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Chapter 3
Culture
Terminology
• Culture shock
– Disorientation due to the inability to make
sense out of one’s surroundings
• Domestic and foreign travel
• Nonmaterial culture
– The intangible world of ideas created by
members of a society
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Terminology
• Material culture
– Tangible things created by members of
society
• Cultural relativism
– More accurate understanding
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Symbols
• Anything that carries a particular meaning
recognized by people who share a culture
• Societies create new symbols all the time.
• Reality for humans is found in the meaning
things carry with them
– The basis of culture; makes social life
possible
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Symbols
• People must be mindful that meanings
vary from culture to culture.
• Meanings can even vary greatly within the
same groups of people.
– Fur coats, Confederate flags, etc.
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Language
• A system of symbols that allows people to
communicate with one another
• Cultural transmission
– One generation passes culture to the next
• Sapir-Whorf thesis
– People perceive the world through the cultural
lens of language
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Values and Beliefs
• Values
– Broad guidelines for social living; values
support beliefs; culturally defined standards
• Of desirability, goodness, & beauty
• Beliefs
– Specific statements people hold to be true
– Matters individuals consider to be true or false
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Sociologist Robin Williams’ Ten
Values Central to American Life
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Equal opportunity
Achievement and success
Material comfort
Activity and work
Practicality and efficiency
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Sociologist Robin Williams’ Ten
Values Central to American Life
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Progress
Science
Democracy and free enterprise
Freedom
Racism and group superiority
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Values Sometimes Conflict
• Williams's list includes examples of value
clusters
• Sometimes one key cultural value
contradicts another
• Value conflict causes strain
• Values change over time
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Values Sometimes Conflict
• Cultures have their own values
• Lower-income nations have cultures that
value survival
• Higher-income countries have cultures
that value individualism & self-expression
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Norms
• Types
– Proscriptive
• Should-nots, prohibited
– Prescriptive
• Shoulds, prescribed like medicine
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Norms
• Mores and Folkways
– Mores (pronounced "more-rays")
• Widely observed and have great moral significance
– Folkways
• Norms for routine and casual interaction
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social Control
• Guilt
– A negative judgment we make about
ourselves
• Shame
– The painful sense that others disapprove of
our actions
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Ideal Versus Real Culture
• Ideal culture
– The way things should be
– Social patterns mandated by values & norms
• Real culture
– Way things actually occur in everyday life
– Social patterns that only approximate cultural
expectations
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Material Culture and Technology
• Culture includes a wide range of physical
human creations or artifacts.
• A society's artifacts partly reflect
underlying cultural values.
• Material culture also reflects a society's
technology or knowledge that people use
– To make a way of life in their surroundings
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Cultural Diversity
• High culture–Cultural patterns that
distinguish a society’s elite
• Popular culture–Cultural patterns that are
widespread among society’s population
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Cultural Diversity
• Subculture–Cultural patterns that set apart
some segment of society’s population
• Counterculture–Strongly oppose those
widely accepted within a society
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Multiculturalism
• An educational program recognizing the
cultural diversity of the United States
– Promoting the equality of all cultural traditions
• Eurocentrism–The dominance of
European (esp. English) cultural patterns
• Afrocentrism–The dominance of African
cultural patterns
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Cultural Change
• Causes of Cultural Change
• Culture lag
– Some cultural elements change more quickly
than others; might disrupt a cultural system
• Example: Medical procedures and ethics
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Culture Changes in Three Ways
• Invention–Creating new cultural elements
– Telephone or airplane
• Discovery–Recognizing and better
understanding something already existing
– X-rays or DNA
• Diffusion–Spread of cultural traits
– Jazz music or much of the English language
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Ethnocentrism and Cultural
Relativism
• Ethnocentrism
– The practice of judging another culture by the
standards of one’s own culture
• Cultural relativism
– The practice of judging a culture by its own
standards
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Is There a Global Culture?
• The Basic Thesis
– The flow of goods–Material product trading
has never been as important.
– The flow of information–Few places left where
worldwide communication isn’t possible
– Flow of people–Knowledge means people
learn about places where life might be better
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Is There a Global Culture?
• Limitations to the thesis
– All the flows have been uneven
– Assumes affordability of goods
– People don’t attach the same meaning to
material goods
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Theoretical Analysis of Culture
• Structural-functional
– Culture is a strategy for meeting human
needs
– Cultural universals–Traits part of every known
culture; family, funeral rites, jokes
• Evaluate
– Ignores cultural diversity; downplays
importance of change
Inequality and Culture
• Social-conflict
– Cultural traits benefit some members at the
expense of others
– Rooted in Karl Marx & materialism
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Inequality and Culture
– Society’s system of material production has a
powerful effect on the rest of a culture
• Critical evaluation
– Understates the ways cultural patterns
integrate members into society
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Evolution and Culture
• Sociobiology
– Theoretical paradigm; explores ways in which
human biology affects how we create culture
– Approach rooted in Charles Darwin and
evolution
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Evolution and Culture
– Living organisms change over long periods of
time based on natural selection
• Critical evaluation
– Might be used to support racism or sexism
– Little evidence to support theory; people learn
behavior within a cultural system
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Culture and Human Freedom
• Culture as constraint
– We know our world in terms of our culture
• Culture as freedom
– Culture is changing and offers a variety of
opportunities
– Sociologists share the goal of learning more
about cultural diversity
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.