GROUP 6

SECTION III - Culture as a Complex Whole

Culture should be thought of as a complex whole

that encompasses many aspects of social life
ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
BELIEFS

Beliefs are the conceptions and ideas of man regarding his

environment which was shaped by religions, traditions, folkways,
law and even science and technology
 SYMBOLS
*Anything that has meaning and represents something else
(Kendall 2013)
*Letters are symbols used for sounds that when used altogether
form words
*words are also symbols which represent an object or a
meaning
*Flags represent a country and can stimulate a
feeling of patriotism
LANGUAGE
*Refers to a set of symbols that expresses ideas and concepts
which enables people to formulate thoughts and communicate
with one another
*Language is also a form of
symbolism
*It is composed of sounds which form words and
these words are used to form sentences
*It can be verbal or non-verbal
*Without language, people cannot communicate, and without
communication, there could be no culture
 VALUES
*It is a sum of all ideas and concepts that is considered by a
particular culture to be good, desirable, and correct conduct in
day-to-day lives
*it is considered to be the basis for evaluating the rightness or
wrongness of an action
NORMS
*In order to understand the concept of a norm, we must first
distinguish it from values

Values generally cannot dictate how a particular good act must be

portrayed in a social setting. it merely provides for a tool for
people to evaluate a particular human conduct. Norms, on the
other hand, serves as a more concrete set of rules and standards
to be observed by a man in his cultural setting
 LAW
*Rule or policy that governs the conduct of men which is mostly enacted by
a sovereign power of authorized legislature
*Laws help shape how culture will evolve or develop in a particular state
but law itself can be said to be a product of a state's cultural orientation
*it is not only an instrumentality of cultural change but it is also a
product of the cultural background of the society which imposes it
ASPECTS OF CULTURE
Culture has characteristics which can be generally seen in all
cultures of the world.
 CULTURE IS LEARNED
*Culture can be learned by anyone who will be under the influence of such
culture. this process of learning culture happens in early life and continues
until a person dies
*Culture learning is an unending process
CULTURE IS SHARED

An individual who learns a particular culture can share his/her

knowledge of that particular culture to other individuals who in
turn can learn it and share to others as well
CULTURE IS CUMULATIVE
Human experiences and the knowledge and understanding gained from
such experience shape how people will think and act in a social
environment

This process of accumulation will go on and on and will not stop as long as
social life is present
CULTURE IS DYNAMIC
Culture is always on the move, it is never stagnant, it constantly
changes as new social experiences accumulate and shape how
people will respond to a social life

because of cumulative characteristic of culture, culture is also

dynamic
one might observe that older people will aways refer to the
culture as their own time to be a little different from the present
cultural trends
 CULTURE IS DIVERSE
The world is composed of many different cultures, it is apparently
observable that a particular culture could be integrated to another
culture
 CULTURE IS INTEGRATED

There could be many different cultures in one society, despite this

countless variations, a particular culture could be integrated to another
culture

One culture could be fused to another culture creating a

hybrid culture

Cultural traditions in the philippines such as the ilocano, tagalog, visayas

- these different cultures could be somehow harmonized into one filipino
culture
 THE CONCEPT OF SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

The great sociologist, C. Wright Mills (1963) stated that

sociological imagination is a kind of perspective that allows
individuals to see their lives as a product of thr various social
forces
these social forces shape not only the destiny of the society but
also the biography of all individuals living in the society

Sociological Imagination is a kind of way of thinking that see's

one's life as a life that is related to everything that happens in
space in time including the context of one's historical background

this means that all human lives are connected to each other and to
the society as well
SOCIETY AND CULTURE
It was established that man as a social animals are naturally
inclined to form societies
Culture is also inherent to man because it is a natural consequence of
human intelligence, since human beings live in a society, culture also
becomes an inescapable variable that needs to be considered in assessing
human societies

The Philippines was always considered as a country that was

influenced by the Christian faith when it was colonized by the
spaniards
CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
*Culture affects the entirety of the human person. a man's way of thinking
and behavior can be pretty much said to be culturally biased

*The dimensions of cultural effects on the individual and the society

itself are so immense that it is impossible to assess all the cultural
influences a person has
*This can be seen in the present day setting when people are very
much influenced by the technology that we have, almost
everything in the society is technology based - from fast foods, to
schools, market place, mall and other establishments
 ONE cannot deny the influences culture asserts over the private
individual and the entirety his social world

Freewill can be roughly defined as man's capacity to determine his

own choices based from the autonomy of his will, the autonomy of
human will become questionable when faced with the fact that
one's frame of mind is greatly influenced by the cultural context
that nourished his personal experiences

The issue on human freewill become perplexing and in a

quandary because culture affects one's decision-making
 GLOBALIZATIO
N or country is totally seperated from world events, this can
*No society, nation,
be seen from the histories of diefferent nations. such national histories are not
isolated or totally seperated from the history of the world

*Global independence is the proper concept to identify this intriguing

interconnectedness

*Global independence is a term used by sociologists to refer to situations

where one can see the transcendence of human activities across the
borders of different states
social problems that are happening in the local setting could be
seen as a ramification of international events that take place in
different geographical location

these intellectual and social movements happened mainly in

europe but it affected almost all parts of the modern world and
probably was the cause for modernity itself to take place
 the philippines itself which was under the spanish crown at that
time was influenced by it

revolutionary ideas reached the philippines through the

intellectualism brought by the propaganda movement in spain
headed by rizal, del pilar, jaena and the other reformers

such intellectualism gave rise to the revolutionary ideas prevalent in the

katipunan, such social movements in the philippines were fueled by the
opening of the suez canal which was the direct route to europe

MORE and more liberal ideas reached the philippines and later on
escalated to a full blown revolution
GLOBALIZATION
refers to the ever-increasing flow of goods, services, money,
people, technology, information and other cultural items across
the political borders

*it signaled a new trend in the diffusion of culture, the spread of

culture to other parts of the world is facilitated by the flow of
goods and services brought by globalization

*with this, a global culture is not impossible to happen in the

near future
THE END