Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2019 Culture Presentation 2
2019 Culture Presentation 2
Male-Female Female-Female
Male-Male
TRANSPORTATION CALL
SUCCESS PARTY
List 1 color that The number of
you associate with children in a
happiness typical family
Why is
this?
Discussion:
What did you notice
about your collective
responses?
VALUES
2) Achievement and Success (do better in life) • Realistic Culture
3) Activity and Work (“work in play,” active lifestyle) Values and standards
people actually follow
4) Science and Technology (expectations from…)
For example:
5) Progress and Comfort (goods, services, and necessities)
People claim to be very law
6) Efficiency and Practicality (bigger, better, faster things) abiding, yet smoke
marijuana (hmm…)
7) Equality (class equality and opportunity)
People think themselves to
8) Morality and Humanitarianism (aiding others in need) be good drivers, yet
constantly drive over the
9) Freedom and Liberty (self explanatory) speed limit
Proscriptive Norms
What behavior is inappropriate or unacceptable
death penalty!
Informal norms are unwritten, often carry informal sanctions and are
often not clearly defined (they often vary among sub-groups)
Informal sanctions may include but are not limited to: frowns, gestures,
Illinois Cannot contact the police before entering the city in a car
Iowa Kisses can last for up to but not longer than 5 minutes
Maine You must not step out of a plane in flight
Massachusetts No gorilla is allowed in the back seat of a car
Minnesota You may not cross state lines with a duck on your head
Vermont Whistling underwater is illegal
Washington It is illegal to pretend your parents are rich
Norms are often classified by their relative
The following are
social importance considered to be of
increasing degree as one
Folkways progresses downward
Informal, everyday customs that if violated
DEGREES OF NORMS
carry little consequences, and are not enforced
Lack of: deodorant, brushing teeth, or
appropriate clothing
Mores
(“Mor-ays”) A particular cultures strongly held
norms with moral and ethical connotations that
may not be violated without serious
consequences
May result in loss of employment, ridicule,
or imprisonment
“Taboos,” strong mores that their violation is
Laws
Formal, standardized norms enacted by
legislatures and enforced throughout
The Study of Culture
• When you study culture it’s a good idea to
consider whether a particular behavior or
event is a cultural universal, or common to
all cultures.
For example, funeral rites are a cultural
universal because all cultures have methods
of disposing of the dead.
– George Murdock
• Specific customs differ from one
group to another
• Customs found were courtship,
marriage, funerals, games, laws,
music, myths, incest taboos and
toilet training.
Cultural Universals: Adaptations that meet human
needs that all societies practice…
Can you
think of any
other cultural
universals?
Micronesia Case Study
Bronislaw Malinowski witnessed a funeral
ritual in which native islanders ate part of the
dead person to maintain a connection. After
eating, they would vomit in an attempts to
create distance from the deceased.
Ethnocentrism & Cultural
Relativism
When studying culture from a sociological
perspective, you must not allow your personal
biases to complicate your understanding
(Weber).
Ethnocentrism
• Ethnocentrism occurs when a person uses his
or her own culture to judge another culture.
Nearly all people in the world are ethnocentric, but
ethnocentrism is potentially dangerous to
sociologists because it can lead to incorrect
assumptions about different cultures.
Xenophobia
• Xenophobia refers to fear and hostility toward
people who are from other countries or
cultures.
When the United States entered World War II after
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, people in
the US began to fear Japanese Americans and
locked many in internment camps.
Xenocentrism
Not all personal biases result in a negative view
of foreign cultures.
• Sometimes, we engage in xenocentrism when
we perceive other groups or societies as
superior to our own.
Cultural Relativism
Thinking like a sociologist means striving to
practice cultural relativism when studying
other cultures.
• Cultural relativism consists of a deliberate
effort to appreciate a group’s ways of life in
it’s own context, without prejudice.
• Philosophers sometimes refer to this effort as
normative relativism because it bases the
evaluation of a society on that society’s own
norms.
Examples of Normative Relativism
In some Islamic countries, women are not
encouraged to seek education. Within the
context of these countries, this practice could be
interpreted as a normal function of that culture.
William Ogburn
Culture Shock
Have you ever traveled to a foreign country and
been stunned by how the culture differed
from your own? If so, you were probably
experiencing culture shock.
• Culture shock occurs when a person
encounters a culture foreign to his or her own
and has an emotional response to the
differences between the cultures.
Ideal versus Real Culture
Is there a difference between culture as we’d
like it to be and culture as it really is?
Often the answer is, YES.
• Ideal culture represents the values to which a
culture aspires, and real culture represents a
culture’s actual behaviors.
Examples of Ideal & Real Culture
Our society aspires to equality, and yet a brief
look at the data shows that minorities still
suffer from inequality in the United States.
They experience more poverty, lower incomes,
and less access to health insurance.
Sub-Cultures (a culture within a culture):
groups with their own dress, specific language (argot),
values, norms, rituals, and perspectives on the world.
Sub-cultures have values that exist harmoniously
within
the dominant culture of their society.
Subcultures
Subcultures
• In complex societies, subcultures allow people
to connect with other people who have similar
interests.
Churches, civic organizations, clubs and even
online communities can become subcultures.
Counter-Cultures:
A sub-culture whose
Values run in
opposition to the
dominant culture
High Culture consists of classical music, opera, ballet, The extensive infusion of