Crossing Borders:

"Cultural systems are coherent patterns of understanding built from the reciprocal relationships among 1) knowledge or beliefs: the shared conceptual understandings of what or how things are; 2) patterns of practice: both the models for doing and the model-guided, habituated actions of everyday practice; 3) 3 tools and artifacts: the means and ends of practical action; and 4) patterns of affect which embody the compelling force of culturally appropriate models. The relationship between ideology and practice is especially crucial to understanding assent and then involvement . . . . Culture is never just an intellectual or cognitive category, but rather one that is intimately tied to how people do things--praxis, and what they do them with--tools and technologies. Cultural patterns are both models of reality and also models for acting in the world (Geertz, 1973). A monastic rule for prayer and fasting and a company's manual of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are similarly guides to right (if not always righteous) conduct. Conversely, the daily process of acting according to the guides makes the world envisioned in those guides both believable and compelling. The continuous reiteration of everyday practice habituates us to the coherence and validity of this reality (Dubinskas, 1994, p. 109)."