(d)Elements of Culture
There are different elements in both material and non-material culture.
The major elements are discussed below:
Values
Beliefs
Norms
Culture
Symbols
Artifacts
Language
Norms
Norms are defined as rules or expectations that are socially enforced.
They are the established standards of behavior maintained by a society.
Some common norms are shaking hands when we meet someone,
making direct eye contact with the person we are speaking with, not
sitting next to a person unless the movie theater is crowded, and not
standing close enough to a stranger to touch arms or hips. Norms are
often divided into two types:
-Formal Norms
-Informal Norms
Formal norms, also called mores and laws, refer to the standards of
behavior considered the most important in any society. Mores are norms
that embody the moral views and principles of a group. Violating them
can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are legally
protected with laws or other formal norms. In the United States, for
instance, murder is considered immoral, and it is punishable by law (a
formal norm). But more often, mores are judged and guarded by public
sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as
shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The
mores of the Canadian school system require that a student’s writing be
in the student’s own words or use special forms (such as quotation
marks and a whole system of citation) for crediting other writers.
Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name—
plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe, and can
usually result in expulsion.
Examples of formal norms Money is highly valued in North America, so monetary crimes are
punished. It’s against the law to rob bank, and banks go to great
lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable
possessions and install antitheft devices to protect homes and cars.
Until recently, a less strictly enforced social norm was driving
while intoxicated. While it is against the law to drive drunk,
drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behavior.
 Also, in Bangladesh, examples include traffic laws, criminal codes,
and, in a college context, student behavior codes addressing such
things as cheating and hate speech.
Informal norms, also called folkways and customs, refer to standards of
behavior that are considered less important but still influence how we
behave. Table manners are a common example of informal norms, as are
such everyday behaviors as how we interact with a cashier and how we
ride in an elevator. People learn informal norms by observation,
imitation, and general socialization. Children learn quickly that picking
your nose is subject to ridicule when they see someone shamed for it by
other children. But although informal norms define personal
interactions, they extend into other systems as well. Customers line up to
order their food, and leave when they are done. They do not sit down at
a table with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or
nap in a booth. Most people do not commit even benign breaches
of informal norms. Informal norms dictate appropriate behaviors without
the need of written rules. It is also true that norms change over time
within a given culture. Two obvious examples here are hairstyles and
clothing styles. When the Beatles first became popular in the early
1960s, their hair barely covered their ears, but parents of teenagers back
then were aghast at how they looked. If anything, clothing styles change
even more often than hairstyles. Hemlines go up, hemlines go down.
Lapels become wider, lapels become narrower. This color is in, that
color is out.
Cultures differ widely in their norms, or standards and expectations for
behaving. We already saw that the nature of drunken behavior depends
on society’s expectations of how people should behave when drunk.
Norms of drunken behavior influence how we behave when we drink too
much.
Acceptance of Norms
Whether it be mores or folkways, people do not follow norms in all
situations. If they find any norm weakly enforced they, get the scope to
evade it. For example, it is illegal for U.S. teenagers to drink alcoholic
beverages, yet drinking by minors is common throughout the nation. (In
fact, teenage alcoholism is a serious social problem.) In some instances,
behavior that appears to violate society’s norms may actually represent
adherence to the norms of a particular group. Teenage drinkers are
conforming to the standards of their peer group when they violate norms
that condemn underage drinking. Similarly, business executives who use
shady accounting techniques may be responding to a corporate culture
that demands the maximization of profits at any cost, including the
deception of investors and government regulatory agencies.
Sanctions
Sanctions are penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a social
norm in other words, they are a form of social control, a way to
encourage conformity to cultural norms. Sometimes people conform to
norms in anticipation or expectation of positive sanctions: good grades,
for instance, may mean praise from parents and teachers. Negative
sanctions include fines, threats, imprisonment, and stares of contempt.
When people go against a society’s values, they are punished. A boy
who shoves an elderly woman aside to board the bus first may receive
frowns or even a scolding from other passengers. A business manager
who drives away customers will likely be fired. Breaking norms and
rejecting values can lead to cultural sanctions such as earning a negative
label lazy, no good bum or to legal sanctions such as traffic tickets,
fines, or imprisonment.
Values and Beliefs:
Perhaps most crucial elements of culture are values and beliefs. Values
are a culture’s standard for discerning what is good and just in society.
Cultural values are these collective conceptions of what is considered
good, desirable, and proper or bad, undesirable, and improper in a
culture. They indicate what people in a given culture prefer as well as
what they find important and morally right. Values may be specific, such
as honoring one’s parents and owning a home, or they may be more
general, such as health, love, and democracy. Of course, the members of
a society do not uniformly share its values. Values are deeply embedded
and critical for transmitting and teaching a culture’s beliefs. Beliefs are
the tenets or convictions that people hold to be true. Individuals in a
society have specific beliefs, but they also share collective values. To
illustrate the difference, North Americans believe that anyone who
works hard enough will be successful and wealthy. Underlying this
belief is the value that wealth is good and important.
Values help shape a society by suggesting what is good and bad,
beautiful and ugly, sought or avoided. Consider the value the culture.
North Americans place upon youth. Children represent innocence and
purity, while a youthful adult appearance signifies sexuality. Shaped by
this value, individuals spend millions of dollars each year on cosmetic
products and surgeries to look young and beautiful. Sometimes the
values of Canada and the United States are contrasted. Americans are
said to have an individualistic culture, meaning people place a high
value on individuality and independence. In contrast, Canadian culture is
said to be more collectivist, meaning the welfare of the group and group
relationships are a primary value. Seymour Martin Lipset used these
contrasts of values to explain why the two societies, which have
common roots as British colonies, developed such different political
institutions and cultures.
Living up to a culture’s values can be difficult. It’s easy to value good
health, but it’s hard to quit smoking. Marital monogamy is valued, but
many spouses engage in infidelity. Cultural diversity and equal
opportunities for all people are valued in Canada, yet the country’s
highest political offices have been dominated by white men. Values
often suggest how people should behave, but they do not accurately
reflect how people do behave. Harriet Martineau’s basic distinction
between what people say they believe and what they actually do are
often at odds. Values portray an ideal culture, the standards society
would like to embrace and live up to. But ideal culture differs from real
culture, the way society actually is, based on what occurs and exists. In
an ideal culture, there would be no traffic accidents, murders, poverty, or
racial tension. But in real culture, police officers, lawmakers, educators,
and social workers constantly strive to prevent or repair those accidents,
crimes, and injustices.
Values are not static, rather they vary across time and between groups as
people evaluate, debate, and change collective societal beliefs. Values
also vary from culture to culture. For example, cultures differ in their
values about what kinds of physical closeness are appropriate in public.
It’s rare to see two male friends or coworkers holding hands in
Bangladesh where that behavior often symbolizes romantic feelings. But
in many nations, masculine physical intimacy is considered natural in
public. A simple gesture, such as hand-holding, carries great symbolic
differences across cultures.
Language:
Language is crucial to communication and thus to any society’s culture.
Children learn language from their culture just as they learn about
shaking hands, about gestures, and about the significance of the flag and
other symbols. Humans have a capacity for language that no other
animal species possesses. Our capacity for language in turn helps make
our complex culture possible. Language is one of the major elements of
culture that underlie cultural variations. It is also an important
component of cultural capital.
Language, of course, can be spoken or written. One of the most
important developments in the evolution of society was the creation of
written language. Some of the preindustrial societies that anthropologists
have studied have written language, while others do not, and in the
remaining societies the “written” language consists mainly of pictures,
not words. Societies often share a single language, and many languages
contain the same basic elements. An alphabet is a written system made
of symbolic shapes that refer to spoken sound. Taken together, these
symbols convey specific meanings. The English alphabet uses a
combination of 26 letters to create words; these 26 letters make up over
600,000 recognized English words. Rules for speaking and writing vary
even within cultures, most notably by region.
Language is constantly evolving as societies create new ideas. In this
age of technology, people have adapted almost instantly to new nouns.
Twenty years ago, the general public would have considered those
nonsense words. Even while it constantly evolves, language continues to
shape our reality. This insight was established in the 1920s by two
linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. They believed that reality
is culturally determined, and that any interpretation of reality is based on
a society’s language. To prove this point, the sociologists argued that
every language has words or expressions specific to that language. In
Canada, for example, the number 13 is associated with bad luck. In
Japan, however, the number four is considered unlucky, since it is
pronounced similarly to the Japanese word for “death.”
Nonverbal Communication:
In addition to using language, people communicate without words which
is called nonverbal communication. It is symbolic, and, as in the case of
language, much of it is learned through one’s culture. Some gestures are
nearly universal: smiles often represent joy and crying often represents
sadness. Other nonverbal symbols vary across cultural contexts in their
meaning. Like other forms of language, nonverbal communication is not
the same in all cultures. Sociological research done at the micro level
documents that people from various cultures differ in the degree to
which they touch others during the course of normal social interactions.
Even experienced travelers are sometimes caught off guard by these
differences.
For example, a thumbs-up indicates positive reinforcement in Canada,
whereas in Russia and Australia, it is an offensive curse. Other gestures
vary in meaning depending on the situation and the person. A wave of
the hand can mean many things, depending on how it is done and for
whom. In Saudi Arabia, a middle-aged man may want to hold hands
with a partner after closing a business deal. In Egypt, men walk hand in
hand in the street; in cafés, they fall asleep while lounging in each
other’s arms. These gestures, which would shock an American
businessman, are considered compliments in those cultures. The
meaning of hand signals is another form of nonverbal
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is based on the idea that people experience
their world through their language, and that they therefore understand
their world through the culture embedded in their language. The
hypothesis, which has also been called linguistic relativity, states that
language shapes thought. Studies have shown, for instance, that unless
people have access to the word “ambivalent,” they do not recognize an
experience of uncertainty due to conflicting positive and negative
feelings about one issue. Essentially, the hypothesis argues, if a person
cannot describe the experience, the person is not having the experience.
Another illustration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is seen in sexist
language, in which the use of male nouns and pronouns shapes how we
think about the world.. In older children’s books, words like fireman and
mailman are common, along with pictures of men in these jobs, and
critics say they send a message to children that these are male jobs, not
female jobs. If a teacher tells a second-grade class, “Every student
should put his books under his desk,” the teacher obviously means
students of both sexes but may be sending a subtle message that boys
matter more than girls. For these reasons, several guidebooks promote
the use of nonsexist language.
Symbols:
Every culture is filled with symbols, or things that stand for something
else and that often evoke various reactions and emotions. Symbols such
as gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words help people understand the
world. Symbols provide clues to understanding experiences. They
convey recognizable meanings that are shared by societies. Some
symbols are actually types of nonverbal communication, while other
symbols are in fact material objects. As the symbolic interactionist
perspective emphasizes, shared symbols make social interaction
possible.
The world is filled with symbols. Sports uniforms, company logos, and
traffic signs are symbols. In some cultures, a gold ring is a symbol of
marriage. Some symbols are highly functional, stop signs, for instance,
provide useful instruction. As physical objects, they belong to material
culture, but because they function as symbols, they also convey
nonmaterial cultural meanings. Some symbols are only valuable in what
they represent. Trophies, blue ribbons, or gold medals, for example,
serve no other purpose other than to represent accomplishments. But
many objects have both material and nonmaterial symbolic value.
A common non-verbal symbol is shaking hands, which is done in some
societies but not in others. It commonly conveys friendship and is used
as a sign of both greeting and departure. Probably all societies have
nonverbal symbols we call gestures, movements of the hand, arm, or
other parts of the body that are meant to convey certain ideas or
emotions. However, the same gesture can mean one thing in one society
and something quite different in another society. In the United States, for
example, if we nod our head up and down, we mean yes, and if we shake
it back and forth, we mean no. In Bulgaria, however, nodding means no,
while shaking our head back and forth means yes! In the United States,
if people make an ‘O’ by putting our thumb and forefinger together, we
mean ‘OK,’ but the same gesture in certain parts of Europe signifies an
obscenity. ‘Thumbs up’ in the United States means ‘great’ or
‘wonderful,’ but in Australia it means something different. Certain parts
of the Middle East and Asia would be offended if they saw you using
your left hand to eat, because they use their left hand for bathroom
hygiene.
Some of our most important symbols are objects. Here the U.S. flag is a
prime example. For most Americans, the flag is not just a piece of cloth
with red and white stripes and white stars against a field of blue. Instead,
it is a symbol of freedom, democracy, and other American values and,
accordingly, inspires pride and patriotism. During the Vietnam War,
however, the flag became to many Americans a symbol of war and
imperialism. Some burned the flag in protest, prompting angry attacks
by bystanders and negative coverage by the news media.
Other objects have symbolic value for religious reasons. Three of the
most familiar religious symbols in many nations are the cross, the Star of
David, and the crescent moon, which stand for Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam, respectively. Whereas many cultures attach no religious
significance to these shapes, for many people across the world they
evoke very strong feelings of religious faith. Recognizing this, hate
groups have often desecrated these symbols. Symbols often get noticed
when they are used out of context. Used unconventionally, symbols
convey strong messages. A stop sign on the door of a corporation makes
a political statement, as does a camouflage military jacket worn in an
antiwar protest. Together, the semaphore signals for ‘N’ and ‘D’
represent nuclear disarmament and form the well-known peace sign.
As these examples indicate, shared symbols, both nonverbal
communication and tangible objects, are an important part of any culture
but also can lead to misunderstandings and even hostility. These
problems underscore the significance of symbols for social interaction
and meaning.
Rituals:
A ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, actions, or
objects, performed in a sequestered place and according to a set
sequence. Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community,
including a religious community. Rituals are characterized, but not
defined, by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance,
sacral symbolism, and performance.
Different cultures also have different rituals, or established procedures
and ceremonies that often mark transitions in the life course. As such,
rituals both reflect and transmit a culture’s norms and other elements
from one generation to the next. Initiation and commencement
ceremonies in colleges and universities are familiar examples of timehonored rituals. In many societies, rituals help signify one’s gender
identity. For example, girls around the world undergo various types of
initiation ceremonies to mark their transition to adulthood. Among the
Bemba of Zambia, girls undergo a month-long initiation ceremony
called the chisungu, in which girls learn songs, dances, and secret terms
that only women know. In some cultures, special ceremonies also mark a
girl’s first menstrual period. Such ceremonies are largely absent in the
United States, where a girl’s first period is a private matter. But in other
cultures the first period is a cause for celebration involving gifts, music,
and food. Boys have their own initiation ceremonies, some of them
involving circumcision. That said, the ways in which circumcisions are
done and the ceremonies accompanying them differ widely. In the
United States, boys who are circumcised usually undergo a quick
procedure in the hospital. If their parents are observant Jews,
circumcision will be part of a religious ceremony, and a religious figure
called a moyel will perform the circumcision. In contrast, circumcision
among the Maasai of East Africa is used as a test of manhood. If a boy
being circumcised shows signs of fear, he might well be ridiculed.
Artifacts:
Artifacts are material objects that constitute a society’s material culture.
In the simplest societies, artifacts are largely limited to a few tools, the
huts people live in, and the clothing they wear. One of the most
important inventions in the evolution of society was the wheel.
Although the wheel was a great invention, artifacts are much more
numerous and complex in industrial societies. Because of technological
advances during the past two decades, many such societies today may be
said to have a wireless culture, as smartphones, netbooks and laptops,
and GPS devices now dominate so much of modern life. The artifacts
associated with this culture were unknown a generation ago.
Technological development created these artifacts and new language to
describe them and the functions they perform. Today’s wireless artifacts
in turn help reinforce our own commitment to wireless technology as a
way of life, if only because children are now growing up with them,
often even before they can read and write
All these of elements are important. They play a vital role in bringing
variety in society and form a unique way of life. These elements also
look different across cultures, and many change with time as a society
evolves.