Culture
 What is Culture?
 What is Civilization?
 Major Components of Culture
 Cultural Diversity
 Cultural Change
 Muslim Culture
 Functions of Culture
 Global Culture
 Postmodernism and New Culture
What is Culture?
• Culture(as designs for living): the values, beliefs, behavior
practices and material objects that constitute a people’s
way of life. It is a bridge to the past as well as a guide to the
future.
• Non-material culture: (Art-thoughts) the intangible world of
ideas created by members of a society, e.g. ideas, beliefs,
values, etc
• Material culture : (artifacts-things) the tangible things
created by members of society, e.g. mobile phones to
pottery.
• Cultural practices: the practical logic by which we both act
and think in a myriad of little encounters of daily life.
Several species display a limited capacity for culture, but
only human beings rely on culture for survival.
Culture and Intelligence
• As the human brain evolved, the first elements of
culture appeared some two million years ago
• With larger brains, modern Homo sapiens
produced culture at a rapid pace .
• The development of culture reached the point we
call “the birth of civilization” approximately
12,000 years ago.
• Gradually, culture pushed aside the biological
forces and gained mental power to fashion the
natural environment for themselves.
What is Civilization?
• Civilization: is the most comprehensive cultural entities,
e.g. Egyptian, Islamic, Western, Indian civilizations.
• A civilization is a culture writ large. They have no clear cut
boundaries but is long lived
• Civilizations of the past include the Ancient Sumerian,
Egyptian, Christian and Islamic
• Contemporary civilizations are: Chinese, Japanese, Indian,
Western and African
• Religions are one of the key defining features of
civilizations. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism
are 4 leading religions linked to civilization. In 21st century
a new global culture emerging “universal civilization” – a
contested idea.
What is Civilization?
• Culture and civilization are two terms used
interchangeably.
• Culture represents what we are whereas
civilization is what we have and will accumulate.
• Culture represents the end (values and goals) and
civilization represents the tools and techniques
that help in achieving the end.
Major components of Culture
• Symbols: anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by
people who share culture. E.g. Jeans –inexpensive clothing for
workers; in 1960s Jeans popular among affluent students; today
designer Jeans emerged as high-priced status symbol.
• E.g., winking an eye, in some cultures this action conveys interest;
in others, insult.
• We are so dependent on our culture that we take things for
granted. Other concepts: cultural shock
• In sum: symbols allow people to make sense of their lives, and
without them human existence would be meaningless. Meanings
are constructed around people through a series of practices. The
study of symbols and signs is called semiotics.
Language
• Language: is a system of symbols that allows members of a society
to communicate with one another. These symbols take the form of
spoken and written words. Western societies write from left to
right, people in northern Africa & western Asia write from right to
left and people in western Asia from top to bottom.
• The three major world languages: Chinese (1.2 billon -20% of the
people); English (600 million- 10%); and Spanish (350 million- 6 %).
English is becoming the global tongue.
• Cultural reproduction: the process by which one generation passes
culture to the next. Symbols carry our cultural heritage.
• Oral cultural tradition: transmission of culture through speech.
• In sum: a system of language guides how we understand the world
but does not limit how we do so. Language skills not only link us to
others and with the past, but also set free the human imagination.
Values
• Values: are culturally defined standards that people use to decide
what is desirable, good and beautiful and that serve as broad
guidelines for social living.
• Values are standards that people who share a culture use to make
choices about how to live.
• Familiar examples are loyalty, equality, justice, friendliness, honesty,
etc. Value systems can differ from culture to culture.
• European values? : 1) Values of rationality, science and progress; 2)
Judeo-Christian religion and struggle with secularization -the
calendar year , key holidays –Christmas, Easter- are bound up with
Christian values.; 3) Core values of rights and obligations; 4)
principle of hierarchy –recognize their superiors and inferiors.
Values (cont.)
• Asian values: east differ from the west in key values
such as:
• Belief in strong families
• Reverence for education
• Hard work a virtue
• Virtue of saving
• A social contract between the people and the state
• East Asians practice national teamwork
• Governments should maintain a morally wholesome
environment
• Collective values and rejection of extreme forms of
individualism.
Values (cont.)
• World Values?
• Two important values: traditional versus secular-rational,
and survival versus self-expression.
• Traditional societies appeal to an authority rooted in the
past-often via religion or through autocratic leaders.
• Secular-rational societies less religious and have rules that
are much more individualistic.
• The survival/ (low income societies) self expression (young
age groups) is linked to the arrival of so-called postmodern
or post materialist societies.
• Value inconsistency reflects the cultural diversity of society.
Beliefs
• The mental act, condition, or habit of placing
trust or confidence in a person or thing;
• Values are broad principles that underlie beliefs,
specific statements that people hold to be true.
Values are abstract standards of goodness, and
beliefs are particular matters that people accept
as true or false. Belief has long become a socially
acceptable form of thinking in science as well as
religion.
• Beliefs in religions, political ideologies, and
philosophies.
Norms
• The term "Norm” refers to rules of behavior that
develop out of a groups values or that which is
“normal”.
• Norms are rules and expectations by which a society
guides the behavior of its members. Norms specify
how people should and should not behave in various
situations.
• Laws, dress codes, rules of sports and games – all
express social norms.
• Norms are relative. It may differ from community to
community, change from time to time and society to
society.
Mores
• William Sumner used the term mores to refer to
society’s standards of proper moral conduct. It is
widely observed and is the strongest of the social
Norms. It applies to everyone, everywhere, all
the time. It distinguishes between right and
wrong.
• For example, A person who steals, rapes or kills
has violated some of society’s most important
mores.
• Violations of mores inspire intense punishment.
The punishment may involve expulsion from the
group, harsh imprisonment, etc.
Folkways
• Folkways simple means “ways of the folks”. These
are not strictly enforced. They are the customary,
normal and habitual ways of the group to meet
certain needs or solving day-to-day problems.
• Example, how to worship; how to treat fellow
human beings, proper dress, etc.
• Folkways are the basis of culture. It designates a
society’s customs for routine, casual interaction.
They are regulative and exert pressure upon the
individual and the group to conform to the
norms.
Cultural Diversity
• High culture: refers to cultural patterns are accessible
to some but not all members of a society, they
distinguish a society’s elite. E.g. French cuisine better
than fish fingers.
• Popular culture: designates cultural patterns that are
widespread among a society’s population.
• Cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu): used to designate
the practices where people can wield power and status
because of their educational credentials, general
cultural awareness and aesthetic preferences. It is
distributed very unevenly in societies.
Sub and Countercultures
• Subcultures: refers to distinctive cultural patterns that may
be part of any distinctive community or group in society.
E.g. frequent flyer executives, jazz musicians, adolescents,
homeless people, people in old age homes, etc.
• Countercultures: is used to describe certain other cultures
within the dominant societal culture. The counterculture
rejects the central values of the culture. E.g. Hippies of the
1960s, youth culture. They separate themselves from the
larger society and pursued radically different values.
• Cultural diversity: cultural variety has characterized most of
the world. E.g. historical isolation makes Japan the most
monoculture of all industrial nations and makes the United
States over centuries the most multicultural nation
Cultural Change
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Cultural changes occur in three ways:
Invention
Discovery
diffusion
Change in one dimension of a cultural system usually
sparks changes in others. E.g. women working has
changed family patterns, including age at marriage,
rising divorce rate, etc . Such connections illustrate
Cultural Integration: the close relationship among
various elements of a cultural system. But all elements
do not change at the same speed.
Cultural Lag
• When non-material culture does not adjust itself
readily to the material changes it falls behind and
the result is a lag between the two. This lag
between non-material and material culture has
been called Cultural Lag by William Ogburn.
• Examples:
• Test-tube babies
• Computer diagnosis & recommend course of
treatment
Cultural Patterns
• Eth- group thinking they are righteous and better
than another group. People use their own culture
as a yardstick for judging the ways of others.
• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other
cultures exclusively by the standards of one’s own
culture.
• For example, my religion is better than somebody
else’s; left hand driving is good; army is the best
(extreme loyalty)
Cultural Relativism
• The alternative to ethnocentrism is Cultural Relativism,
the practice of understanding and judging a culture by
its own standards. It requires that we not only
understand the values and norms of another society
but also suspend cultural standards that we have know
all our life.
• Examples: eating frog legs; eating ants or beetles; raw
camel liver, etc.
• IBM, for example , now provide technical support for
its products using websites in twenty –two languages.
Muslim Culture
• Core cultural elements:
• Key text Koran
• Rules: 1) The Shahada; 2) Salat; 3) Sawn; 4)
Zakat; 5) Hajj
• Material culture: art, architecture, typical
cultural dress and appearance.
• Islam: is monotheistic religion.
• Variations and divisions: Sunni & Shi’at
Functions of Culture
• Binding together members of society and family.
It operates as an integrated system for meeting
human needs.
• Cultural universals: refers to traits that are part of
every known culture. E.g. family, funeral rites,
jokes, etc.
• From the conflict perspective as a web of
inequality, mass culture and hegemony, the
means by which a ruling/dominant group wins
over a subordinate group through ideas.
Global Cultures
• It is a perspective recognizing the cultural diversity and
promoting respect and equal standing for all cultural
traditions, also called pluralism, encourages racial-ethnic
variation. Today, we can observe many of the same cultural
patterns the world over.
• Example:
• 1) The Swiss population includes 4 ethnic groups: French,
Italians, Germans and Romansh. They kept their own
languages, live peacefully in political and economic unity.
• 2) businesses are learning the value of marketing to a
culturally diverse population.
Global Cultures
• The global economy: The flow of goods. E.g.
consumer goods from cars to TV shows to T-shirts
– the world over
• Global communications: the flow of information.
E.g. satellite based communication system.
• Global migration: The flow of people. E.g.
transportation technology, tourism.
• Cultural hybridization: the ways in which parts of
one culture (language, symbols) get recombined
with the cultures of another.