UCSP L34

Aspects of Culture & Foundations of Social Sciences

Society

A large group of people who live together in an organized way, making decisions about how to do things and sharing the work that needs to be done.

Omnipotence

Society is all-powerful because its “agents” control and run the machinery of social control

Omniscience

 Society is all-knowing because its “library” keeps all possible knowledge and collects the memories of the people who form it.

Omnipresence

Society is everywhere because its “spies” are scattered in the four corners of the land.

Culture

people’s way of life

• Culture is social because it is the product of behavior.

• Culture varies from society to society.

• Culture is shared.

• Culture is learned.

• Culture is transmitted among members of society.

• Culture is continuous and cumulative.

• Culture is gratifying and idealistic.

characteristics of cuture

• Culture defines attitudes, values, and goals.

• Culture defines myths, legends and the supernatural.

• Culture provides a behavior pattern.

Functions of Culture

Ethnocentrism

The term is used to describe the opinion that one’s own way of life is natural or correct.

Ethnocentrism

 means that one may see his/her own culture as the correct way of living

Cultural Relativism

ability to understand a culture on its own terms and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s own culture.

Cultural Relativism

The goal of this is to promote understanding of cultural practices that are not typically part of one’s own culture

Xenocentrism

The opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one's own.

Xenophobia

Fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

Sociology

study of society

Anthropology

study of culture

Political Science

study of politics

Sociology

study of human social relationships and institutions.

Sociology

subject matter is diverse, ranging from crime to religion, from the family to the state, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared beliefs of a common culture, and from social stability to radical change in whole societies.

Sociology

Unifying the study of these diverse subjects is X’s purpose of understanding how human action and consciousness both shape and are shaped by surrounding cultural and social structures.

 how people relate to one another

Analyze X and influence each other’s behavior.

social phenomena

Examine X observable facts or events that involve human society.

social phenomena, how people relate to one another

FOCUS OF SOCIOLOGY?

Social Phenomena

Examples: Mass Migration, Social Media Trends, Urbanization, Protests and Social Movements, Consumerism, Digital Divide, Cultural Assimilation etc.

Europe & Industrial Revolution

Sociology was born in ? and when ?

Origin of Sociology

The birth of Capitalism

Auguste Comte

Father of Sociology

Auguste Comte

saw society as a social organism possessing a harmony of structure and function.

Auguste Comte

Theory of Positivism

Emile Durkheim

Father of Modern Sociology

Emile Durkheim

WHO treated society as a reality in its own right?

Emile Durkheim

Functionalism, Division of labor, Solidarity, and Anomie

Karl Marx

WHO: Communism?

Karl Marx

He worked primarily in the realm of political philosophy and was a famous advocate for communism.

Karl Marx

He co-wrote The Communist Manifesto and was the author of Das Kapital, which together formed the basis of Marxism.

Karl Marx

Critique of capitalism and its shortcomings.

Karl Marx

thought that the capitalistic system would inevitably destroy itself.

Max Weber

WHO: Protestant Ethics?

Max Weber

WHO: idea of bureaucratic management is that an organization must be hierarchical and have well-defined rules to govern it and its members.

Max Weber

relating Protestantism to capitalism, and for his ideas on bureaucracy.

We as Social Beings

shapes our existence and somehow controls the way we live our lives.

We as Social Beings

categories that we possess as individuals – labels that are ascribed or given to us collectively or individually.

Anthropology

study of human beings’ origin, societies, and culture.

Anthropology

scientific study of human society and behaviors, in the past and present.

Anthropology

“the science of humanity”

Anthropology

science of human beings. especially: the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture.

• Biological/Physical

• Cultural aspects

• Archaeological aspects

• Linguistic aspects

Aspects of Anthropology?

Cultural Anthropology

Study of human culture

Social Anthropology

Studies human in relation to the societies

Social Diversity

The gaps between people are measured by the presence or absence of certain socially desirable traits.

Cultural Diversity

A range of different societies or people of different origins, religion and traditions all living and interacting together.

Social Diversity

“Who we are in society”

Cultural Diversity

“How we live and express our heritage”

Franz Boas

Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism

which held that all cultures were essentially equal but simply had to be understood in their own terms.

Franz Boas

Comparing two cultures was tantamount to comparing apples and oranges; they were fundamentally different and had to be approached as such.

Franz Boas

Famous for rejection of the then-popular evolutionary approaches to the study of culture, which saw all societies progressing through a set of hierarchic technological and cultural stages, with Western European culture at the summit.

Margaret Mead

one of the earliest American anthropologists to apply techniques and theories from modern psychology to understanding culture.

Margaret Mead

She believed that cultures emphasize certain aspects of human potential at the expense of others.

Margaret Mead

The book details the sexual life of teenagers in Samoan society in the early 20th century, and theorizes that culture has a leading influence on psychosexual development.

Margaret Mead

who: Coming of Age in Samoa

Bronislaw Malinoski

He is particularly known for his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, where he helped popularize methods of fieldwork.

Bronislaw Malinoski

Society and economy of Trobriand people who live on the small Kiriwana island chain northeast of the island of New Guinea, was widely regarded as a masterpiece and significantly boosted X’s reputation in the world of academia.

Bronislaw Malinoski

who: Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Political Science

theory and practice of government and politics at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Political Science

branch of knowledge that deals with systems of government, power, and analysis of political activity and behavior.

Social Change

polsci: often requires political action—changes in laws, governance systems, or leadership are political processes.

Political institutions, leaders, and policies

polsci: shape and respond to social changes

political scientists

polsci:  study how these changes are managed.

Social Activism

involves collective action to influence laws, policies, or social norms. Political science studies these movements to understand how citizens engage with power structures.

Activism

polsci: mechanism of political participation and a driver of policy reform.

Activism

Consists of the efforts to promote, inhibit, or redirect social, political, economic, or environmental issues with the desire to make improvements in the society and correct social injustice.

Social Contract

core political theory (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) that explains the legitimacy of government: people give up some freedoms in exchange for protection and order.

Social Contract

polsci: It is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.

Social Contract

polsci: says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior.