Lecture - Culture

Culture

Instructor: Payton Andrews

“The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.”

Ralph Linton, Anthropologist

What is Culture?

• Culture – the values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects that form a people’s way of life.

• Society – People who interact in a defined territory and share a culture.

• Nonmaterial culture – ideas created by members of a society.

• Material culture – tangible things created by members of a society.

• Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct to ensure survival.

“Culture becomes the lens through which we perceive

and evaluate what is going on around us.”

Structural Functionalist Perspective on Culture

• Explains culture as a complex strategy for meeting human needs

• Integrates people into groups

• Provides coherence and stability in society

• Creates norms and values to socialize people in society

Social Conflict Perspective of Culture

• Link between culture and inequality

• Serves the interest of powerful groups (dominant elites)

• Can be a source of political resistance

Symbolic Interaction Perspective on Culture

• Creates group identity from diverse cultural meaning systems

• Changes as people produce new cultural meaning systems

• Is socially constructed through the activities of social groups

The Components of Culture

• Although cultures vary, they all have five common components:

(1) Symbols

(2) Language

(3) Values

(4) Beliefs

(5) Norms

Components of Culture:Symbols

• Symbols – anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share culture

• Not understanding the symbols of a culture leaves a person feeling lost and isolated

• Symbolic meaning may also vary within a single society

Components of Culture:Language

• Language – a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.

• Language allows for the continuity of culture.

• Cultural transmission – the process by which one generation passes culture to the next.

• Every society transmits culture through speech.

Components of Culture:Values and Beliefs

• Values – culturally defined standards by which people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.

• Beliefs – shared ideas that people hold to be true (stem from religion, myth, folklore, personal experience, or science).

• Values are abstract standards. • Beliefs are particular ideas that individuals

consider true or false.

Theoretical Perspectives on Beliefs

• Structural Functionalist – beliefs are a functional component of society, integrate people into social groups

• Social conflict – beliefs present potentially competing world views with dominant elites imposing their beliefs onto others

• Symbolic Interaction – beliefs are constructed and maintained through the social interaction people have with each other

Components of Culture: Norms• Norms – rules and expectations by which a

society guides the behavior of its members

• William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)

– Mores – norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance often upheld through rules and laws

– Folkways – norms for routine, casual interaction, ordinary customs (lighter sanctions)• Social Sanctions: consequences of

following or violating norms.

Norms - Folkway or More? sidewalk etiquette, driving laws

 Ethnomethodology• Technique for studying human

interaction.

• By disrupting social norms we can discover the true social order and norms become apparent.

• Culture is enforced by the social sanctions applied to those who violate the norms.

• Society exists “as if” there were no other way to do so.

Cultural Diversity• Cultural diversity can involve social

class.• Many cultural patterns are readily

accessible to only some members of a society.

• High/Elite culture – cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite.

• Popular culture – cultural patterns that are widespread.– Industrialization – greater cultural

divisions between people

Subculture• Subculture – cultural patterns that

set apart some segment of society’s population.

• Values that differ in some way.

• Almost everyone participates in many subcultures without having much commitment to any of them.

Counter-culture• Counter-culture – cultural patterns that

strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society.

• In many cultures, counterculture is linked with youth.

• Outright rejection of various conventional ideas

• Non-conformity to the dominant culture– Hippies

Ethnocentrism & Cultural Relativism

• Ethnocentrism

• the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture.

• A particular culture as the basis for everyone’s reality

• Cultural Relativism• the practice of

evaluating a culture by its own standards.

• It requires critical distance and understanding unfamiliar values and norms in their social context.

Sources of Cultural Change

1. Change in societal conditions.

2. Innovation.

3. Imposition by an outside agency (an invasion or political revolution).

Cultural Change• Cultural lag – refers to the delay in cultural

adjustments to changing social conditions.

• Cultural shock – personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life.

• Global culture – the diffusion of a single culture throughout the world.

• Cultural Universals – traits that are part of every known culture– Family, Religion, Funeral rites, Jokes, Art,

Economics, Social organization, Socialization, roles/status