Introduction to Sociology
Kathy Edwards
Lecture 4
Cultural Lag
When some parts of culture change,
and other parts do not. Material
culture often changes first.
Cultural Lag
• Technology, science, and economics are the
engines that drive our society, non material
culture or our ideas lag behind.
Cultural Lag
• Example: The public school system, most
are on a 9 month term, this is from the early
19th century, and has not caught up with
new patterns of work, and living.
Technological Determinism
The view that technology is the new
determinate of our culture, that
technology has life of it’s own,
forcing humans to follow it’s lead.
Cultural diffusion/assimilation
Groups that adapt part of other
people’s way of life, remaining open
to changes. This occurs via increased
contact with others: travel &
communication
Cultural Leveling
The process by which cultures
become similar, through
industrialization, technology,
capitalism
Cultural leveling
• Western culture: Radio shack, McDonald’s,
Disney, Coca Cola, rock music, clothes
• The incorporation of Western culture into
the world via globalization
• Eventually, everyplace starts to look like
every other place.
Values
• Values determine for us what is desirable in
our life;
• If we learn other people’s values we learn
about other people;
• Values underlie our preferences, our
choices, indicate what we deem as
worthwhile in our society.
Values
• Values are “general” rules for behavior and
perceptions we hold in a society.
• Norms develop out of our values.
• Norms are the expectations, rules of
particular behaviors which come out of our
everyday life.
Values
• Norms are particular ways that we act, and
prescribed behavior and rules governing our
everyday life.
• With Norms come sanctions, rewards,
punishments - you receive approval or
disapproval for upholding or violating
norms.
Norms
• Positive and negative sanctions, rewards, or
punishments occur that are social
consequences if we adhere or violate a
norm.
• Rewards are smiles, claps, hugs, high 5,
prize, trophy, money; negative sanctions or
punishments are frowns, stares, fists, harsh
words…norms become laws!
Norms
•
•
•
•
Regulation of appearance and behavior
Define and maintain boundaries
Norms support cultural values.
Desirable behavior is attached to an actual
expectation with social consequences.
Norms
• There are norms that govern us in everyday
life.
• How do you act at Church? A ballgame?
Greeting someone? A rock concert?
Types of Norms
• Folkways: These are norms that are not
strictly enforced, we expect people to
comply, but if they don’t we don’t make a
big deal about it. Situational: Walking on
one side of the sidewalk, going up and
down stairs, elevator behavior
• Customs, habits, commonly accepted
practices
Types of Norms
• Folkways: Usually involve unimportant
matters: table manners, accepting your
place in line rather than cutting ahead,
wearing appropriate clothing.
• Few restrictions, and mild sanctions.
Types of Norms
• Mores: Means “manners” in French.
Mores are norms that are essential to
American Values, close to legalistic.
• Attitudes from the past, habituated, very
little deviation allowed
• Duties, obligations, common to cultural
morality
Types of Norms
• Mores: The fundamental ideas about what
is right/wrong, virtuous and sinful.
• Important because they involve moral
vision based on social cohesion, continuity,
and community in human life.
• Mores eventually become LAWS.
• Part of social life, not changing.
Mores
• Strict enforcement, and insistence on
conformity, we learn through socialization
via our institutions in society.
• Examples: “prescribed” gender roles;
Americans eat beef, not horse, dog, cat; you
do not expose your genitals in public
Mores
• Part of moral behavior which includes the
following:
• not in self interest
• command/obligation to do right
• desirable, satisfactory
• sacred authority
Taboo
• A taboo is a norm so strongly ingrained that
to violate it creates disgust, revulsion,
horror - the thought of it makes people sick:
• Eating human flesh - cannibalism
• Incest - having sex with relatives
• Pedophilia - adults having sex with children
Law
• Laws are norms with strict and formal
sanctions, punishments - to violate a law is
to violate society itself.
• Codified, and enforcement is reserved for
those in positions of authority.
• Formal legal codes are necessary to manage
relationships in interdependent, self
interested, contractual societies.
Laws
• Criminal law has to do with formal, clear
definitions, specialization, and enforcement.
Prohibits behaviors such as murder, fraud,
desecrating sacred objects or places.
• Civil law has to do with social relations,
disputes, compensation, loss through
negligence - example family law.
Laws
• All societies have some form of law the
prohibit certain behaviors.
• Law comes from mores.
• Most societies have similar laws and mores,
but the rule of sociology is:
• “One culture’s mores are another group’s
folkways, and another group’s laws!”
• (cultural and ethical relativism)