Societies and Culture

1. Terms and ideas Societies and Culture

2. Society is the largest form of group • Sociology is the study of people in groups • Sociology is a way to think about social action • Society is composed of social actions with a group of people who share • Culture • (and related subcultures) • Defined geography • A Specific time period • And are relatively autonomous

3. To understand a society we must first understand its culture Culture

4. Where does culture come from? • Culture is handed down to us through the process of socialization. • Learning a culture is also called aculturalization • Culture is learned • The ability to have culture is biological but the specific culture is learned • We are constantly socialized • We are always learning more about our culture • Culture is shared • No one has their “own culture” • Always shared with someone

5. Culture has a material basis • We use material “things” to support ourselves and survive • Culture is limited by our ability to • Obtain material goods or the resources to make them • Use material goods in settings for which they were not designed • Culture adjusts to new uses of environmental resources through • Material change …Technology (technological change) • And through non-material adaptation (ideological change)

6. Culture has a non-material basis • Knowledge • Ideas • Skills • Organized into • Philosophies • Beliefs • Customs • Institutions • Language http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Thinker,_Auguste_Rodin.jpg

7. Different cultures meet the same needs differently • Cultural Universals • Every culture must provide a set of routine behaviors that make it possible for the people in the culture to meet their human needs. • George Murdock, an Anthropologist, compiled a list of 72 areas that are addressed by all cultures. • He found great diversity in the way in which cultures handled the same area of human need, emotion or behavior • Importantly, he believes that all cultures do address all these areas; these areas of culture are the cultural Universals

8. The “Universals” • postnatal care • pregnancy usages • property rights • propitiation of supernatural beings • puberty customs • religious ritual • residence rules • sexual restrictions • soul concepts • status differentiation • surgery • tool-making • trade • visiting • weather control • weaving • Source:http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/powerpt/define.ppt • hygiene • incest taboos • inheritance rules • joking • kin groups • kinship nomenclature • language • law • luck / superstitions • magic • marriage • mealtimes • medicine • obstetrics • penal sanctions • personal names • population policy • ethics • ethno-botany • etiquette • faith healing • family feasting • fire-making • folklore • food taboos • funeral rites • games • gestures • gift-giving • government • greetings • hair styles • hospitality • housing age-grading athletic sports bodily adornment calendar cleanliness training community organization cooking co-operative labor cosmology courtship dancing decorative art divination division of labor dream interpretation education eschatology List from: Howard Culverson’s summary of Murdock’s Universals

9. The same culture often meets the same need differently at different times and places Cultural Change Obviously time can bring new technologies and techniques to solve old problems. But it may be that ideas will change as well. This results in changes in the social rules and expectations. • Resources Matter • Materialism • Marx (who controls materials) • Diamond (geographic luck) • Lenski (technology drives change) • Ideas Matter • Beliefs • Weber (Protestant Ethic)

10. Culture change Culture Lag Sometimes culture changes faster than people within the culture can keep up. When non-material culture falls behind material culture it is called culture lag • The rate of change can be very slow or very fast… or anywhere in between • Culture changes in response to • Population changes • Environmental changes • Resource changes • Discovery, Innovation, Invention • Ideas

11. Language Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis The words that a culture uses transmit more than communication, they transmit the values, what is good/bad; right/wrong; important/not important. Language shapes not only what we say, but how we think about the world. Learning a new language involves learning how the culture perceives reality, in fact how it defines and constructs what is real. The Rosetta Stone, written in 3 languages provide a clue to the translation of hierogyphics

12. Dominant Ideology Cultural beliefs that help to maintain control by the powerful in society. • Two views • Conflict Theory • This term is defined as the conflict theorists see it • Ideas that provide advantage to the powerful and disadvantage to the less powerful • Ex: bank policies • Functionalism • Social stability requires consensus • “Strong values” (i.e. dominant ideology) provides the needed agreement • Everyone benefits when we all agree

13. Dominant Ideology… an example Are we Christian nation? Would this change our experience of living as Americans? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

14. The Intersection of History & Biography Society History (Culture) Biography (Culture) Culture is an intrinsic part of our history and our biography Background image http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/itl05/

15. Societies are unique • Society emerges from the actions of all the members of the interrelated social group • Actions take place in real time and are affected by earlier actions • Culture is expressed • Through the norms of the actors • Through the rules of the society • Through the institutions of society • Through material objects • People are free to deviate • Deviation may or may not bring cultural change