Culture

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

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

24. 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

25. 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.