Notes: culture, the society’s socially learned and shared ideas, behaviors, and material components.
Material culture, the physical artifacts representing components of society, and nonmaterial culture, ideas and symbols representing components of society, are the two basic types of culture (C-19). Material culture includes electronic devices, houses, toys, automobiles, and food. Languages, customs, philosophies, morals, and knowledge represent nonmaterial culture. Material culture is easier to identify.
Ideal culture, the ideals and values that a society professes to believe, represents the majority of members of society
t a symbol, an idea or object that has a shared meaning to groups of people
Every society, and every region within society, has a unique language, words and symbols used to communicate (HP), characteristics that produce distinctive and stable arrangements of social patterns that form the society. Verbal language, a system of spoken and written words,
The Sapir-Whorf theory, a theoretical perspective that suggests people view society through the framework of language, states that it is difficult to understand a culture without understanding the influence of language
Nonverbal language, a system of communication using symbols such as facial expressions, gestures, and proximity of the body, can be just as powerful as spoken words, if not more so. Consider the example of personal space, the physical region surrounding an individual that is considered private.
The third element of culture is beliefs, ideas generally held to be true in society (HP). Beliefs include ideas, viewpoints, and attitudes held by groups of people in a society. Traditions, science, religion, superstitions, and ideologies mold and shape our beliefs. One commonly held belief among Americans is technological determinism, the idea that society’s technology drives the development of its social structures.
These beliefs spawned values, collective ideas about what is desirable and undesirable in society (HP), such as efficiency and practicality, that are still present in the U.S. today. Like beliefs, values are based on ideas that have grown from a consensus of opinions within a society.
Upon closer examination of the list of values, you will notice value contradictions, conflicting issues between values.
There are also value contradictions concerning sustainable development, development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
These elements are maintained in our culture through norms, established guidelines, behaviors, and expectations that are accepted in a given range of social situations
Folkways, informal and common norms that guide everyday behavior, are norms encountered throughout your day.
However, the violation of mores, (more-ayz), informal norms based on moral and ethical factors, typically results in minimal to severe disapproval.
Taboos, formal norms that, if violated, cause revulsion and the most severe social sanctions, are considered abhorrent to most members of society.
Severe negative social sanctions, punishments or rewards that support socially approved norms
Cultural transmission, the means by which culture is passed from generation to generation, is an essential tool for the health and perpetuation of communities.
Within society, the dominant ideology, the beliefs and interests of the majority, typically takes precedence over all others. This can lead to problems for those with different beliefs, interests, perspectives, or resources.
On the international stage, it is easy to see how social problems can develop between groups due to cultural imperialism, the influence and power of one country’s culture on a country due to importing goods and services.
In societies around the world, people often belong to subcultures, groups with a distinct set of cultural characteristics shared by a minority of people in society.
countercultures are subculture groups that are in opposition or contrast with the majority of the members of society.
Functionalist Theory: Functionalist theory is concerned with how cultures operate interdependently as societies evolve. Functionalists focus on how society adapts to a changing culture through shifts in norms, values, and ideologies.
Symbolic Interactionism: Symbolic interactionist theory focuses on the role symbols play in everyday life and our experience of the world around us.
to as cultural universals, aspects of culture found in all societies.
The reason your parents would never have considered these alternative forms of shelter has to do with what Durkheim called social facts, social patterns that are external to individuals and greatly influence our way of thinking and behaving in society.
ethnocentrism, judging another culture by one’s own standards
An alternative way to respond to situations outside our cultural norm is cultural relativism, understanding another culture from its standards. In other words, instead of looking at the situation from the standpoint of a person from Anywhere, USA, consider it from the perspective of a member of that culture
cultural diffusion, the spread of norms, values, knowledge, symbols, and material components from one society to another.
When some parts of society change quickly and others more slowly, sociologists call this cultural lag, the process by which technological development and progress outpace current norms, values, knowledge, symbols, and material components of society
cultural leveling, the process of cultures becoming similar due to factors such as media and globalization, is what happens when societies adopt a new culture they have been exposed to, resulting in similarity from one society to the next.
popular culture, cultural characteristics adopted, imitated, and idolized by the masses
Compared to pop culture, high culture consists of cultural characteristics associated with the dominant and elite members of society.