The Study of Culture

Prepared by: Rene A. Japitana

Social Science Instructor
 Defining
Popular Culture
 Definition of Sociology and Culture
• Sociology is the study of human society at a given period in time.
• Anthropology is the study of human beings and their ancestors through
time in terms of physical characteristics, environmental and social
relations, and culture
• Anthropology covers all characteristics of humanity, including physiology
and evolutionary origins while sociology focuses on social relationships
Beginnings of Anthropology and Sociology
• The beginnings of anthropology go back to the period of discovery and
exploration, from the nineteenth centuries.
• Sources of facts are the accounts of early Western explorers, missionaries,
soldiers, and colonial official regarding the strange behavior and beliefs as
well as exotic appearance of people they had come in contact with.
• Discoveries of flint tools and other artifacts in Europe in the early
nineteenth century gave evidence of the existence of human beings a
million years ago.
• These discoveries happened at a time when advances in physics and
chemistry were made, arousing an interest in scientific inquiry.
• In the nineteenth century anthropology began to take shape as a separate field
of study that had its root in the natural sciences, social sciences and the
humanities.
• Edward Tylor was the first professor of anthropology in Oxford, England. In
United States, it was Franz Boas of Clark University, Massachusetts.
• From 1980, ethnographers approached the study of local culture as embedded
within regional and tribal forces.
• Ethnography is the systematic study of people and culture
 Defining Popular Culture
• Popular Culture  (or "pop culture") refers in general to the traditions and
material culture of a particular society. In the modern West, pop culture
refers to cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance,
film, cyberculture, television, and radio that are consumed by the majority
of a society's population. Popular culture is those types of media that have
mass accessibility and appeal.
• The term "popular culture" was coined in the mid-19th century, and it
referred to the cultural traditions of the people, in contrast to the "official
culture" of the state or governing classes. In broad use today, it is defined
in qualitative terms—pop culture is often considered a more superficial or
lesser type of artistic expression.
 Defining Popular Culture
• Popular Culture is the set of practices, beliefs, and objects that embody
the most broadly shared meanings of a social system. It includes media
objects, entertainment and leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic
conventions, among other things. Popular culture is usually associated
with either mass culture or folk culture, and differentiated from high
culture and various institutional cultures (political culture, educational
culture, legal culture, etc.).
 Defining Popular Culture
• Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally
recognized by members of a society as a set of the practices, beliefs,
and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in
time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings
produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The
primary driving force behind popular culture is mass appeal, and it is
produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno refers to as the
"culture industry".
 Defining Popular Culture
• Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of
ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. Therefore,
popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards
certain topics.
• However, there are various ways to define pop culture. Because of this,
popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting
ways by different people across different contexts. It is generally viewed
in contrast to other forms of culture such as folk cults, working-class
culture, or high culture, and also through different high praised
perspectives such as psychoanalysis, structuralism, postmodernism, and
more. The most common pop-culture categories are: entertainment (such
as film, music, television and video games), sports, news (as
in people/places in the news), politics, fashion, technology, and slang.
 Defining Popular Culture
• In his wildly successful textbook "Cultural Theory and Popular Culture"
(now in its 8th edition), British media specialist John Storey offers six
different definitions of popular culture
1. Popular culture is simply culture that is widely favored or well-liked by
many people: it has no negative connotations.
2. Popular culture is whatever is left after you've identified what "high
culture" is: in this definition, pop culture is considered inferior, and it
functions as a marker of status and class.
3. Pop culture can be defined as commercial objects that are produced for
mass consumption by non-discriminating consumers. In this definition,
popular culture is a tool used by the elites to suppress or take advantage
of the masses.
 Defining Popular Culture
4. Popular culture is folk culture, something that arises from the people
rather than imposed upon them: pop culture is authentic (created by the
people) as opposed to commercial (thrust upon them by commercial
enterprises)
5. Pop culture is negotiated: partly imposed on by the dominant classes, and
partly resisted or changed by the subordinate classes. Dominants can create
culture but the subordinates decide what they keep or discard.
6. The last definition of pop culture discussed by Storey is that in the
postmodern world, in today's world, the distinction between "authentic"
versus "commercial" is blurred. In pop culture today, users are free to
embrace some manufactured content, alter it for their own use, or reject it
entirely and create their own.
 Rise Popular Culture
• Scholars trace the origins of the rise of popular culture to the creation of
the middle class generated by the Industrial Revolution. People who were
configured into working classes and moved into urban environments far
from their traditional farming life began creating their own culture to
share with their co-workers, as a part of separating from their parents and
bosses.
• After the end of World War II, innovations in mass media led to
significant cultural and social changes in the west. At the same time,
capitalism, specifically the need to generate profits, took on the role of
marketing: newly invented goods were being marketed to different
classes. The meaning of popular culture then began to merge with that of
mass culture, consumer culture, image culture, media culture, and culture
created by manufacturers for mass consumption.
SOCIETY
and
CULTURE
 Definition of Sociology and Culture
• Sociology is the study of human society at a given period in time.
• Anthropology is the study of human beings and their ancestors through
time in terms of physical characteristics, environmental and social
relations, and culture
• Anthropology covers all characteristics of humanity, including physiology
and evolutionary origins while sociology focuses on social relationships
 The Individual in Society
1. Culture
a. Concept of Culture- all the human beings learned to do, to use, to
produce, to know and to believe as they grow to maturity and live out
their in the social groups where they belong .
1. Culture and Biology- the habits shared by the members of each group,
express the group’s culture
2. Culture Shock- this describes the difficulty of people have in adjusting
to a new culture that differs markedly from their own
 Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

• Ethnocentrism- people make judgments about other

cultures according to the customs and values of their
own terms before comparisons can be made
• Cultural Relativism- the recognition that the social
groups and cultures must be studied and understood on
their own
• Counter Culture- opposite to the culture/
different to what is dominant
• Accommodation- peaceful adjustment
• Acculturation – acquire individual traits at a
culture
• Enculturation- process of learning the rules/
learning our own culture or socializing
 Components of Culture

• 1. Material Culture – consists of human technology- all

things human beings make and use, from small hand-
held tools to skyscrapers
• 2. Non- Material Culture – consists of the totality of
knowledge, beliefs, values, and rules for appropriate
behavior
 Non- Material Culture
• Norms- are the rules of behavior that are agreed upon and shared within a culture
and that prescribe limits of the acceptable behavior
• Mores- strongly held norms that usually have a normal connotation and are based
on the central values of culture (should follow the rules)
• Folkways- are norms that permit a wide degree of individual interpretation as
long as certain limits are not overstepped
• Ideal Norms- expectations of what people should do under perfect conditions
• Real Norms – that are expressed with qualifications and allowances for
differences in individual behavior
• Language- is the road map in culture