Understanding Culture, Society, and Three Levels of Social System

Politics (UCSP) ● Dyadic - a personal relationship, often

Quarter 3 Quiz #2 (Reviewer)
Lesson #1:
Social Structure and Social Organization
+Social Structure
➢ Perceived as the matrix of society,
emptied of humans, the totality of
duties, rights, division of labor,
norms, social control, etc.
an intimate one, between two people
● Household - same person, 2 different
personalities/behavior
● Village or Community - general
behavior
Conceptualizing Group Membership

❖ Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
➢ Point out the functions of social
institutions to show how they
supported and contributed to the
maintenance of society as a whole.

+Structural Functionalism
➢ Society thought as a kind of
organism

❖ Raymond Firth
➢ He defined that:
● Social Structure - an
established pattern of rules,
customs, statuses, and social
institution
● Social Organization - defined
as the dynamic aspect of
structures, what people actually Lesson #2:
do, their decisions, and pattern Person and Society
of action within the framework of
the structure. +Society
➢ Defined as constituting a fairly large
+Social System number of people who are living in
➢ Set of social relations which are the same territory, are relatively
regulated actualized and thus independent of people outside their
reproduced as a system through area, and participate in a common
interaction culture.
➢ A deity or god is supposed to
possess the tripartite (threefold)
reserved for him alone
 (Omnipotence (all powerful),
omniscience (all-knowing), and
omnipresence (everywhere))
Society as God
+Boundaries of Social System
➢ Social system set of relationships that
are created and recreated
➢ Systematic boundaries are not absolute
but relative to a kind of social context or
a set of activities
+Network
➢ The term “social network” has years
entered the everyday vocabulary of
many societies. In the day-to-day
speech, it refers to an ego-centered set
of relationships, as when people talk of
“my social network”.
➢ It may also be used to refer to a set of
relationships activated for a particular
end, without necessarily being
organized around a single person.
Three Kinds of Social Field (According to
John Barnes)
● Territorially Delineated - hierarchically
organized through public administration
● Economic Field - consist of many
mutually dependent but formally
independent entities
● Social Field - had no unit or boundaries
had no coordinating organization, made
up of by ties of friendship and
acquaintance
Lesson #3:
Person and Society (Part 2)
+Scale
➢ Measure of social complexity in
society.
➢ The scale of a society can be
defined as the total number of
statuses necessary for the society to
reproduce itself
➢ The larger the scale, the fewer
actors of the system one knows
personally.
+Internet (Non-localized networks)
➢ It transcends dualism such as
local/global and small/large scale
➢ Online communities
❖ Mary Douglas
➢ Draws a classificatory scheme that
runs along two axes
+Group Dimension
➢ Persons in society are classified
according to their degree of
social cohesion
+Grid Dimension
➢ It describes the degree of shared
classification of knowledge
 Characteristics of Each Group
Dimension
● The Fatalist (Fatalism)
➔ Power struggle
➔ Mutual distrust
➔ Atomization
➔ Social exclusion
➔ Cynicism

● The Hierarchist (Hierarchy)

➔ Strong
➔ Stable
➔ Expert-led
➔ Synergistic regulation for the Lesson #4:
betterment of all Expanding the Concept of Culture

● The Individualist +Culture

(Individualism) ➢ A people’s way of life
➔ Self-reliance ➢ It prefigures both the processes and
➔ Individual freedom and structures that account not only for
responsibility the development of such way of life
➔ Equality of opportunity but also for the inherent systems
that lend it its self-perpetuating
● The Egalitarian nature
(Egalitarianism) ➢ The complex whole suggest that
➔ Solidarity culture cannot be simply broken
➔ Community down into a set of attributes.
➔ Unanimity ➢ It means that an understanding of a
➔ Equality of condition part can only be achieved in relation
to the other parts of the system
❖ Anthony Giddens
➢ Led the concept of the “Duality of Anatomy of Culture and Society
Structure”
➢ According to it, actors do not act
entirely on their own whim: there are
bound by structural preconditions for
their acts
➢ Duality of the structure
simultaneously be understood as the
necessary conditions for action as
the cumulative result of the totality of
action
Characteristics of Culture
● Explicit Culture - refers to the
similarities in words and actions which
can be directly observed
● Implicit Culture - exist in abstract forms
which are not quite obvious
Types of Culture
● Material
Examples: Technology, Food, and
Fashion
● Non-Material
Examples: Ideas, Behavior, Gesture,
Habit, and Religion
Elements of Culture
● Beliefs - perception of accepted reality
that may be material or non-material
● Knowledge - refers to any information
that is perceived as true
● Social Norms - established
expectations of society as to how a
person is supposed to at depending on
time, place, or situation
Types of Social Norms
❖ Folkways - patterns of repetitive
behavior which becomes habitual
and conventional part of living
❖ Mores - set of ethical standards
❖ Values - anything relatively worthy,
important, desirable, or valuable
❖ Technology - practical application of
knowledge
Functions of Culture
➔ Defines situation
➔ Defines attitudes, values, and goals
➔ Defines myth, legends, and the
supernatural
➔ Provides behavior pattern
+Ethnocentrism
➢ Came from “Ethno”: a Greek word
that means “people”, and
“Centric”: a Latin word that means
“center”
➢ It encourages solidarity, believing
that one’s ways are the best
➢ It hinders the cooperation and
understanding between groups
➢ It believes that the conflict between
societies, groups, or cultures often
leads to social change
Terms Related to Ethnocentrism:
+Xenocentrism
➢ Preference for the foreign, the exact
opposite of ethnocentrism
+Xenophobia
➢ Fear of what is perceived as foreign
or strange
+Cultural Relativism
➢ Its concept underscores the idea
that the culture in every society
should be understood and regarded
on its own terms
+Cultural Heritage
➢ Its concept includes that culture has
tangible and intangible components
● Tangible Components - are
those that are produced and
created based on specific and
practical purposes and aesthetic
values
● Intangible Components - may
be associated with events, and
historical sites but are not limited
to the houses of heroes and
historical personalities
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