Just as individuals are neither essentially socially constructed nor essentially biologically determined, neither are cultures. Foley (1997) explains culture as a community’s shared knowledge and judgments about their shared material environment. Defining culture as the resulting "network of [shared] understandings"
(p. 11) and behaviors that remain somewhat stable over generations of replaced individuals, he argues that the "coordinated behaviors which trigger social structural coupling in a social system can loosely be called communication … [which then serves to] maintain … the ongoing structural coupling"
(p. 12). Educational support groups such as those at the Center for Nonviolence are one source of public and continued support for the women and men making cognitive and behavioral changes necessary to live without violence. But this is only one source of cultural validation for their hard work, and that validation may be resisted when the support is imposed by another, often oppressive institution, the court system. Validation coming from multiple institutional sources, such as religious leaders or adult literacy development educators, can provide crucial ongoing support these men and women need.