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culture
culture
why is culture essential to our survival, what is common to all cultures, and how they vary?
what is culture?
a culture is a design for living, or more precisely, that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by the human being as a member of society
society & culture compared
society consists of people interacting with one another in a patterned, predictable way
culture consists of:– abstract ideas that influence people (nonmaterial
culture)– tangible, human made objects that reflect those
ideas (material culture)
nonmaterial culture
cognitive component: knowledge and beliefs
normative component: norms and values
symbolic component: signs and language
cognitive
culture help us to develop certain knowledge and beliefs about what goes on around us
knowledge is a collection of ideas and facts about our physical and social worlds, which are relatively objective, reliable, or verifiable
beliefs are ideas that are more subjective, unreliable or unverifiable
normative
each culture has its own idea not only about what is important in the world but also how people should act
values are socially shared ideas about what is good, desirable or important
these shared ideas are usually the basis of a society’s norms, rules that specify how people should behave
norms
folkways – norms that are rather trivial, relatively weak, only expecting us to behave properly in our everyday lives
mores – insist that we behave morally, and violations of such norms will be severely punished
why do values have power over our behavior?
our parents, teachers, and other socializing agents teach us our society’s values so that we will feel it is right and natural to obey its norms
values contain an element of moral persuasion
values carry implied sanctions against people who reject them
symbolic
a symbol is a language, gesture, sound or anything that stands for some other thing.
symbols enable us to create, communicate and share, and transmit to the next generation the other components of culture
it is through symbols that we get immersed in culture and in the process become fully human
symbols : its characteristics
arbitrary: a word may mean whatever a group of humans have agreed it is supposed to mean
open system: we can blend and combine symbols to express whatever ideas come into our heads; we can create new messages, and the potential number of messages that we can send is infinite
nonverbal communication
kinesics: body language; the use of body movement as means of communication
proxemics: the use of space as a means of communication – unless someone violates what we consider our personal space
the power of language: sapir-whorf hypothesis
human beings live at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium expression for their society
language predisposes us to the see the world in a certain way
evolution & culture
according to the theory of natural selection, the biological characteristics of every species change over the generations and evolutionary change takes place in either of the following situations:– physical environment changes– a species move to a new environment– competition among species
evolution & culture
humans today are the product of a tremendously long process of evolution – and that caused us to lose nearly all our instincts – biologically fixed traits that enable the carrier to perform complex tasks
the loss of instincts has made us more dependent on each other, but the development of culture has also loosened our bondage to the natural environment
cultural universals
cultural universals – point of similarities in all cultures, i.e., need for clothing, complex communication, social order and esthetic and spiritual experiences are basic necessities of human social life
ethnocentrism
ethnocentrism: an attitude that our own culture is superior to other people’s, i.e. we think that the way we live is right and that other people’s way of life are wrong, uncivilized, or unnatural
ethnocentrism: is so powerful, it is bound to make us extremely biased against other cultures and to distort our observation of what they are really like
cultural relativism
It involves judging a culture on its own terms, i.e. since the terms of the culture – the participants’ perceptions, feelings, or viewpoints – are either completely or largely known to outsiders, social scientists usually try to become insiders so as to understand the native’s point of view
ecological perspective
attributes cultural variations to differences in the natural environment
humans must adapt to their environment to survive and they adapt through their cultures
functional perspective
explains cultural practice by referring to its function for the society as a whole
key terms
belief: an idea that is relatively subjective, unreliable, or unverifiable counterculture: a subculture whose norms and values sharply
contradict those the larger society but which is basically not illegal or criminal
cultural relativism: evaluating other cultures in their own terms, with the result of not passing judgment on them
cultural universal: a practice that is found in all cultures as a means for meeting the same human need
deviant subculture: a subculture whose values are in conflict with those of the dominant culture and which tends to be illegal or criminal
ethnocentrism: the attitude that one’s own culture is superior to that of others
folkways: weak norms that specify expectations about proper behavior
key terms
instincts: fixed traits that are inherited and enable the carrier to perform complex tasks
kinesics: use of body movements as a means of communication knowledge: a collection of relatively objective ideas and facts about
physical and social world laws: norms that are specified formally in writing, and backed by the
power of the state material culture: all the physical objects produced by humans as
members of society mores: strong norms that specify normal behavior and constitute
demands, not just expectations natural selection: process in which organisms that are well-adapted
to their environment have more offspring that the less well-adapted, thereby producing evolution
key terms
nonmaterial culture: norms, values, and all the other intangible component of culture
norm: a social rule that directs people to behave in a certain way proxemics: perception and use of space as a means of
communication sanction: formal or informal rewards for conformity to norms, or
punishments for violation of norms subculture: a culture within a larger culture symbol: a thing that stands for some other thing value: a socially shared idea that something is good, desirable or
important variable subculture: a subculture that is different from but
acceptable to the dominant culture