THE INTERPRETIVE

DYNAMICS OF
SOCIETY AND
CULTURE
THINK . GUESS . RELATE !!
Situations
1. Gary graduated a year ago. Despite being
blessed with several job offers, he chose to
remain jobless and hang around with his
barkada. Together they love to stay in the town
plaza especially at night.
2. As a businessman, Mang Leo is used to
giving “padulas” or (lagay) to his main supplies
in order to expedite his business transactions
with them.
3. Members of the Seventh-Day Adventist
Church are strongly prohibited from eating
pork and food with blood, as well as from
smoking, and drinking alcohol beverages.
4. Darius is openly gay. He lives with his
partner Garner. He and Garner are both college
professors in the local city college.
If were grades were to be the basis of Rusty’s
standing in his economics class, he would
surely fall the course. However, he was given a
passing grade by his economic teacher, who
happened to be a childhood friend of his
mother.
Social, Political and
Cultural Behavior
 Every society has its own norms to follow. These norms
serve as guides or models of behavior which tell us what is
proper and improper, appropriate or inappropriate, right or
wrong. They set limits within which individuals may seek
alternative ways to achieve goals.
 Norms are often in the form of rules, standards, or
prescriptions that are strictly followed by people who
adhere on certain conventions and perform specific roles.
 They also indicate a society’s standard of propriety,
morality, ethics and legality.
Norms of Decency and Conventionality
Norm of Decency and norm of conventionality are the most
adhered norms in society.
 Norm of appropriateness or decency is commonly exhibited on
the type of clothing person wears in a specific occasion. This
norm also includes the manners and behaviors that show a
person’s refinement and civility (for instance, how to treat guests
cordially).
 Insome society, norm of decency also include the use of
appropriate words and gestures that convey politeness and
courtesy.
A good example is this: For Westerners, it is improper for a
person to be close or near a guest when having a
conversation BUT for Asians?

Likewise color signify different meaning certain culture.

Royalty is Blue for British people, while in Indians is Pink
Red is Luck for Chinese, but war and heroism for others.
Norms of Conventionality are beliefs and practices that are
acceptable to certain cultures but can be inimical to others.

For example, Bagobo in Davao bury their dead within their

neighborhood and T’boli of South Cotabato hangs corpses of
dead infants on trees.
But what makes them conventional?

Eating beef is prohibited in India

Eating Pork and drinking alcohol are prohibited in Muslim Believers
Only Kosher foods are allowed to eat by Jewish practitioners
Conformity and Deviance
Every society has a form of social control, a set of means that ensure people behave
in expected and approved ways.
All norms, whether codified or not, are supported by sanctions: reward for
conformity and punishment for non-conformity.
Internalization of norms- is the unconscious process of including conformity to the
norms of culture and as part of one’s personality, so that an individual often follows
social expectations automatically and without permission.
Conformity- is defined as the state of having internalized norms as part of the social
expectation.
 Deviance- describes an action or behavior that violates social norms,
including a formally enacted rule and a behavioral disposition that is
not in conformity with an institutionalized set-up or code of conduct.
 It can tolerated, approved, or disapproved depending on societal view.
 It is divided into two types:
Formal deviance includes actions that violate enacted laws, such as
robbery, theft, graft, rape, and other forms of criminality.
Informal deviance refers to violations to social norms that are not
codified into law, such as pricking one’s nose, belching loudly, and
spitting on the street, among others.
Taboos
 Taboos is an implicit prohibition on something
(usually against an utterance or behavior) based on
a cultural sense that it is excessively repulsive or, perhaps,
too sacred for ordinary people.
 It may be associated with foods, folklore and acts.
 SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL
CHANGE
 Change is generally pervasive and takes places in culture, society and politics,
change in culture bring change in society and human beings; likewise, changes in
society and human beings bring change in culture and politics.
 3 CAUSES OF CHANGE
1. Invention- it is often defined as a new combination or a new use of existing
knowledge.
2. Discovery- takes place when people reorganized existing elements of the world
they had not notices before or learned to see in new way.
3. Diffusion- refers to the spread of culture traits from one group to another. It
creates changes as cultural elements spread from one society to another through
trade, migration, and mass communication
CULTURE SPREADS THROUGH:

1. Enculturation- takes place when one culture spreads to another through

learning.
2. Socialization- refers to learning through constant exposure and experience to
culture which ultimately imbibes the latter to the system of values, beliefs, and
practices of an individual.
3. Association- is establishing a connection with the culture thereby bridging areas
of convergence and cultural symbiosis.
4. Integration- is the total assimilation of culture as manifested by change of
worldview, attitudes, behavior, and perspectives of looking things.
Political Change- it is the change that occurs in the realm of
civil and political societies and in the structure of relations
among civil society, political society, and the state.
Ex. Young Awareness and volunteerism and emergence of civil
society.

Cultural Change- refers to all alterations affecting new traits or

trait complexes and changes in a culture’s content and
structure.