Chapter 3

CULTURE: A WORLD OF
MEANING

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Culture: A World of Meaning

Learning Objectives
• LO 3.1 Explain the development of culture as a
human strategy for survival.
• LO 3.2 Identify common elements of culture.
• LO 3.3 Discuss dimensions of cultural difference
and cultural change.
• LO 3.4 Apply sociology's macro-level theories to
gain greater understanding of culture.
• LO 3.5 Critique culture as limiting or expanding
human freedom.

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The Power of Society

• Is how we feel
about abortion as
“personal” an
opinion as we
may think?

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Culture is…

Society's entire way

of life

LO 3.1 Explain the development of culture

as a human strategy for survival.

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 “No particular way of life is
natural to humanity, even
though most people around
the world view their own
behavior that way.”

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Culture Shock

• Culture shock
– Disorientation due
to inability to make
sense out of
unfamiliar way of
life

– Often occurs with Yąnomamὃ live in villages scattered

domestic and along the border of Venezuela and
foreign travel Brazil. Their way of life could not be
more different from our own.

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Kinds of Culture: What Is…?

Cultural Relativism

More accurate
understanding

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Descriptive Statistics: What Is…?

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Culture Differences

All societies contain

cultural differences that
can provoke a mild case
of culture shock.

This woman traveling on a British subway is not sure what to make of

the woman sitting next to her, who is wearing the Muslim full-face veil
known as the niqab.

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Elements of Culture: Symbols

Humans transform elements of the

world into symbols.
• Symbols are 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.
• Meanings vary within and between cultures.

LO 3.2 Identify common elements of culture.

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Seeing Sociology in Contemporary
Everyday Life

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Elements of Culture: Language

• Language is a
system of
symbols that
allows people to
communicate with
one another.
– Cultural Here the English word “read” is written in
transmission twelve of the thousands of languages
humans use to communicate with one
– Sapir-Whorf thesis another.

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Chinese (including Mandarin, Cantonese, and dozens of other
dialects) is the native tongue of one-fifth of the world's people,
almost all of whom live in Asia. Although all Chinese people read
and write with the same characters, they use several dozen
dialects. The “official” dialect, taught in schools throughout the
People's Republic of China and the Republic of Taiwan, is
Mandarin (the dialect of Beijing, China's capital). Cantonese, the
language of Canton, is the second most common Chinese dialect;
it differs in sound from Mandarin roughly the way French differs
from Spanish.

English is the native tongue or official language in several

world regions (spoken by 5 percent of humanity) and has
become the preferred second language in the world.

The largest concentration of Spanish speakers is in Latin

America and, of course, Spain. Spanish is also
the second most widely spoken language in the United
States.

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Descriptive Statistics: What Is…?

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Sociologist Robin Williams' Ten Values
Central to American Life
• Equal opportunity
• Achievement and success
• Material comfort
• Activity and work
• Practicality and efficiency
• Progress
• Science
• Democracy and free
enterprise How does the popularity of the television
• Freedom show American Idol illustrate many of
the key values of U.S. culture listed here?
• Racism and group
superiority

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Values Sometimes Conflict

Sometimes one key cultural

value contradicts another.
• Value conflict causes strain.
• Values change over time.

Cultures have their own values.

• Lower-income nations have cultures that
value survival.
• Higher-income countries have cultures
that value individualism and self-
expression.

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Sociology, 15th Edition, Global Edition, Pearson Education © 2015
Norms

Norms Mores Folkways

Rules and
expectations by Widely observed Norms for
which a society and have great routine and
guides the moral casual
behavior of its significance interaction
members

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Descriptive Statistics: What Is…?

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Culture: What Is…?

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Material Culture and Technology

Includes a wide range of physical human creations or

artifacts
Material
culture

Contains artifacts that partly reflect underlying cultural

values

Reflects a society's technology or knowledge used to make

a way of life in particular surroundings

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Values and Standards of Beauty

Standards of beauty—including the color and design of everyday

surroundings—vary significantly from one culture to another.

This Ndebele couple in South Africa dresses in the same bright colors they
use to decorate their home.

Members of North American and European societies, by contrast, make far

less use of bright colors and intricate detail, so their housing and clothing
appear much more subdued.

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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life in One
World

High culture: Cultural

patterns that distinguish
a society's elite
Many cultural patterns
are readily available to
only some members
of society. Popular culture:
Cultural patterns that
are widespread among
society's population

LO 3.3 Discuss dimensions of cultural

difference and cultural change.

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Cultural Diversity: Subcultures

Subcultures involve difference

and hierachy

Cultural patterns that

set apart some
Subculture
segment of society's
population

Cultural patterns that

strongly oppose those
Counterculture
widely accepted
within a society

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Cultural Diversity: Subcultures

Reality television is based on popular culture rather

than high culture.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo follows seven-year-old

Alana Honey Boo Boo Thompson and her parents,
who live in rural Georgia.

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Cultural Diversity: Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Promotes the equality of all cultural

traditions
Recognizes the
cultural diversity
of the U.S. Eurocentrism: Afrocentrism:
Dominance of Dominance of
European cultural African cultural
patterns patterns

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National Map: Language Diversity across the United
States

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Perhaps the most basic human
truth of this world is that “all
things shall pass.”

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Cultural Change

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Life Objectives of First-Year College Students, 1969 and 2012
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Culture Changes in Three Ways

Invention Discovery Diffusion

• Creating • Recognizing • Spread of

new cultural and better cultural traits
elements understanding • Jazz music
• Telephone something or much of
or airplane already the English
existing language
• X-rays or DNA

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Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Practice of judging Practice of judging

Ethnocentrism

Cultural relativism
another culture by a culture by its
the standards of own standards
one's own culture

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Ethnocentric or not?

• In the world's low-income

countries, most children must
work to provide their families with
needed income.

• Is it ethnocentric for people living

in high-income nations to
condemn the practice of child
labor?

Why or why not? These young girls work long

hours in a brick factory in the
Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

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Is There a Global Culture?

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Is There a Global Culture?

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Functions of Culture: Structural-Functional
Theory
• Structural-functional
– Culture is a strategy for meeting human
needs.
– Values are core of a culture.
– Every culture has cultural universals.

LO 3.4 Apply sociology's macro-level theories

to gain greater understanding of culture.

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Functions of Culture: Structural-Functional
Theory
• Evaluation
– Cultural diversity is
ignored.
– Importance of change
is downplayed.

From a structural-functional point of

view, we might ask if this universal
character reflects the fact that
LO 3.4 Apply sociology's macro-level families carry out important tasks not
theories to gain greater understanding easily accomplished in other ways.
of culture.
What tasks do families perform?
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Inequality and Culture: Social-Conflict Theory

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Evolution and Culture

Sociobiology
• Theoretical paradigm
• Exploration of ways in which human biology
affects how we create culture
• Approach rooted in Charles Darwin and
evolution
• Contends living organisms change over long
periods of time based on natural selection

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Evolution and Culture

Evaluation
Using an evolutionary perspective,
• Might be used to support racism or
sociobiologists explain that different
sexismreproductive strategies give rise
• Littletoevidence to support
a double standard: theory
Men treat women
• as sexual
People objects
learn more than
behavior women
within treat
a cultural
system men that way.

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Culture and Human Freedom
Culture as Culture as
constraint freedom
• We know our world • Culture is changing
in terms of our and offers a variety
culture. of opportunities.
• Sociologists share
the goal of learning
more about cultural
diversity.
To what
extent are
human
beings, as
cultural
creatures,
free?

LO 3.5 Critique culture as limiting or expanding human freedom.

Sociology, 15th Edition, Global Edition, Pearson Education © 2015
Sociology, 15th Edition, Global Edition, Pearson Education © 2015