Ch. 3 Culture

Culture

• A system of behaviour, beliefs, knowledge, practices, values and materials that are produced by and operate within a society

• The filter through which we understand and view the world

Material Culture

• Goods, physical objects that a society produces

  • Websites, computers, cellphones, coffee

Non-material culture

• Socialization and events, parties

Dominant culture

• The ability of a culture to impose its values, beliefs, and behaviours on a given society

Dominant Culture example

• When we engage with influencers and advertisements, it shows us how we should look

Subculture

• A community that shares the cultural elements of the larger society but also has its own distinctive values, beleifs, norms, style of dress, and behavioural patterns

Robert Merton (subculture)

• CUDO

• Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Organized skepticism

• Cultures that form around occupation they have procedures but still consumer culture

Communism (CUDO)

• The free sharing of knowledge

Universalism (CUDO)

• Assessment of evidence by universal unbiased standards

Disinterestedness (CUDO)

• Lack of personal investment in results

• No personal bias

Organized skepticism (CUDO)

• Critical peer review of findings

Counterculture

• A subculture that rejects conventional norms and values and adopts alternative ones

Cultural relativism

• The principle that we should judge a culture and its beliefs and values by that culture itself not another culture

Ethnocentrism

• The tendency to use one’s own culture as a basis for evaluating other cultures: also the view that one’s culture is superior to other cultures

Conflict Theory

• Concerned with the unequal distribution of wealth and power in a society

• Aims to uncover and better understand inequalities in society related to access to resources, power, privilege. A wide range of methodologies can help us better undestand inequalities among social group

Ideology

• A set of beliefs or ideas that supports and promotes certain political actions

Dominant ideology

• A set of thoughts and beliefs that justify and perpetuate social inequality

Theodor Adorno, Max, Horkheimer, and the Frankfurt School

• Popular culture

• Standardization, commodification, and commercialization

Standardization

• Everyone owns similar items and luxury

• New models of phones

Commodification

• The mass production of consumer goods specifically for profit

• Mass production of new phone

Commercialization

• The process of managing or running something principally for financial gain

• Suppliers create only the things that they think will sell best

• Ensures that we continue to perform our consumer culture through advertisements and influences

• Advertisements for new phone

The culture industry

• The mass production of standardized commodified and commercialized goods that manipulates society into passive conformity

Patriarchy

• A system of political, social, and economic relation and institutions structured around the gender inequality of socially defined men and women

Gender scripts

• Are the scripts we follow to perform our parts

Queer Theory

• Focuses on sexuality, gender identity, and the ways in which they intersect with other social identities and power structures

Functionalism

• Functionalists view culture as an integrated whole, not a mere ideology or collection of ideologies

Conspicuous consumption

• Refers to the purchase of goods and services aimed at showing others how wealthy and tasteful one is

  • It creates boundaries between the upper and lower social classes

Symbolic Interactionism

• Culture grows out of face-to-face interactions and the things people communicate to one another through these interactions

Symbol

• A sign whose relationship with something else also expresses a value or evokes an emotion

  • Socially constructed

Sign

• A gestures, artifact, or word that represents something other than itself

• Middle finger just a finger! Haha!

Postmodernism

• Culture is diverse, fluid and constantly changing

Culture and Social Change

• Culture changes slowly

• Innovation adoption curve

  • Always ‘innovators’ in society who adopt new ideas

• Role of technology

Pierre Bourdieu

• Cultural Capital

• Habitus

Cultural Capital

• Knowledge and social skills that help people get ahead socially

• Usually about class, lower or higher class

Habitus

• Refers to having a “feel for the game”

• Knowing what to do under given situations due to past experiences

• Usually a product of Cultural Capital