Culture Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter Two: Culture
2.1: Culture
Defining Culture
· Culture: The way of life of people. Includes the shared and human-created strategies for adapting and responding to one's surroundings, including the people and other creatures that are apart of those surroundings.
· Human created strategies include, the invention of physican objects such as cars, and motor bikes to transport, values defining what is right and good, beliefs about the world & how things operate, a language to communicate, and rules guiding behavior in any situation.
· Sociologists face 3 challenges in defining a cultures boundaries: Describing a culture, determining who belongs to a culture, and identifying the distinguishing markers that set one culture apart from others.
· Once sociologists think that they …show more content…
have identified a clear marker, they always find exceptions to those, and see that the marker is not unique to one culture.
Culture as a Rough Blueprint
· Culture is a bluepring that guides, and in some cases, even determines behavior.
· Mostly, people behave as they do because it seems natural and they know of no other way.
· Even with culture being a "blueprint" people who share a culture are not exact replicas of one another; this makes it difficult to describe a culture and determing who belongs to it.
Cultural Universals and Particulars
· George Murdock distinguished between cultural universals and particulars.
· Cultural Universals: The things that all cultures have in common; such as natural resources, and the developed responses to the challenges og being human and living with one another.
· Cultural Particulars: The specific practices that distinguish cultures from one another. Example: All people become hungry, and all cultures have defined certain items and objects as edible.
· All cultures provide formulas for expressing social emotions.
· Social Emotions: Feelings that we experience as we relate to other people such as empathy, grief, love, guilt, jealousy and embarassment.
· People evaluate their social emotions and modify their feelings to fit with a culturally established rules on how to express them.
Passing on Culture
· The way people create and pass on culture suggests that it is more than a blue print.
· Babies enter the world and everything they experience -- being born, being bathed, being toilet trained, learning to talk, playing, and so on -- involves others facilitating theat experience. The people present in the child's life expose them to their version of culture.
· People are carriers and transmitters of culture with the power to accept, change and, reject any cultural expereinces that they have been exposed to, and also choose which ones to pass on to future generations.
· Sociologists do not get caught up in identifying distinct markers that set people apart of one culture from another. Instead, they are interested in how culture shapes human behavior and in how people create, share, pass on, resist, change, and even abandon culture.
2.2 Material and Nonmaterial Culture
Material Culture
· Material Culture: All of the natural, and human-created objects to which people have assigned a name and attatched meaning. (iPods, cars, clothing, tattoos, trees, diamonds, etc..)
· Sociologists work to understand the larger context in which an object exists, and to identify the meanings people assign to a certain & the ways it is used.
· Sociological POV: Material objects are windows into a cuture because they offer clues about how people relate to one another, and what is valued.
Nonmaterial Culture
· Nonmaterial Culture: Intangible human creations; things that cannon be touched with our hands. (Values, Believes, Norms, and
Symbols.
· Values: General shared conceptions of what is good, right, desirable, or important with regard to personal chatacteristics/ways of conduct. (freedom, happiness, consumption, conservation, sharing, cleanliness, obedience, independence, salvation, responsibility to others, and national security) -Cultures are distinguished by which values are produced as reasons for taking some action, and which values are most cherished, and dominant.
· Beliefs: Conceptions that people are true concerning how the world operates, and the place of the individual in relationship to others. - Beliefs are about what is or is not true. - Belifs may be descriptive, casual, or prescriptive. - Can be rooted in blind faith, experience, tradition, or science. - Cubans believe that happiness can be achieved by getting the most out of what one already has. - Americans believe that happiness can be achieved by accumulating wealth and consuming products.
· Norms: Written and unwritten rules that specify behaviors, thoughts, and appearances that are appropriate and inappropriate to a particular social situations. (rules that appear in a student handbook, signs, garage doors) -Punishment for violating a norm can range from a frown to the death penalty. - Folkways: Norms that apply to the details of daily life: when and what to eat, how to greet someone, and how to dress for a school event such as prom. William Graham Sumner: "Folkways give us discipline and support routine of habit" - Mores: Norms that people define as essential to the well being of a group. Violations of mores are generally punished severely.
· Symbols: Anything -- a word, an object, a sound, a feeling, an odor, a gesture, an idea -- to which people assign a name and meaning. - Language: A symbol system that assigns meaning to particular sounds, gestures, characters, and specific combinations of letters; the most important symbol system people have created. - Human language is what sets us aside from animals because it is so complex. - Edward Sapir & Benjamin Whorf advaced the linquistic relativity hypothesis (Sapir-Worf Hypothesis). - Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: States that "No two languages are sufficently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality" The worlds of those who speak different languages "are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attatched"
2.3 Cultural Diversity
· Cultural Diversity: The cultural variety that exists among people who share some physical or virtual space.
· Sociologists examine the extent to which people in a particular setting vary with regard to:
1. Material components of culture (the objects they possess and have access to and the meanings)
2. Nonmaterial components of culture (the beliefs, values, norms, symbolic meanings, and language guiding behavior)
· Sociologists look at the people who occupy a specific setting, and then try to establish the extent of the cultural diversity.
· Objectified Cultural Capital: Consists of physical and material objects that a person owns outright or has direct access too; have a monentary value that is tied to the willingness to buy/sell/own and hold on to them by others. Includes the ability to understand, appreciate and explain an objects meaning and value.
· Embodied Cultural Capital: Consists of everything that has been consciously and unconsciously internalized through the socialization process. Includes the words and languages one hears, has acquired, and has used to communicate with others ect. - The socialization proces shapes a person's character.
⦁ Institutionalized Cultural Capital: Consists of anything material & nonmaterial that is recognized as important to success in a particular and social setting. (Academic credentials for a job search, the ability to dress the part, and physical qualities.)
The 3 concepts above help us to think about what people bring to a setting!
· Cultural Anchors: Some cultural component that brings out a general agreement among members of its importance but also allows debate about its meaning.
Subcultures and Countercultures
2.1: Culture
Defining Culture
· Culture: The way of life of people. Includes the shared and human-created strategies for adapting and responding to one's surroundings, including the people and other creatures that are apart of those surroundings.
· Human created strategies include, the invention of physican objects such as cars, and motor bikes to transport, values defining what is right and good, beliefs about the world & how things operate, a language to communicate, and rules guiding behavior in any situation.
· Sociologists face 3 challenges in defining a cultures boundaries: Describing a culture, determining who belongs to a culture, and identifying the distinguishing markers that set one culture apart from others.
· Once sociologists think that they …show more content…
have identified a clear marker, they always find exceptions to those, and see that the marker is not unique to one culture.
Culture as a Rough Blueprint
· Culture is a bluepring that guides, and in some cases, even determines behavior.
· Mostly, people behave as they do because it seems natural and they know of no other way.
· Even with culture being a "blueprint" people who share a culture are not exact replicas of one another; this makes it difficult to describe a culture and determing who belongs to it.
Cultural Universals and Particulars
· George Murdock distinguished between cultural universals and particulars.
· Cultural Universals: The things that all cultures have in common; such as natural resources, and the developed responses to the challenges og being human and living with one another.
· Cultural Particulars: The specific practices that distinguish cultures from one another. Example: All people become hungry, and all cultures have defined certain items and objects as edible.
· All cultures provide formulas for expressing social emotions.
· Social Emotions: Feelings that we experience as we relate to other people such as empathy, grief, love, guilt, jealousy and embarassment.
· People evaluate their social emotions and modify their feelings to fit with a culturally established rules on how to express them.
Passing on Culture
· The way people create and pass on culture suggests that it is more than a blue print.
· Babies enter the world and everything they experience -- being born, being bathed, being toilet trained, learning to talk, playing, and so on -- involves others facilitating theat experience. The people present in the child's life expose them to their version of culture.
· People are carriers and transmitters of culture with the power to accept, change and, reject any cultural expereinces that they have been exposed to, and also choose which ones to pass on to future generations.
· Sociologists do not get caught up in identifying distinct markers that set people apart of one culture from another. Instead, they are interested in how culture shapes human behavior and in how people create, share, pass on, resist, change, and even abandon culture.
2.2 Material and Nonmaterial Culture
Material Culture
· Material Culture: All of the natural, and human-created objects to which people have assigned a name and attatched meaning. (iPods, cars, clothing, tattoos, trees, diamonds, etc..)
· Sociologists work to understand the larger context in which an object exists, and to identify the meanings people assign to a certain & the ways it is used.
· Sociological POV: Material objects are windows into a cuture because they offer clues about how people relate to one another, and what is valued.
Nonmaterial Culture
· Nonmaterial Culture: Intangible human creations; things that cannon be touched with our hands. (Values, Believes, Norms, and
Symbols.
· Values: General shared conceptions of what is good, right, desirable, or important with regard to personal chatacteristics/ways of conduct. (freedom, happiness, consumption, conservation, sharing, cleanliness, obedience, independence, salvation, responsibility to others, and national security) -Cultures are distinguished by which values are produced as reasons for taking some action, and which values are most cherished, and dominant.
· Beliefs: Conceptions that people are true concerning how the world operates, and the place of the individual in relationship to others. - Beliefs are about what is or is not true. - Belifs may be descriptive, casual, or prescriptive. - Can be rooted in blind faith, experience, tradition, or science. - Cubans believe that happiness can be achieved by getting the most out of what one already has. - Americans believe that happiness can be achieved by accumulating wealth and consuming products.
· Norms: Written and unwritten rules that specify behaviors, thoughts, and appearances that are appropriate and inappropriate to a particular social situations. (rules that appear in a student handbook, signs, garage doors) -Punishment for violating a norm can range from a frown to the death penalty. - Folkways: Norms that apply to the details of daily life: when and what to eat, how to greet someone, and how to dress for a school event such as prom. William Graham Sumner: "Folkways give us discipline and support routine of habit" - Mores: Norms that people define as essential to the well being of a group. Violations of mores are generally punished severely.
· Symbols: Anything -- a word, an object, a sound, a feeling, an odor, a gesture, an idea -- to which people assign a name and meaning. - Language: A symbol system that assigns meaning to particular sounds, gestures, characters, and specific combinations of letters; the most important symbol system people have created. - Human language is what sets us aside from animals because it is so complex. - Edward Sapir & Benjamin Whorf advaced the linquistic relativity hypothesis (Sapir-Worf Hypothesis). - Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: States that "No two languages are sufficently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality" The worlds of those who speak different languages "are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attatched"
2.3 Cultural Diversity
· Cultural Diversity: The cultural variety that exists among people who share some physical or virtual space.
· Sociologists examine the extent to which people in a particular setting vary with regard to:
1. Material components of culture (the objects they possess and have access to and the meanings)
2. Nonmaterial components of culture (the beliefs, values, norms, symbolic meanings, and language guiding behavior)
· Sociologists look at the people who occupy a specific setting, and then try to establish the extent of the cultural diversity.
· Objectified Cultural Capital: Consists of physical and material objects that a person owns outright or has direct access too; have a monentary value that is tied to the willingness to buy/sell/own and hold on to them by others. Includes the ability to understand, appreciate and explain an objects meaning and value.
· Embodied Cultural Capital: Consists of everything that has been consciously and unconsciously internalized through the socialization process. Includes the words and languages one hears, has acquired, and has used to communicate with others ect. - The socialization proces shapes a person's character.
⦁ Institutionalized Cultural Capital: Consists of anything material & nonmaterial that is recognized as important to success in a particular and social setting. (Academic credentials for a job search, the ability to dress the part, and physical qualities.)
The 3 concepts above help us to think about what people bring to a setting!
· Cultural Anchors: Some cultural component that brings out a general agreement among members of its importance but also allows debate about its meaning.
Subcultures and Countercultures