text: Operational Environment of Counterinsurgency
  • What are the punishments (formal and informal) for role violations? What will the people
  disapprove of? What are the requirements for revenge if honor is lost?
  Interrelated Nature of Culture
  1-98. Culture is learned, shared by members of a society, patterned, changeable, arbitrary,
  and internalized, in the sense that it is habitual, taken for granted, and perceived as “natural” by people in
  the society. Culture conditions the individual’s range of action and ideas, including what to do and not do,
  how to do or not do it, and whom to do it with or not to do it with. Culture also includes under what
  circumstances the “rules” shift and change. Culture influences how people make judgments about what
  is right and wrong, assess what is important and unimportant, categorize things, and deal with things that
  do not fit into existing categories. Cultural rules are flexible in practice.
  Taxonomy
  1-99. One simple way to show a culture is to build a chart that systematically distinguishes, orders,
  and names groups—a cultural taxonomy. In order to do this, leaders and staffs must define a culture’s
  influences, variations, and manifestations. Cultural influences and cultural variations explain why the
  culture is the way it is. Cultural manifestations refer to what one may encounter in a culture. Figure 1-4
  shows an example of a culture’s taxonomy.
  Figure 1-4. Taxonomy of culture.
  ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
  1-100. The size of a nation, its diverse subcultures, different educational levels and geographic
  backgrounds contribute to a great range of cultural variances amongst individuals and groups. Members
  of the population view cultural influences differently depending on their geographic location or identifying
  group. Some elements of culture should be identified and evaluated in a counterinsurgency operation. The
  following questions can aid units in defining the different elements of culture:
  History
  • What are the major wars, massacres, and conflicts that shaped the culture?
  • What are some of the great leaders, heroes, or legends in the nation's history?
  • What are some of the villains (infamous) people in the nation's history?