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Social Change
CULTURE AND SOCIALIZATION
Society -- a group of interacting people
who share a culture.
Culture -- the products, material and
nonmaterial, of a society.
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Note: these two basic concepts are so
intertwined that they are often used
interchangeably, even by sociologists -- no
society or individual that we would consider
human could exist apart from culture, no
culture could exist apart from the
interacting people who inherit it, maintain
and modify it, and pass it on to succeeding
generations.
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Cultures are
Adaptive, Reflexive, and Dualistic
-- the total way of life shared by people in a
society.
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Adaptive -- Like other animals, humans must
convert what they find in their environment
into things that meet their needs (food,
shelter, clothing, tools, etc.).
Reflexive -- Products of one generation in a
society become part of the environment to
which later generations adapt -- culture
expands over the course of generations.
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Dualistic -- two kinds of products/tools:
Material culture -- “things” that humans
produce and use in adapting to their
material environments (food, shelter, ect.).
Nonmaterial culture -- symbols that allow
people to work together to produce the
things that they need (language, norms,
values, skills, etc.).
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Our evolutionary background
-- mammals, learning, and flexible
adaptation.
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Implications for the concepts of “human nature”
and “instincts” and individuality.
Ethnocentrism -- the idea that “our way” is
best or “natural”.
Reification -- the opacity (hidden/unconscious)
nature of much of nonmaterial culture.
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Cultural Relativism and Social Science
-- the attempt to view cultures, including our
own, in an objective (scientific) way
by “seeing through” ethnocentrism and
reification.
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Norms -- rules or guidelines (often reified) for
how to behave in particular situations in a
particular culture at a particular time (note:
norms and normal).
The internalization of norms, social control and
self control.
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Three processes of “natural selection”
-- biological, cultural, individual.
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Socialization
-- the processes by which people learn to
function in society
-- lifelong as humans adapt to biological
changes (e.g. aging) and changing
circumstances (culture).
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Two basic things acquired through socialization:
1. Use of symbols -- language, norms,
skills, values, knowledge, etc.
2. Individuality -- Personality (stable
patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior).
Self (conscious sense of identity as an
individual).
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How do we know that these things are acquired
through socialization and to what extent are
they learned rather than
inborn/biological/instinctual?
The “Nature vs. Nurture” debates