CULTURE
WEEK 03
SOC101
DEFINITIONS
SOCIETY
CULTURE
The values the members of a
group hold, the norms they
follow, the material goods
they create, and the
languages and symbols they
use to construct their
understanding of the world,
including both speech and
writing.
Basic Concepts
Cultural Universals
Values or modes of behavior shared by all
human cultures.
Material Culture
Cultural ideas that are themselves physical
objects.
Non-Material Culture
Cultural ideas that are not themselves physical
objects.
Examples
Material Culture
Cuisine, Clothing,
Architecture, etc.
Non-Material Culture
Values, norms, symbols,
and language
LANGUAGE
Abstract system of word meanings and symbols for all aspects
of culture; includes written character, numerals, symbols, and
nonverbal gesture and expressions.
SAPIR-WHORF
HYPOTHESIS
• Language precedes thought
• Language is not a given
• Language is culturally
determined
• Language may color how we
see world
SYMBOLS
VALUES &
Anything that carries a specific
The cultural standards that
meaning that's recognized by
people use to decide what's good
people who share a culture
or bad, what's right or wrong.
BELIEFS
While Beliefs are specific ideas
about what people think is true
CULTURAL LAG
about the world.
NORMS
When a non material culture tries
The rules and expectations that
to adopt a material culture.
guide behavior within society.
TYPES OF NORMS
FOLKWAYS
The informal little rules that kind of go
without saying
MORES
More official than folkways and tend to be
codified, or formalized, as the stated rules
and laws of a society
TABOO
The norms that are crucial to a society’s
more center, involving behaviors that are
always negatively sanctioned.
ASPECTS OF CULTURE
Subculture
Counterculture
Cultural patterns that set apart a
Counter-cultures push back on
segment of society’s population.
mainstream culture in an attempt
For Example: Biker gangs
to change how society functions.
For Example: Punk
What would be
your reaction to
your friend
serving this at
his/her house
for dinner?
If your response is to say,
"disgusting"
"ew" "gross"
Then you might
be: Ethnocentric
If your response is to say,
"This is my friend's
culture and I
respect it"
Then you might be:
Cultural Relativist
CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
Ethnocentrism
Cultural
Relativism
The tendency to look at other
The practice of judging a
cultures through the eyes of one’s
own culture, and thereby
misrepresent them.
society by its own
standards