UNDERSTANDING CULTURE,

SOCIETY & POLITICS

(UCSP)

MODULE 4

Significance of Cultural, Social,

Political and Economic Symbols and
Practices
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Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs)

Analyze the significance of cultural, social, political, and economic symbols and practices.
Explore the significance of material remains and artifactual evidence in interpreting cultural
and social, including political and economic processes (UCSP11/12HBS-If-13)

At the end of the module, you should be able to:

1. Describe the role of culture in human adaptation.

2. Evaluate the importance of artifacts in relation to cultural and social aspect.
3: Form interest on the processes involved in cultural and socio- political evolutions.

In this module students will learn about early humans’ capacity and their determination to
survive the elements of their environment and the methods used by early humans in creating
tools as well as their cultural and sociopolitical evolutions.

It is important to understand how early humans outlive the pressure from their environment
through their material remains and evidence. The shift in stone tool technology informs us of
the capacity of humans to continuously alter their behavior to suit their circumstances.
Humans set of behaviors are constantly changing and adapting to their perceived needs until
now.

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I. Symbols
Do you know that the world is filled with symbols and practices? Sports uniforms, company logos,
and traffic signs are symbols. In some cultures, a gold ring is a symbol of marriage. Some symbols
are highly functional; stop signs, for instance, provide useful instruction. Humans, consciously and
subconsciously, are always striving to make sense of their surrounding world.

Symbols such as gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words— help people understand the world.
Symbols provide clues to understanding experiences. They convey recognizable meanings that are
shared by societies. Symbols are the basis of culture.

A symbol is an object, word, or action that stands for something else with no natural relationship
that is culturally defined. Everything one does throughout their life is based and organized through
cultural symbolism.

Symbolism is when something represents abstract ideas or concepts. Symbols mean different things
to different people, which is why it is impossible to hypothesize how a specific culture will symbolize
something. Some symbols are gained from experience, while others are gained from culture. One of
the most common cultural symbols is language. For example, the letters of an alphabet symbolize the
sounds of a specific spoken language.

Cultural, Social, Political and Economic Symbols

Cultural Symbols are a physical manifestation that signifies the ideology of a particular culture
or that merely has meaning within a culture. Cultural symbols do not have to be actual symbols
or signs; they can also be gestures such as handshakes and hand signals. Additionally, the same
symbol can mean different things in different cultures. Americans should be careful in Greece, for
example. The thumbs up, which symbolizes that everything is great in American culture, is just
like giving the middle finger in Greek culture.

Social Symbols are relating to human society and its modes of organization: social classes;
social problems or a social issue. A symbol that something people want to have or do because
they think other people will respect or admire them for it such as education, occupation, marital
status, accomplishments, or other factors.

Political Symbols are symbolism that is used to represent a political standpoint. The symbolism
can occur in various media including banners, acronyms, pictures, flags, mottos, and countless
more. For example, Red flags have traditionally been flown by socialists, left-wing radicals, and
communist groups to represent the "blood of the workers". Black flags have traditionally been
flown by anarchism, and left-wing radicals to represent the absence of all oppressive structures.
A combination of the two colors in a black flag represents social anarchism, such as anarchist
communism and anarcho syndicalism.

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Economic Symbols are symbols used in production, distribution, and consumption of goods and
services like currency, market, labor, demands and other economic activities.

The Significance of Cultural, Social, Political and Economic Practices

Cultural practices are the manifestation of a culture or subculture, especially concerning the
traditional and customary practices of a particular ethnic or other cultural group. It plays an
important role for a civilization and character of its citizens and society. It helps in striking the
balance with Mother Nature, conservation of natural resources and respecting each other. The
examples of cultural practices are religious and spiritual practices, medical treatment practices,
forms of artistic expression, culinary practices, housing and construction and childcare practices.

Social Practices refer to everyday practices and the way these are typically and habitually
performed in a society. It shapes everyday life and are familiar to all members of the community,
even if not everybody participates in them. They are relevant to community and help reinforce a
sense of identity and continuity with the past.

Economic system or practices are how societies distribute resources and trade goods and
services. They are used to control the five factors of production, including: labor, capital,
entrepreneurs, physical and information resources.

Artifact
Artifact is an object remaining from a particular period.

Mycenaean stirrup vase, 14th-13th centuries BC, imported to

Ugarit. Found in the acropolis of Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit),
tomb 37.

An artifact, or artefact is something made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art,
especially an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, however, the word has become a term of
nuance and is defined as: an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, which may be a cultural
artifact having cultural interest.

Tool Traditions

Oldowan tools are part of the Lower Paleolithic stage of technological development. They were made by
Homo habilis, and by early Homo erectus. There were two main types of Oldowan tools: core tools and

flake tools.
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1. Core tools were made by using a rock as a hammer to knock flakes off another stone, resulting in a
chopping tool that could be held easily in the hand. The tool could also be used for hammering or
digging.

2. Flake tools were the flakes of rock that were removed in the process of making the core tools.
Flake tools were used as knives. They were used, for example, to butcher animals, as evidenced
by cut marks on animal bones found in association with the tools.

Acheulean Tools

Homo erectus developed a more complex tool from what they inherited from Homo habilis. Using
the same process of percussion flaking, Homo erectus created hand axes that were bifacial, shaped in
both sides and with straighter and sharper edges. These stones were used in multiple activities such as
light chopping of woods, digging up roots and bulbs, butchering animals, cracking nuts, and small bones.
Homo erectus made other tools such as choppers, cleavers, and hammers as well as flakes used as
knives and scrapers.

An Acheulean hand axe, Haute-Garonne France – MHNT

Mousterian Tools

It was developed by Homo neaderthalensis (Neanderthals) in Europe and West Asia. The tools from this
industry combined Acheulian industry technique, which involved the use of premade core tool and
extraction of a flake tool that has sharpened edges. This type of tool is very efficient as all the sides of the
flake tool are sharpened and are handier.

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Mousterian tool made by the Levallois flaking technique, from Syria.

Upper Paleolithic Tools

By about seventy-five (75) thousand years ago, some early modern humans began making tools that were
significantly different from the earlier Mousterian tools. They have been categorized in several different
tool traditions in the Upper Paleolithic stage of technological development. These new tools have been
found in sites in Europe and elsewhere in the Old World and more recently in the New World. They range
from blades of various shapes and sizes to barbed harpoon heads.

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Types of Society
To help understand how modern society developed, sociologists find it useful to distinguish
societies according to their type of economy and technology. One of the most useful schemes
distinguishes the following types of societies: hunting-and-
gathering, horticultural, pastoral, agricultural, and industrial (Nolan & Lenski, 2009).Nolan, P., &
Lenski, G. (2009). Human societies: An introduction to macrosociology (11th ed.). Boulder, CO:
Paradigm. Some scholars add a final type, postindustrial, to the end of this list.

Summary of Societal Development

Type of
society Key characteristics

Hunting-and- These are small, simple societies in which people hunt and gather food. Because all people in these societies have few
gathering possessions, the societies are fairly egalitarian, and the degree of inequality is very low.

Horticultural and pastoral societies are larger than hunting-and-gathering societies. Horticultural societies grow crops
Horticultural and
with simple tools, while pastoral societies raise livestock. Both types of societies are wealthier than hunting-and-
pastoral
gathering societies, and they also have more inequality and greater conflict than hunting-and-gathering societies.

These societies grow great numbers of crops, thanks to the use of plows, oxen, and other devices. Compared to
Agricultural
horticultural and pastoral societies, they are wealthier and have a higher degree of conflict and of inequality.

Industrial societies feature factories and machines. They are wealthier than agricultural societies and have a greater
Industrial
sense of individualism and a somewhat lower degree of inequality that still remains substantial.

These societies feature information technology and service jobs. Higher education is especially important in these
Postindustrial
societies for economic success.

Hunting-and-Gathering Societies

Beginning about 250,000 years ago, hunting-and-gathering societies are the oldest ones we
know of; few of them remain today, partly because modern societies have encroached on their
existence. As the name hunting-and-gathering implies people in these societies both hunt for
food and gather plants and other vegetation. They have few possessions other than some simple
hunting-and-gathering equipment. To ensure their mutual survival, everyone is expected to help
find food and also to share the food they find. To seek their food, hunting-and-gathering peoples
often move from place to place. Because they are nomadic, their societies tend to be quite small,
often consisting of only a few dozen people.

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Beyond this simple summary of the type of life these societies lead, anthropologists have also
charted the nature of social relationships in them. One of their most important findings is that
hunting-and-gathering societies are fairly egalitarian. Although men do most of the hunting and
women most of the gathering, perhaps reflecting the biological differences between the sexes
discussed earlier, women and men in these societies are roughly equal. Because hunting-and-
gathering societies have few possessions, their members are also fairly equal in terms of wealth
and power, as virtually no wealth exists.

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

Horticultural and pastoral societies both developed about 10,000–12,000 years ago.
In horticultural societies, people use hoes and other simple hand tools to raise crops. In pastoral
societies, people raise and herd sheep, goats, camels, and other domesticated animals and use
them as their major source of food and also, depending on the animal, as a means of
transportation. Some societies are either primarily horticultural or pastoral, while other societies
combine both forms. Pastoral societies tend to be at least somewhat nomadic, as they often have
to move to find better grazing land for their animals. Horticultural societies, on the other hand,
tend to be less nomadic, as they are able to keep growing their crops in the same location for
some time. Both types of societies often manage to produce a surplus of food from vegetable or
animal sources, respectively, and this surplus allows them to trade their extra food with other
societies. It also allows them to have a larger population size than hunting-and-gathering
societies that often reaches several hundred members.

Accompanying the greater complexity and wealth of horticultural and pastoral societies is greater
inequality in terms of gender and wealth than is found in hunting-and-gathering societies. In
pastoral societies, wealth stems from the number of animals a family owns, and families with
more animals are wealthier and more powerful than families with fewer animals. In horticultural
societies, wealth stems from the amount of land a family owns, and families with more land are
wealthier and more powerful.

One other side effect of the greater wealth of horticultural and pastoral societies is greater
conflict. As just mentioned, sharing of food is a key norm in hunting-and-gathering societies. In
horticultural and pastoral societies, however, wealth (and more specifically, the differences in
wealth) leads to disputes and even fighting over land and animals. Whereas hunting-and-
gathering peoples tend to be very peaceful, horticultural and pastoral peoples tend to be more
aggressive.

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Horticultural societies often produce an excess of food that allows them to trade with other societies and also to have more members than
hunting-and-gathering societies.

Throughout Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula live the Bedouin, modern-day nomads.
While many different tribes of Bedouin exist, they all share similarities. Members migrate from
one area to another, usually in conjunction with the seasons, settling near oases in the hot
summer months. They tend to herd of goats, camels, and sheep, and they harvest dates in the
fall (Kjeilen).

In recent years, there has been increased conflict between the Bedouin society and more
modernized societies. National borders are harder to cross now than in the past, making the
traditional nomadic lifestyle of the Bedouin difficult. The clash of traditions among Bedouin and
other residents has led to discrimination and abuse. Bedouin communities frequently have high
poverty and unemployment rates, and their members have little formal education (Immigration
and Refugee Board of Canada 2005).

The future of the Bedouin is uncertain. Government restrictions on farming and residence are
slowly forcing them to integrate into modern society. Although their ancestors have traversed the
deserts for thousands of years, the days of the nomadic Bedouin may be at an end.

This photo shows a Bedouin family from eastern Oman. How will their society respond to the
constraints modern society places on a nomadic lifestyle? (Photo courtesy of
Tanenhaus/Wikimedia Commons)

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Agricultural Societies

Agricultural societies developed some 5,000 years ago in the Middle East, thanks to the invention
of the plow. When pulled by oxen and other large animals, the plow allowed for much more
cultivation of crops than the simple tools of horticultural societies permitted. The wheel was also
invented about the same time, and written language and numbers began to be used. The
development of agricultural societies thus marked a watershed in the development of human
society. Ancient Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome were all agricultural societies, and India and
many other large nations today remain primarily agricultural.

We have already seen that the greater food production of horticultural and pastoral societies led
them to become larger than hunting-and-gathering societies and to have more trade and greater
inequality and conflict. Agricultural societies continue all these trends. First, because they
produce so much more food than horticultural and pastoral societies, they often become quite
large, with their numbers sometimes reaching into the millions. Second, their huge food
surpluses lead to extensive trade, both within the society itself and with other societies. Third,
the surpluses and trade both lead to degrees of wealth unknown in the earlier types of societies
and thus to unprecedented inequality, exemplified in the appearance for the first time of
peasants, people who work on the land of rich landowners. Finally, agricultural societies’ greater
size and inequality also produce more conflict. Some of this conflict is internal, as rich landowners
struggle with each other for even greater wealth and power, and peasants sometimes engage in
revolts. Other conflict is external, as the governments of these societies seek other markets for
trade and greater wealth.

If gender inequality becomes somewhat greater in horticultural and pastoral societies than in
hunting-and-gathering ones, it becomes very pronounced in agricultural societies. An important
reason for this is the hard, physically taxing work in the fields, much of it using large plow
animals, that characterizes these societies. Then, too, women are often pregnant in these
societies, because large families provide more bodies to work in the fields and thus more income.
Because men do more of the physical labor in agricultural societies—labor on which these
societies depend—they have acquired greater power over women (Brettell & Sargent,
2009).Brettell, C. B., & Sargent, C. F. (Eds.). (2009). Gender in cross-cultural perspective (5th
ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. In the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, agricultural
societies are much more likely than hunting-and-gathering ones to believe men should dominate
women.

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Type of Society and Presence of Cultural Belief That Men Should Dominate Women

Source: Data from Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

Industrial Societies

Industrial societies emerged in the 1700s as the development of machines and then factories
replaced the plow and other agricultural equipment as the primary mode of production. The first
machines were steam- and water-powered, but eventually, of course, electricity became the main
source of power. The growth of industrial societies marked such a great transformation in many
of the world’s societies that we now call the period from about 1750 to the late 1800s the
Industrial Revolution. This revolution has had enormous consequences in almost every aspect of
society, some for the better and some for the worse.

On the positive side, industrialization brought about technological advances that improved
people’s health and expanded their life spans. As noted earlier, there is also a greater emphasis
in industrial societies on individualism, and people in these societies typically enjoy greater
political freedom than those in older societies. Compared to agricultural societies, industrial
societies also have lowered economic and gender inequality. In industrial societies, people do
have a greater chance to pull themselves up by their bootstraps than was true in earlier societies,
and rags-to-riches stories continue to illustrate the opportunity available under industrialization.
That said, we will see in later chapters that economic and gender inequality remains substantial
in many industrial societies.

On the negative side, industrialization meant the rise and growth of large cities and concentrated
poverty and degrading conditions in these cities, as the novels of Charles Dickens poignantly
remind us. This urbanization changed the character of social life by creating a more impersonal
and less traditional Gesellschaft society. It also led to riots and other urban violence that, among
other things, helped fuel the rise of the modern police force and forced factory owners to
improve workplace conditions. Today industrial societies consume most of the world’s resources,

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pollute its environment to an unprecedented degree, and have compiled nuclear arsenals that
could undo thousands of years of human society in an instant.

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Mulberry-Street-New-York-City1.jpg

Postindustrial Societies

We are increasingly living in what has been called the information technology age (or
just information age), as wireless technology vies with machines and factories as the basis for
our economy. Compared to industrial economies, we now have many more service jobs, ranging
from housecleaning to secretarial work to repairing computers. Societies in which this transition is
happening are moving from an industrial to a postindustrial phase of development.

In postindustrial societies, then, information technology and service jobs have replaced machines
and manufacturing jobs as the primary dimension of the economy (Bell, 1999).Bell, D. (Ed.).
(1999). The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. New York, NY:
Basic Books. If the car was the sign of the economic and social times back in the 1920s, then the
smartphone or netbook/laptop is the sign of the economic and social future in the early years of
the 21st century. If the factory was the dominant workplace at the beginning of the 20th
century, with workers standing at their positions by conveyor belts, then cell phone, computer,
and software companies are dominant industries at the beginning of the 21st century, with
workers, almost all of them much better educated than their earlier factory counterparts, huddled
over their wireless technology at home, at work, or on the road. In short, the Industrial
Revolution has been replaced by the Information Revolution, and we now have what has been
called an information society (Hassan, 2008).Hassan, R. (2008). The information society: Cyber
dreams and digital nightmares. Malden, MA: Polity.

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https://sticsdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/post-indus.jpg

As part of post industrialization in the United States, many manufacturing companies have moved
their operations from U.S. cities to overseas sites. Since the 1980s, this process has raised
unemployment in cities, many of whose residents lack the college education and other training
needed in the information sector. Partly for this reason, some scholars fear that the information
age will aggravate the disparities we already have between the “haves” and “have-nots” of
society, as people lacking a college education will have even more trouble finding gainful
employment than they do now (W. J. Wilson, 2009).Wilson, W. J. (2009). The economic plight of
inner-city black males. In E. Anderson (Ed.), Against the wall: Poor, young, black, and male (pp.
55–70). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. In the international arena, postindustrial
societies may also have a leg up over industrial or, especially, agricultural societies as the world
moves ever more into the information age.

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Societies are classified according to their development and use of technology. For most of human
history, people lived in preindustrial societies characterized by limited technology and low
production of goods. After the Industrial Revolution, many societies based their economies
around mechanized labor, leading to greater profits and a trend toward greater social mobility. At
the turn of the new millennium, a new type of society emerged. This postindustrial, or
information, society is built on digital technology and non-material goods.

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