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. Charlene is openly lesbian. He lives with her
partner Cherry. She and Cherry 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 economics 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).
 In some 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.
Understanding Culture, Society
and Politics: Some Key
Observations

THE ESSENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY,

POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND
ANTHROPOLOGY
 The Historical Background of
the Growth of Social Sciences

 In the development and progress of human

knowledge, the social sciences were the last
to develop after the natural science.
 It was originally based from the studies of
political philosophies and theological
reasoning.
 It was slowed because of religious authority
and tradition.
The Unprecedented Growth of
Science
 Itcan be traced back from Nicolaus
Copernicus that unfolded the truth
about the universe to Sir Isaac
Newton’s proposal about universal
laws of motion and a mechanical
model of the universe along with
Rene Descartes and Francis
Bacon’s establishment of supremacy
of reason.
 The Birth of Social Sciences
as a Response to the Social
Turmoil of the Modern Era

 Sociology- is a branch of the social

sciences that deals with the scientific
study of human interactions, social
groups and institutions, whole
societies.
 It deals with the relationship between
the individual and the society as they
develop and change in history.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

 Founding father of Sociology

 First coined the term “Social Physics”
 According to him, there are three stages of societies
namely,
Theological Stage
Metaphysical Stage
Positive Stage
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

 The Founding mother of Sociology

 Shewrote her accounts in How to Observe Morals and
Manners (1838)
 She expressed how ethnographic narrative works
 She also wrote on political economy
Karl Marx (1818- 1883)

 He introduced the materialist analysis of history which eliminates religious and

metaphysical (spiritual) explanation for historical development
 He proposed the “Conflict Theory” which had an element of revolutionary
activities and discounts the class system in society and economy.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

 Made possible the professionalization of sociology by

teaching in the University of Bordeaux.
 He famously argued that society preexisted the individuals
and will continue to exist long after the individuals is
dead.
Max Weber (1864-1920)

 He stressed the role of rationalization in the

development of society.
 For him, rationalization refers essentially to the
disenchantment of the world. As science begun to
replace the religion, people also adopted a
scientific or rational attitude to the world.
Political Science

 Itis a part of the social sciences that deals with the

study of politics, power, and government.
 Itstudies how even the most private and personal
decisions of individuals are influenced by
collective decisions of a community.
Various Areas of Interest
 Public Administration
Which examines how the government
functions and how decisions are policies
are made.
 Political Economy
Which evaluates the interplay between
economics, politics and law and its
implication
 Comparative Politics
Compare different government systems
ANTHROPOLOGY

 Itis a systematic study of the biological, cultural,

and social aspect of man. It is derived from the two
Greek words, athropos which means “man” and
logos which means “study” or “inquiry”.
 Ithas also had diverse field of study and areas of
interest.
Four fields of Disciplines:

1. Physical Anthropology (Biological)- deals with the

humans as Biological organisms (tracing evolutionary
development and looking at biological variation.
2. Cultural Anthropology- investigate the contrasting ways
groups of people think, feel, and behave.
3. Archeology- interested in recovering the prehistory and
early history of societies and their cultures by investigating
the material samples, skeletal remains, and settlements.
They systematically uncover the evidence by excavating,
dating, and analyzing the material remains left by people
in the past.
4. Linguistic Anthropology- study of nature and nuances of
languages – communication systems by which cultures are
maintained and passed succeeding generations.
Great Anthropologist
1.Franz Boas
- Historical Particularism

2. Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski

- Participant Observation

3. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe- Brown

- Structural-functionalist paradigm
The Colonial Origin of the Social Sciences

 The Clamor for Decolonization of Social

Sciences
It traces back the origination of studying
societies through having some biases and
racism.
 Indigenization of Social Sciences in the
Philippines
It is trying to eliminate the impression of
western world in viewing Philippines as an
inferior society.