Unit 2- Culture
I.
CULTURE AND SOCIETY
A. Culture determines a people’s way of life. Culture and society are often used
interchangeably
1. A society is a group of people that has lived and worked together long enough to
become an organized population and to think of themselves as a social unit.
2. A culture guides people’s interactions, and shapes their experiences and behavior.
B. All human societies share some cultural characteristics.
1. Characteristics of Culture include:
a. Culture is learned. It is not innate.
b. Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next. Humans pass on
attitudes, customs, and habits making culture cumulative.
c. Culture is shared, bringing members of a society together.
d. Culture is adaptive and always changing. Culture adaptation is a survival
strategy.
2. Changing American Attitudes
a. Attitudes concerning premarital sex have changed over the years. In 1969, 68
percent of Americans responded to surveys that premarital sex was wrong. In
2007, that number was only 38 percent.
b. Choices and Constraints: What do Americans think about unwarranted wire
taps?
c. President George Bush’s USA PATRIOT ACT has led to controversy as the act has
allowed spying on American citizen’s telephones and email communications
without a warrant. Originally in support of the act, many Americans see the
activities as a violation of civil rights. This situation brings into question the
constraints and freedoms Americans perceive as important.
C. Material and Nonmaterial Culture
1. Material culture consists of the tangible objects that members of a society make, use, and
share.
2. Nonmaterial culture includes the shared set of meanings that people use to interpret and
understand the world. Symbols, values, beliefs, sanctions, customs, and rules of behavior
are examples of nonmaterial culture.
II. THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF CULTURE
A. The building blocks of culture are interdependent and interconnected in everyday life.
1. A symbol is anything that stands for something else, and has a particular meaning for
people who share a culture. People influence each other with symbols. They are engaging
in symbolic interaction.
a. Symbols can take many forms. These can include a number of forms including
both words and gestures.
b. For instance in Islamic societies, many women wear a head scarf (hijab or hejab)
that covers their hair and neck. The variety of veils is just a piece of cloth, but
mean different things to people across and within cultures. For Non-Muslims the
veil may mean repression for the women. However for many Muslims it is a dress
and moral code.
c. Symbols affect cross-cultural views of a particular society. American consumerism
in other societies for instance.
d. Symbols can unify or divide a country. Cultural symbols may have multiple
meanings. An example is pictures of firemen raising the American flag after 9/11.
e. Symbols change over time. Symbols communicate information that varies across
time and across societies.
B. Language is a system of shared symbols that enables people to communicate with one another.
1. Children learn language without training. Humans have the capacity for language.
a. Language is important because it is what makes us human. It directs our thinking
and behavior.
b. Language is important for determining how we experience gender.
c. Language is important for determining how we experience race and ethnicity.
d. Language can reinforce stereotypes.
e. Language changes over time. It reflects social and cultural change in a society. An
example is the country of Ireland, where some areas continue to use Gaelic on
street signs to preserve the language.
C. Values are the standards by which members of a particular culture define what is good or bad,
moral or immoral, proper or improper, desirable or undesirable, beautiful or ugly
1. Core U.S. values reflect a way of life that is widespread, enduring over time, and reflects
people’s feelings. They are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Achievement and success. The U.S. has a strong work ethic.
Activity and work designed to generate success.
Morality and a strong sense of ought behavior.
Humanitarianism characterized by kindness, comfort, and support.
Efficiency and practicality centered on technology and innovation. U.S. culture is
characterized by practical approaches to knowledge.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
Progress based on a view of the future and not the past. The U.S. is a society that
values progressive change over linking to the past.
U.S. culture focuses on material comfort often provided by technology and
consumerism.
Equality is considered a key component of the nation’s legal system.
Freedom is a key component of the U.S. belief system. Most of the nation’s
primary doctrines refer to freedom.
Conformity in order to be accepted, to get social approval, or achieve success is a
U.S. culture trait.
Nationalism and patriotism reflect loyalty to institutions and symbols because they
represent values such as democracy and respect for individuals.
Democratic faith in the people is an important idea in the U.S.
Individuality reflects the nation’s drive for personal development and success.
Values are often emotion laden. People in the U.S. are passionate about their
cultural ideas.
2. Values Vary Across Cultures and Change Over Time
a. For instance, the Japanese parliament recently passed a law making love of country
a compulsory part of school curricula The government is trying to resist
individualism by promoting Japanese values of self-discipline, responsibility, and
respect for others.
b. Another example of how cultures change is surveys showing changes in college
students’ core values. Surveys show a meaningful philosophy of life has been
replaced by being rich.
D. Norms are a society’s specific rules of right and wrong behavior. They are sometimes referred to
as ought behavior.
1. Norms are characterized as unwritten, instrumental, explicit, implicit, changing,
conditional and rigid or flexible.
a. Norms are not universally applied to all groups. For instance a female professor’s
evaluations might read she needs to dress like a professor while her professor
husband can continue to wear casual wear.
b. In the U.S. young adults are expected to become independent while in China they
are expected to remain with aging adults and care for them.
2. Folkways are norms that members of a society (or a group within society) look upon as
not being critical and that may be broken without severe punishment.
3. Mores are strong norms that members of a society consider very important. They are
sometimes called “must” behavior and are backed up by social penalties.
4. Laws are norms involving formal rules about behavior that are defined by a political
authority which has the power to punish violators.
5. An example of how laws develop or do not develop is the aguinaldo tradition in Latin
America. The custom involves employers giving extra money for Christmas. The money
can be as much as three month’s salary. Aguinaldo takes the place of negotiated wages
and is socially expected every year around the Christmas season.
6. Sanctions are rewards for “good” or appropriate behavior or penalties for “bad” or
inappropriate behavior. They can be positive or negative with accompanying responses.
Sanctions vary around the world.
III. SOME CULTURAL SIMILARITIES
A. Cultural universals are customs and practices that are common to all societies. All societies create
expectations around cultural practices. A list of cultural universals can be found in table 3.2.
1. Cultural universals do not mean cultures interpret practices the same. All societies have
food taboos, but practices about what we ought and ought not to eat differ across
societies.
2. Real versus Ideal Culture refers to differences in how a culture acts out what it believes.
Ideal culture refers to the beliefs, values, and norms people say they hold while real
culture refers to the actual behavior that a society engages in.
3. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s culture and way of life are superior to those of other
groups. This attitude leads people to view other cultures as inferior, wrong, backward,
immoral, or barbaric.
a. Examples of ethnocentrism in U.S. history are the exclusionary acts of 1882 and
1924, which placed quotas on the Chinese, Italians, and Jewish people.
Ethnocentrism can cause one to be hostile. Ethnocentrism can also be functional.
Pride in one’s country promotes loyalty and cultural unity. When children learn
their country’s national anthem and customs, they have a sense of belonging.
4.
Culture Relativism is recognizing that no culture is better than another and that a culture should be
judged by its own standards.
IV. SOME CULTURAL VARIATIONS
A. There is diversity found both between and within cultures.
1. A subculture is a group or category of people whose distinctive ways of thinking, feeling,
and acting differ somewhat from those of the larger society.
a. A subculture can groups which identify with ethnicity, religion, politics, sex and
gender, age, occupation, music and art, physical ability, social class, or recreation
among others.
b. A subculture may be college students who identify with certain styles, vocabularies,
or housing.
2. Counterculture is a group that deliberately opposes and consciously rejects some of the
basic beliefs, values, and norms of the dominant culture.
a. An example of a counterculture is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Many counterculture
groups violate laws.
3. Multiculturalism (sometimes called cultural pluralism) refers to the coexistence of many
cultures in the same geographic area, without any one culture dominating another.
4. Culture shock is a sense of confusion, uncertainty, disorientation, or anxiety that accompanies
exposure to an unfamiliar way of life or environment. Culture shock is often based food, clothes,
or hygiene differences in populations.
V. POPULAR CULTURE
A. Popular culture refers to the beliefs, practices, activities, and products that are widely shared
among a population in everyday life. Popular culture includes television, music, magazines, radio,
advertising, sports, hobbies, fads, fashions, and movies as well as the food we eat, the people with
whom we spend time, the gossip we share, and the jokes we pass along to others.
1. Individuals interact with popular culture shaping its direction while they participate.
2. Popular cultural can increase bad behaviors such as U.S. sugar consumption leading to
poor health. Many European countries forbid advertising to children unlike companies in
the U.S.
3. The mass media are forms of communication that are designed to reach a large audience.
4. Newspapers and magazines can influence public opinion. Coverage of events can be
deceptive. Critics argue that those engaging in popular culture can be controlled and
manipulated by its creators in newspapers and magazines, television, movies, music, and
ads.
5. Advertising and Commercials inundates U.S. society. The average person in the U.S.
views 3,000 ads per day and 40,000 commercial on television per year. Critics of U.S.
morning television, for instance, point out that many morning shows are a kind of
“sophisticated infomercial.”
B. Cultural Imperialism is when the cultural values and products of one nation influence or
dominate those of another country. Cultural imperialism can refer to situations where popular
cultural icons become popular in another country, such as Elvis in Japan.
VI. CULTURAL CHANGE AND TECHNOLOGY
A. Cultural integration is the basis for cultural stability. Cultural integration is defined as
consistency of various aspects of society, order, and stability.
B. Cultural Change is a complicated process. It becomes even more complicated is a globalizing
world. The example of Joe Smith shows how cultural change is a global process.
1. Diffusion is the process through which components of culture spread from one society to
another.
2. Innovation and Invention are main causes of cultural change.
3. Discovery results in new products, insights, ideas, or behavior. Discovery is often the
application of scientific processes.
4. External Pressures can cause cultural change. It is often caused by threats, war, or
colonization. Change can also be causes by external forces using international public
opinion.
5. Changes in the physical environment can also cause cultural change. Disasters cause
changes that are far reaching. An example is the Nulak-Makú in Colombia who moved
out of the Amazon jungle for assistance after interaction with the outside world.
C. Technology Lag and Cultural Lag
1. Cultural lag is used to describe the gap when nonmaterial culture changes more slowly
than material culture.
VII. SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE
A. Functionalist focus on seeing culture as cement that holds society together. Norms and values
promote stability and holds society together.
1. Culture can be dysfunctional when it starts to impede integration. This might occur when
immigrants enter a society and change its values.
2. Functionalists are criticized for overlooking diversity and change.
B. Conflict theorists argue that culture can lead to inequality. Because the rich and powerful
determine economic, political, educational, and legal policies for their own benefit and control the
mass media, the average American has little power in changing the status quo—whether it’s low
wages, a disastrous war, or corporate corruption.
1. Critics of conflict theory argue that the perspective often emphasize divisiveness and
don’t appreciate how culture bonds people to a society.
C. Feminist scholars use gender based analysis to examine multicultural variations across groups.
1. Feminists focus on how gender affects our cultural experiences.
2. Critiques of feminism are that the perspective promotes divisiveness and focuses on low
income and middle class men and women ignoring how women can exploit other groups.
D. Symbolic interactionists try to understanding how people interpret culture and transmit norms and
values through social interaction.
1. Symbolic interactionists focus on how culture influences our daily lives and how
meaning is created through cultural symbols.
2. Critiques of the perspective point out that it ignores power and the relationship between
institutions and cultural meanings.