Culture and cultural

imperialism
SOC10500 INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETY (FALL 2020)
PROF. BILES
Week 3: Key questions

 What are some examples of material and nonmaterial culture?

 What is ethnocentrism? Cultural relativism?
 Identify and explain the four elements of nonmaterial culture.
 Explain the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the role of language in culture.
 What are the characteristics of high and popular cultures?
 What is a counterculture? Subculture? Syncretism? Cultural imperialism?
 How does cultural change take place?
 How do structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic
interactionism conceptualize culture?
What is culture?

 Shared beliefs, values, and practices that we learn

in the context of everyday life
 Group of people who share community and culture form a
society
 Way that material (things) and nonmaterial (ideas)
objects come together to form a way of life
 Material and non-material culture
 Cultural universals
 Patterns or traits that are common to all societies
 Revolve around human survival, shared experiences
Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism

 Cultural differences are more prevalent than universals

 Differences among similarities
 Personal space and etiquette are examples
 Ethnocentrism
 Evaluating another culture based on how it compares to
one’s own cultural norms
 Xenocentrism
 Cultural relativism
 Assessing a culture by its own standards
Elements of nonmaterial culture

 Symbols
 Values
 Beliefs
 Norms
Symbols

 Gestures, signs, objects, signals, words and non-verbal

communication that help us make sense of the world
 Language
 Written system of symbolic shapes that refer to spoken
sounds, combined to convey specific meanings
 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
 Language shapes reality, people experience their world
through the culture embedded in their language
 if
a person can’t describe an experience, the person is not
having that experience
Values and beliefs

 Values
 Standards for discerning what is good and
just in society
 Deeply embedded, critical for transmitting a
culture’s beliefs
 Ideal culture vs. real culture
 Beliefs
 Tenets or convictions that people hold to be
true
Norms

 How to behave according to what a society has

defined as good and right
 Formal norms
 Established, written rules (laws, regulations) that are
enforced to varying degrees
 Informal norms
 Casual behaviors that are generally, widely conformed to
 Folkways (norms without any moral underpinnings)
 Mores (moral views and principles of a group)
 Taboos (crucial to society’s moral center, always sanctioned)
High culture and pop(ular) culture

 High culture describes patterns of cultural

experiences and attitudes that exist in the
highest class segments of society
 Associated with intellectualism, political power,
prestige
 Popular culture refers to patterns of cultural
experiences and attitudes that exist in
mainstream society
 Cultural capital
 High or low?
Counterculture and subculture

 Subculture
 Smaller group within a larger culture that
share a specific identity
 Members still identify with and participate in
the larger society
 Counterculture
 Rejects some larger cultural norms and
values
 Might defy larger society, develop their own
rules and norms, even create communities
that operate outside of greater society
 Cults
Cultural change

 Cultures change when something new opens up new

ways of living and when new ideas enter a culture
 Innovation
 Initial appearance of an object or concept in society
 Two ways for innovation to occur
 Discovery or invention
 Discoveries make known previously unknown but existing
aspects of reality
 Inventions result when existing objects or concepts are
put together in new ways
 Diffusion
 Spread of material and nonmaterial culture
Theoretical perspectives on culture

 Structural functionalism
 Cultural norms support the smooth operation of society; values guide people in
identifying social priorities and in making choices
 Conflict theory
 Social structures are inherently unequal based on power differentials, culture
reinforces issues of "privilege" for certain groups
 Inequalities exist within systems of values; society’s cultural norms benefit some
people at the expenses of others
 Symbolic interactionism
 Culture is highly dynamic, depends on how individuals interact and how
meaning is interpreted
 Every object and action has a symbolic meaning
 Language serves to represent and communicate interpretations of these
meanings to others
Cultural hybridization and
cultural imperialism

 Syncretism
 Amalgamation, blending of different aspects of culture
 Cultural imperialism
 Deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on
another culture
 Purposeful imposition of one culture on other cultures,
thereby destroying at least part of the other culture(s)
 Examples
 Consumerism
 Development