CULTURE

COMPONENTS
Haralambros and Holborn (2004) posited that
culture defines accepted ways of behaving for
members of a particular society.

According to Tischler (2014), culture is all that

human beings learn to do, to use, to produce, to
know and to believe as they grow to maturity and
live out their lives in the social groups to which
they belong.
Such definitions vary from society to society.
Culture is basically a outline for living in a
particular society.

In common speech, people often refer to a

“cultured person” as someone with an interest
in the arts, literature, or music, suggesting that
the individual
has a highly developed sense of style or artistic
appreciation of finer things. To sociologists
however, every human being is cultured.
Why? Because in order for an infant to survive
when it is born, it must learn skills, knowledge
and accepted ways of behaving of society into
which it is born
In Sociology terms, it must learn the culture of its
society.
Ralph Linton states that “the culture of a society is
the way of life of its members; the collection of
ideas and habits which they learn from generation
to generation.
In Clyde Kluckhohn’s elegant phrase, Culture is a
design for living held by members of a particular
society. Since humans have no instincts to direct their
actions, their behaviour must be based on guidelines
that are learned. In order for a society to operate
effectively, these guidelines must be shared by its
members.
Without a shared culture, members of the society
would be unable to communicate and cooperate
and confusion and disorder would result. Culture
therefore has two essential qualities: first, it is
learned, second it is shared. Without it there would
be no human society.
In every social group, culture is transmitted from
one generation to the next. Unlike other creatures,
human beings do not pass on many behavioural
patterns through their genes. Rather, culture is
taught and learned through social interaction.
Culture Shock
Every social group has its own specific culture, its
own way of seeing, doing and making things, its own
traditions. Some cultures are quite similar to one
another; others are often very different. When
individuals travel abroad to countries with cultures
that are very different from their own, the experience
can bee quite upsetting.
Meals are scheduled at different times of the day,
strange or even replusive foods are presented, and
the traveler never quite knows what to expect
from others or what others in turn might expect.
Local customs might seem charming or brutal. Sometimes
travelers are unable to adjust easily to foreign culture; they
might become anxious, lose their appetite or even feel
sick.

Sociologists use the term culture shock to describe the

difficulty people have adjusting to a new culture that
differs markedly from their own.
Components of Culture
The concept of culture is not easy to understand,
perhaps because every aspect of our social lives
is an expression of it and because familiarity
produces a kind of nearsightedness toward our
own culture, making it difficult for us to take an
analytical perspective toward our everyday social
lives.
Sociologists find it helpful to break down culture
into separate components: material culture
(objects) and non material culture (rules and
shared beliefs) (Hall and Hall, 1990).
Material Culture
According to Tischler (2004) Material Culture
consists of human technology- all the things human
beings make and use, from small, handheld tools to
skyscrapers.
Without material culture, our species could not
survive long because material culture provides a
buffer between humans and their environment.
 Using it, human beings can protect themselves from
environmental stresses, as when they build shelters and
wear clothing to protect themselves from the cold or
strong sunlight.
 Even more important, humans use material culture to
modify and exploit the environment. They build damns
and irrigation canals, plant fields and forests, convert
coal and oil into energy and transform ores into versatile
metals.
 Using material culture, our species has learned to cope
with the most extreme environments and to survive and
even to thrive on all continents and in all climates.
Human beings have walked on the floor of the ocean and
on the surface of the moon. No other creature can do
this; none has our flexibility. Material culture has made
human beings the dominant life form on earth.
Nonmaterial Culture
Every society also has a nonmaterial culture,
which consists of the totality of knowledge,
beliefs, values and rules for appropriate behaviour.
The nonmaterial culture is structured by which
institutions as the family, religion, education,
economy and government.
Whereas material culture is made up of
things that have a physical existence (they
can be seen, touched and so on), the
elements of nonmaterial culture are the ideas
associated with their use.
Although engagement rings and birthday flowers
have a material existence, they also reflect
attitudes, beliefs and values that are apart of
culture, with rules for their appropriate use in
specified situations. Norms are central elements of
nonmaterial culture.
Norms

Norms are the rules of behaviour that are agreed upon and
shared within a culture and that prescribe limits of
acceptable behaviour. They define normal expected
behaviour and help people achieve predictability in their
lives.
For example in the American culture, a common way for
men to greet each other is to shake hands. In the Japanese
society, bowing is common.
Every culture contains a large number of guidelines
that direct conduct in particular situations. Such
guidelines are known as norms. A norm is a
specific guide to action which defines acceptable
and appropriate behaviour in particular situations.
For example, in all societies there are norms
governing dress.
Members of society generally share norms which
define acceptable male and female apparel and
appropriate dress for different age groups: for
example in our society, a 70 year old grandmother
dressed as a teenager would contravene the norms
for her age group. Norms of dress provide
guidelines on what to wear on particular
occasions.
A formal dance, a funeral, a day out on the beach, a working
day in the bank, on the building site or in the hospital- all these
situations are governed by norms which specify appropriate
attire for the occasion.

 Norms of dress vary from society to society. For example, take

the case of the male missionary who was presented with bare
breasted African females in his congregation. Flushed with
embarrassment, he ordered a consignment of brassieres. The
woman could make little sense of them in terms of their norms
of dress.
From their point of view, the most
reasonable way to interpret these strange
articles was to regard them as headgear.
Much to the dismay of the missionary, they
place the two cups on the top of their heads
and fastened the straps under their chins.
 Mores (pronounced more-ays) are strongly held norms
that usually have a moral implications and are based on
central values of culture.
 Violations of mores produce strong negative reactions,
which are often supported by law.
 For example, sexual molestation of a child, rape,
murder, incest are some violations of Guyanese mores.
 Notall norms command such absolute conformity. Much of
day to day life is governed by traditions or folkways.

Folkways
 Folkways are norms that permit a wide degree of individual
interpretation as long as certain limits are not overstepped.
People who violate folkways are seen as peculiar or
possibly eccentric, but rarely do they elicit strong public
response.
 Folkways vary from culture to culture and changes with
time.

 Forexample, good manners in our culture also show a

range of acceptable behaviour. A man might or might not
open a door or hold a coat for a woman, who might also
choose to open a door or hold a coat for a man- all four
options are acceptable behaviour and cause neither
comment nor negative reactions from people.
Norms are specific expectations about social
behaviours, but it is important to add that they
are not absolute. Even though we learn what is
expected in our culture, there is room for
variation in individual interpretations of these
norms that deviate from the ideal norm.
Ideal norms are expectations of what people
should do under perfect conditions. These
norms we first teach to our children. They
tend to be simple, making few distinctions
and allowing for no expectations. In reality
however nothing about humans is ever that
dependable.
Real Norms are norms that are expressed with
qualifications and allowances for differences in
individual behaviour. They specify how people
actually behave. They reflect the fact that
person’s behaviour is guided by norms as well
as unique situations.

For example: Bribes

Values

Tichler (2014) states that values are a culture’s general

orientations toward life. Its notion of what is good and
bad, what is desirable and undesirable.
Unlike norms, which provide specific directives
for conduct, values provide more general
guidelines. According to Haralambos and Holborn,
a value is a belief that something is good and
desirable. It defines what is important, worthwhile
and worth striving for. It has often been suggested
that individual achievement and materialism are
major values in Western Industrial Society.
The origin of language
 Language enables humans to organize the world around them
into labeled cognitive categories and use these labels to
communicate with one another. Language therefore, makes
possible teaching and sharing the values, norms and non
material culture.

 It provides the principal means through which cuture is

transmitted and the foundation on which the complexity of
human thought and experience rests.
Symbols and Culture

What does it mean to say that culture is symbolic?

A symbol is anything that represents something else and
carries a particular meaning recognized by members of a
culture.

Symbols need not share any quality at all with whatever they
represent.
 Symbols stand for things simply because people agree
that they do. Thus, when two or more individuals agree
about the things a particular object represents, that object
becomes a symbol by virtue of its shared meaning for
those individuals.
 Forexample when Whitney Smith sewed the Golden
Arrowhead she was creating a symbol.
The important points about the meaning of the
symbols is that they are entirely arbitrary, a matter
of cultural convention. Each culture has its own
meaning to things, example, in Guyana mourners
usually wear black to a funeral, in the far east
people wear white.
References

Henry L. T (2014: Introduction to

Sociology