Culture, norms and values

Lecture 7

Write down your answers (5 mins)

• What is the meaning of ‘culture’? Write down a definition

• How can you recognise (see) someone’s culture?

• There are 5 elements to culture- think of examples of them:– Language– Symbols– Values– Norms– Materials

• Why should we study culture?

Today

• Culture – definitions• Elements of culture –

define:– Language – Symbols– Values– Norms– Materials

• Sub-culture

• The Frankfurt School and mass consumption of culture

• Ethnocentricity vs Cultural relativism

• Saphir-Whorf Hypothesis

What is English culture?

British Weather‘Bill Bryson, for example, concludes that the

English weather is not at all fascinating, and presumably that our obsession with it is therefore inexplicable:

“To an outsider, the most striking thing about the English weather is that there is not very much of it. All those phenomena that elsewhere give nature an edge of excitement, unpredictability and danger—tornadoes, monsoons, raging blizzards, run-for-your-life hailstorms—are almost wholly unknown in the British Isles.”’

--qtd. in Fox, Watching the English

British Weather‘My research has convinced me that . . . Bryson . . . [is] missing the

point, which is that our conversations about the weather are not really about the weather at all: English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other. Everyone knows, for example, that “Nice day, isn’t it?”, “Ooh, isn’t it cold?”, “Still raining, eh?” and other variations on the theme are not requests for meteorological data: they are ritual greetings, conversation-starters or default “fillers”. In other words, English weather-speak is a form of “grooming talk”—the human equivalent of what is known as “social grooming” among our primate cousins, where they spend hours groom each other’s fur, even when they are perfectly clean, as a means of social bonding.’

--Kate Fox

Hall, 2007:2

‘To say that two people belong to the same culture is to say that they interpret the world in roughly the same way and can express themselves, their thoughts and feelings about the world, in ways will be understood by each other. Thus, culture depends on its participants interpretting meaningfully what is happening around them, and ‘making sense’ of the world in broadly similar ways.’

What is culture?• ‘The values, beliefs, behaviours, practices and material

objects that constitute a people’s way of life’ (Macionis & Plummer 2007:128)

• ‘Believing with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning...’ (Geertz 1995:5)

• Write down these definitions and compare to yours.

Figure 5.5 The circuit of culture

The Circuit of Culture (du Gay et al; Hall et al)

Culture

• Intangible (non-material) world of ideas

• Tangible (material) things • Cultural Practices: the

practical logics by which we both act and think in a myriad of little encounters of daily life (Bourdieu 1990) In Other Words: Towards a Reflective Sociology; Language and Symbolic Power 1991

5 Main Components of Culture

Research into culture is extremely varied, but all seem to agree on these components:

• Symbols • Language• Beliefs• Norms• Material

Symbols http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90e81SuoIvI&feature=fvsr

• ‘anything that carries a particular meaning recognised by people who share a culture’ (Macionis & Plummer 2007:130) What meaning does this fur coat have? Does it mean the same to a vegetarian and to someone from a high socio-economic group?

• Semiotics - de Saussure – meanings are constructed through social practices, rather than being inherent. Why is a dog a dog? It’s also a chien. It’s not a cat.

The Major Components of Culture: Symbols: Jeans

• 18th and 19th century: Californiagold miners and workers wore jeans because the material was very strong and did not wear out

easily. • 1930s Westerns—cowboys

made jeans popular

1951

The Major Components of Culture:Symbols: Jeans

• 1950s: symbol of the teenage rebel.

• Some schools in USAbanned students from wearing denim.

The Major Components of Culture:Symbols: Jeans

1960s & 70s: Hippies and the Cold War• Working class association of jeans

made them popular among affluent students who wanted to look different.

• In many non-western countries,jeans became symbol of ‘western decadence’ and veryhard to get.

The Major Components of Culture:Symbols: Jeans

1980s: ‘designer jeans’ become high-priced ‘status-symbols.’

The Major Components of Culture:Symbols: Jeans

1990s: move away from traditional jeans style that parents were wearing.

• Aged, authentic vintage jeansin second-hand stores and thrift shops (not conventionaljeans stores)

Major Components of Culture: Language

• ‘a system of symbols that allows members of a society to communicate with one another’ (Macionis & Plummer 2007:131)

• Form is written and spoken words

• Main form of cultural reproduction

• Oral cultural tradition

Figure 5.2 Where the words won’t be heardThousands of languages may die out during the twenty-first century, and more than 420 are already characterised as ‘nearly extinct’ by Ethnologue, a catalogue of the world’s tongues. Source: adapted from Newsweek, 19 June 2000

The Major Components of Culture:Language

• Proverbs are one example of how culture is conveyed through words. What do these proverbs mean?– ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’– ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness.’– ‘The early bird gets the worm.’

• What do these tell us about culture in the UK? Can you think of any proverbs from your culture?

Language• Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis

‘people perceive the world through the cultural lens of language’ (1949):

• Linguistic determinism (language shapes the way we think) + linguistic relativity (distinctions found in one language are not found in another)

• Language has power – Austin ‘How to do things with Words’

Values & Beliefs

• Values: ‘the standards people have about what is good and bad’ (Macionis & Plummer 2007:134)

• Prescriptive – broad statements about what ought to be ethical

• Beliefs: ‘specific statements that people hold to be true’ (Macionis & Plummer 2007:134)

4 European Values

• Product of Enlightenment: rationality, science and progress

• Judaeo-Christian history of dominance; secularism

• Treaty of Westphalia: – Land ownership / states

• Hierarchy:– Estates – Monarchy

How do other cultures differ in values?Asian Values:•Hard work•Saving•Strong families•Education is important

Do you agree?

Inglehart (2000)

Inglehart (2000) Dimensions of World Values

• Traditional vs Secular-rational

• Traditional societies rooted in past through religion or autocratic leaders

• Secular-rational: less religious, more in individualistic

• Survival vs Self- expression

• So-called post-modern society

• Survival: low level of well-being; intolerance of outgroups; emphasis on materialistic gain; favourable attitudes to authoritarian gov’ts

• Self-expression: reverse

The Major Components of Culture:Norms

• ‘The rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members’ (Macionis & Plummer, 2008: 136)

• ‘Rules of behaviour that reflect or embody a culture’s values, either prescribing a given type of behaviour, or forbidding it’ (Giddens, 2008: 1127).

• These tell us what we should and should do (prescriptive) or should not do (proscriptive); they differ from place to place

The Major Components of Culture:Norms

What norms are represented in these pictures?

Norms: Sumner 1959 (1906)• Mores: ‘ a society’s standards of proper moral

conduct’ • Distinguish between right and wrong• Essential to maintaining way of life• People develop emotional attachment to mores

and will defend them publicly

• Folkways: society’s customs for routine, casual interaction

• Distinguish between right and rude

Components of Culture: Material Artefacts

• Tangible creations• High culture – cultural artefacts

which distinguish a society’s elite

• Popular culture – cultural patterns which are widespread among population

• Cultural patterns are not accessible to all (Hall & Neitz 1993) – what do they mean?

• Cultural variety = hierachy

Cultural Capital – Pierre Bourdieu Distinction (1984)

•Each family teaches cultural capital•More experience; more capital•Cultural reproduction means reproduction of the culture of the dominant classes• Habitus - classifications, perceptions, ways of talking•The education system is biased towards working-class skils/knowledge

Subculture; Counterculture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r61ks18Bd7I

• Subculture – cultural patterns that make some people different from the rest

• Cohen (1972) • Counterculture – cultural

patterns which strongly oppose accepted cultural patterns:* distinctive values

* unconventional behaviour

Ethnocentricity & Cultural Relativity

• Ethnocentricity – judging another culture by your own culture’s values

• Cultural relativism – judging a culture by its own standards

• Cultural relativism is difficult and it is problematic: how can it be problematic?

Approaches to culture

• Functional:– relatively stable system

built on core values– traits function to

maintain stability of overall system

– Key theorists: Talcott Parsons; George Murdock – Cultural Universals

• Conflict/Critical:– inequality– Mass culture (Adorno &

Horkheimer)– Hegemony – the means

by which a ruling/dominant group wins over a subordinate group through ideas (Gramsci)

Modern Culture: The tyranny of mass Consumption.

• The Frankfurt School (Horkheimer/ Adorno) of ‘Critical Sociology’ suggests that in mass society, cultural production is standardized and rendered undemanding to be acceptable to a mass audience.

• Culture is reduced to profit seeking much like any other industry.

• The leisure industry – inculcates appropriate values and attitudes in society.

• Leisure is no longer a break from work, but a preparation for it.

The Frankfurt School.

Today

• What is culture• Elements of culture:

– Language – Symbols– Values– Norms– Materials

• Sub-culture• Mass consumption• Cultural hybridization

• The Frankfurt School• Ethnocentricity• Cultural relativism• Saphir-Whorf

Hypothesis

Independent study• Key reading: Macionis, J. J. and Plummer, K.,

Sociology. A Global Introduction, Fourth Edition, (Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.), 2008. Ch. 7.

• Secondary reading: Giddens, A., Sociology, Sixth Edition, (Cambridge: Polity Press), 2009. pp.258-278.

• Moodle:– Homework Forum– Revision Quiz