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Culture
What is Culture?
Culture:
is the entire way of life for a group of people who share similar ways of thinking, believing, and
living, expressed in common elements or features.
Cultural Universals
Cultural Universals
• Customs and practices that occur across all societies
7 Universals• Economy
– System for the production, distribution and consumption of goods• Institutions
– Different groups within the culture• Arts
– Various branches of creative activity• Language
– How people communicate– Differences can exist here as well (Dialects)
• Environment– Surroundings where things live and/or operate
• Recreation– What we do for fun
• Beliefs– Influences daily life– Symbols and Stories shape cultural expression
Examples ofCultural Universals
Table from Textbook
Components of Culture
Beliefs/Religions
• Shared ideas people hold collectively within a culture.
• Specific statements that people hold to be true or false.
• Beliefs are the basis for many of a culture’s norms and values.
Components of Culture• Values: abstract ideas about the good, the right, the
desirable – Norms: social rules and guidelines; guide appropriate
behavior for specific situations Folkways: norms of little moral significance
dress code; table manners; timeliness Mores: norms central to functioning of social life
– bring serious retribution: thievery, adultery, alcohol
Values
Values• Culturally defined standards by which
people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty and that serve as broad guidelines for social living.
• Values determine what is considered right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, good and bad.
• Values can provide rules for behavior, but can also be the source of conflict.
American Values Examples
American Values
Emerging American ValuesValues change over time:• Material comfort • Personal growthU.S. always valued hard workRecently, increasing importance of
leisureTime off from work for:
TravelFamilyCommunity service
Norms
Norms• Norms are expectations for behavior• A society without norms would be in
chaos; with established norms, people know how to act, and social interactions are consistent, predictable, and learnable.
• Social sanctions are mechanisms of social control that enforce norms.
Folkways
Folkways
• Folkways are norms governing everyday behavior whose violation might cause a dirty look, rolled eyes, or disapproving comment
• Example: Walking up a “down” escalator in a department store challenges our standards of appropriate behavior
Mores
Mores
• Mores: Means “manners” in French.• Mores are norms that are essential to
American Values, close to legalistic.• Mores: The fundamental ideas about
what is right/wrong, virtuous and sinful
Mores
• Strict enforcement, and insistence on conformity, we learn through socialization via our institutions (school) in society.
• Examples: Americans eat beef, not horse, dog, cat; you do not expose your genitals in public
Sociologists Ian Robertson illustrated the difference between Folkways and Mores: “A man who walks down a street wearing nothing on the upper half of his body is violating a folkway; a man is wearing nothing on the lower half of his body is violating one of mores (requirement that people cover their genitals and buttocks in public “(1987)
Globalization
Definition-
• The widening exchange of culture traits such as trade, technology, and ideas
America around the World
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AuTncvW1CNY/TcCHdoZDHAI/AAAAAAAAAAg/BFfmjsRuBtM/s1600/fdfg.jpg
Benefits and Drawbacks
• Growing Economies• Increase Standard
of Living• More aware of other
cultures and lifestyles
• Traditional Cultural Heritage (Language, Artistic traditions, clothing
styles, behaviors) diluted/altered by outside influences
Iceberg
The Iceberg Metaphor
