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CULTURE

CULTURE. Chapter 2. What Is Culture?. Culture : The language, beliefs, values, norms, and material objects that are passed from one generation to the next. Material Culture : The material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as food, art, buildings, clothing, machines, utensils.

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CULTURE

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  1. CULTURE Chapter 2

  2. What Is Culture? • Culture: The language, beliefs, values, norms, and material objects that are passed from one generation to the next. • Material Culture: The material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as food, art, buildings, clothing, machines, utensils. • Nonmaterial Culture: A group’s way of thinking (including values and beliefs) and doing (patterns of behavior, language, interaction).

  3. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life • We came into life without language, values, morality, etc., but we acquire them and they become our assumptions about what normal behavior is • Because we assume that our language, values, etc. are normal we often follow them without question • Culture provides a basis for decision making – what we ought to do or think

  4. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life • Culture Shock: • The surprise, disorientation, and fear people experience when they encounter a new culture. • We find unfamiliar behaviors upsetting because they violate our expectations of the way “people ought to be”

  5. Taken-for-Granted Orientations to Life • Ethnocentrism: Using one’s own culture to judge the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors • Positive Effects: Can create loyalty • Negative Effects: Can lead to discrimination • Cultural Relativism: Not judging a culture, but trying to understand it in its own terms

  6. Components of Symbolic Culture • Symbolic Culture: Another term for nonmaterial culture • Symbol: Something to which people attach meaning and then use to communicate with others, including gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways, and mores.

  7. Components of Symbolic Culture • Gestures: The ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another

  8. Components of Symbolic Culture • Language: A system of symbols that can be combined in an infinite number of ways and can represent not only objects but also abstract thought. • Language allows us to… • pass ideas, knowledge, & attitudes to future generations. • move beyond immediate experiences –share past or future events. • develop a shared understanding of past events • plan future events • establish shared understandings

  9. Components of Symbolic Culture • Language (continued) • The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis • When we learn a language, we not only learn words, but a way of thinking and understanding • Ex: If you didn’t know words like jock, goth, stoner, etc. you wouldn’t perceive people in these manners

  10. Components of Symbolic Culture • Values: • The standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly. • Values underlie our preferences, guide our choices, and indicate what we hold worthwhile in life.

  11. Components of Symbolic Culture • Norms: Expectations, or rules of behavior, that reflect and enforce values. • Change constantly • Differ widely among cultures and even within cultures • Settings • Time Period • Country

  12. Components of Symbolic Culture • Sanctions: Expressions of approval or disapproval given to people for upholding or violating norms • Positive Sanction: A reward or positive reaction for following norms • Negative Sanction: An expression of disapproval for breaking a norm. Can be informal (a frown) or formal (prison sentence).

  13. Folkways and Mores • Folkways: Norms that are not strictly enforced • We expect people to follow these, but don’t make a big deal if they don’t. • Mores (MORE-ays): A norm based on morality, or definitions of right and wrong. • Usually strictly enforced. • Taboo: A norm that is so strong that it often brings revulsion if violated. • Ex: eating human flesh, necrophilia

  14. Many Cultural Worlds • Subcultures: A world within the larger world of the dominant culture. • May be based on occupation, race, religion, financial status, political ideals, sexual orientation, hobbies

  15. Many Cultural Worlds • Counterculture: A subculture that opposes the dominant culture.

  16. Values in U.S. Society • Pluralistic Society: A society made up of many different groups, such as the United States.

  17. Values in U.S. Society • Core values shared by most Americans: • Achievement • Success • Individualism • Hard Work • Technology • Progress • Material Comfort • Freedom • Democracy • Equality

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