W3 Culture

Culture

What is Culture

• Culture encompasses the sun total of the social environment in which we are raised and continue to be socialized in throughout our lives

• This means that culture entails a wide assortment of shared and contested ideas, customs, behaviours, and practices that in turn, shape the attitudes and behaviours of members of that culture

• Basic elements of culture set the foundation for our expectations and behaviours, which are rooted in geography, climate, language, norms, values, and traditions

Culture and the Sociological Imagination

• As we have previously learned, SOC100 is all about developing the sociological imagination - the ability to see the connection between "personal troubles" and social structure

• One of the elements of social structure is the culture we were raised in

• Culture shapes individual actions. But different sociologists think about the relationship between culture and individuals in different ways

Values and Norms

• Cultural values are collectively shared ideas about what is right and wrong

• Norms are expectations for how we are supposed to act, think, and look; in other words, norms are values translated into expectations about actions

  • Prescriptive norms are rules depicting behaviours we are expected to perform, such as covering one's mouth while coughing, respecting the rights of others, and following the appropriate authority structures in the workplace

  • Proscriptive norms are rules outlining behaviours we are expected to refrain from doing, such as speaking with one's mouth full, swearing in church, or raking drugs that impair one's ability to perform in the workplace

Norms and Values: Public Transportation

• As a culture, we value people being able to quickly and efficiently get around the city, regardless of class or ability. That’s why we have public transportation

• There are prescriptive norms for riding the subway: you should give up your seat for people who are elderly, disabled, pregnant; you should stand on the right on escalators

• There are also proscriptive norms: you shouldn’t watch videos on your phone without headphones, you shouldn’t block the doorways

Folkways

• Folkways are informal norms based on accepted traditions and centre on acts of kindness or politeness that demonstrate respect for the generalized other

Mores

• Mores refer to institutionalized norms that are considered to embody fundamental values, e.g. laws that criminalize trespass, commit theft, or sell prohibited drugs

Taboo

• Taboos are mores that have such strong moral connotations attached to them that the acts are considered wrong in and of themselves (e.g. cannibalism and incest)

But Context Matters

• Some behaviours that are taboo in some contexts are not in others

• Sociologists, especially those in the symbolic interactionism school of thought, analyze why the same behaviour is taboo in some contexts but not others

Using Functionalism to Understand Culture

• Functionalists think that cultural values are the foundation of society and what holds it together

• According to Emile Durkheim, cultural values and norms are social factors

• According to Talcott Parsons, another functionalist theorist, culture is a generalized system of internalized symbols and meanings, along with role expectations (i.e. norms) and general values held by the collectivity. In this case, norms and values work together at a more general level in the form of  social institutions (e.g. the family and school) to keep society running smoothly

Using Postmodernism to Understand Culture

• Postmodernists emphasize the changing nature of society

• Postmodernists would understand culture as fragmented and multiple. Rather than one single, unified Canadian culture, there are many different countercultures and subcultures going on at any given time

• Cultural diffusion refers to the spread of material and nonmaterial aspects of culture from one social group to another through various means including communication, trade, intermarriage, immigration, and technology. Postmodernists would focus on this blurring distinction between cultures

Using Symbolic Interactionism to Understand Culture

• Symbolic interactionists are interested in how individuals communicate through words, facial expressions, gestures, and clothing to create shared meanings

• Symbolic interactionists are this interested in language: shared systems of communication that includes spoken, written, and signed forms of speech as well as nonverbal gestures used to convey meaning

Material and Nonmaterial Culture

• Material culture includes all of the tangible or physical objects that people have created for use in a culture, such as articles of clothing and other consumer goods, various forms of housing, buildings including schools and places of worship, means of transportation, tools and works of art

• Nonmaterial culture includes intangibles stemming from intellectual and/or spiritual development, or the meanings that people attach to artifacts. Examples of nonmaterial culture include language, knowledge, symbols, customs, morals, beliefs, and practices that help organize and give meaning to our social world

Cultural Symbols

• A symbol is an object, image, or event that represents a particular concept

• In a typical image that comes up when searching for "canadian culture", we see symbols for material culture like maple syrup, parliament hill, lighthouses

• We also see symbols of nonmaterial culture: sports, cold weather, values like multiculturalism, indigenous sovereignty, preservation of nature

Culture as a Toolkit

• The sociologist Ann Swidler (1986) argues that culture influences action by providing a "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action"

• According to Swidler, culture does not primarily describe values or preferences, but the available skills, habits, and styles people can use to attain certain goals

• People have more cultural capacities than those they actually use. They draw on their cultural "tool kit" in particular situations

Culture of Poverty

• For example, some people have argues that there is a culture of poverty that is pervasive in poor communities. They argue that poor communities simply do not value hard work and individualism, and that’s why they stay poor

• However, Swidler and others point out that when asked, youth from poor communities say they do want to go to university and get higher paying jobs, and their parents want the same for them

• Swidler suggests that rather than having different values, youth from poor communities have different cultural tool kits from middle class youth. It is difficult to pursue success in a context where the accepted skills, styles and informal know-how are familiar

Skills, Habits, Styles for Education

• Skills might include writing multiple choice exams, reding comprehension, researching in a library

• Habits might include class attendance, interacting with teachers

• Styles might include individualism vs. collective good, trust in authority

• All of these are more easily acquired in, and useful for, a middle-class cultural environment

• Working class youth are less likely to have these in their "tool kit" for higher education

Culture Shock

• When we move from one cultural community to another, we can experience culture shock: a sense of disorientation and confusion that results when placed in unfamiliar surroundings where objects, practices, language and rules are new or unknown

• We lack the ability to understand how we are doing in  the eyes of others, and the capacity to choose among different lines of action to fit in

• We understand this culture shock when moving across countries, but culture shock can also happen when we enter new cultural communities within one country: across class linea, for example

High Culture

• High culture refers to activities shared mainly by the social elite, who supposedly possess an appreciation for this culture and the resources necessary to immerse themselves in it (i.e. wealth and higher education)

• For example, opera, classical music, and theatre are high culture

Popular Culture

• Popular culture is typically used to describe the everyday cultural practices and products most desired by the masses

• For example, movies and television series, social media such as Twitter and Instagram, and heavily marketed products that may or may not originate in Canada (e.g. the latest Fitbit, Lego, Barbie, vintage-inspired jeans, and Canada Goose parkas). Popular culture also includes well-established spots to eat, drink, or shop, such as McDonald's, Tim Hortons and Lululemon

Cultural Omnivores

• The sociologist Richard Peterson (1992) noticed that rather than only consuming high culture, elites are increasingly also consuming mass, or popular, culture

• He called these people cultural omnivores: people in the middle and upper classes who consume a wide variety of cultural forms

• In fact, being able to mix between high culture and popular culture has become a sign of status and cultural sophistication, demonstrating knowledge of a broad range of styles and tastes

Status Symbols

• Typically, status symbols are defined as material indicators of wealth and prestige including imported luxury cars (Ferrari, Porsche, and Rolls-Royce), designer clothing and jewellery (Gucci, Chanel, and Hermes), and paintings by highly praised artists (Van Gogh, Picasso, and Cezanne)

• Elites are distinguished from lower classes through status symbols

• However, with the increasing mixing of high and popular cultures, cheaper goods have come to be reconstituted as status symbols

Middle-Class Status Symbols

• The rise of non-luxury goods as status symbols exemplifies cultural omnivorousness

• Even brands that used to be associated with the working class, such as Carhartt's workwear, has become elevated as relatively expensive, middle-class status symbol

Stanley Cups as Status Symbols

• Recently, certain water bottle brands have become elevated as status symbols

• This demonstrates that not everyone living in the same country or even family has the same culture. In this case, there are generational and gendered divides

Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

• In order to think like a sociologist you need to employ the nonjudgemental principle of cultural relativism: the idea that beliefs and practices are best understood from within the culture in which they occur

• We demonstrate cultural relativism when we are "understanding another culture in its own terms sympathetically enough so that the culture appears to be a coherent and meaningful design for living" (Lavenda et al. 2020: 32)

• Sociologists use the term ethnocentrism to refer to the tendency to believe that one's cultural beliefs and practices are superior and should be used as the standard to which other cultures are compared

Ethnocentrism

• For example, when we think of child soldiers, often we automatically think of countries like South Sudan or Yemen

• However, in Canada, you can join the armed forces as an officer at age 16 and a non-commissioned member at 17

• If we think of Canadian practices as acceptable and those elsewhere as unacceptable, we are engaging in ethnocentrism

• Again, Swidler's notion of culture as a tool kit guiding possible actions rather than as values is helpful here

Cultural Relativism

• As Lavenda et al. argue, its important to understand other cultures as a coherent and meaningful design for living in their context

• For example, the military is often an escape from extreme poverty. Demilitarized child soldiers often struggle to find food when returned to their communities of origin. In this case, it seems reasonable for children to return to military life

• Some sociologists look at the question of cultural relativism vs cultural universals: things that are shared between all cultures, such as the need to secure basic necessities, communication and familial structures and self-expression

Ideal vs Real Culture

• Ideal culture encompasses the cultural values that most people identify with

• Real culture refers to the actual practices engaged in

• For example, Canadians value equal rights, and although men and women are treated similarly under the law, this is not always the case in practice - women are still disadvantaged by inequities in pay