Sociology

Chapter 3
Culture

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 Culture is… (1 of 2)
• Society's entire way of
life
• Culture is the ways of
thinking, acting and the
material objects that
form people’ lives.
Culture is what we think,
how we act and what we
own. Culture is the link
to the past and guide to
future.
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 • No particular way of life is natural to humanity,
even though most people around the world view
their own behavior that way.
• Every group have their own culture and it is
accumulated through time and pass on from
generation and generation.
- Differentiate material and non-material culture?
Give examples?
- How many cultures in Vietnam do you know?

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 Descriptive Statistics: What Is…?
• Nonmaterial culture
– The intangible world of ideas created by members of a
society
• Material culture
– Tangible things created by members of society

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 Elements of Culture: Symbols
• Humans transform elements of the world into
symbols.
– Symbols are anything that carries a particular meaning
recognized by people who share a culture.
– Societies create new symbols all the time.
– Reality for humans is found in the meaning things carry
with them.
– Meanings vary within and between cultures.

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 Elements of Culture: Language (1 of 2)
• Language is a system of symbols that allows people to
communicate with one another.
– Cultural transmission
– Sapir-Whorf thesis

• Here the English word “read” is written in twelve of the

thousands of languages humans use to communicate with
one another.
o There are 7,000 languages globally

o Language not only allows communication but is also the

key to cultural transmission, the process by which one
generation passes culture to the next
o New Symbols in the World of Instant Messaging

G9, CU, g2g, brb

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 • Values: Broad guidelines for social living; values support
beliefs; culturally defined standards of desirability,
goodness, and beauty.
- Value conflict causes strain. Values change over time.
- Cultures have their own values.
- Lower-income nations have cultures that value survival.
- Higher-income countries have cultures that value
individualism and self-expression

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 Values Sometimes Conflict
• Sometimes one key cultural value contradicts
another.
– Value conflict causes strain.
– Values change over time.
• Cultures have their own values.
– Lower-income nations have cultures that value survival.
– Higher-income countries have cultures that value
individualism and self-expression.

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 Norms
• Norms: Norms are rules to guide people’ behavior in
particular situations. norms, rules and expectations by
which a society guides the behavior of its members.
– Mores to refer to norms that are widely observed and
have great moral significance. Mores, which include
taboos, are the norms in our society that insist, for
example, that adults not walk around in public without
wearing clothes. Mores distinguish between right and
wrong.
– Folkways, norms for routine or casual interaction.
– Mores distinguish between right and wrong, and
folkways draw a line between right and rude

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 Social Control

• Social Control: to regulate people thoughts and behaviors

by society. Various means by which members of society
encourage conformity to norms
- Guilt
A negative judgment we make about ourselves
- Shame
The painful sense that others disapprove of our actions
- Sanctions: Sanctions are rewards or punishment to confirm
norms. There are two kinds of sanctions: for folk-way
norms (weak sanctions) and for mores (strong sanctions)
- Laws: formal norms issued by political authority
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 Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life in
One World
• Many cultural patterns are readily available to only
some members of society.
– High culture: Cultural patterns that distinguish a
society's elite
– Popular culture: Cultural patterns that are widespread
among society's population

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 Cultural Diversity: Subcultures
• Subcultures involve difference and hierachy
– Subculture
 Cultural patterns that set apart some segment of society's
population
– Counterculture
 Cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted
within a society

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 Cultural Diversity: Multiculturalism
• Multiculturalism
– Recognizes the cultural diversity of the U.S.
– Promotes the equality of all cultural traditions
– Eurocentrism: Dominance of European cultural
patterns
– Afrocentrism: Dominance of African cultural patterns

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 Culture Differences
• Culture is varied from
society to society like food,
language…. Sometimes one
key cultural value contradicts
another.
• All societies contain cultural
differences that can provoke
a mild case of culture shock.

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 Culture Shock
• Culture shock
– Disorientation due to inability to
make sense out of unfamiliar way
of life
– Often occurs with domestic and
foreign travel
• Yąnomamὃ live in villages scattered
along the border of Venezuela and
Brazil. Their way of life could not be
more different from our own.
• This woman traveling on a British
subway is not sure what to make of the
woman sitting next to her, who is
wearing the Muslim full-face veil known
as the niqab.

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 • Cultural Relativism
– More accurate understanding
– The practice of judging a culture by its own standards
• Ethnocentrism A biased “cultural yardstick”.
Judging another culture by the standards of one’s
culture

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