[The importance of cultural coding in nursing practice, nursing research and nursing science--components of a critical concept of culture].

Based on the question, on which conditions the understanding of the strange is possible at all, this article points out--illustrated by research material on nursing practice, nursing education and nursing science--collective interpretative patterns that are based on binary codings like "nature-culture", "body-mind", "female-male", "strange-familiar", foreign-native", "you-we", "sick-healthy", "black people-white people", etc. These patterns and the value judgements expressed by them are social constructions within specific in certain historical and cultural contexts. Yet people neither experience collective interpretative patterns nor recognize them as such, but deal with them as if they were natural facts. This (unrecognised) process of naturalization of social-cultural phenomena provokes contradictions and conflicts in all fields of practical life--in nursing practice and nursing education too, which will be shown by examples. To describe and analyse these complex circumstances, an approach to a critical concept of culture is developed in this article. The approach includes social-cultural events, processes and structures as well as their implicated symbolization. However, this heuristic construct itself must not be naturalized and "essentialized".