You might just as well ask 'what do we understand by "culture"?', because it is a multifarious word having many subjective interpretations depending on context and application, that is whether one is talking about an individual, an organisation, a family, a nation, etc. William Rowe was examining culture as an expression of collective memory, and what happens when part of that collective memory is "lost" (or dies - literally), as in the case of Argentina in the 1970s, when society fractures. I have also heard culture defined as "the way things are done around here..." and as "personal behaviour as an expression of a shared identity".