Chapter 4
Building Order: Culture and History
Culture
• A society’s personality
• The shared, taken-forgranted values, beliefs,
objects, and rules that
guide people’s lives
Culture
• Usually only notice
other people’s cultures
• Our own culture is
usually invisible to us
• Except in times of
social upheaval
• When traveling or
returning home
Elements of Culture
• Non-material culture
• Knowledge, beliefs,
customs, morals,
symbols
• Patterns of behavior
• “Owner’s manual for
social life”
Elements of Culture
• Material culture
• Stuff: clothing,
buildings, inventions,
food, artwork, music
• Technological
achievements that
shape and are shaped
by non-material
culture
The Chair is Cultural
• May define your status
or role
• May carry symbolic
meaning
• Only common to about
one third of the world’s
populations
Thinking Sociologically
• Cultural change
• What are some
changes that you have
observed in material
culture in your
lifetime?
• What are some
changes that you have
observed in
nonmaterial culture in
your lifetime?
Global Culture
• Transnational media,
global communication,
transportation
systems, and centuries
of international
migration have made
the concept of
“cultural purity” all but
obsolete
• People have always
met, shared, and
traded (but it happens
a lot faster now)
Subcultures &
Countercultures
• Values, behaviors, and
physical artifacts of a
group that distinguish
it from the larger
culture
• Subcultures
• Culture within a
culture
Subcultures &
Countercultures
• Countercultures
• Reject some elements
of the larger culture
• Yet also exist in
relation to it
History & Culture
• Culture’s “archives”
• Shifts in accepted
behaviors
• Need to view historical
acts within their
cultural setting
Cultural Expectations &
the Social Order
• Expected formulas:
“How are you?”
• Humor: disrupted
social order or cultural
expectations
Cultural Expectations &
Social Order
• Social order and
cultural expectations
are not static
• History: how we tell
our cultural story
Norms
• Culturally defined “rules”
of conduct or
expectations for behavior
• Different levels of norms
• Folkways: informal
norms that are mildly
punished when violated
• Mores: highly codified,
formal, systematized
norms that bring severe
punishment when
violated
Institutionalized Norms
• Patterns of behavior
that become widely
accepted within a
particular social
institution and taken
for granted in society
• Establish ways for
people to discover
preferences or see the
world in a particular
way
Institutionalized Norms
• Make certain actions
seem unthinkable:
• 2010: going to college
is the path to financial
success
• 1810: owning other
human beings is the
path to financial
success
Institutionalized
Emotions
• Emotions seem natural,
sometimes instantaneous
• Yet, they are also culturally
bounded
• How should you react at
funerals?
• At weddings?
• When you get good news?
• If the good news is at
someone else’s expense?
• If you are a doctor giving
bad news to a patient?
• If you a flight attendant
during turbulence?
Norms & Sanctions
• Norms provide a
framework for our
actions and choices
• Rarely tell us exactly
what to do or how to
act
• May be ambiguous or
contradictory
Norms & Sanctions
• Sanctions discourage
breaking social norms
• Direct social response
to a behavior
• Symbolically reinforce
the culture’s values
and morals
Cultural Relativism
• People’s beliefs and
activities should be
interpreted in terms of
their own culture
• May challenge the
values of one’s own
culture
Ethnocentrism
• Ethnocentrism: the
tendency to evaluate
other cultures using
one’s own culture as a
standard
• Ethnocentrism is
encouraged by
institutional ritual and
symbolism, cultural
loyalty
Managing Cultural
Variation
• Doing taarof in Iran
• Hand gestures across
cultures
• Forming lines
Culture in Health &
Illness
• U.S. medical treatment
tends to derive from an
aggressive, “can do”
spirit
• U.S. doctors are more
likely than European
doctors to prescribe
drugs and resort to
surgery
Culture in Health &
Illness
• What does it mean to
be sick in U.S. culture
compared to other
cultures?
• What if you don’t play
the sick role correctly?
The Sick Role: Norms in
Action
• The sick role is a set of
norms governing how
one is supposed to
behave and what one is
entitled to when sick.
How to be Sick in the
United States
•It’s not your fault.
•It’s bad to be sick and
you should try to get
over it.
•You may be excused
from ordinary
obligations and duties.
How to be Sick in the
United States
•Laws institutionalize the
sick role and legitimize
it.
•You may be excused
from normal rules of
etiquette.
•You can ask for and
receive care and
sympathy.
Culture and “the Sexes”
• Sexual dichotomy
•
•
•
•
Female and male
Universal
Exhaustive
Mutually exclusive
• Sex is much more
complex
• Transsexuals
• Intersexuals
• Other cultures have
defined more than two
sexes
Intersexuality
• Ambiguous
genetic/anatomical
indicators of sex
• Often “corrected”
through surgery that
reinforces cultural ideal
of two sexes
• Increasing protests
regarding the use of “sex
assignment surgery”
• Surgeries seen as
mutilating and
potentially harmful
• Doesn’t allow other
options beyond male or
female