10.21 Intro to Material Culture

Culture: systems and patterns of meaning shared by members of a group

• Created

• Learned

• Passed between people

• Elements of culture

  • Material

  • Non material (ideas, customs)

Material culture: artifacts

• Tools

• Clothing

• Transportation

Nonmaterial culture: rituals, values, norms, symbols, language

• Rituals: procedures that mark transitions

• Values: 

  • Micro: individual or group values are beliefs of what's right and wrong, important or unimportant

  • Macro: cultural values that are more collective

• Norms: formally and informally establish standards of behavior

• Symbols: words, items, or gestures that stand for something

• Language: abstract system of word meanings and symbols

  • Important for cultural capital

  • Day to day exchanges

  • Language is fundamental to a shared culture

  • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: hypothesis that language is culturally determined and shapes our interpretation of reality

    • Examples: addict, drug abuser, alcoholic

    • Substance user, drug dependent, recovery

Review : culture vs society

• Society: people live in a community and share a culture

• Culture: the glue that helps people in a society have things in common

Cultural Universals

• cultural universals: patterns or traits that are globally common in all societies

  • Many adaptations

• Examples: 

  • Society - families, hierarchy, gender roles, language

  • Ritual - song, dance, art, healing practices

  • Taboos: incest, murder, theft, suicide

  • Religion: every society has had some form of religion

Status and culture

Status: any of the full range of socially defined positions within a large group or society, from lowest to highest

• Can hold more than one 

Master status: a status that dominates other statuses and determines a person's general position in a society

Ascribed status: status assigned without regarded for unique talents or characteristics

Achieved status: status earned through one's own efforts or choices

Cultural -isms

• Ethnocentrism: to evaluate or judge a different culture based off of one's own cultural norms

• Cultural imperialism: the deliberate imposition of one's own cultural values on another culture

• Cultural relativism: the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than your cultures standards

Types of identities

• Personal - who am i?

• Social - involvement in groups

• Cultural 

• Dominant - most powerful

• Ascribed - identities placed on us by others 

• Avowed - identities placed on us by ourselves