Sociology of Culture: Universals, Lag, and Theoretical Perspectives

Cultural Universals: Patterns or traits globally common to all societies.
- Examples include naming a baby, ceremonies for permanent relationships (marriage), funeral or homegoing services for the dead, and joining places of worship (church, synagogue, or mosque).
- Music functions as a universal to evoke emotions, such as frenzied music for passion or soft lullabies for calming effects, regardless of language.
Cultural Lag: A period of maladjustment when the material culture (technology/objects) changes faster than the nonmaterial culture (how society thinks/acts) can adapt.
- Material Culture: Objects and technology relative to a group.
- Nonmaterial Culture: Thoughts, feelings, and actions within a group.
- Examples include the adaptation to computers in the workplace in the $1960s$ and the development of policies for e-cigarettes in public buildings.

Counterculture: Groups holding values that stand in opposition to the dominant culture.
- Examples: Gang activity (breaking laws) or religious groups like Mormons or Muslims when viewed by a dominant Christian society.
- In $2012$ , Mitt Romney addressed Mormon counterculture perceptions through advertising to show Mormons have standard routines (jobs, school).
Popular Culture: Widespread cultural patterns involving trendy objects and behaviors, such as cell phones, Zoom meetings, and tattoos.
- Tattoos have transitioned from being viewed as counterculture to being a part of popular culture.

High Culture: Cultural patterns distinguishing a society’s elite or wealthy individuals with high social standing.
- Examples: Purchasing multiple expensive homes, traveling global circuits in yachts, or staying in expensive locations.
- John McCain was cited as an example when he could not recall how many homes he owned during an interview.
Marginalization: A state of having low social standing, opposite to high culture.
Culture Shock: Disorientation caused by unfamiliar experiences.
- During the $1918$ Spanish flu pandemic, which caused $675,000$ deaths in the US, people experienced shock regarding mandatory mask mandates ("wear a mask or go to jail").

Norms: Behaviors society expects from individuals.
Sanctions: Social responses tied to norms used to encourage or discourage behavior.
- Positive Sanctions: Rewards for following norms (e.g., happy faces on papers, smiles, pay raises, letters of accommodation, or promotions).
- Negative Sanctions: Disapproval or punishment for violating norms (e.g., sad faces, frowning, write-ups, demotions, firing, traffic citations, or arrests).
- A sanction must be tied to a norm; a smile is only a positive sanction if it follows an expected action, like helping someone pick up dropped papers.

Subculture: Smaller clusters of people within a society sharing distinctive patterns or activities (e.g., skateboarders, singers, dancers, or students).
Cultural Diffusion: When people learn and adopt material objects from other cultures.
- Example: McDonald's in the Middle East uses the "golden arches" but provides different experiences, such as three or four-course meals with linen tablecloths for approximately $20$ .
Patterns of Comparison:
- Ethnocentrism: Judging another culture using one's own culture's standards (e.g., claiming African Americans are the only "best" dancers and dismissing Chinese dance).
- Cultural Relativism: Judging a culture by its own standards to ensure fairness.
- Cultural Imperialism: Deliberately imposing one's cultural values on another culture (e.g., Nestle's providing powdered milk to Northwest Africans without access to clean water).
- Xenocentrism: Believing a different culture is superior to one's own (e.g., preferring only European cars or French/Spanish wines over domestic ones).

Structural Functional Paradigm: A positive view where values (e.g., religion, education, equality) direct lives, give meaning, and bind society together.
Conflict Theory: A negative view arguing society values the dominant group's culture while devaluing or marginalizing others as inferior.
Interactionist Theory (Symbolic Interaction): A neutral view focusing on symbols and interactions, such as wearing a turban, bowing versus shaking hands, or eating with hands versus utensils (e.g., Christmas as a symbol of Christian culture).

Question: Can students smoke e-cigarettes in the building?
Response: Missus Holly's research through supervisors, the dean, and the vice president led to a meeting concluding that policies must be created to prohibit e-cigarettes indoors as society adapts to the new material culture.
Question: Is a teacher smiling at a student entering class a positive sanction?
Response: No. A smile is only a positive sanction if it is tied to a norm, such as a reward for the student performing a specific expected behavior like helping a teacher pick up papers.