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Culture and social structure

Culture and social structure. Ms. currey. Learning goals:. 1.Explain how culture and heredity affect social behavior . 2.What are the criticisms of sociobiology? 3. Where do norms come from and how to they affect our behavior? List 3 types of norms.

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Culture and social structure

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  1. Culture and social structure Ms. currey

  2. Learning goals: • 1.Explain how culture and heredity affect social behavior. • 2.What are the criticisms of sociobiology? • 3. Where do norms come from and how to they affect our behavior? List 3 types of norms. • 4. Why does culture change? Is cultural change good? • 5. Does ethnocentrism help or hurt a society? • 6. Identify similarities in cultures around the world. Why are there similarities in cultures around the world?

  3. Culture • Knowledge, values, customs and physical objects that are shared by members of a society. • Society: specific territory inhabited by people who share a common culture

  4. Does Culture or biology Affect behavior? • Both! • Why is culture more important than biology? We are not controlled by our instincts because we don’t need them to survive anymore. Ex: Eating when you are not hungry.

  5. Heredity and Behavior • About ½ of our personality traits come from genes.

  6. Reflexes and drives • Eat, drink, associate with others, react to pain. • BUT expression of our reflexes and drives can be dif based on culture. Ex: Be a MAN! Don’t cry!

  7. Sociobiology • The study of the biological basis for human behavior. • Assumes that the behaviors that best help people are biologically based and transmitted through the genetic code.

  8. Criticisms of sociobiology • Can be used as justification for racial inferiority • Too much variation in societies around the world for behavior to be explained with biology • Main lesson: genes work WITH culture. Men and women prefer different things in romantic partners. Is this biological?

  9. How are language and culture related • Language is a way to create and spread culture. • Easy way to transmit culture. • Exposure to another language or new words can alter perception.

  10. Cultural Relativism • Story of girl who wanted to build a well in Africa…..

  11. Norms and Values • Norms: the rules we live by. May not even think about them unless violated. Ex: cutting in line.

  12. 3 types of norms • Folkways, mores, and laws. • Folkways: norms that lack moral significance ex: sleep in bed not floor • Mores: norms that have morals that should be followed: if you can work you SHOULD work. • Taboo: most serious mores: violation calls for strong punishment • Laws: norm that is FORMALLY defined and enforced by officials. Consciously created while mores emerge slowly and are often created unconsciously

  13. Enforcing the Rules • Rules must be learned and accepted. • How? Sanctions! Rewards and punishments used to encourage people to follow norms. • Informal Sanctions: can be applied by most members of a group (ex stare at someone who talks during a movie • Formal Sanctions: only applied by officially designated people like judges or teachers. • As we age, we start to conform w/our sanctions because we want to avoid guilt or social disapproval.

  14. Values: Basis for norms • Shared broad ideas about what is good or desirable. • Note: people can have similar values with dif norms. Ex: US and Soviet Union had value of freedom but they had very dif norms in their society.

  15. Why are Values important? • They form the basis for norms. • Involved in most aspects of daily life. • Ideal of freedom in Americas affects family relationships, how people are treated in the legal systems, worship, and running of organizations.

  16. Basic values of the us • Achievement and success • Activity and work • Efficiency and practicality • Equality • Democracy • Group superiority (place greater value on people of own race) • Some think honesty, optimism and friendliness should be added to this list.

  17. Beliefs and material culture • Behavior based on beliefs. • Material culture: the concrete tangible objects of a culture: cars, books, chairs….. No meaning unless people give it to them • Non-material culture: cultural meaning not determined by physical characteristics of objects. Based on beliefs, norms and values people hold w/regards to them. Newspaper and Pepper story (p93)

  18. Ideal and real culture • Ideal: cultural guidelines that group members claim to accept. (honesty) • Real: actual behavior patterns (tax evasion)

  19. Cultural diversity and similarity • Why does culture change? • Discovery: women can play sports! • Invention: creation of something new (cell phones, i-pods , facebook have big effect on life) • Diffusion: borrowing aspects of culture from other cultures. Ex: pizza hut, KFC all over the world

  20. Facebook Debate! • Read articles together: • http://www.sociology.org/featured/friend • http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/itslideshow/5916773.cms • Discuss!

  21. Cultural Diversity • Some is result of social categories: grouping of persons that share a social characteristic: age, gender, religion……….

  22. subcultures and counterculture • Subculture: part of dominant culture but differs in some important respects. Ex: China town in San Francisco • Counterculture: subculture deliberately and consciously opposed to certain cultural beliefs or attitudes of dominant culture. Ex: white supremacists.

  23. ethnocentrism • When people learn their culture and tend to be strongly committed to it and cannot imagine any other way of life. • Olympics!

  24. Does ethnocentrism help or hurt society? • Both! People feel good about themselves in a group- leads to stability, traditions… • BUT if a society is too rigid, it can prevent change for the better.

  25. Cultural Universals • Traits that exist in all cultures (over 70!) p 107 sports, cooking, division of labor…. • How are they expressed? Different for dif cultures. EX: caring for kids: U.S.: mostly done by women. New Guinea: men

  26. Why do cultural universals exist? • 1. Biological similarity shared by all humans. Ex: childcare necessary for survival of species. • 2. Physical Environment: All people need to protect themselves from environment with things like shelter, armies etc… • 3. Social Problems: Goods must be produced and distributed, tasks must be assigned, work must be accomplished and dif cultures develop similar methods of solving these problems.

  27. review: • 1.Explain how culture and heredity affect social behavior. • 2.What are the criticisms of sociobiology? • 3. Where do norms come from and how to they affect our behavior? List 3 types of norms. • 4. Why does culture change? Is cultural change good? • 5. Does ethnocentrism help or hurt a society? • 6. Identify similarities in cultures around the world. Why are there similarities in cultures around the world?

  28. Social Norms Experiment

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