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Culture
Chapter 3
What is culture?
 Culture refers to the learned and shared behaviors, beliefs,
attitudes, values, and materialistic objects that characterize
a particular group or society.
 Culture influences what you eat, how you were raised, how
you will raise your children, what you wear, etc.
 Even people who feel they are individualist, conform to most
cultural rules.
Society is a group of people who share a culture.
Society and culture are often used interchangeably
Characteristics of Culture
 Culture is learned—learn customs, attitudes, and beliefs
 Culture is transmitted from one generation to the next—
We learn through family, relatives, friends, media and formal settings
 Culture is shared—brings members of a society together with a sense of
belonging
 Culture is adaptive and always changing—new inventions,
changes in attitudes
Culture reflects who
we are, but it’s
people who create
culture.
Material Culture- consist of the physical objects that
people make, use and share
Examples: jewelry, internet, hairstyles, music, furniture
Nonmaterial culture- consists of the ideas that people
create to interpret and understand the world
Examples: beliefs and attitudes, customs, rules of
behavior
Cultural Lag: When material culture changes faster than
non-material culture
Building Block of Culture
Symbols
Language
Values
Norms
Rituals
Symbols
Anything that stands for something else and has a particular
meaning for people who share a culture
 Represents a thing or an aspect
 Holds a specific meaning for people who share a culture
 Helps people engage in symbolic interaction
 Take many forms
 Distinguish one culture from another
 Unify or divide a society
 Change over time
Language
A system of shared symbols that enables people to
communicate with each other.
 Invention of human thought that people have endowed with
meaning
 Determines thoughts and behaviors
 Influences how people perceive genders, races, and
ethnicities
 Words create and reinforce positive and negative images
about race and ethnicity
 Dynamic and changes with society
 Cultural and technological changes in the vocabulary are
represented by various words
 Sexting, ebook, tweet, staycation, twerk, unfriend, and selfie
Language is important…..
 Helps people understand various aspects
 Daily experiences, ideas, communication and attitudes
and behavior
 Directs thinking and controls actions
 Shapes expression of emotions
 Gives people a sense of belonging to a group
Values
Standards by which people define:





Good or bad
Moral or immoral
Proper or improper
Desirable or undesirable
Beautiful or ugly
 Provide guidelines for daily behavior
 Change due to technological advances, immigration, and
contact with outsiders
 Shift over time
Norms
Specific rules of right and wrong behavior
 Tell us what we should, ought, and must do, as well as what
we should not, ought not, and must not do
 Make lives orderly and predictable
 Characteristics





Unwritten - Passed down orally from generation to generation
Instrumental-serve a specific purpose
Change over timeConditional - Apply in specific situations
Rigid or flexible- based on situations
Types of Norms

Folkways: Involve everyday customs, practices, and interaction
 Exemplified by etiquette rules
 Vary from one country to another
 Change in response to macro-level changes

Mores: Maintain morals and ethics
(must dos)
 Considered to be important by people
 Define must behavior
 Taboos: Strong prohibitions of any act that is forbidden because it’s considered to be
(ought to dos)
offensive

Laws: Formally defined norms about what is permissible or illegal
 Defined by political authority holding the power to punish violators
 Deliberate, formal, and enforced
 Change over time
 Vary across societies
(must dos)
Sanctions: Rewards for appropriate behavior and/or penalties for inappropriate behavior
 Mild when people violate folkways
 Severe for violating mores and laws
 Inconsistent in nature
Rituals
Formal and repeated behavior that unite people
 Have transmission and reinforcement of norms
 Unites people and strengthens relationships
 Outward symbol of value
Cultural Similarities
 Cultural universals: Customs and practices that are
common to all societies
 Specific behaviors vary across cultures, among groups in
the same society, and over time
 Ideal culture: Beliefs, values, and norms that people
say they hold
 Real culture: People’s everyday behavior
Ethnocentrism and Cultural
Relativism
Ethnocentrism: Belief that one’s culture, society or group is
superior to others
 Functional - Promotes loyalty and cultural unity
 Reinforces conformity and maintains stability
 Dysfunctional - Generates hatred, discrimination, and conflict
 Discourages intergroup understanding and cooperation
Cultural relativism: Belief that no culture is better than
another
 Maintains that culture should be judged by its own standards
Cultural Variations
Subculture

Group within a society that has distinctive norms, values, beliefs, lifestyle or language

Existing in U.S. society are based on:
 Ethnicity
 Religion
 Politics
 Sex, gender, and age
 Occupation and social class
 Music, art, and Recreation
Counterculture
Groups that oppose and/or reject the dominant culture’s norms, values, or laws
 Emerge when people believe they can not achieve their goals within the existing society
 Most are law-abiding
 Some are extreme and violent
Multiculturalism

Coexistence of several cultures without dominating each other in a same geographical area

Otherwise known as cultural pluralism

Encourages intercultural dialogue

Aims to decrease ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination
Culture Shock

Confusion, disorientation, or anxiety that accompanies exposure to an unfamiliar way of life

Affects each person in a different way

Involves differences of food, clothes, punctuality, ideas, language, the pace of life, and a lack of privacy
High Culture and Popular
Culture
High Culture
 Cultural expression of a society’s highest social classes
Popular Culture
 Beliefs, practices, activities, and products that are
widespread among a population
Cultural Capital
 Resources such as knowledge, verbal and social skills,
education, and other assets that gives a group advantages
Cultural Change
 Diffusion - Spreads components of culture from one society to another
 Direct and interpersonal - Trade, tourism, immigration, intermarriage, or
invasions
 Indirect and impersonal in nature - Internet transmissions
 Invention - Creating new things
 Innovation - Turning inventions into mass-market products
 Discovery - Involves exploration and investigation
 Results in new products, insights, ideas, or behavior
 Requires dedication and commitment
 Serendipity effect - Discoveries that occur by chance
 External pressures
 Direct form - Dominant group uses force to bring cultural change in other
groups
 Indirect form - Involves criticism
Sociological Perspective on
Culture