Download Culture: A shared way of life that includes values, beliefs and norms

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Culture: A shared way of life that includes values, beliefs and norms transmitted within a
particular society from generation to generation.
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Society: The pattern of relationships among the animals within a definite territory.
o  sociocultural system: the basic framework for analyzing the totality of social
relations and cultural productions.
o Culture is acquired through a process of enculturation, both conscious formal
learning and informal interaction.
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Situational learning: It is a trial-and-error process in which the organism
adjusts its behavior on the basis of direct experience. (Ct. the etymology of
“experience”.) The basic mechanism is that of conditioning: stimulus
response positive reinforcement through reward (pleasure) or negative
deterrence through punishment (pain).
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Social learning: observe another organism’s response to stimulus and add
that to one’s own. The basic mechanism is that of imitation.
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Symbolic learning: based on linguistic symbols, i.e. arbitrary units of
meaning that represent reality.
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Language and communication.
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Symbol and sign: the issue of that of the representing relation that
holds between the unit of meaning and its reference.
o Arbitrary vs. natural (?)
o Semantic field vs. emotive associations.
o “black” as color of mourning; “white” among the Chinese.
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Culture is transmitted through symbolic learning. This enables
culture to be cumulative.
o Culture is shared: it is inherently public.
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Linguistic meaning is supra-individual.
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Individual mediation of social meanings: the distribution as well as
perception of culture may vary individually.
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Contestation: the interrogation of and struggle over the meanings
and values that comprise culture.
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Material vs. nonmaterial culture.
o Material component consists of the physical products of human society.
o Nonmaterial culture consists of intangible products of human society.
o An interesting question is that of the relation between material and nonmaterial
cultures.
o Nonmaterial culture:
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Values: the standards whereby members of a given society define what is
good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful and ugly.
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They may be implicit or explicit.
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Intercultural or intergender variation: e.g. individual achievement
vs. communal cooperation and interest.
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Beliefs: Conventions that concerns truth and falsity. Beliefs tend to be
more specific. “Education is good”  “Grading is the best means of
determining the quality of students.”
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 Worldview: the set of beliefs about the nature of reality that provides a
more or less consistent orientation to the world.
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E.g. nonstandard behavior of an individual attributed to possession
by harmful spirits or to organic disease produced by viruses or
bacteria or genes.
 Ideology: set of symbols and beliefs that reflect and support the
interests of specific groups within society.
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Ideologies also serve a justificatory function: they legitimate
certain arrangements—social, economic, etc.—that sustain
particular interests.
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Cultural hegemony: ideological control by one dominant group at
the expense of other groups over beliefs and values.
Norms: the set of rules governing right or wrong behavior.
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They tell you—implicitly or explicitly—how you ought to behave.
o E.g. norms concerning the treatment and care of the elderly,
the choosing of sexual partners, how to eat one’s food….
o Ethos: the set of norms specific to a given society.
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Folkways: Norms guiding ordinary usages and conventions of everyday
life.  “that’s the way it’s done.”
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These tend to be noticed only when they break down or are
transgressed. A certain margin of flexibility is allowed—in fact, it
is crucial.
Mores: Norms with a particular significance and strength for the given
society.
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They are in some sense unique and necessary for the way of life
characteristic of a society.
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Social reinforcement through punishment: ostracism, vicious
gossip, public ridicule, exile, losing one’s job, physical violence,
imprisonment, commitment to a mental asylum, execution.
 important question is that of how to demarcate the boundary of
folkways and mores. Norms tend to fall on a continuum and therefore the
conversion from one type to another is usually gradual and one is one of
degree.
o Ideal culture: what people say they do or should do; real culture: people’s actual
behavior.
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Ethnocentrism: judging another culture by the standards of one’s own.
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Cultural relativism: cultural traditions must be understood within the context of a
particular society’s solutions to problems.
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Edible/inedible; pets/farm animals: where do you place a horse?
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Pork: the symbolic explanation of falling through the cracks of basic taxonomic
categories; the evolutionary explanation from pigs’ ill-suited adaptive condition in hot
dry climates.
o Universal need for protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals; but diverse ways of
obtaining them.
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Bread and circus.
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Ethnicity: perceived differences in ancestral origin or descent or shared historical and
cultural heritage.
o Ethnic boundary markers.
o Cultural universals.
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Fundamental behavioral patterns shared by all humans and indicative of
species membership.
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Language use, kinship classifications and age differentiation, gender
terms, gestures that express basic emotions, self as subject and object,
tools, shelter, fire, childbirth and training, families, political groupings,
conflict and procedures for conflict resolution, morality, religious belief,
dance, music, art: indicative of common problems homo sapiens must
solve to survive.
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“Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other
human.”
Problems: culture vs. nonhuman animal behavior. Multiculturalism. (merkel) “you are what you
eat.” Dress code. Ethnicity. Universal people. Key terms. List of universals 239