Culture (3)

Culture: Norms, Values, and Variations

Culture Overview

  • Comprises all objects and ideas within a society, including learned behaviors.

  • Encompasses two aspects:

    • Material Culture: Physical artifacts of a society.

    • Non-material Culture: Shared non-physical features, serving as a guide for social life.

Cultural Change

  • Culture Lag: Concept by Ogburn (1922) where one aspect of culture develops faster than others, leading to societal issues.

Mechanisms of Cultural Change

  1. Discovery: Identification of something that previously existed.

  2. Invention: Creation of new items by combining existing ones.

  3. Diffusion: Change from contact with other cultures, involving both material and non-material aspects.

Cultural Appropriation

  • Adoption of elements from one culture by another, often involving exploitation by a dominant group without understanding the history of the marginalized group.

Norms, Values, and Social Control

  • Norms: Standards of acceptable behavior.

  • Values: Ethical foundations justifying normative behavior.

  • Social Control: Strategies to control and deter deviance.

Processes of Social Control

  1. Internalization: Learning and accepting group norms.

  2. Sanctions: Society's reactions to behavior, positive or negative.

Types of Norms

  • Formal Norms (Mores): Essential for societal survival; enforced with severe consequences.

  • Informal Norms (Folkways): Everyday behaviors guided by peers with milder punishments.

Conformity

  • Solomon Asch's study (1961) demonstrated how conformity affects group behavior, with a significant percentage of participants conforming to incorrect group answers.

Culture and Language

  • Language is crucial for communication and understanding cultural context. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis suggests that language shapes thought and behavior toward the world based on cultural significance.

Cultural Variation

  • Ideal Culture: Values claimed to support.

  • Real Culture: Actual behaviors and beliefs in practice.

  • High Culture: Artistic and cultural products of the upper classes.

  • Low/Popular Culture: Mass appeal tastes in culture.

Subcultures and Countercultures

  • Subcultures: Groups within a culture that differ in some aspects but still align with the dominant culture.

  • Countercultures: Groups that reject the dominant culture, often seen as a societal threat.

Attitudes Toward Variation

  • Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures by one’s own standards, seeing one’s culture as superior.

  • Cultural Relativism: Understanding norms within their cultural context to meet community needs.

Cross-Cultural Variation

  • Variation can manifest in norms, values, and morals across different cultures, sometimes visibly (clothing, food) and other times less obvious.