MELC 3 Supplementary Resources:

IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGIES IN ENCULTURATION AND SOCIALIZATION

Nature- biological inheritance
Nurture- cultural inheritance
Socialization- refer to the process by which an individual is oriented and taught by his or
her society’s norms.
Identity Formation – the compilation of the values, attitudes, and beliefs that individuals
receive from their family, peers, and community enables them to create a personal identity.
Primary Identity- consist of the roles and statutes that an individual learns as a child.

THEORIES ON IDENTITY
Norms and values- it refers to all those ideas held in society that are considered good,
acceptable, and right.
Four Categories of Norms
Folkways- the socially approved behaviors that have no moral underpinning. These stem from
and organize casual interactions, and emerge out of repetition and routines
Mores- the norms related to moral conventions. People feel strongly about mores, and
violating them typically results in disapproval or ostracizing.
Taboos- behaviors that are absolutely forbidden in specific culture.
Laws- consists of the rules and regulation that are implemented by the state.

RULES and STATUS

Status- is an individual’s position in his or her society, which carries with it a set of
defined rights and obligations.

Roles- the sets of expectation from people who occupy a particular status.

CONFORMITY and DEVIANCE

Conformity - is the act of following the roles and goals of one’s society.

Deviance- the act of violating the prescribed social norms.

CULTURAL RELATIVISM is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be
understood based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged against the criteria of
another.
MORAL RELATIVISM OR ETHICAL RELATIVISM (often reformulated as relativist ethics or
relativist morality) is a term used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with
the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and their own particular cultures.
In detail, descriptive moral relativism holds only that people do, in fact, disagree
fundamentally about what is moral, with no judgment being expressed on the desirability of
this.
ENCULTURATION is the process by which people learn the dynamics of their surrounding
culture and acquire values and norms appropriate or necessary in that culture and
worldviews. As part of this process, the influences that limit, direct, or shape the individual
include parents, other adults, and peers.

It is related to socialization. In some academic fields, socialization refers to the deliberate

shaping of the individual. In others, the word may cover both deliberate and informal
enculturation.
Ex: Saying po and opo, “mano”, being hospitable,
It also the process where the culture that is currently established teaches an individual the
accepted norms and values of the culture or society where the individual lives.

ACCULTURATION is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from
the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society.
Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new
cultural environment.
Ex: kpop fashion, IP like the “ita” no longer uses “bahag”

ETHNOCENTRISM refers to the tendency of each society to place its own culture at the center
of things. It is the practice of comparing other cultural practices with those of one’s own and
automatically finding those practices to be inferior. Judging another culture solely by the
values and standards of one’s own culture.
Ex: When native English speaking people would think that all people should be/should know
how to speak in English. When they travel abroad, they would often assume that people of
that place can speak English.
XENOCENTRISM refers to the preference of the foreign. It is characterized by a strong belief
that one’s own products, styles or ideas is inferior to those which originated elsewhere.
Ex: When one thinks the imported products are far more effective than the Philippine made
products.

References:
Understanding Culture, Society and Politics 2016 by Phoenix Publishing House, Inc
Module 3 Department of Education, Region VII CENTRAL VISAYAS, CEBU CITY DIVISION

Prepared by:
(sgd.) FREZIELLE P. LAYNO
Teacher II