Essential Question
It is the lens
through which
we perceive
and evaluate
what is going
on
around us.
The language, beliefs, values, norms,
behaviors and material objects that are passed
down from one generation to the next.
“The last thing a fish would ever
notice would be water”.
-Ralph Linton, Anthropologist,
(1936)
How much of life do we take for granted?
The Iceberg Theory of Culture
Like an iceberg, nine-tenths of culture is below
the surface
The tangible objects that distinguish a
group of people
•Jewelry
•Art
•Buildings
•Weapons
•Machines
•Foods
•Fashion
Keep in mind the sociological imagination!
There is nothing “natural” about material culture.
Arabs wear gowns and Americans wear
jeans.
Both feel NATURAL in doing so.
-aka-
Symbolic Culture
A group's way of thinking
including its beliefs, values
-and-
its common patterns of behavior
including language and other
forms of interaction.
Keep in mind the sociological imagination!
There is nothing “natural” about nonmaterial culture.
It is just as arbitrary to stand in line as it is to
push and shove.
The disorientation that
people experience when
they come in contact
with a different culture
and can no longer
depend on their takenfor-granted assumptions
about life.
• The use of one’s own culture as a
yardstick for judging the ways of other
individuals or societies.
• In general this leads to a negative
evaluation of another group or culture’s
values, norms and behaviors.
Keep in mind the sociological imagination!
• Culture penetrates deep into our
thinking, becoming a taken-for-granted
lens through which we see the world
and obtain our perceptions of reality.
• Culture provides the fundamental basis
for our decision making.
• The culture we have internalized
becomes the “right” way of doing
things.
Keep in mind the sociological
imagination!
• Coming in contact with a radically
different culture challenges our basic
assumptions about life.
• Culture is universal.
• All people are ethnocentric which has
both positive and negative
consequences.