Culture and Society

After going through this topic,

you are expected to :
•Describe the concept of culture and
society;
•Identify aspects of culture and society;
and
•Value the changes of culture and society.
 SOCIETY
•Is a group of people interacting with
each other and having a common
culture; sharing a common geographical
or territorial domain, and having
relatively common aspirations.
•Derived from Latin term “societas” from
socius which means companion or
associate
 The following are reasons people live
together as a society (Ariola, 2012)
• For survival - No man can live alone. From birth to death, man
always depend upon his parents and from others. Care,
support and protection given by them are important factors for
survival.
• Feeling of gregariousness - This is the desire of people to be
with other people, especially of their own culture. People flock
for emotional warmth and belongingness. The more the
person is needy, the more he craves for sympathy and
understanding from someone else.
• Specialization - Professionals organize themselves into societies
or associations to promote and protect their own professions.
MAJOR FUNCTIONS OF SOCIETY
1. It provides a system of socialization.
2. It provides the basic needs of its members.
3. It regulates and controls people’s behavior.
4. It provides the means of social
participation.
5. It provides mutual support to the
members.
 TYPES OF SOCIETIES
• PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
During the pre-industrial society, the
main economic activity is food production
carried out through the utilization of
human and animal labor.
Particularly, these societies are
subdivided according to their level of
technology and their method of producing
food.
These are hunting and gathering
societies, pastoral societies, horticultural
societies, agricultural societies, and feudal
societies.
1. Hunting and gathering society
In these societies main
method of food production is
collection of wild plants and the
hunting of wild animals on a daily
basis. Human gather and hunt
around for foods as nomads.

2. Pastoral society
The prevailing method
food production during this
period is through pastoralism,
more efficient than the
subsistence method.
3. Horticultural society
These societies have learned
how to raise fruits and vegetables
grown in the garden plots that
have provided them their main
source of food.

4. Agrarian Society
Societies which applied
agricultural technological
advances to cultivate crops over a
large area.
5. Feudal Society
As an offshoot of
increased food chain,
several groups become
wealthy and able to
acquire lands and declared
these as their own
domain. It is based on
ownership of land.
• INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
An economic system emerged between the
15th and 16th centuries began to replace
feudalism.
This is capitalism, the predominant
economic system of industrial societies.
Capitalism, characterized by free competition, free
market and the right to acquire private property,
emerged. The introduction of foreign metals, silk,
and spices in the market stimulated greater
commercial activity in European societies.
A society driven by the use of technology
and machinery to enable mass production,
supporting a large population with a high capacity
of division of labor.
• POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
More advanced societies,
called post-industrial societies,
dominated by information,
services, and high technology,
surfaced. The hallmarks of
these societies were beyond
the production of goods.
Advanced industrial
societies are shifting toward an
increase in service sectors over
manufacturing and production.
•MODERN SOCIETIES
Our highly industrialized modern society
is characterized by mass production of all
essential products such that the subsistence
level of food production is now a thing of the
past.
Products are sold in markets in large
quantities. People nowadays typically do not
need to subsist on their own and instead buy
items they cannot personally produce to live.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIETY
•Society consists of groups of people who share
some likeness such as being rational, free and
bodily. They share similar needs such as food,
shelter, clothing, love, among other things.
•Society does not only consist of groups of people
who share a likeness with everyone but also
need to exhibit some differences.
• The differences would also be beneficial and necessary
to society as different individuals can perform acts or
tasks that the self may not be capable.

• Different people are endowed with different gifts or

talents distinct from others. Some are good at
carpentry, others are good at farming or in teaching,
to name some few professions or strengths. Individual
differences are not accidental but natural in the
person of every individual.
• These differences among individuals would consequently lead to inter-
dependence which is the following characteristics of society as the case
maybe. This inter-independence is a vital cog in the survival and sustenance
of society’s existence. As we are naturally limited, we need others to fulfill
some of our inadequacies.

• Humans do not live alone, isolated from each other. Instead, individuals tend
to live in communities with other people to help one another not just along
economic needs but also in gaining knowledge or in learning some ways or
means of living happily and collectively.

• Society is its nature of being dynamic and changeable. No society is static.

Every society changes along in time and place. The change both from within
and without manifests in society.
 CULTURE
• is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs,
arts, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of society.”
• (Edward B. Tylor) The Cambridge English Dictionary states
that culture is “the way of life, especially the general
customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a
particular time.”
Culture refers to all that man has made for himself through
time, material or non-material still useful or not anymore, all
to provide benefits for his society.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
1. Culture is learned.
The different habits, skills, values and knowledge
are acquired or learned in the course of a person’s life.
This is what we call enculturation, the acquisition of
knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that enable
men to become active members of their communities.

2. Culture varies from society to

society.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
3. Culture is adaptive.
All culture changes. Changes in the environment
are caused by inventions and discoveries. Man is
capable of adjusting to his environment.
Adaption is the process of change in response to a
new environment. It is one component of acculturation,
which relates to the change in a group’s culture or the
change in individual psychology in response to a new
environment.
4. Culture is social.
No man can acquire culture without the
association of others.
5. Culture is transmitted.
Culture within a social group is
transmitted to succeeding generations
through imitation, instruction and example,
in the form of attitudes, values, beliefs and
behavioral scripts are passed onto and taught
to individuals and groups.
6. Culture is shared.
As we share culture with others,
we are able to act in an appropriate
ways as well as predict how others
will act.
Despite the shared nature of
culture, that doesn’t mean that
culture is homogenous.
 MAIN TYPES OF CULTURE
•Material culture
- deals with the physical culture including
contemporary technology, artifacts relics,
fossils, and other tangible remains of cultural
development, past and present.
-Material culture refers to the tangible and
concrete objects produced by main in the
process of social development.
Examples of Material Culture
1. Tools
2. Clothing
3. Technology
4. Monuments
5.
 MAIN TYPES OF CULTURE
•Non-material culture
- deals with the intangibles including
values, norms, beliefs, traditions,
and customs that collectively hold a
society and shape individuals are
they interact within society.
 Examples of Non-Material
Culture
1. Slangs 6. Rituals
2. Signs of 7. Punishments
Respect 8. Musical Styles
3. Folklore 9. Humor
4. Cooking Style 10. Folkways
5. Superstitions
 ELEMENTS OF NON-MATERIAL
CULTURE
• Beliefs - are man’s perception about the reality of
things and are shared ideas about how the world and
his environment operates. A belief is an idea that a
person holds as being true. Beliefs are influenced by
emotions, attitudes, values ideology and religion.
• Values - refer to the broad preferences of person on
the appropriate course of action or decisions he has to
take. Values are a reflection of a person’s sense of right
and wrong. A person’s values sociologically influence
his attitudes and behavior.
 ELEMENTS OF NON-MATERIAL
CULTURE
•Norms - are society’s standard of
morality, conduct, propriety, ethics
and legality.
Norms vary according to age,
gender, religion, politics, economics
ethnicity or race of the group
• Folkways - are fairly weak forms of norms, whose violation
is generally not considered serious within a particular
culture. They are habits, customs, and repetitive patterns of
behavior.
• - culturally-defined norms of etiquette that are not very
serious if broken.
• Ideas - comprise man’s concepts of his physical, social and
cultural world as manifested in people’s beliefs and values.
• Knowledge - can be natural, supernatural, magical or
technical. These are the body of facts and beliefs that
people accumulate over time.
 CHANGES IN CULTURE AND SOCIETY
• Customs, traditions, folkways, mores, values and
institutions go through some changes as well where new
customs and values take place.
• The present generation, for instance, shows many changes
inside out.
• The different gadgets like cellphone of various labels, a
variety of iPods, tablets, the proliferation of shopping malls
around the country, notwithstanding the moral
permissiveness you observe in the behaviors and lifestyles
of the people especially the youth, largely define the
present society here and elsewhere.
•Society cannot exist without its
population. The people who constitute
society constantly engage in a social
relationship that brings them together in
group endeavors or activities they do in
every day of their lives. Social relationship
is inevitable in society.
•The social relationship, however, cannot
be possible without going through the
process of socialization