Sociologists do not argue about what a custom is so much as about which question to ask of it. Functionalism asks what it does for the society, conflict theory asks whose interests it serves, and symbolic interactionism asks how it came to mean anything at all. Pick a paradigm, aim it at a piece of culture, and tap the diagram to take it apart.
Pick a paradigm
Choose one of the three lenses to draw its model of culture — then tap the parts of the diagram.
Three paradigms on culturetap a lens to begin
1 · Pick a paradigm
2 · Aim it at a piece of culture
Which paradigm is speaking?
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They are lenses, not rivals to be settled. A full account of a custom usually needs all three: what it does for the group, whose position it protects, and what it means to the people performing it. Choosing only one is how an analysis goes thin.