2 Culture

Culture andSociety in a Changing World

MaterialCultureand Nonmaterial Culture Cultural Universals

Componentsof Culture

SymbolsLanguageValuesNorms

Technology, Cultural Change,and Diversity

Cultural ChangeCultural DiversityCulture ShockEthnocentrism andCulturalRelativism

A Global PopularCulture?

HighCulture and PopularCulture Forms of Popular Culture

Sociological Analysis of Culture

FunctionalistPerspectives ConflictPerspectives SymbolicInteractionistPerspectives Postmodernist Perspectives

Culture in the Future

I

got myfirstcreditcard,an American Express, a few weeks beforethemall trip....And let meconfess up front that Ihavealways loved shopping and buying things for myself , even when Icouldn't afford them.

Esp e cially

when Icouldn'tafford them. Somy story ofthe mall trip is a storyofpleasure, but also a story about denial-for I spent money I did not have,as usual,and Icould only enjoy that while denying Iwas doing it....I looked long and lovinglyat a red andwhite plaid flannel dress-it would havebeen perf ect with a white t-shirt and black docmartin boots.But it was $75.00,two weeks worth ofgroceries orseveral much-needed university press books.SoIknew I could not buy any new clothes. [Instead,]Ibought a video....

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Using my credit card was reallyeasy.Ijust handed it over to the young man at the cashregister, who had mesign a slip ofpaper.Then, the video was mine. . ..I think my urgetocall this "losing myvirginity" isjust onemoreway to deny what actually happened to me.... Denial is a fairly predictable process-whatever it isthat you repress to getyour pleasure always comesback to haunt you.Credit card denial works lik e that: first

sample of respondentsprovides datathrough ques- tionnaires or interviews. In secondary analysis, re-searchers analyze existing data,such as a government census, or cultural artifacts, such asa diary.In field re-

Key Terms

search, sociologists study social life in its naturalset- ting through participant observation,interviews,and ethnography. Through experiments,researchers study the impact of certain variableson theirsubjects. anomie12 interview 30secondary analysis31 conflict perspectives 17latent functions 16 social Darwinism 10contentanalysis 31 low-income countries 8social facts12 control group33 macrolevel analysis 18society4 correlation33 manif est functions 16sociological imagination 5dependentvariable 23microlevelanalysis 18 sociology 4 ethnography32 middle-income countries 8survey28 experiment 33 participant observation 32 symbolicinteractionist experimental group 33 positivism 10 perspectives19 functionalist perspectives15 postmodern perspectives 20theory 15high-income countries 6 qualitative research 22 urbanization8hypothesis 23 quantitative research 22validity25 independentvariable 23reliability25variable 23industrialization 8 researchmethods 28

Questions for Critical Thinking

1.What does C.Wright Mills mean when he says that the sociological imagination helps us "to grasp historyand biographyand therelationsbetween thetwo withinsociety?" (Mills,1959b:6). 2.As asociologist,how wouldyou remain objective yetstill see the world as others see it?Wouldyou mak esubjectivedecisions when trying to under- stand the perspectives of others?

The Kendall Companion Website

http://thomsonedu.com/sociology/kendaLL

Supplementyour review of thischapter by going to the companion website to take one of the tutorial quizzes,usethe flash cards to master key terms,and check out the manyother studyaidsyou'll f ind 3. Early social thinkers were concerned aboutstabil- ity in times of rapid change.In our more global world,is stability still a primary goal?Oris con- stant conflict important for thewell-being of all humans?Use the conflictandf unctionalistper- spectives to bolsteryour analysis. there. You'll also findspecial features suchas GSS Dataand Census2000 information that will put data and resourcesatyour fingertipsto helpyouwith thatspecial project or help you dosomeresearchon your own.

you buy something for "free," then your monthlystatement comes with an itemized list which tellsyou exactly what you'll have to pay for yourpleasure ....

-Annalee Newitz(1993) describing herf irst experience using a credit card, which oc- curredwhenshewasa University of California-Berkeley graduate student

L

ike millions of college students in theUnited States and other high-income na-tions, Annalee quickl'l learned both theliberating and constraining aspects of living in a"consumer society" where credit cards playa cru-cial role in everyday life. Sociologists are inter-ested in studying the

consumer society,

whichrefers to a society,such as ours, in which discre-tionary consumption is a mass phenomenon amongpeople across diverse income categories. In theconsumer society, purchasing goods and services isnotin the exclusive province of the rich or eventhe middle classes; people in all but the lowest in-come categories may spend extensive amounts of time, energy, and money shopping, while amassinglarger credit card debts in the process (seeBaudrillard, 1998/1970; Ritzer, 1995; Schor, 1999).Did you know that surveys show that people inthis country go to shopping centers more oftenthan they go to church? Are you aware that U.S.teenagers spend more time at malls than anywherebesides school or home? (Twitchell, 1999).What all of this means to sociologists is thatshopping and consumption are integral compo-nents of culture in the United States and otherhigh-income countries. What is culture?

Culture

is

the knowledge, language, values, customs, andmaterial objects that are passed from person toperson and from one generation to the next in ahuman group or society.

As previously defined, a

According to sociologists,our consumer society continues to growasmore people shop at home via telephone and Internet.

society

is a large social grouping that occupiesthesamegeographic territory and is subject tothe samepolitical authority and dominant culturalex- pectations. Whereas a society is composed of people, a culture is composed of ideas,behavior, and material possessions. Society and culture are inter- dependent; neither could exist without the other. Although people throughout history

have