Chapter 2 - Culture

Culture: A World of Meaning

1. What is Culture?

   1. culture - the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people’s way of life

   2. nonmaterial culture - the ideas created by members of a society

   3. material culture - the physical things created by members of a society

   4. culture shock - personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life

   5. Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct to create a way of life and ensure our survival

   6. society - people who interact in a defined territory and share a culture

   7. Language is where culture is, language in decline

2. The Elements of Culture

   1. symbol - anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture

   2. Travelers may experience culture shock or inflict culture shock on others

   3. language - a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another

   4. cultural transmission - the process by which one generation passes culture to the next

   5. Sapir-Whorf thesis - the idea that people see and understand the world through the cultural lens of language

   6. Although we do fashion reality out of our symbols, language does not necessarily determine reality 

   7. values - culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living

   8. beliefs - specific thoughts or ideas that people hold to be true

3. Key Values of U.S. Culture

   1. Equal Opportunity - society should provide everyone with the chance to get ahead according to individual talents and efforts

   2. Achievement and success - encouraging competition and rewarding personal merit

   3. Material comfort - pursuit of wealth

   4. Activity and work - taking control is prioritized over passivity

   5. Practicality and efficiency - practical over theoretical

   6. Progress- optimistic people

   7. Science - belief in science, believe we are rational, logical people

   8. Democracy and free enterprise - we believe we have rights that governments should not take away

   9. Freedom - favor individual initiative over collective conformity

   10.  Racism and group superiority - judgeing according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class

4. Values

   1. Can be in harmony or in conflict

   2. Can change over time

   3. Vary from culture to culture, vary globally

5. Norms

   1. norms - rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members

   2. mores - norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance

      1. Includes taboos

   3. folkways - norms for routine or casual interaction

   4. social control - attempts by society to regulate people’s thoughts and behavior

   5. Only cultural creatures can experience shame and guilt

6. Ideal and Real Culture

   1. They differ from each other

   2. Real is everyday life lol

Technology and Culture

1. technology - knowledge that people use to make a way of life in their surroundings

2. Lenski argued that a society’s level of technology is crucial in determining what cultural ideas and artifacts emerge or are even possible

   1. Pointed to sociocultural evolution

3. hunting and gathering - the use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation for food

4. horticulture - the use of hand tools to raise crops

5. pastoralism - the domestication of animals

6. agriculture - large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or more powerful energy sources

7. industry - the production of goods using advanced sources of energy to drive large machinery

   1. Raises living standards

   2. Destroys environment and sense of community

8. postindustrialism - the production of information using computer technology

   1. Postindustrial information technology

   2. The emergence of an information economy changes the skills that define a way of life

   3. Capacity to create symbolic culture on an unprecedented scale

Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life in One World

1. Japan’s historic isolation makes it the most monocultural of all high-income nations, vs the US, the most multicultural of all high-income countries

2. high culture - cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite

3. popular culture - cultural patterns that are widespread among a society’s population

4. subculture - cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society’s population

   1. Don’t necessarily require commitment

   2. Melting pot? Imagery

   3. Subcultures involve not just difference but hierarchy, subculture necessitates the existence of dominant or mainstream culture

5. multiculturalism - a perspective recognizing the cultural diversity of the United States and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions

   1. Focus on historical traditions or highlight contemporary diversity?

   2. Eurocentrism - the dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns

   3. Afrocentrism - emphasizing and promoting African cultural patterns

   4. Criticism: divisiveness rather than unity because it encourages people to identify with their own category rather than the nation as a whole, that it harms minorities themselves

6. Counterculture - cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society

   1. Hippies, militant groups

7. Cultural Change

   1. Attitudes change, more concerned with making money than philosophy

   2. cultural integration - the close relationships among various elements of a cultural system

      1. Example: working for income increasing age at first marriage, age of first childbirth, divorce rate

   3. cultural lag - the fact that some cultural elements change more quickly than others, disrupting a cultural system

   4. Causes of cultural change

      1. Invention - process of creating new cultural elements

      2. Discovery - recognizing and understanding more fully something already in existence

      3. Diffusion - the spread of cultural traits from one society to another

8. Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

   1. ethnocentrism - the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture

   2. Cultural relativism - the practice of judging a culture by its own standards

   3. Thanks to flow of information we contact each other more:

      1. Global economy: flow of goods

      2. Global communication: the flow of information - Internet and satellite-assisted communications

      3. Global migration: flow of people

   4. But this does not mean we have a global culture:

      1. Flow of goods, information, and people is uneven in different parts of the world

      2. Not everyone can afford new goods and services

      3. People do not attach the same meanings to similar cultural practices

Theories of Culture

1. Structural-Functional Theory to Culture

   1. Philosophy of idealism

   2. Complex strategy for meeting human needs

   3. Considers values the core of a culture, thinking functionally of unfamiliar ways of life

      1. Understanding the function of Amish farming techniques is not efficiency but discipline, for example

   4. cultural universals - traits that are part of every known culture

      1. Family

      2. Funeral rites

      3. Jokes

   5. This approach misses cultural diversity

2. Social-Conflict Theory Approach to Culture

   1. Argue culture is shaped by society’s system of economic production

   2. “Social being determines consciousness” - Marx

   3. Rooted in the philosophy of materalism

   4. Example) values of competitiveness and material success are linked to capitalism

   5. Strains of inequality erupt into movements for social change

3. Feminist Theories Approach to Culture

   1. Claim culture is gendered

   2. Masculine is dominant in relation to feminine, it is the default

   3. Cultural patterns reflect and support gender inequality

4. Evolution and Culture: Sociobiology

   1. sociobiology - a theoretical approach that explores ways in which human biology affects how we create culture

   2. Theory of evolution, natural selection

   3. Claim cultural universals reflect us as a species

   4. Basically, sperm and egg counts are why men prefer to look for multiple women, and why women prefer looking for one man

   5. Critics claim it will revive bioessentialism and the prejudices associated with those, also little evidence to support theories

Culture and Human Freedom

1. To what extent are we free? Does culture bind us to each other and the past? Does culture enhance our capacity for individual thought and independent choice?

2. Culture as Constraint

   1. Cannot live without culture, it has drawbacks

   2. We are the only creatures who experience alienation

   3. Matter of habit, limits our choices, and drives us into repeating patterns

   4. Urges us towards excellence, isolating us from each other, a focus on the material and superficial

3. Culture as Freedom

   1. Culture forces us to make choices as we make and remake a world for ourselves

   2. Cultural diversity

   3. Better we understanding the wrokings of surrounding culture, the better prepared we are to use the freedom it offersus