Culture is a vast domain, builtform (however broadly defined) is a small part of it and also a subset ofit. The latter is, as it were, embedded in the former. This makes the natureof the relationships between them, and the nature of the translation processof one into the other, rather difficult to grasp. Without resolving eitherthe nature of the relationship or the translation process, it is essentialthat this difficulty be borne in mind. The second reason concerns the impossibility of using the concept "culture"in trying to understand environments and how they are used, or to designenvironments for culture. It can be suggested that "culture" isboth too abstract and too global (or general) to be useful. It is oftenuseful to clarify excessively broad and abstract concepts by "dismantling"them and then studying the components and the ways in which they interrelatewith each other and with other variables (e.g. components of built environments).Over the years I have developed two complementary ways of responding tothe twin problems of excessive abstractness and excessive generality. The first addresses the view that "culture" is too abstract.It begins with the frequent reference to "socio-cultural" variables,and takes the position that "social" and "cultural"are distinct and different. "Cultural" refers to ideational variables,the blueprint for the social variables which are then seen as referringto more concrete manifestations or expressions of culture. Important amongthese are the actual potentially observable social expressions of culturesuch as family and kinship structures, social networks, roles, statuses,social institutions, and the like. This can be diagrammed as follows: While it is virtually impossible to link culture to built environments,it is feasible to relate them to family and kinship structures, clans ornotices, religions or recreational institutions, sex and other roles, socialnetworks, or status hierarchies. It should also be emphasized that "culture" is a theoreticalconstruct, it exists by definition and is a conceptual summary shorthand(and proposed explanation) for particular conjunctions of a great varietyof human phenomena. No one has even seen or ever will see or observe culture,only its effects, expressions, or products. One is thus making inferencesabout an unobservable entity; that presents no insurmountable problems ifthe nature of that entity is borne in mind. The discussion immediately above leads to the second problem-that "culture"is too broad or global. There is a second way of dismantling this conceptwhich I have used and advocated since the 1970's. This begins with the observationthat it is not possible to link culture and environments at that level ofgenerality. To be asked to analyze the relation between culture and environment,or to "design for culture" is to be given an impossible task. Greater specificity does not help: To design housing for culture is indeedmore specific but neither easier nor more feasible. To consider housingfor a particular culture is still more specific but still impossible. Partof the problem stems from the terms "environment" and "housing"both being unusable without further definition, clarification, and "dismantling."Part, however, has to do with the excessive generality of the term "culture." The response mentioned above depends on the notion that it may be possibleto show that particular parts of the environment are congruent with, orsupportive of, particular "lower-level" components or expressionsof culture. While social variables are useful, as already discussed, I haveused a particular sequence of increasing specificity going from culturethrough world views and values to lifestyles and activities. World views, the way members of a particular culture "see"the world has some utility. The concept is still abstract and not easyto use. Values are more specific and can be useful. The study of environmentalpreference and choice is explicitly based on values, as is much of micro-economics.The concept of lifestyle has proven particularly useful for the study ofa great variety of environment-behavior interactions, and for the designof environments. Lifestyle itself has been defined in many different ways,and these definitions have been reviewed by W. Michelson and P. Reed (inan unpublished report). This review leads to an operational definition:Lifestyle is the result of choices about how to allocate resources. Thisdefinition I have found most useful, have used since the 1970's, and haverefined and suggested how it can be represented graphically in the formof profiles.8 Lifestyle leads to activities and activity systems, the specifics ofwhich begin to explain the diversity of environments and hence their linkswith culture. Together, lifestyle and activities are extremely useful inanalyzing and designing environments. Lifestyle groups are extremely usefulsince most other criteria for group membership such as age, sex, race, ethnicity,religion, caste, occupation, tribe, and ideology, historically used to definegroups, can be expressed in terms of lifestyle (which is increasingly usedin marketing, advertising, consumer research and housing design by developers).Activity systems are the most concrete and planners and designers are relativelyfamiliar with using activity analysis. The two types of dismantling can be combined into a single diagram, thesize of arrows suggesting the relative feasibility and ease of using thevarious components for both analyzing and designing environments.