DEFINING CULTURE AND SOCIETY FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY

A society describes a group of people who share a common territory and a culture. “By territory”, sociologists refer to a definable region as small as a neighborhood (e.g. barangay), a city (e.g. manila), a country (e.g. Philippines), to as large as the global regional context (e.g asia).

Culture refers to “that complex whole which encompasses beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws, norms, artifacts, symbols, knowledge, and everything that a person learns and shares as a member of society (E.B Taylor 1920)

To clarify, a culture represents the beliefs, practices, and artifacts of a group, while society represents the social structures and organization of the people who share those beliefs and practices.

TYPES OF SOCIETY

HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES.

- earliest forms of society

- small and generally with less than 50 embers and is nomadic

- they survive primarily by hnting, trapping, fishing, and gathering edible plants.

- the family determines the distribution of food and how to socialize children.

- members are mutually dependent upon each pther and although there is equal division of labor among the members of hunting and gathering societies, there is division of labor based on sex wherein men are responsible for hunting and women for gathering.

PASTORAL SOCIETIES

- rely on products obtained through the domestication and breeding of animals for transportation of food.

- they also allow for job specialization, since not everyone is needed to gather of hunt for food.

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES

- relies on the cultivation of fruits, vegestables, and plants in order to survive.

- often forced to relocate when the resources of the land are depleted or when the water supplies decrease.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES

- relies on the use of technology in order t6o cultivate crops in large areas, including wheat, rice, and corn.

- productivity increases, and as long as there ae plenty of food, people do not have to move.

- towns form and then cities emerged, ob specialization increases, and the economy become more complex.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

-they use advanced sources of energy to run large machinery which led to industrialization.

- innovations in transportation led people to travel, work in factories, and live in cities.

- occupational specialization became even more pronounced and a persons vocation became more of an identifier than his or her family ties, as was common in nonindustrial societies.

POST INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

- their economy is based on services and technology, not production.

- the economy is dependent on tangible goods, people must pursue greater education, and the new communications technology allows work to be performed from a variety of locations.

CLASSIFICATION OF CULTURE

MATERIAL CULTURE. Cultural components that are visible and tangible. Material objects or those components or elemts of culture with physical representation such as tools, furnitures, buildings, bridges, gadgets, etc.

NONMATERIAL CULTURE. Components of culture that are nontangible or without physical representation. Categorized into cognitive and normative nonmaterials culture.

- COGNITIVE CULTURE. Ideas, concepts, philosophies, designs, etc. That are products of the mental or intellectual functioning and reasoning of the human mind.

- NORMATIVE CULTURE. Expectations, standards and rules for human behavior.

ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

- BELIEFS. Conceptions or ideas people have about what is true in the envuronment around them like what is life, how to value it, and how one’s beliefs on the vaue of life relate with his or her interaction with others and the world. These may be based on common sense, fold wisdom, religion, science, or a combination of all these.

- VALUES. Describe what is appropriate or inappropriate (good or bad; desirable or undesirable; worthy or unworthy) in a given society or what ought to be. These are broad, abstract, and shared to influence and guide the behevior of people.

- people live in a culture wherein symbols are used to understand each other. Symbols can be verbal (words) or nonverbal (acts, gestures, signs, and objects) that communicate meaning that people recognize and shared.

- LANGUAGE. Is a shared set of spoken and written symbols. It is basic to communication and transmision of cuture. It is known as the storehouse of culture.

- TECHNOLOGY. Refers to the application of knowledge and equipment to ease the taks of living and maintaning the environment. It includes all artifacts, methods, and devices created and used by people.

- NORMS. Are specific rules/standards to guide appropriate behavuor. Societal normas or different types and forms.

TYPES

PROSCRIPTIVE - defines and tells us things to not to do

PRESCRIPTIVE - defines and tells us things to do

FORMS

FOLKWAYS. Also known as customs, these are norms for everyday behavior that people follow for the sake of tradition or convenience. Breaking a folkway does not usually have serious consequences.

MORES. Strict norms that control moral and ethical behavior. Mores are norms based on definitions of right and wrong.

TABOOS. Norms that society holds so strongly that violatng it results in extreme disgust. Often times the violator of the taboo is considered unfit to live in that society.

LAWS. Codified ethics, formally agreed, written down, and enforced by an official law enforcement agency.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE

DYNAMIC, FLEXIBLE, AND ADAPTIVE. Cultures interact and change. Most societies interact with other societies, and lead to exchange of material (e.g. tools and furniture) and nonmaterial (e.g. ideas and symbols) component of culture.

SHARED AND MAY BE CHALLENGED. As we share culture with others, we are able to act in appropriate ways as well as predict how other will act. It may be challenged by the presence of other cultures and other social forces in society life modernization, industrialization, and globalization.

LEARNED THROUGH SOCIALIZATION OR ENCULTURATION. It is not biological, we do not inherit it but learn as we interacr in society. Much of learning culture is unconcious. We learn, absorb, and acquire culture form families, peers, institutions, and the media. The process of learning culture is known as enculturation.

PATTERNED SOCIAL INTERACTIONS. Culture as a normative system has the capacity to define and control human behavuors. Norms are cultural expectations in terms of how one will think, feels, or behave as set by one’s culture. It sets the aptter in terms of what appropriate or inappropriate in a given setting. Human interactions are guided by some forms of standard and expectation which in the end regularize It.

INTEGRATED. This is known as holism, or the vairous parts of a culture being interconnected or interlinked. All aspects of a culture are related to one another and to truly understand a culture, one must learn about all of its parts, not only a few.

TRANSMITTED THROUGHG SOCIALIZATION/ENCULTURATION. As we share our culture with others, we were able to pass it on to the new members of society or the younger generation in different ways. In the process of socialization/enculturation, we were able to teach them about many thinsg in life and euip them with the culturally acceptable ways of surviving, competing, and making meaningful interactions with others in society.

REQUIRES LANGUAGE AND OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNICATION. In the process of learning and transmitting culture, we need symbols and language to communicate with others in society. A symbol is something that stands for something elese. Symbols very cross culturally and are arbitrary. These only have meaning when people in a culture agree on the use. Language, money, and art are all symbols. Language is one of the key elements of culture needed for people in one culture to interact or for one to interact with other people in other countries.

ETHNOCENTRISM/XENOCENTRISM AND CULTURAL RELATIVISM AS ORIENTATIONS IN VIEWING OTHER CULTURES.

ETHNOCENTRISM

“the view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everthing and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it…… each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superios, exalts its own divinities and looks with contempt on outsiders. -WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMMER

ETHNOCENTRISM

- coined by willim summer

- to see and evaluate other cultures in terms of one’s own race, nation, or culture.

- this rests on the belief of the superiority of one’s own cultue or ethnic group compared to others.

- nonsensitivity cultural practices of other groups may be misinterpreted and this may lead ti conflict with others or may be seen by others as rude behavior especially when articulated or expressed in front of others.

- learning to take role of the other person gives one the ability to see the perspective of the other before articulating or giving judgement.

- 1. study the cultural contect in which the action occurs.

- 2. determine the circumstances of place, time, and condition surrounding it.

- 3. look into the reasoning behind any cultural element.

XENOCENTRISM

- one’s exposure to culural practices of other cultures which is termed by John D. Fullmer.

- people who usually experience xenocentrism came from a country with lower economic position as compared to the one preferred.

- this may be triggered by coparison wherein the person sees one’s position as inferior and would like to improve one’s status or experience a better condition comapred to his/her current position.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM

- individual human’s beliefs and actvities should be understood by others in terms of that indivials own culture. Though franz boas coined the term, the concept was popularized by his students. Cultural relativism highlihts the perspective that no culture is superior to any other culture when comparing systems of morality, law, politics, etc. Culture is seen to have a equal value. It rests on the idea that all cultural pracruces and beliefs are equally valid and that truth itself is relative, depending on the cultural environment. Followers of the idea of cultural relativism also embrace the views that religious, ethical, aesthetic, and political beliefs are completely relative to the individual within a cultural identity. It also covers ideas of moral relativism (ethics depend of a social situation), and situational relativism (right or wrong is based on the particular situation), and cognitive relativism (truth itself has no objective standard)

FIRST SLIDE:

Societies is a group in a specific area na nagshashare ng iisang cultural traits, this may be language, traditions, values and social norms.

2^nd slide;

Culture is a complex concept of human experience wherein nadedetermine how a individual interact with one another. Culture is also learned and shared. We go through the process called enculturation wherein we learn about a culture.

3^rd slide;

TYPES OF SOCIETY

4^TH slide;

Nomadic - follows seasonal patters to estimate resource availability

Pastoral societies;

We are talking about how certain animals are raised and trained to help move food from one place to another efficiently.

Domestication - this is a process of taming wild animals and breeding them for specific purposes

Ex: horses, donkeys, or camels, they can help to transport goods.

Breeding - eto naman is a process where you select a animals with your choice of trait to produce another animal that are better suited for tasks susch as carrying or pulling carts.

Horticultural societies;

They grow crops to provide food for themselves.

Cultivation meaning planting, growing and harvesting maily fruits and vegetables which is a primary source of food for many communities.

Water supply issues: changes in climate or environmental conditions can lead to reduced water availability, making it difficult to grow crops.

Relocation: find a more fertile land or better water sources.

Agricultural societies;

This means that they use advanced tools and methods to grow food efficiently, this includes crops like wheat, rice and corn.

Technology - sa modern farming they use machineries like tractors, irrigation systems, and improved seed varieties to help farmers plant crops in a large field more effectively.

Productivity increases as they produce more than usual, this can result to having enough food to feed the population.

Having stable food availability help people to settle in one place and that can lead to formation of towns.

So when a town is formed, people can focus on having other jobs like trading or teaching rather than just farming.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

So when we talk about this we mean by revolution of industry, where ang ginagamit para mapagana ang machinery sa factories is  steam engines and fossil fuels like uling and oil.

This boosted productivity and transformed transportations. So nung dumami ang nag settle sa cities and meron nang mga specialized jobs, and economy this time is more complex.

POST INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

It meand that the primary focus is on providing services like healthcare, education, finance, and entertainment

So in this society nakafocus naman sila sa pag provide ng services. Nakacenter sa businesses and jobs na nagpoprovide ng services.

So kung kailangan ng economy ng physical goods, in this society need din ng physical products to provide those services for example is medical equipments, or computers.

During this time dumami rin ang skilled workers because they can finally persue high education.

CLASSIFICATION OF CULTURE

Material culture refers to physical objects, resources, and spaces na ginagamit ng isang tao para idefine yung culture nila. Mga items na ginagawa at ginagamit at binibigyan ng meaning or value sa loob ng society nila.

So these are items that you can see and touch

For ex: tools such as hammers, or computers

This also help in expressing identity and heritage.

NONMATERIAL CULTURE

Refers to things that you cannot see and touch in aspects of culture, walang physiclal representation. This can be beliefs, values, practices, and norms

COGNITIVE CULTURE IDEAS

This includes ideas and knowledge na hinahawakan ng tao sa loob ng isang culture.

This may be beliefs- related to religion or spirituality. Language that they use to communicate.

In normative culture naman is nagiinclude sya ng rules and expectations na pinapangunahan ang behavior ng isang society.

ELEMENTS OF CULTURE

BELIEFS;

Understanding beliefs can help us appreciate yung malawak na perpectives sa iba’t ibang cultures and societies.

VALUES;

Understanding values helps us naman in appreciating principles na ginagamit para mashape yung norms and influence ng actions ng isang individuals sa iba’t ibang cultural contexts.

LANGUAGE;

Storehouse meaning it allows individuals to express themselves and share their experiences with others.

Understanding language helps us to appreciate how complex human interactions are and how rich ang isang heritage ng culture.

TECHNOLOGY;

This also helps in making daily taks more easy and improve living conditions.

This helps us naman in appreciating pano nag aadvance ang technology natin sa paglipas ng panahon.

Folkways - informal behaviors used everydy without serious moral implication (e.g. table manners)

Mores - strongly held norms na nagbabase naman sa moral values (e.g. theft or violence)

Taboos - norms that are considered as unacceptable, this is so important that it can lead to extreme disgust, banishment, and dissapproval when violated.

Laws - system of rules that are establised and enforced by governmental authorities to maintain order, promote justice, and potect rights.

ETHNOCENTRISM

- is a belief that is passed through one culture believing that a specific culture is above any culture. That includes how a person act towards other cultures. They believe that their culture is the standard which other cultures are judged. This results to failing promoting harmony in a diverse world.

XENOCENTRISM

- characterized naman ang xenocentrism sa preference ng cultural practices and products of other societies over sa sariling culture.

- they prioritize on idealizing foreigh cultures rather than their own.