CULTURE

Refers to all the ideas, beliefs behaviours and products common to, and defining a
groups way of life. Culture encompasses everything humans create and have as
they interact together. It shapes how we see the world, impacts how we think and
act, what we eat, what we wear etc.

Culture can be classified into:

a) Material Culture
All the tangible products created by human interaction e.g. clothing, books,
art, buildings, food, vehicles etc.
b) Non-Material Culture
These are the intangible creations of human interaction e.g. ideas, languages,
values, beliefs, behaviours etc.

COMPONENTS OF CULTURE

1. Norms
Refer to shared expectations/rules specifying appropriate behaviours in
various situations. Norms help to maintain social order and they direct and
prohibit behaviour. (Hetcher and Opp, 2001)
Norms are enforced through internalisation and enforcement can be done
through both positive and negative sanctions. Norms vary over time. For
instance, women wearing trousers especially in public places or work is a
recent occurrence. Norms and social reaction breaches vary in strength and
intensity.
i. Folkways- Norms that are often informally passed down from previous
generations. They often deal with everyday behaviours and manners
and most of them are not written down of enumerated
ii. Mores- Strongly held norms that represent deeply held standards of
what’s right and wrong. Prohibitions of murder, robbery, assault etc.
iii. Taboos- Norms that are so objectionable they are strictly forbidden.
They are often considered as unthinkable culture e.g. cannibalism
2. Values
These are culturally defined ideas about what is important that are central to
culture. Values define how culture should be. However, not everyone in a
culture shares identical values and they also do not share them equally. Some
people and groups hold more tightly to certain values while rejecting others.
There may also be a mismatch between the values and norms claimed by
society (ideal culture) and the values and norms that are actually practiced
(real culture).
3. Symbols
A symbol is something that stands for, represents or signifies something else
in a particular culture. It can represent for example, ideas, emotions, values,
beliefs etc. A symbol can be anything including gestures, words, objects etc.
The meaning of symbols derives from the way they are interpreted within a
culture.
4. Languages
Language is a major component of culture and a special kind of symbol. It
refers to a system of symbols that allows communication among members of
a culture. The symbols can be verbal or written. Languages reflect cultural
perceptions and they define to some extent, how we think about the world and
how we act. Language is constantly evolving as societies create new ideas.
Swoyer (2003) articulates that that people experience their world through their
language and therefore understand their world through the culture embedded
in their language; a hypothesis known as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

CULTURAL UNITY AND DIVERSITY

When culture evolves, cultural unity and diversity are affected and that
becomes a cause for concern. Once we acquire the cultural ways peculiar to
our own society, they become so deeply rooted in that they seem second
nature to us and it becomes difficult for us to conceive other alternative ways
of life. We tend to judge the behaviour of other cultures by the standards of
our own and that’s termed ethnocentrism. In order to avoid ethnocentric
 feelings, social scientists need to develop cultural relativism which means that
they should be careful to judge other cultures by those cultures’ own
standards and not by their own.

Cultural diversities may also be found within a society. A sub-culture is a

smaller culture within a dominant culture that has a way of life that is
distinguished in some important way from the dominant culture. Sub-cultures
form around for example, hobbies, occupation etc. Sub-cultures usually have
their own beliefs, interests and means of interaction while at the same time
they share most of the values of the dominant culture. Not all smaller cultures
within the dominant culture largely share the values of that dominant culture.
A culture that opposes the patterns of a dominant culture is known as a
counter-culture.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Social structure is the term applied by sociologists to social ordering; in which

society is organised around the regulated ways people interrelate and
organise social life. All social ordering must continually be created and
recreated through the interconnecting of social relationships. And thus,
organised social life is always undergoing modification and change. In order
to understand social structure statuses and roles are some of the commonly
used concepts.
a. Statuses
Refer to established social positions. Status can be achieved or
ascribed.
Achieved status- Positions acquired through personal effort e.g. being
a doctor, lawyer etc.
Ascribed status- Positions involuntarily acquired through birth e.g.
being male/female, being a Mosotho

Combined together, all the statuses that a person holds comprise of that person’s
status set. Some statuses in a status set may be more important and influential than
others and those are called master statuses.
 b. Roles
A role is a behaviour expected of someone in a particular status e.g. a
student is expected to attend classes and pass exams. Role conflict
results when the different statuses of a person conflict with each other.
E.g. A doctor who is a mother may have trouble balancing the two.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE

 Functionalists obtain that societies need culture to exist. Cultural norms

function to support the smooth operation of society and cultural values guide
people in making choices.
 Conflict Theorists view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power
differential related issues such as class gender, race and age. For them,
culture reinforces and perpetuates these inequalities and differences in
power.
 Symbolic interactionist see culture as being created and maintained by the
ways people interact and how individuals interpret each other’s actions.
Human interactions are a continuous process deriving meaning from objects
in the environment and actions of others.