Culture

1. Culture Chapter 3

2. What Is Culture? • Culture: Totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior • Includes ideas, values, customs, and artifacts of groups of people

3. What is Culture? • Material culture – physical or technological aspects of our daily lives • Nonmaterial culture - beliefs

4. Non Material Culture • Values – culturally defined standards which serve as broad guideline for social living • Beliefs- specific statements which people hold to be true

5. Non Material Culture • Norms – rules and expectations by which society guides the behavior of its members • Mores – norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance • Folkways – norms for routine, casual interaction

6. What is the purpose of culture? • Our major mode of adaptation • Sets limits on behavior and guides us along predictable paths • Becomes internalized • Doxa –things so deeply internalized that they come to be seen as “natural”

7. Characteristics of Culture • Culture is shared • uniquely • Culture is learned • Cultural transmission – passing of cultural traits from one generation to the next

8. Characteristics of Culture • Culture is based on symbols • Symbol – anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share culture • Language – a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with each other • Language is our most important symbolic system • Ensures the continuity of culture • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – people perceive the world through the cultural lens of language

9. Characteristics of Culture • Culture is integrated • Cannot change one element without impacting another • Cultural integration – close relationship among various elements of a cultural system • Cultural lag – period of maladjustment when on element of culture changes and disrupts a system • Change caused by • Innovation – introducing a new idea or object • Invention – creating new elements • Discovery – understanding an idea not fully understood before • Diffusion – spread of cultural traits

10. Culture and Society • Society is the largest form of human group • Common culture simplifies day-to-day interactions • Culture influences human behavior

11. Cultural Universals • Cultural universal: certain common practices and beliefs that all societies have developed • Many adaptations to meet essential human needs • Murdoch listed cultural universals but they are expressed differently from culture to culture

12. Ethnocentrism • Ethnocentrism: Tendency to assume that one’s own culture and way of life represents the norm or is superior to others • Our view of the world is dramatically influenced by the society in which we were raised

13. Cultural Relativism • Cultural relativism: People’s behaviors from the perspective of their own culture • Different social contexts give rise to different norms and values

14. Cultural Diversity • High culture – cultural patterns that distinguish a society’s elite • Popular culture – cultural patterns that are widespread among a society’s population • Subcultures – cultural patterns that distinguish some segment of a society’s population

15. Cultural Diversity • Counterculture – cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted in society

16. Globalization, Diffusion, and Technology • Diffusion: Refers to the process by which a cultural item spreads from group or society to society. • McDonalization of Society: Term used by George Ritzer to describe how the principles of fast-food restaurants have come to dominate more and more sectors of society throughout the world.

17. Globalization, Diffusion, and Technology • Technology: Defined by Gerhard Lenski as“Cultural information about the ways in which the material resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires.”

18. Culture and the Dominant Ideology • Dominantideology: Set of cultural beliefs and practices that help maintain powerful interests, including: • Social interests • Economic interests • Political interests • Conflict perspective: dominant ideology has major social significance • Growing number of social scientists believe it is not easy to identify a core culture in U.S.