Transcript Chapter 3

8/21 (Thursday)
TOTD: How would you describe American
culture?
Agenda:
TOTD
Culture Notes
Ch.3
Lost Boys
Facts
Essay
assignment
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Culture
The values, beliefs, behavior, and material
objects that together form a people’s
way of life
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
All rights reserved.
Terminology
• Nonmaterial culture
– The intangible world of ideas created by
members of a society
• Material culture
– The tangible things created by members of
a society
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Terminology
• Culture shock
– Disorientation due to the inability to
make sense out of one’s surroundings
• Domestic and foreign travel
• Ethnocentrism
– A biased “cultural yardstick”
• Cultural relativism
– More accurate understanding
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Symbols
• Anything that carries a particular
meaning recognized by people who
share a culture
• Societies create new symbols all the
time.
• Reality for humans is found in the
meaning things carry with them.
– The basis of culture; makes life
possible
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Symbols
• People must be mindful that
meanings vary from culture to
culture.
• Meanings can even vary greatly
within the same groups of people.
– Fur coats, Confederate flags, etc.
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
8/22
TOTD: What is the difference b/w material
culture & non-material culture? Give an
example of both for the USA.
Agenda:
Turn in your Common
Sense essay
Lost Boys
Culture Notes
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Language
• A system of symbols that allows
people to communicate with one
another
• Cultural transmission
– The process by which one generation
passes culture to the next
• Sapir-Whorf thesis
– People perceive the world through the
cultural lens of language.
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
8/25 Monday
TOTD: Do you think that a person who speaks Cherokee,
an American Indian language, experiences the world
differently from other Americans who think in English or
Spanish? Explain your answer.
Agenda:
 CH 3 Notes
 Culture Review
 Culture Assignment
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/
the-global-guide-to-hand-_n_4956860.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTE0G
9amZNk#t=13
Values and Beliefs
• Values
– Culturally defined standards of desirability,
goodness, and beauty, which serve as broad
guidelines for social living. Values support
beliefs.
• Beliefs
– Specific statements that people hold to be true.
– Particular matters that individuals consider to
be true or false.
Sociologist Robin Williams’ Ten Values
That Are Central to American Life
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Equal opportunity
Achievement and success
Material comfort
Activity and work
Practicality and efficiency
Progress
Science
Democracy and free
enterprise
9. Freedom
10. Racism and group superiority
Are some of these values inconsistent with one another?
Values Sometimes Conflict
• Williams's list includes examples of value
clusters.
• Sometimes one key cultural value contradicts
another. (Ex: people in US may believe in equality
but also may degrade others b/c of their sex or
race)
• Value conflict causes strain.
• Values change over time.
A Global Perspective
• Cultures have their own values.
• Lower-income nations have cultures that value
survival.
• Higher-income countries have cultures that
value individualism and self-expression.
Norms:
Rules and expectations by which society guides its
members’ behavior (Ex: applauding after a musical
performance; not applauding after a classroom
lecture)
• Types
– Proscriptive
• Should-nots, prohibited
– Prescriptive
• Shoulds, prescribed like medicine
• Mores and Folkways
– Mores (pronounced "more-rays")
• Norms that are widely observed and have great
moral significance (tell us what is right vs wrong)
– Folkways
• Norms for routine and causal interaction (tell us
what is right vs rude)
.
8/28 *thursday
For 8/27 write: NO TOTD. Today’s is: Thinking
about the article yesterday, do you think your
generation values the “right” things? Explain.
Agenda:
TOTD
Culture Notes: Finish
Culture Review Sheet
Culture MiniProject
Cultural Diversity
• High culture–Cultural patterns that distinguish a
society’s elite.
• Popular culture–Cultural patterns that are
widespread among society’s population.
• Subculture–Cultural patterns set apart some
segment of society’s population. (surfers,
athletes, computer nerds, wilderness campers,
emo…)
• Counterculture–Cultural patterns that strongly
oppose those widely accepted within a
society.(hippies in the 1960s, doomday-preppers,)
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Ethnocentrism
and Cultural Relativism
• Ethnocentrism
– Whenever someone believes that their
own culture is superior over another
culture or the practice of judging another
culture by the standards of one’s own
culture
• Cultural relativism
– The practice of judging a culture by its
own standards
Xenocentrism• This means to think that another culture is
better than your own.
• For example, you might think that the math
skills of students in Singapore are better
than those of American students or food in
France is better than your Spanish cuisine.
• This can create distress among a society
when its individuals do not feel that their
own culture is up-to-par.
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Culture Collage Project
Fun online collage makers:
• glogster.com
• postermywall.com
• collage.com
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Social Control
Attempts by members of society to
regulate/encourage conformity to norms
How we evaluate our own behavior:
• Guilt
– A negative judgment we make about
ourselves
• Shame
– The painful sense that others
disapprove of our actions
Ideal Versus Real Culture
• Ideal culture
– The way things should be
– Social patterns mandated by values
and norms
• Real culture
– They way things actually occur in
everyday life
– Social patterns that only approximate
cultural expectations
• “Do as I say, not as I do”
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Material Culture and
Technology
• Culture includes a wide range of physical
human creations or artifacts.
• A society's artifacts partly reflect
underlying cultural values.
• In addition to reflecting values, material
culture also reflects a society's
technology or knowledge that people use
to make a way of life in their
surroundings.
Multiculturalism
An educational program recognizing the cultural
diversity of the United States and promoting the
equality of all cultural traditions.
• Eurocentrism– The dominance of
European (especially English) cultural
patterns
• Afrocentrism–The dominance of African
cultural patterns
Interdependence
• Culture integration
– The close relationships among various
elements of a cultural system
• Example: Computers and changes in our
language
• Culture lag
– The fact that some cultural elements
change more quickly than others, which
might disrupt a cultural system
• Example: Medical procedures and ethics
Culture Changes
in Three Ways
• Invention–Creating new cultural elements
– Telephone or airplane
• Discovery–Recognizing and better
understanding of something already in
existence
– X-rays or DNA
• Diffusion–The spread of cultural traits
from one society to another
– Jazz music or much of the English language
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Is There a Global Culture?
• The Basic Thesis
– The flow of goods–Material product trading has
never been as important.
– The flow of information–Few, if any, places are left
where worldwide communication isn’t possible.
– The flow of people–Knowledge means people
learn about places where they feel life might be
better.
• Limitations to the thesis
– All the flows have been uneven.
– Assumes affordability of goods
– People don’t attach the same meaning to material
goods.
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
.
Theoretical Analysis of Culture
• Structural-functional
– Culture is a complex strategy for meeting
human needs.
– Cultural universals–Traits that are part of
every known culture; includes family,
funeral rites, and jokes
• Critical evaluation
– Ignores cultural diversity and downplays
importance of change
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
.
Inequality and Culture
• Social-conflict
– Cultural traits benefit some members at the
expense of others.
– Approach rooted in Karl Marx and materialism;
society’s system of material production has a
powerful effect on the rest of a culture.
• Critical evaluation
– Understates the ways cultural patterns
integrate members into society
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
.
Evolution and Culture
• Sociobiology
– A theoretical paradigm that explores ways in
which human biology affects how we create
culture.
– Approach rooted in Charles Darwin and
evolution; living organisms change over long
periods of time based on natural selection.
• Critical evaluation
– Might be used to support racism or sexism
– Little evidence to support theory; people learn
behavior within a cultural system
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
.
Culture and Human Freedom
• Culture as constraint
– We only know our world in terms of our
culture.
• Culture as freedom
– Culture is changing and offers a variety of
opportunities.
– Sociologists share the goal of learning
more about cultural diversity.
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
8/29 Friday
TOTD: What is the term for the cultural
patterns that strongly oppose those widely
accepted within a society?
Agenda:
TOTD
Culture Chapter 3
Research/Online study
9/4 Thursday
NO TOTD today!
Agenda:
• Review—follow the directions below!
• Get your laptops out, go to kahoot.it and put in this
code: 66377
• Test: Culture
Sociology, 12th Edition by John Macionis
Copyright  2008 Prentice Hall, a division of Pearson Education. All rights reserved.