CULTURE

CULTURE
* affects almost everything we do, think, and feel.

* It shapes our habits, behaviour, language and

impersonal style.
It affects how we talk, make love, build homes
and die.

Culture also affects all the things that we take

for granted and what we question.
Sociologically speaking, culture is the
sum total of all things we have learned
in living together in a group or a society.
Other Definitions
 
“Culture is an organization of
phenomena that is dependent upon
symbols, phenomena, which includes
acts (pattern of behaviour); object
(tools and things made by tools); ideas
(beliefs and knowledge); and sentiments
(attitudes, values, etc.).”
Leslie White
“Culture is the way of life shared by
members of society, which includes
language, values and symbolic
meanings and also technology and
material objects.”
Brikerhoff and White
ELEMENTS OF CULTURE
 
Material Culture- It is the
physical objects a society
produces, things people create
and use. These are the tools,
furniture, clothing, automobiles,
and computer systems, to name a
few.
 
Non-material Culture- It
consists of elements termed
norms, values, beliefs, and
language shared by the
members of society.
Generally, the non-material
culture is more resistant to
change than the material
culture.
Symbolic components of Culture
 
Sociologists refer to non-material culture as
symbolic culture because the vital components
are the symbols that people use to
communicate.
 
A symbol is something to which people
attach meaning and which they use to
communicate. Symbols are the basis of culture.
They include the following:
 
Language- The most defining characteristics of
human being is the ability to develop and use highly
complex systems of symbols like language. A symbol,
as sociologists says, is the very foundation of culture.
The essence of culture is the sharing of meanings
among members of society. Language includes also
speech, written character, numerals, symbols and
gesture of non-verbal communication.
IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE
 
 It is the primary means of communication between
people.
 It allows experience to be passed on the next generation,
which builds on it, freeing people to move beyond
immediate experiences
 It provides a social or shared past; without it, each of us
would have our own memories, but not those of others.
 It provides a social or shared future; enabling us to plan
future events.
 It allows shared perspective or understanding.
 It allows complex, shared, goal-directed behaviour.
 It expands connections beyond our immediate face-to-
face groups.
Belief- these are the ideas that
people hold about the universe or
any part of the total reality
surrounding them.
Values- They are the shared ideas of the
desired goal. To learn a culture is to learn
people’s values. Values are accepted not
merely as overt statement to which each
group member assents, but as the individual
commitment of each member, who has
internalized them in the process of
socialization.
Norms- These are the
shared rules of
conduct that specify
how people ought to
think and act.
 
CLASSIFICATION OF NORMS

Folkways
These are the norms that are simply the
customary, normal.
Behaviour which have become habitual and
repetitive to a number of individuals or group.
They have no particular moral significance.
 You are considered funny, ridiculous and
eccentric if you don’t follow folkways.
Example: Manner of eating
 
 Chinese eat with chopsticks.
 Occidental people and educated Filipinos use
silverware.
 Merienda, eating fried chicken with fried rice
for breakfast, asking a person where he has been
or where he is going as a form of greeting.
 Misa de Gallo
Mores
 
These are the norms associated with strong ideas of
right and wrong; ethical and moral values.
They are the “must” and “should” of society;
coercive in nature.
Many of our mores are the result of long established
customs.
Society Punishes violation of the mores by ostracism;
regarded as immoral, sinful, vicious or antisocial.
 
Example: Respect for Authority
 
Sex and Marriage behaviour
Laws
A law is a group of expectation which has
the formal sanction of the state.
These are often referred to as the formal
norms.
They are rules that are enforced and
sanctioned by the authority of the
government.
The laws supplements and reinforces the
mores.
Punishment for the violation of the laws is
explicit and is expressed in the laws
themselves.
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
 
 
Culture is cumulative- Culture has a
tendency to grow and expand.
 
Culture is dynamic- Culture changes and change
in culture is continuous. Cultures change from
within and without.
 

 
Culture is diverse- Culture varies
and is different from one another.
DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS OF CULTURE
 
Culture Relativism- the concept of culture
relativism states that culture differ, so that a
culture trait, act, or ideas has no meaning or
function by itself but has a meaning only within
its cultural setting.
Culture Shock- It refers the feeling of
disbelief, disorganization, and frustration
one experience when he encounters
cultural patterns or practices which are
different from his.
Ethnocentrism- It refers to the tendency
to see the behaviour, beliefs, values, and
norms of one’s own group as the only
right way of living and to judge others by
those standards.
Xenocentrism- this refers to the
idea that what is foreign is best and
that one’s lifestyle, products or
ideas are inferior to those of
others.
Noble savage mentality- It refers to the
evolution of one’s culture and that of other
based on the romantic notion that the culture
and the way of life of the primitives or other
simple culture is better, more acceptable, and
more orderly.
Subculture- This refers to the smaller
groups which develop norms, values,
beliefs and special languages which make
them distinct from the broader society.
Counter Culture and Contra Culture- It refers
to the subgroups whose standards come in
conflict with and oppose the conventional
standards of the dominant culture.
Culture Lag- It refers to the gap
between the material and nonmaterial
culture.
 
MODES OF ACQUIRING CULTURE
 Imitation- It is human action by which
one tends to duplicate more or less
exactly the behaviour of others.
Indoctrination- This takes place in the
form of formal teaching or training which
may take place anywhere.
Conditioning- Through the social norms
prevailing in one’s social and cultural
milieu, and through the process of
conditioning, the individual acquires
certain patterns of beliefs, values,
behaviour and actions.
Acculturation- A process by which
societies of different culture are
modified through fairly close and long
continued contact.
Amalgamation- Intermarriage of persons
coming from different cultural groups
result in some kind of biological fussion.
 
VALUES DEFINED
 
 Etymologically, value comes from the Latin
word, “valere”, which means to be strong,
to be worth.
 Values are those standards by which a
group of society judges the desirability and
importance of persons, ideas, actions or
objects.
 Values are shared conceptions of our
beliefs in what we considered desirable or
undesirable.
 Values are something deserving of one’s
best effort, something worth living for,
if need be, worth dying for.
 Values are principles or ideas in which
groups and individual may believe
strongly and which guide their
respective behaviour; principles by
which man lives.
 A value is an enduring conception of the
preferable which influences choices and
action.
 Values are the ideals, customs,
institutions, etc. of a society toward
which the members of the group have
an effective regard.
 Value refers to the utility of a thing,
the environmental conditions at the
time of evaluation.
 Value is that quality of anything which
renders it desirable or useful.
 
 
FUNCTION OF VALUES
 
 Values provide framework within which
judgment are made. Values are guides
for behaviour.
 Values give purpose and direction to the
lives of people.
 Values give meaning and significance to
life and to the totality of society.
 Values makes things desirable,
satisfying and worthy of approval.
 Values defined what are important to
people, what are worth living or and, if
need be, what are worth dying for.
 Values provide for the gap between
knowledge and action.
 Values have a primordial place in
education, in the total formation of the
person.
 
SOURCES OF VALUES
 
Inner Man or Mentalistic Theory of
Values- William James pointed out that all
our obligations, all of what call good and
what we call bad, do not exist as good and
bad per se.
Outer Man or Behavioral Theory of
Values- According to B.F. Skinner, values
come from your personal experience.
Id, Ego and Superego Theory or Theory of
Values and Preference- Freud argued that
we have evolutionary based instinctual
drives, Id based drives, prefer certain
things, we developed over time a
consciousness of ways to interact with our
external world to get what we want, ego
based drives, and we have a set of
culturally and parentally induced should
and should not superego base drives that
spend a good amount of time in a tension,
producing conflict between what we value
and what we prefer.
Labeling Theory or Cultural Relativism
Theory of Values- According to the theory
things, ideas, events, behaviour are
neither good nor bad per se.