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Introduction to Sociology
Chapters 3 and 4
Competencies and Methodologies

Main Competencies Covered


2. Analyze the importance of cultures within
societies.
Methodologies

Lecture, Large Group Discussion, Interaction
Culture
The values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects that
together form a people’s way of life
Terminology

Nonmaterial culture


The intangible world of ideas created by
members of a society
Material culture

The tangible things created by members of a
society
Terminology

Culture shock

Disorientation due to the inability to make
sense out of one’s surroundings


Ethnocentrism


Domestic and foreign travel
A biased “cultural yardstick”
Cultural relativism

More accurate understanding
Have you ever experienced
culture shock?
An example of
ethnocentrism….
“Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits
are objects of scorn to smart Americans who
blow horns to break up traffic jams.”
-Mary Ellen Kelly
Elements of Culture





Symbols
Language
Values and Belief
Norms
Material Culture

Including technology
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
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.
Figure 3.1
Human Languages: A Variety of Symbols
Here the English word “read” is written in twelve of the hundreds of languages humans use to communicate with each other.
Language


A system of symbols that allows
people to communicate with one
another
Cultural transmission


The process by which one generation
passes culture to the next
Sapir-Whorf thesis

People perceive the world through the
cultural lens of language.
Global Map 3.1a
Language in Global Perspective–Chinese
Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, and dozens of other dialects) is the native tongue of one-fifth of the world’s people, almost all of whom
live in Asia. Although all Chinese people read and write with the same characters, they use several dozen dialects. The “official” dialect, taught in
schools throughout the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Taiwan, is Mandarin (the dialect of Beijing, China’s historical capital city).
Cantonese, the language of Canton, is the second most common Chinese dialect.
Global Map 3.1b
Language in Global Perspective–English
English is the native tongue or official language in several world regions (spoken by one-tenth of humanity) and has become the preferred
second language in most of the world.
Global Map 3.1c
Language in Global Perspective–Spanish
The largest concentration of Spanish speakers is in Latin America and, or course, Spain. Spanish is also the second most widely spoken
language in the United States.
Values and Beliefs

Values


Culturally defined standards of desirability,
goodness, and beauty, which serve as broad
guidelines for social living. Values support
beliefs.
Beliefs


Specific statements that people hold to be true.
Particular matters that individuals consider to be
true or false.
Sociologist Robin Williams’ Ten Values
That Are Central to American Life
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Equal opportunity
Achievement and success
Material comfort
Activity and work
Practicality and efficiency
Progress
Science
Democracy and free enterprise
Freedom
Racism and group superiority
Are some of these values inconsistent with one another?
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.
Customs and Courtesies




Greetings
Visiting
Eating
Gestures
The People


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General Attitudes
Personal Appearance
Population
Language
Religion
Lifestyle





Family
Dating and Marriage
Diet
Business
Recreation
Robert Bellah
Cultures are dramatic conversations about
things that matter to their participants.
A Global Perspective
• Cultures have their own values.
• Lower-income nations have cultures that
value survival.
• Higher-income countries have cultures
that value individualism and selfexpression.
Figure 3.2
Cultural Values of Selected Countries
Higher-income countries are secular-rational and favor self-expression. The cultures of lower-income countries are more traditional and concerned
with economic survival.
Source: Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Weizel, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Norms

Rules and expectations by which society
guides its members’ behavior

Types


Proscriptive
 Should-nots, prohibited
Prescriptive
 Shoulds, prescribed like medicine
Norms - Types

Mores and Folkways


Mores (pronounced "more-rays")
 Widely observed and have great
moral significance
Folkways
 Norms for routine and casual
interaction
Social Control
Various means by which members of society
encourage conformity to norms
 Guilt


A negative judgment we make about ourselves
Shame

The painful sense that others disapprove of our
actions
Material Culture and Technology



Culture includes a wide range of physical human
creations or artifacts.
A society's artifacts partly reflect underlying
cultural values.
In addition to reflecting values, material culture
also reflects a society's technology or knowledge
that people use to make a way of life in their
surroundings.
Ideal Versus Real Culture

Ideal culture



The way things should be
Social patterns mandated by values and
norms
Real culture


They way things actually occur in
everyday life
Social patterns that only approximate
cultural expectations
Cultural Diversity

High culture–Cultural patterns that distinguish a
society’s elite.

Popular culture–Cultural patterns that are
widespread among society’s population.

Subculture–Cultural patterns that set apart some
segment of society’s population.

Counterculture–Cultural patterns that strongly
oppose those widely accepted within a society.
National Map 3.1
Language Diversity across the United States
Multiculturalism
An educational program recognizing the cultural
diversity of the United States and promoting
the equality of all cultural traditions.
•
•
Eurocentrism–The dominance of European
(especially English) cultural patterns
Afrocentrism–The dominance of African
cultural patterns
Interdependence

Culture integration

The close relationships among various
elements of a cultural system


Example: Computers and changes in our
language
Culture lag

The fact that some cultural elements
change more quickly than others, which
might disrupt a cultural system

Example: Medical procedures and ethics

Life Objectives of
First-Year College
Students, 19692008
Culture Changes in Three Ways

Invention–Creating new cultural elements


Discovery–Recognizing and better
understanding of something already in
existence


Telephone or airplane
X-rays or DNA
Diffusion–The spread of cultural traits
from one society to another

Jazz music or much of the English language
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

Figure 3.4
The View from “Down Under”
North America should be “up” and South
America “down,” or so we think. But
because we live on a globe, “up” and
“down” have no meaning at all. The reason
this map of the Western Hemisphere looks
wrong to us is not that it is geographically
inaccurate; it simply violates our
ethnocentric assumption that the United
States should be “above” the rest of the
Americas.
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, if any, places are left
where worldwide communication isn’t possible.
 The flow of people–Knowledge means people learn
about places where they feel life might be better.

Limitations to the thesis
 All the flows have been uneven.
 Assumes affordability of goods
 People don’t attach the same meaning to material
goods.
Theoretical Analysis of Culture

Structural-functional
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Culture is a complex strategy for meeting
human needs.
Cultural universals–Traits that are part of
every known culture; includes family,
funeral rites, and jokes
Critical evaluation

Ignores cultural diversity and downplays
importance of change
Inequality and Culture

Social-conflict

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Cultural traits benefit some members at the
expense of others.
Approach rooted in Karl Marx and materialism;
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
Evolution and Culture

Sociobiology

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A theoretical paradigm that explores ways in which
human biology affects how we create culture.
Approach rooted in Charles Darwin and evolution;
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
Culture and Human Freedom

Culture as constraint


We only 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.
Applying Theory: Culture
Finley Peter Dunne
“To most people a savage nation is one that
wears comfortable clothes.”
Society
People who interact in a defined territory and share culture
Edmund Burke
“Society is indeed a contract between those
who are living, those who are dead, and those
who are yet to be born.”
Visions of Society

Gerhard Lenski
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Karl Marx
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Society in conflict
Max Weber
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Society and technology
The power of ideas shapes society
Emile Durkheim

How traditional and modern societies hang together
Gerhard Lenski
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Sociocultural evolution–The changes that
occur as a society gains new technology
Societies range from simple to the
technologically complex.
Societies simple in technology tend to
resemble one another.
More technologically complex societies
reveal striking cultural diversity.
Sociocultural Evolution
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
Technology shapes other cultural patterns.
Simple technology can only support small
numbers of people who live simple lives.
The greater amount of technology a society
has within its grasp, the faster cultural
change will take place.
High-tech societies are capable of
sustaining large numbers of people who are
engaged in a diverse division of labor.
Lenski’s Five Types Of Societies

Hunting and gathering
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
The use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather
vegetation
Horticultural and pastoral
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Horticulture–The use of hand tools to raise crops
Pastoralism–The domestication of animals
Lenski’s Five Types Of Societies
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Agriculture

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Industrialism
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Large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to
animals or more powerful energy sources
The production of goods using advanced sources of
energy to drive large machinery
Postindustrialism

The production of information using computer
technology
Limits of Technology
While expanding technology can help to solve
many existing social problems, it creates new
problems even as it remedies old ones.
Karl Marx

Social conflict–Struggle between segments of society
over valued resources
 Capitalists–People who own and operate factories and
other businesses in pursuit of profits
 Proletariat–People who sell their productive labor for
wages
 Social institutions–All the major spheres of social life
or societal subsystems organized to meet human needs
 Infrastructure–Society’s economic system
 Superstructure–Other social institutions: family,
religion, political
Karl Marx’s Model of Society
This diagram illustrates Marx’s materialist view that the system of economic production shapes the entire society. Economic production involves
both technology (industry, in the case of capitalism) and social relationships (for capitalism, the relationship between the capitalists, who own the
factories and businesses, and the workers, who are the source of labor). On this infrastructure, or foundation, rests society’s superstructure, which
includes its major social institutions as well as core cultural values and ideas. Marx maintained that every part of a society supports the economic
system.
Karl Marx

Rejected false consciousness–The explanation of
social problems as the shortcomings of individuals
rather than the flaws of society

Believed that the history of all existing society is the
history of class conflict–Conflict between entire
classes over the distribution of a society’s wealth and
power

Believed that workers must replace false
consciousness with class consciousness–Workers’
recognition of themselves as a class unified in
opposition to capitalists and, ultimately, to capitalism
itself
An example of false
consciousness…
Playing the lottery….
Woodrow Wilson
“The truth is that we are all caught in a great
economic system which is heartless.”
Capitalism and Alienation

Alienation–The experience of isolation and
misery resulting from powerlessness.

Marx: To the capitalists, workers are
nothing more than a source of labor.

Another contradiction of capitalist society:
As people develop technology to gain
power over the world, the capitalist
economy gains more control over people.
Capitalism and Alienation

Capitalism alienates workers in four
specific ways:
 From the act of working
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From the products of work
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Workers have no ownership in the product that is
sold for profit.
From other workers

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Workers have no say in production; work is tedious
and repetitive.
Work is competitive rather than cooperative.
From human potential

Workers deny, not fulfill themselves in their work.
Revolution

The only way out of capitalism is to remake society.

Socialism is a system of production that could
provide for the social needs of all.

Marx believed that the working majority would
realize they held the key to a better future.

The change would be revolutionary and perhaps even
violent.

Marx believed a socialist society would end class
conflict.
Pope Leo XIII
“It is impossible to reduce society to one level.”
Max Weber

Rationalization of society–The historical
change from tradition to rationality as the
main type of human thought.

The willingness to adopt the latest
technology is a strong indicator of how
rationalized a society is.

Why are some societies more eager than
others to adopt new technology?
Max Weber
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Claimed that the key to the birth of
industrial capitalism lay in the Protestant
Reformation.
Industrial capitalism is the major outcome
of Calvinism.
The Calvinist idea of predestination


Worldly prosperity is a sign of God's grace.
Poverty is a sign of God's rejection.
Weber’s Rational Social Organization
Seven characteristics:
1.
Distinctive social institutions
2.
Large-scale organization
3.
Specialized tasks
4.
Personal discipline
5.
Awareness of time
6.
Technical competence
7.
Impersonality
Expressed in bureaucracy and capitalism
Durkheim
“The only question that a man can ask is not
whether he can live outside society, but in what
society he wishes to live.”
Emile Durkheim

Society


More than individuals
 Society has a life of its own, beyond our personal
experiences
Social facts

Any patterns rooted in society rather than the experience
of individuals
 Society has an “objective reality” beyond our own
subjective perceptions of the world
 Examples: Norms, values, religious beliefs, and
rituals
 Power to guide our thoughts and actions
Durkheim

Warned that modern society creates
anomie–A condition in which society
provides little moral guidance to individuals

Mechanical solidarity–Social bonds based
on common sentiment and shared moral
values that are common among members of
preindustrial societies
Durkheim

Organic solidarity–Social bonds based on
specialization and interdependence that are
strong within industrial societies

Key to the change is an expanding division
of labor–Specialization of economic activity
Four Visions of Society

Gerhard Lenski


Karl Marx

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Elites force an ‘uneasy peace’
Max Weber


A shared culture
Rational thought, large-scale organizations
Emile Durkheim

Specialized division of labor
Four Visions of Society

Gerhard Lenski


Karl Marx


Social conflict
Max Weber


Changing technology
From traditional to rational thought
Emile Durkheim

From mechanical solidarity to organic
solidarity
Are Societies Improving?

Gerhard Lenski: Modern technology offers
expanded human choice, but leaves us with
new sets of dangers.

Karl Marx: Social conflict would only end
once production of goods and services were
taken out of the hands of the capitalists and
placed into the hands of all people.
Are Societies Improving?

Max Weber: Saw socialism as a greater evil
than capitalism, as large, alienating
bureaucracies would gain even more control
over people.

Emile Durkheim: Optimistic about
modernity and the possibility of more
freedom for individuals, but concerned
about the dangers of anomic feelings.