LESSON 2: DEFINING CULTURE AND SOCIETY
CONCEPTS OF CULTURE
GENDER
• Refers to the socially constructed characteristics of being male
and female
• Gender also serves as a guide on how males and females think
and act about themselves the ways they interact with others and
they perform their various roles in society
SEX
• Refers to the biological differences of individuals.
• Sex is also refers to the hormonal distinction as well as diverse
levels of sexual arousal segregate from men and from women as
these indicators provide clues on one’s maleness and femaleness.
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS
• Refers to the category of person who have more or less the same
socioeconomic privileges in a society.
ETHNICITY
• Refers to the people who collectively and publicly identify
themselves as distinct and unique based on distinguishable
cultural features that set them apart from others, such as
language, shared ancestry, common origin, customs, and
traditions.
RELIGION
• Is an organized system of ideas about the spiritual sphere or the
supernatural, along with associated ceremonial or ritualistic
practices by which people try to interpret and influence aspects of
the universe otherwise beyond human control.
EXCEPTIONALITY
• Refers to the state of being intellectually gifted and/or behavior,
communication (learning disability, speech impairment, and
hearing problems), intellect and physical appearance, or an
combination of more than one specific exceptionality or disability.
NATIONALITY
• Is the legal relationship that binds a person and a country. It
allows the state to protect and have jurisdiction and a state to
protect and have jurisdiction over a person.
ASPECTS OF CULTURE
• The cumulative and social nature of human ideas, activities, and
artifacts gives a tremendous potential source of variability in
adaption.
• Cultural behaviors allow people to fit into and adapt to their
respective environments.
SHARED AND CONTESTED
• Culture is shared to others in order to learn and appreciate it. And
also contested in times of misunderstanding such as cultural war
in order to survive it.
LEARNING THROUGH SOCIALIZATION OR ENCULTURATION
• Culture is learned through socialization or the continuous
experiencing the certain culture by involving your physical states,
and also, it can be learn through enculturation or by means of
learning it by studying.
PATTERNED SOCIAL INTERACTION
• Culture need communication in order to pass and disseminate
information. It is also lead to interaction of different individuals
with different perspective and point of view.
INTEGRATED AND TIMES UNSTABLE
For a society or group, ideas activities, and artifacts are not only
shared their arrangement more or less fit together and interlock to
form consistent whole.
TRANSMITTED THROUGH SOCIALIZATION ENCULTURATION
• Acquired through learning, cultural ideas, activities, and artifacts
are handed down from generation to generation as a super
organic inheritance, which means it is inherently pass on through
generations.
SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE
SOCIAL CHANGE
• It refers to variation or modification in the pattern of social
organization, of sub-groups within society, or the entire society
itself.
3 TYPES OF SOCIAL CHANGE
1. INVENTION – Is often defined as a new combination or a new
use of existing knowledge. It produces mechanical objects,
ideas and social patterns that reshape society to varying
degrees.
2. DISCOVERY – Take place when people reorganized existing
elements of the world they had not noticed before or learned
to see in a new way.
3. DIFFUSION – Refers to spread of culture traits from one group
to another. Culture spread through;
• Enculturation – takes place when one culture spread to
another through learning.
• Association – is stablishing connection with the culture by
building bridges area of convergence and cultural symbioses.
• Assimilation - is integration which manifested by change of
worldviews, attitudes, behavior and perspective of looking
things.
POLITICAL CHANGE
• Include all categories of change in the direction of open,
participatory, and accountable policies.
• It is a change that occurs in the realm of civil and political societies
and in the structure of relations among civil society, political,
society and state.
CULTURAL CHANGE
• Refers to all alteration affecting new trait complexes and
changes in a culture’s content and structure.
• These changes are caused by several factors such as;
▪ PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT – Earthquake, repeated flooding, severe
drought, and other interruptions in the physical environment
drastically alters people’s lifestyle.
▪ POPULATION – Movement brought about by migration and
transnational origins whether due to dislocation,
deterritorialization, or urban explosion.
▪ WAR AND CONQUEST – War reduces population size, provide
conditions for war industry to flourish, and enable the victors to
lord over conquered territories and have the subjugated ones
under its control.
▪ RANDON EVENTS OR ACTS OF MAN – Can lead to change
▪ TECHNOLOGY – The impact of science and technology on a social
institution like family, school, church, and state is major impetus
for change.