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Culture

Explore the concept of culture and its various components such as language, beliefs, values, norms, and symbols. Learn about the importance of culture in shaping our perceptions, behaviors, and interactions with others.

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Culture

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  1. Beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Culture

  2. What is Culture?? • Language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors and material objects that are passed from one generation to another. • Ideal culture • A group’s ideal values, norms, and goals • Real culture • The group’s actual behavior

  3. Material Culture • Jewelry, art, buildings, weapons, machines, even eating utensils, hair styles, and clothing…

  4. Non- Material Culture… • Group’s way of thinking, beliefs, values, etc. • i.e. religion • Language • Gestures • Body language • Customs • Patterns of behavior.

  5. Culture often taken for granted. Seen as “normal”! • Culture Shock • The disorientation people feel when they come into contact with a different culture and it causes them to question the perspectives they were taught and raised with. • Ethnocentrism • The belief that one’s own culture is superior leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms and behaviors.

  6. Cultural Relativism • Not judging a culture, but trying to understand it on its own terms.

  7. Components of Symbolic Culture • Symbol • something to which people attach meaning and use to communicate with each other. • Gestures • Language • Values, Norms, Sanctions • Folkways and Mores

  8. Gestures are… • Movements of the body to communicate with others… • Used as a shorthand to communicate messages without using words. • Make a list of commonly used gestures

  9. Language… • Visual and Sound symbols that convey meaning based on their combinations. • Language allows culture to exist!! • Allows human experience to be cumulative • Allows us to share and pass on our past • Allows us to share a vision of our future • Allows us to share perspectives • Share and communicate goal directed behavior

  10. Language and Perception • The Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis • Language determines our consciousness and thus shapes perception of objects and events. • In short, Language shapes how you see the world!! **Think of examples where language influenced how you interpreted what was going on…

  11. Values, Norms, Sanctions • Values • The standards by which people define what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, etc. • Norms • expectations (or rules of behavior) that develop out of a groups values • Sanctions • the reactions people give or receive for following or breaking norms. • Positive Sanctions – approval • Negative Sanctions - disapproval

  12. Folkways and Mores • Folkways • norms that are not strictly enforced. • Mores • Norms that are strictly enforced because they are thought to be essential to the core values or the well being of the group (i.e. society) • Taboo • a norm so strong that it brings revulsion if violated.

  13. Many Cultural Worlds • Subcultures • Smaller Cultures within the larger overall culture • Counter-Cultures • Group’s whose values and norms place them on opposition to the value and norms of the larger culture • Pluralism • One group made up of many smaller groups and cultures… i.e. the United States

  14. Overview U.S. Culture • Achievement and success • Individualism • Activity and work • Efficiency and practicality • Science and Technology • Progress • Material Comfort • Humanitarianism • Freedom • Democracy • Equality • Racism and Group Superiority (exceptionalism) • Education • Religiosity • Romantic Love

  15. Value Clusters • values are not independent, cluster together to form the larger whole. • Value Contradictions • Values that contradict one another. Creates “cognitive dissonance” and pushes change

  16. Culture Wars • Clashes in Cultural Values • Challenges in core values are met with strong resistance by the people who hold them dear. i.e civil rights legislation • Values as Blinders • Form a view of what ‘ought’ to be like • Ideal vs Real Culture • ‘Ideal’ culture • A group’s ideal values, norms, and goals • ‘Real’ culture • The group’s actual behavior

  17. Dialectics- The Basics • There are the three laws of dialectics according to Frederick Engels, a revolutionary thinker and partner of Karl Marx, writing in the 1870s in his book Dialectics of Nature.

  18. Here's how it works - • 1. Every thing is made of opposing forces/ opposing sides. • 2. Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the other. • 3. Change moves in spirals, not circles

  19. 1. Everything is made of opposites Like material objects, the process of change needs opposing forces. Change needs a driving force to push it ahead, otherwise everything stays put. A billiard ball only moves when hit with a pool cue or another ball. We eat when our hunger tells us to.

  20. 2. Gradual changes lead to turning points. Two opposing forces in a process of change push against each other. As long as one side is stronger than the other side, change is gradual. But when the other side becomes stronger, there is a turning point--an avalanche, a birth, a collapse, a discovery, . . . This law is powerful in describing the stages of development of anything. A person's life, a society is shaped by these changes.

  21. 3.Change moves in spirals, not circles • Many changes are cyclical--first one side dominates, then the other--as in day/night, breathing in/breathing out, one opposite then another. • Dialectics argues that these cycles do not come back exactly to where they started; they don't make a perfect circle. Instead, change is evolutionary, moving in a spiral. http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/whatheck.htm

  22. Technology (tools) • Sets the framework for the non-material culture… • Shape thinking • Symbols • Language • Interactions • Roles • Etc.

  23. Cultural Lag and Change • William Ogburn • A group’s material culture usually changes first, and the non-material culture will lag behind. • i.e. hard for laws, religion, etc. to keep up with scientific advancements and new technology

  24. Technology and Cultural Leveling • Cultural Diffusion • The spread of cultural traits from one culture to another. (i.e. McDonalds) • Cultural Leveling • The process by which cultures become similar to one another. Refers specifically to the process by which Western culture is being diffused into other nations.

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