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Chapter 3. Culture. Culture. The sum of: socially transmitted practices Languages Symbols Beliefs Values Ideologies material objects that people create to deal with real-life problems. Cultures enable people to adapt to, & thrive in, their environments. Types of Culture.
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Chapter 3 Culture
Culture The sum of: • socially transmitted practices • Languages • Symbols • Beliefs • Values • Ideologies • material objects that people create to deal with real-life problems.Culturesenablepeopleto adaptto,&thrivein,their environments
Types of Culture • High Culture – culture consumed mainly by upper classes (opera, ballet, art, fine literature) • Popular or Mass Culture – culture consumed by all classes
Society • Composed of people who interact, usually in a defined territory, and share a culture
The Origins & Components of Culture • Why did humans survive? • The first humans 100,000 years ago lived in harsh conditions • They had poor physical endowments (slow runners and weaker fighters than many other animals • Yet they survived • The survival of humans was possible largely because they had sophisticated brains that enabled them to create cultural survival kits
The Origins & Components of Culture • What were these cultural survival kits? • Three Main Tools • Abstraction • Cooperation • Production
Culture: Origins & Components • Abstraction – the human capacity to create general ideas, or ways of thinking that are not linked to particular instances • For example: Symbols • Anything that carries a particular meaning, including the components of language, mathematical notations, & signs. • Symbols allow us to classify experience & generalize from it.
Culture: Origins & Components • Cooperation – the human capacity to create a complex social life • This is accomplished by establishing Norms & Values • Norms are generally accepted ways of doing things • Values are ideas about what is right and wrong
Culture: Origins & Components • Norms achieved by Cooperation • The human capacity to create a complex social life • Raise children & build schools, we are cooperating to advance human race • Create communities & industries, we are cooperating by pooling resources and encouraging people to acquire specialized skills
Culture:Origins & Components • Production – making and using tools and techniques that improve our ability to take what we want from nature • Such tools & techniques are called Material Culture • Only humans are sufficiently intelligent and dexterous to make tools and use them to produce everything from food to computers
Culture:Origins & Components See Concept Summary 3.1, p.66
Culture: Origins & Components • Social Control – the sum of sanctions in society by means of which conformity to cultural guidelines is ensured. • Sanctions: rewards and punishments to ensure conformity to cultural guidelines
Culture:Origins & Components • Types of Sanctions: • Taboos: strong social norms (incest, murder) • Mores: core norms most people believe essential for survival of group or society • Folkways: very mild norms and evokes least severe punishment
Culture & Biology • Evolution of Human Behavior • Human brain structure and genes account not just for physical characteristics but also for specific behaviors and social practices • Charles Darwin • First identify a universal human trait • Next explain why this behavior increases survival
Culture and Language • Language is a system of symbols strung together to communicate thought • With language we can share understandings, pass experience and knowledge from one generation to the next, and make plans for the future. • Language allows culture to develop
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Innate Argument: • Steven Pinker • “people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs.” • Language is an “instinct”. • Language is not so much learned as it is grown.
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Innate Argument: • Specific Language Impairment (SLI) • Mutation of gene FOXP2 associated • Children with SLI find it hard to articulate words and make variety of grammatical errors when they speak
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Learned Argument: • From sociological viewpoint there is nothing problematic abut the argument that we are biologically prewired to acquire language and create grammatical speech
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Learned Argument: • However, young children go through periods of rapid development, and if they do not interact symbolically with others during these critical periods, their language skills remain permanently impaired
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Learned Argument: • This suggests that our biological potential must be unlocked by the social environment to be fully realized. • Language must be learned
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • The Learned Argument: • The environment is in fact such a powerful influence on language acquisition that even a mutated FOOXP2 gene does not seal linguistic fate. Up to half of children with SLI recover fully with intensive language therapy
Culture and Language • Is Language Innate or Learned? • Conclusion: • All language is learned, though our potential for learning and the structure of what we can learn is rooted in biology
Culture and Language • What is the relationship between our use of language, the way we think, and our social environment? • Sapir-Whorf Thesis • Speech patterns are interpretations of experience
Culture and Language Sapir-Whorf Thesis 1 Experience Verbalization 3 (language) 2 Conceptualization (thought)
Culture and Ethnocentrism • Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other cultures exclusively by the standards of your own culture.
The Two Faces of Culture: Freedom And Constraint
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Freedom: • People do not accept culture passively • We are not empty vessels into which society pours a defined assortment of beliefs, symbols, and values. • People actively produce and interpret culture, therefore we are at liberty to choose how culture influences us.
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Freedom: • Part of the reason we are increasingly able to choose how culture influences us is that a greater diversity of culture is available from which to choose. • Cultural diversification of America and Multiculturalism • The Rights Revolution • Globalization
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Constraint: • Values: Although people in much of the world are freer than ever to choose their values, powerful social forces still constrain their choices.
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Constraint: • Two value dimensions • Values are not randomly distributed across populations and people are not free to choose whatever values they want. Instead, values cluster along identifiable dimensions • Values cluster in the way they do because they are influenced by powerful social forces, one economic, the other religious
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Constraint: • Two value dimensions • Traditional/Modern • Materialist/Postmaterialist
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint • Constraint: • Regulation of Time • 700 years ago Germans imposed town clocks on workers • Today we have so internalized this and made it part of our culture that we wear watches on our wrists • A rational means (work clock) leads to an irrational end (hectic life)
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint Constraint and Consumerism • To define ourselves in terms of the goods we purchase • Advertising is widespread, most people unquestioningly accept it as part of their lives, and many people have become ads (wearing outward labels) • Advertisers teach us to associate labels with different kinds of people • Advertising becomes us and once we incorporate into us, it becomes our culture
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint Constraint and breaking free? • Countercultures oppose dominant values and seek to replace them • Hippies • Environmentalists
The Two Faces of Culture:Freedom and Constraint Constraint and breaking free? • Countercultures • System of social control, of rewards and punishments, keeps countercultures from disrupting social order • The system transforms deviations from mainstream culture into means of making money and by enticing rebels to become entrepreneurs • Ozzy Osbourne • Hip Hop
Extra Credit • http://www.coedu.usf.edu/culture/Activity.htm
Class Culture Activity • http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/educators/culture.html • Or find a magazine article on culture. • Read on-line or hardcopy article and write a brief reaction (3-5 sentences) – bring to class Friday for a quiz grade