Nonmaterial culture: Ways of using material objects.
Customs
Beliefs
Philosophies
Governments
Patterns of communication
Culture and Society
Society: Large number of people who live in the same territory, who are relatively independent of people outside that area, and who participate in a common culture.
Common culture simplifies day-to-day interactions.
Society: the structure of relationships within which culture is created and shared through regularized patterns of social interaction.
Society provides the context within which our relationships with the external world develop.
How we structure society constrains the kind of culture we construct.
Cultural preferences vary across societies.
Culture: A shared way of life or social heritage.
Society: Refers to people who interact in a defined territory and share a culture.
Neither society nor culture could exist without the other.
Culture (a shared way of life) must be distinguished from those of nation (a political entity) or society (the organized interaction of people in a nation or within some other boundary).
Many modern societies are multicultural - their people follow various ways of life that blend and sometimes clash.
Components of Culture
Symbols
Language
Values and Beliefs
Norms
Material Culture
Symbols
Symbols are defined as anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share culture.
The meaning of the same symbols varies from society to society, within a single society, and over time.
Nonverbal communication: Use of gestures, facial expressions, and other visual images to communicate.
Learned
Differs by cultures
Symbols: gestures, objects, and words that form basis of human communication
Signs
Gestures
Language
Symbols allow for abstract concepts.
Ideas, beliefs, values, norms, rules
Social systems, patterns, ways of thinking
Symbols Humans sense the surrounding world and give it meaning.
Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture.
Human capacity to create and manipulate symbols is almost limitless.
Entering an unfamiliar culture reminds us of the power of symbols.
Culture shock is really the inability to “read” meaning in unfamiliar surroundings.
Culture of mountain Asian kingdom of Bhutan, people will greet each other by extending their tongues and hands.
Language
Language is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another. It can be either written or spoken or both.
Language is the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to the next.
Through most of human history, cultural transmission has been accomplished through oral tradition.
Language: Abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects of culture.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Language precedes thought
Language is not a given
Language is culturally determined
Language may color how we see the world
Eskimo (Inuit) have more than 100 words for SNOW
Aput = snow on the ground
Qana = falling snow
Piqsirpoq = drifting snow
Qimuqsuq = a snow drift
Qanuk = snowflake
Qanir = to snow
Qanugglir = to snow
Kaneq = frost
Kaner = frosty
Kanevvluk = fine snow
Many words to describe TIME:
Nanosecond
Moment
Minute
Hour
Era
Interim
Century
Afternoon
A system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.
Heart of the symbolic system
Key to Cultural Transmission
The process by which one generation passes culture to the next
Values and Beliefs
Values:
Culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.
Beliefs:
Specific statements that people hold to be true.
Cultural values: Collective conceptions of what is good, desirable, and proper.
Influence people’s behavior
Criteria for evaluating actions of others
Values may change
Values What a group values and honors
Standards and ideas about good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal
Values are culturally defined standards by which people judge desirability, goodness and beauty, and which serve as broad guidelines for social living.
Values are broad principles that underlie beliefs, specific statements that people hold to be true.
Norms
Every society has expectations about how its members should and should not behave.
A norm is a guideline or an expectation for behavior.
Each society makes up its own rules for behavior and decides when those rules have been violated and what to do about it.
Norms change constantly.
Norms differ widely among societies, and they can even differ from group to group within the same society.
Wherever we go, expectations are placed on our behavior.
Even within the same society, these norms change from setting to setting.
Example: The way we are expected to behave in a stadium differs from the way we should behave in a classroom.
Norms are place-specific, and what is considered appropriate in one country may be considered highly inappropriate in another.
Example: Norwegians use knife and fork when eating a hamburger.
Appropriate and inappropriate behavior often changes dramatically from one generation to the next.
Norms can and do shift over time.
Formal norms: Generally written; specify strict punishments.
Law: government social control
Informal norms: Generally understood but not precisely recorded.
Types of Norms
Folkways
Mores
Laws
Taboos
Folkways
A folkway is a norm for everyday behavior that people follow for the sake of convenience or tradition.
People practice folkways simply because they have done things that way for a long time.
Violating a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.
Examples:
Do not push people when waiting in line.
Do not pass gas in public.
Do not put food in your mouth with a knife.
Cover your mouth when you yawn.
Consequences for not abiding by a Folkway
A reprimand/disapproval or a minor punishment.
Might cause a dirty look, rolled eyes or disapproving comment.
Does not endanger the well-being of a society.
Mores
A more (pronounced MORE-ay) is a norm based on morality, or definitions of right and wrong.
Since mores have moral significance, people feel strongly about them, and violating a more usually results in disapproval.
Examples:
Fraud
Murder
Bullying
Rape
Child abuse
A man who does not wear a tie to a formal dinner party may raise eyebrows for violating folkways.
A man who wears only a tie, he would violate cultural mores and invite a more serious response.
Violation of a more can lead to severe penalties or punishments.
It will endanger the society’s well-being and stability.
Serious mores are formalized as LAWS.
Laws
A law is a norm that is written down and enforced by an official agency.
Violating a law results in a specific punishment.
Example: It is illegal in most countries to drive a car while drunk, and a person violating this law may get cited for driving under the influence (DUI), which may bring a fine, loss of driver’s license, or even jail time.
Laws are the norms created through a society’s political system.
Civil law defines the legal rights and relationships involving individuals and businesses.
Criminal law focuses on people’s responsibilities to uphold public order.
Law is a system of rules a society sets to maintain order and protect harm to persons and property.
Taboos
A taboo is a norm that society holds so strongly that violating it results in extreme disgust.
The violator is often considered unfit to live in that society.
In most countries, cannibalism and incest are considered taboo.
Deviance
Where there are rules, there are rule breakers. Sociologists call the violation of a norm deviance.
The word deviant has taken on the negative connotation of someone who behaves in disgusting or immoral ways, but to sociologists, a deviant is anyone who doesn’t follow a norm, in either a good way or a bad way.
Although deviance can be good and even admirable, few societies could tolerate the chaos that would result from every person doing whatever he or she pleased.
Social Control
Social Control: Means to ensure that people behave in acceptable and expected ways.
Techniques and strategies for preventing deviant human behavior in any society.
Social Control > “Self Control”
Social control refers to the methods that societies devise to encourage people to observe norms.
The most common method for maintaining social control is the use of sanctions, which are socially constructed expressions of approval / disapproval.
Sanctions
Positive or negative reactions to people:
Reward conformity
Punish violation
Positive Sanctions
A positive sanction rewards someone for following a norm and serves to encourage the continuance of a certain type of behavior.
Example: A person who performs well at his or her job and is given a salary raise or a promotion is receiving a positive sanction.
Example: When parents reward a child with money for earning good grades, they are positively sanctioning that child’s behavior.
Negative Sanctions
A negative sanction is a way of communicating that a society, or some group in that society, does not approve of a particular behavior (punishment).
The optimal effect of a negative sanction is to discourage the continuation of a certain type of behavior.
Example: Imprisoning a criminal for breaking the law, cutting off a thief’s hands for stealing, and taking away a teenager’s television privileges for breaking curfew are all negative sanctions.
Material Cultures
Physical (tangible) objects belonging to a culture
To which we give meaning
Art, artifacts, architecture, clothing, utensils, tools, machines, technologies, etc.
Material culture reflects a society’s values and a society’s technology, the knowledge that people apply to the task of living in their surroundings.
Examples include books, buildings, physical objects that future generations can use to try and understand us.
Other Cultural Concepts
Counter Culture
Cultural Diffusion
Cultural Integration
Cultural Lag
Cultural Relativism
Culture Shock
Cultural Transmission
Cultural Universal
Ethnocentrism
High Culture
Popular Culture
Sub Culture
Counterculture
Counterculture: Subculture that conspicuously and deliberately opposes certain aspects of the larger culture.
Openly rejects or opposes society's values and norms
May actively challenge dominant culture
Cultural diversity includes outright rejection of conventional ideas or behavior
Cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society
Counterculturalists favor a collective and cooperative lifestyle “Being” more important than “doing”
Some people “dropped out” of the larger society
Refers to cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society.
Countercultures reject many of the standards of a dominant culture
Cultural Diffusion
The dissemination of beliefs and practices from one group to another
Material
Symbolic
Diffusion: The spread of objects or ideas from one society to another
Diffusion, the spread of cultural traits from one cultural system to another
Exposure to new cultural elements may lead to adoption
Process by which cultural item spreads from group to group
McDonaldization: Process through which principles of fast-food industry dominate certain sectors of society
Technology: Information about how to use material resources of the environment to satisfy human needs and desires (Nolan and Lenski)
Cultural Integration
As cultures change, they strive to maintain cultural integration, the close relationship among various elements of a cultural system.
Talcott Parson : A mode of relation of the units of a system by virtue of which, they act so as collectively to avoid disrupting the system and making it impossible to maintain its stability. To cooperate to promote its functioning as a unity.
When both ethnic group and host society have become so well adjusted to each other, that major conflicts in the total social fabric of the host society are avoided without the ethnic group losing its identity and solidarity.
Cultural Lag
The fact that some cultural elements change more quickly than others, disrupting a cultural system (Macionis)
William Ogburn’s concept of cultural lag
Refers to the fact that cultural elements change at different rates, which may disrupt a cultural system.
Period of maladjustment when nonmaterial culture struggles to adapt to new material conditions
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism views the behavior of a people from the perspective of their own culture.
There are distinctive subcultures within cultures and even organizations within a culture (Berger).
People’s behaviors from the perspective of their own culture
Each cultural group as relative to others
Seeing differences and distinctions rather than:
right and wrong
normal and abnormal
good and bad
better and worse
The practice of judging a culture by its own standards
Alternative to ethnocentrism
Requires openness to unfamiliar values and norms
Requires the ability to put aside cultural standards known all our lives
Culture Shock
Feeling disoriented, uncertain, out of place, or fearful when immersed in an unfamiliar culture (Schaefer).
Personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life
No way of life is “natural” to humanity
Animal behavior is determined by instinct
Biological programming over which each species has no control
Cultural Transmission
The process by which one generation passes culture to the next (Macionis).
Language is the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to the next.
Through most of human history, cultural transmission has been accomplished through oral tradition .
Cultural Universal
Traits that are part of every known culture (Macionis).
Cultural universals are traits that are found in every known culture.
Certain common practices and beliefs that all societies have developed
Many are adaptations to meet essential human needs
Murdoch compiled list of cultural universals but they are expressed differently from culture to culture
Ethnocentrism
Is the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture (Berger).
Use of one’s own culture as a standard to evaluate others, usually leading to a negative judgment.
Tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represents the norm or is superior to others
Conflict theorists: ethnocentric value judgments serve to devalue groups and to deny equal opportunities
Functionalists: ethnocentrism maintains sense of solidarity
The practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture
Exhibited by people everywhere
Can you give examples of how ethnocentrism can generate misunderstanding and sometimes conflict?
High Culture
Refers to cultural patterns that distinguish a society's elite (Macionis)
Popular Culture
Describes cultural patterns that are widespread among a society's population (Macionis).
Popular culture designates cultural patterns that are widespread among a society’s population.
High culture is not inherently superior to popular culture.
*
Subculture
Cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society’s population (Macionis).
Subcultures are cultural patterns that distinguish some segment of a society’s population. They involve not only difference but also hierarchy (Berger).
Segment of society that shares distinctive pattern of mores, folkways, and values that differs from larger society.
A group within dominant culture
Large or small
Each has distinctive values, norms and lifestyle
Exercises
Give ONE (1) example of counterculture and explain why this group rejected the society’s norm and value.
List down THREE (3) cultural diffusion in Malaysian.
List THREE (3) cultures that you have been borrowing (acculturating) by other ethnic groups.
Briefly explain the meaning of cultural lag.
Based on Cultural Relativism, what do you understand about this picture?
Explain ONE (1) culture shock experience you had.
What are cultures that you had transmitted from your grandparents or parents?
List FIVE (5) cultural universal in Malaysia.
What is your opinion about people who are ethnocentric?
What are high cultures practiced by Malaysian?
What are popular cultures that you are following?
List down THREE (3) subcultures in Malaysia.
Theoretical Analysis of Culture
Sociologists investigate how culture helps us make sense of ourselves and the surrounding world (continued)
A micro-level approach to the personal experience of culture
Emphasizes how individuals conform to cultural patterns
How people create new patterns in their everyday lives
The Functions of Culture: Structural-Functional Analysis
Explains culture as a complex strategy for meeting human needs
Draws from the philosophical doctrine of idealism
Structural-functional analysis helps us understand unfamiliar ways of life
Cultural universals
Traits that are part of every known culture
Strength of structural-functional analysis lies in showing how culture operates to meet human needs
This approach ignores cultural diversity
Emphasizes cultural stability, downplays the importance of change
Inequality and Culture: Social-Conflict Analysis
Draws attention to the link between culture and inequality
Any cultural trait benefits some members of society at the expense of others
Culture is shaped by a society’s system of economic production
How might a social-conflict analysis of college fraternities and sororities differ from a structural-functional analysis?
Social-conflict theory is rooted in the philosophy of materialism
Social conflict analysis ties our cultural values of competitiveness and material success to our country’s capitalist economy
Views capitalism as “natural”
Strains of inequality erupt into movements for social change
Social-conflict approach suggests that systems do not address human needs equally
Inequality, in turn, generates pressure toward change
Stressing the divisiveness of culture, understates ways in which cultural patterns integrate members of a society