The Cultural Context

Culture:
Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular
group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, according to society's shared values, and
contribute to society.

Society:
Society is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. Sociologists define society as the
people who interact in such a way as to share a common culture. The cultural bond may be ethnic or racial, based on
gender, or due to shared beliefs, values, and activities.
 Culture as a system of Norms
Informal norms can be divided into two distinct groups: folkways and mores. Both "mores" and "folkways" are terms
coined by the American sociologist William Graham Sumner. Mores distinguish the difference between right and wrong,
while folkways draw a line between right and rude.

 mores

A set of moral norms or customs derived from generally accepted practices. Mores derive from the established
practices of a society rather than its written laws.

 folkway

A custom or belief common to members of a society or culture.

Values

Values refer to intangible qualities or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a given society. Values are distinct from
attitudes, traits, norms, and needs. Values share the following characteristics and qualities:

• Values tend to be unobservable;

• Values tend to be conflated with other social and psychological phenomena;

• Values tend to have historical and cultural variability.

• Values express an idealized state of being.

Laws:
Laws refer to the mores that are formally enforced by political authority and backed by the power of the state.
Laws may enforce norms or work to change them. Examples of laws that worked to change existing norms
include the liquor prohibition laws of the 1920s or civil rights legislation of the 1950s.

Subcultures and Countercultures

A subculture is a small segment of people that operate within the framework of the dominant culture. In
contrast, a counterculture is a group of people with shared values that go against one or more significant
values of the dominant culture.

Subcultures have distinct values or shared interests that aren't popular among the majority of people in the
larger culture. However, they share in their interests in a way that doesn't violate or contradict what the
majority values. Musical interest is a common factor in the formation of a subculture. Glam rock, punk rock and
grunge music were associated with subcultures that also shared in fashion styles and attitudes. Other examples
of subcultures include biker groups, jocks and role-playing gamers.

A counterculture is often viewed as deviant by society because the values and behaviors of group members
rebel against what cultural values dictate. One of the largest counterculture groups in American history was the
"hippies." It consisted of people who spoke and acted out against the Vietnam War. In addition, hippies took on
certain fashion styles and behavioral choices. The Ku Klux Klan is one of the most notorious and controversial
counterculture groups. People who homeschool are considered countercultural, although their choice has
become more socially accepted as of 2014.

Cultural Relativism
Cultural Relativism is the view that all the beliefs, customs and ethics are relative to the individual within his
own social contexts. In other words, right and wrong are culture specific; what is considered moral in one
society may be considered immoral in another and since no universal standard of morality exits, no one has the
right to judge another society’s custom.

Principles involves in cultural relativism

Descriptive Cultural Relativity cultural relativism states that different societies have different moral code.

Equality Principle the moral code of our own society has no special status. It is merely one among many.
Relativity principle there is no “Universal Truth” in ethics that there are no moral truth that hold for all peoples
at all times.

Cultural Principle the moral code of a society determines what is right within a society; that is,if the moral code
of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society.

Tolerance principle it is mere arrogance for us to judge the conduct of people outside of society. We should
adopt an attitude of tolerance towards the practice of other cultures.

Difference between Ethnocentrism & cultural relativism

 The difference between two concepts Ethnocentrism & cultural relativism are
difference between night and day; they are simply different attitudes about
the world.

 Ethnocentric Ethan postulates the observer’s own culture as a standard of

measurement, while cultural relativist has no standard and views each culture
as special, according to its own merits.

Ethnocentrism and Xenocentrism

Ethnocentrism:
The belief that your own culture and ethnic group is superior to other cultural and ethnic
groups is called ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism has both positive and negative consequences. On one hand, it encourages
societies to advance their technology and research of numerous things past that of other
societies and revelations (discoveries) are made sooner. On the other hand, it makes societies
ignore what is going on in other societies. It can also lead to cultural misinterpretation and it
often distorts communication between human beings.

Xenocentrism:
Xenocentrism is a preference for the products, styles, or ideas of a different culture. In this, one
thinks that other culture has better styles, innovations, ideas, lifestyle etc. and they are
superior to us in many different ways and we are inferior to them.