LESSON #2 THE CHANGE AND ESSENCE OF CULTURE, SOCIETY AND POLITICS AND OTHER FIELDS

INTRODUCTION

In studying society, many aspects and fields are need to analyze and evaluate. But it can be studied by looking
for the intersections of the society, analyze the culture and traditions, identify the institutions and structures.

Changes can happen over a period of time, these changes may lead people to know what is happening around
them and if they’re going to adapt those changes. People are part of the society as well as the changes in it.
Aside from changes happened in a society, different fields that are connected to a society is important.
Different fields help people to learn more about the society and to know how it became important.

CONTENT

Change – is generally pervasive and takes place in culture, society, and politics. Changes in culture bring
change in society and human beings. Changes in society and and human beings bring change in culture and
politics.

These changes are even overlapping and interdependent in contemporary times due to factors affecting social
mobility.

Factors affecting social mobility

1.  Migration
2.  Transnationalism
3.  Globalization

Social Change – variations or modifications in the patterns of social organization, of sub-groups within a
society, or of the entire society itself.

This may be manifested in the rise and fall of groups, community or institutional structures and functions or
changes in the statuses and roles of members in the family, work, setting, church, government, school, and
other sub-systems of the social organization.

Three causes of social change

1.  Invention – new combination or a new use of existing knowledge, it produces mechanical objects. Ideas,
and social patterns that reshape society to varying degrees.
Material Intervention
Social Intervention
2.  Discovery – people reorganized existing elements of the world they had not noticed before or learned to
see in a new way.
3.  Diffusion refers to the spread of culture traits from one group to another.
Culture spreads through the processes of the following:
- Enculturation – takes place when one culture spreads to another through learning.
- Socialization – learning through constant exposure and experience to culture, which ultimately
imbibes the latter to the system of belief, values, and practices of individual groups.
- Association – establishing a certain connection thereby bridging areas of convergence and cultural
symbiosis.
- Integration – total assimilation of culture as manifested by change of worldviews, attitudes, behavior,
and perspective of looking things.

Political Change – all categories of change in the direction of open, participatory, and accountable politics.
One of the type of this change includes active participation and youth awareness.
Cultural Change – refers to all alterations affecting new traits or trait complexes and changes in a culture’s
content and structure. This are caused by physical environment, population, war and conquest, random
events, and technology.

FACTORS THAT AFFECT CHANGES

1. Natural Disasters or Phenomena (Floods, Earthquakes, Flood, etc.)

1.  Population that leads to Migration and Transnationalism

2.  Random Events such as Human acts
3.  War and conquest – Territorial dispute
4.  Technology

Essence of Anthropology, Political Science and Sociology

Numerous changes and transformations in the social, political and cultural aspects of individuals and societies
all over the world are best understood using the disciplines of anthropology, political science, and sociology as
tools.

Social Science – are a division of science that deal with the functions and structure of human society, as well
as the interpersonal relationship of individuals as members of society.

Anthropology – study of human beings and their ancestors and produces knowledge about what makes people
different from one another and what they all share in common. It also deals with scientific study of humanity
or those aspects that make us human and the imprints of human achievement and progress.

Every culture has its own particular rituals, behaviors, and lifestyles, and people in the field of anthropology
document the many varieties of human experience. The main concern of anthropology is to understand the
diversity and dispersion of human beings from the standpoint of cultural differences. It is important because
of its ability to synthesize the learning of other disciplines into one comprehensive picture of what it means to
be a human.

Anthropos – greek word for human being

Logos – the study of

FOUR FIELDS OF DISCIPLINE:

Physical Anthropologists – focus on humans as biological organisms

Cultural Anthropologists – investigate the contrasting ways groups of people think, feel, and behave.

Biological Anthropologists – recover information about human cultures often from the past by studying
material samples, skeletal remains, and settlements.

Linguistic Anthropology – nature and nuances of languages, communication systems by which cultures are
maintained and passed on to succeeding generations.

Political Science – body of knowledge relating to the study of the state and government. According to Harold
D. Lasswell it is a science of politics and politics as a governmental determination of who gets what, when and
how.

Polis – city-state

Science – comes from a latin word ‘sci” which means “to know”

Political Science is concern with the political behavior of individuals, groups of individuals, agencies,
institutions, and organizations among others.
The importance of Political Science are the following:

1.  Imparting knowledge of the State

2.  Imparting knowledge of government and administration
3.  Imparting knowledge about the world
4.  Creation of democratic values
5.  Creation of good citizenship
6.  Lesson of cooperation and toleration

Two types of political power in the Philippines:

Central Power – focused on the national government based in Manila.

Divided into three branches of government:

1.  Executive (President, VP, Cabinet secretaries)

2.  Legislative (Senate and House of Representatives)
3.  Judiciary

Local Power – centered on local governments in the provinces, cities, and localities outside of the capital.

Includes:

1.  Governors
2.  Mayors
3.  Barangay captain

SOCIOLOGY

This fields focuses on how people are doing in the society and its effects in a society where they belong.
Socialogy was first born in Europe during the Industrial Revolution, in this period there is a rapid changes in
which an invention of machinery happened.

Sociology – considered the science of society and social behavior, which is viewed as an aggregate of
individuals. (study of various activities of human beings) It also deals with social development in general and
describes and analyzes social life in all its phases and complexities. According to Joel M. Charon, it is the
systematic and scientific study of the human social life.

Socius – associate or companion

Logos – the study of

It seeks to provide an analysis of human society and culture with a sociological perspective and to study the
primary units of life. It is concerned with social acts and social relationships, individual, personality, groups of
all varieties, communities, associations, organization and population. Sociology has been concerned with the
development, structure and function of a wide variety of basic social institutions such as the family and
kinship, religion and poverty, economic, political, legal, educational and scientific, recreational and welfare,
aesthetic and expressive institutions. Sociology is a great importance in the solution of social problems.

August Comte – Father of Sociology

Emile Durkheim and Marx Weber – supporting founders of the sociology that gave their critical ideas
regarding the society.

Three stages to learn the society

1.  Theological
2.  Metaphysical
3.  Positive

The analogy of the dynamics

1.  Structure (anatomy of culture)

2.  Evolution (biocultural and social evolution)
3.  Processes (society as socially constructed reality)