Chapter 8: Culture
Culture and adolescence
Socioeconomic status and poverty
Ethnicity
Television and Other Media
Culture and Adolescence
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We will examine the following:
– What is culture
– The relevance of culture to the study of
adolescence
– Cross-cultural comparison research
– Models of Cultural Change
– Rites of Passage
What is Culture?
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Culture is:
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behavior
patterns of action
beliefs
products of particular
group of people
– passed on from
generation to
generation
What is culture?
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Ideals
Values
Assumptions about
life that guide
behavior
Made by people
Transmitted by
parents, teachers,
community leaders
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Provokes clashes
between peoples
Remain relatively
constant across time
If violated provokes
emotional reactions
Each must find
his/her own place in
culture
What is culture?
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Socioeconomic
Class
– a grouping of people
with similar
occupational,
educational, and
economic
characteristics
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Ethnicity
– a cultural heritage
– nationality
characteristics
– race
– religion
– language
What is culture? Emotional
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World Wars are
fought about culture
The Relevance of Culture to the
study of adolescence?
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Ethnocentrism: the tendency to favor
one’s own group over other groups
Global interdependence
Unity in diversity
What is the role of culture in the 21st
century?
Adolescent “fit” in the melting pot?
Cross-cultural Comparisons
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How is adolescent development similar
across cultures and thereby universal?
How is adolescent development
different across cultures and thereby
specific?
What is “inherited” and what is “taught?”
What is normal? What is abnormal?
Cross-cultural comparison
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Achievement
– What is achievement?
– Is America an achievement oriented
society?
– How does independence relate to
achievement? How do you teach children
to be achievement oriented?
– Are there cultural differences in
achievement? Anglo- African- Mexican-
Cross-cultural comparison
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Achievement among Chinese- and
Japanese-Americans contrasted to
Anglo-, African-, or Spanish-American
persons? Same or different?
What is a “successful person?”
Is American culture too achievement
oriented?
Cross-cultural comparisons
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Sexuality
– What is the “typical” American teens’
sexuality?
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The “Ines Beag” people and repressed
sexuality
The “Mangaian” culture and expressed
sexuality
What is normal?
Models of cultural change
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Assimilation: relinquish your own culture
and move into the predominate society
as part of the predominate society
holding its values, beliefs, and ideals.
Acculturation: continuous, first-hand
contact between two or more cultures;
participating in both
Models of Cultural Change
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The “alteration model”: understanding
both cultures and being able to be the
appropriate person depending upon
which culture you are in.
The “multicultural model” promotes a
pluralistic approach to culture; there is
no dominant culture
Which of these 2 is better?
Rites of Passage
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Ceremonies that mark an individual’s
transition from one status to another,
especially into adulthood
What are some rites of passage?
– Apache Amerindian girls 4-day ceremony
– The Jewish “bar mitzvah”
– Catholic “confirmation”
– High school graduation?
Rites of passage
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Mangaians of Polynesia: 13yr old boy
has his penis cut and then 2 weeks later
has sexual intercourse with an
experienced older woman who teaches
him how to pleasure her without his
having an orgasm.
Mexico: Catholic girls will go through a
“wedding to God” ceremony
Rites of passage
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Getting your driver’s license?
Old enough to vote?
Old enough to drink?
Having your first sexual episode?
There is no real clear-cut rite of
passage in America today; in the past
and in other cultures there was and is.
Yucatecan Girls Celebrating
Quinceanera at age 15 years
Socioeconomic status and
poverty
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Socioeconomic status infers certain
inequalities
high-low prestige jobs?
Different educational attainment
Different economic resources
Different levels of power or influence in
the culture
Socioeconomic status
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White collar; blue collar
high income; low income
high education; low education
high culture; low culture
managerial; day labor
property owners; renters
investment portfolio; hand-to-mouth
Reading and TV habits by SES
Living in distressed
neighborhoods
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See pg 268
25% AfricanAmerican
10% LatinoAmerican
2% Anglo-American
– poverty, femaleheaded household,
high school dropout,
welfare
Feminization of poverty
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Far more women
live in poverty than
men
Divorce leaves
women with less
money than they
and their children
need
SES and poverty
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Parenting in low SES are more likely to
value external characteristics and use
physical punishment than their middle
SES counterparts
Percentage of children living in poverty
has increased from 15% in the 70s to
about 20% in the late 1990s.
SES and poverty
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Subcultures of the poor are
characterized by economic hardship, of
course, but also social and
psychological difficulties
Persistent poverty can have devastating
effects on child and adolescent
development, e.g., malnutrition
Compare the “Great Depression” people
Ethnicity
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Prejudice
Discrimination
Bias
Institutional Racism
“Aware” Bigots vs.
“Unaware” Bigots
Whose culture is it?
Ethnicity
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African-American teens: largest visible
ethnic minority group in US; church and
extended family are important
Latino-American teens: fastest growing
ethnic minority group in the midwest
Asian-American: fastest growing ethnic
minority in the nation
Native-American: painful discrimination
Media functions
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Entertainment, information, sensation,
coping, gender-role modeling, youth
culture identification
33% of waking time is spent consuming
mass media
Teens watch TV 2-4 hours a day
Large individual differences in media
consumption
Television
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Conveys a portrait of society beyond the
family, peers, and school
Trains adolescents to be passive
learners and adopt a passive entertainme lifestyle.
Is this a good thing? Compare today’s
scholarship with that of the 1870s
scholarship
Television concerns
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How are ethnic minorities portrayed on
the tube?
Sex and the TV?
Aggression and the TV? The average
child has, at age 17, observed over
17,000 murders on television. Effects?
Columbine? Copy-cats?
Other media
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Teens are heavy consumers of CDs,
tapes, and rock music
“Californication”
Music tastes are refined throughout
adolescence; becoming very
individualistic toward late adolescence.
Social and psychological needs met
through music?
Other media
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The impact of high technology,
computers, and the internet
Internet webpages, chatrooms, emailbuddies, pornography, effects on
scholarship, effects on education,
effects on those who are technologically
illiterate
A hundred computers and no one uses
them
Social Policy and Culture
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What should be on TV?
What should happen with computers
and education?
What should happen regarding poverty?
What is the appropriate way to handle
the ethnic shifts that are occurring in
society? What is society of 2050 going
to be like?
Questions on Chapter 8?
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Questions?