Sociology The Basics
Fifteenth Edition
Chapter 2
Culture
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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
2.1 Explain the development of culture as a human strategy
for survival.
2.2 Identify common elements of culture.
2.3 Analyze how a society’s level of technology shapes its
culture.
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Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
2.4 Discuss dimensions of cultural difference and cultural
change.
2.5 Apply sociology’s macro-level theories to gain greater
understanding of culture.
2.6 Critique culture as limiting or expanding human freedom.
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The Power of Society
Is how we feel about abortion
as “personal” an opinion as
we may think?
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What is Culture? (1 of 5)
2.1 Explain the development of culture as a human strategy
for survival.
• Culture
– The ways of thinking, the
ways of acting, and the
material objects that
together form a people’s way
of life
– Nonmaterial culture: ideas
created by members of a
society
– Material culture: the physical
things created by members
of a society
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What is Culture? (2 of 5)
• Culture shock
– Disorientation due to inability
to make sense out of
unfamiliar way of life
– Often occurs with domestic
and foreign travel
• Yąnomamö live in villages
scattered along the border of
Venezuela and Brazil. Their way
of life could not be more different
from our own.
• No particular way of life is natural
to humanity, even though most
people around the world view
their own behavior that way.
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What is Culture? (3 of 5)
Culture and Human Intelligence
• Humans evolved from great apes
– Learned advantages of hunting in groups
• About 12,000 years ago, founded permanent settlements
– Humans made and remade their world, resulting in
cultural diversity
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What is Culture? (4 of 5)
Culture, Nation, and Society
• Culture
– Shared way of life
• Nation
– A political entity
• Society
– Organized interaction of people who typically live in a
nation or some other specific territory
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What is Culture? (5 of 5)
How Many Cultures?
• Best way is to count the number of languages
• In United States
– 382 languages spoken
– 166 are native languages
• Globally
– More than 7,000 languages
– Number is declining
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The Elements of Culture (1 of 9)
2.2 Identify common elements of culture.
Symbols
• Humans transform elements of the world into symbols.
– Symbols: anything that carries a particular meaning
recognized by people who share a culture
– Societies create new symbols all the time.
– Reality for humans is found in the meaning things
carry with them.
– Meanings vary within and between cultures.
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The Elements of Culture (2 of 9)
Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life
• About 92 percent of U.S. adults own cell phones and 81
percent of adults use mobile text-messaging on a regular
basis.
• Cell phone owners between eighteen and twenty-four
years of age typically send or receive more than 100
messages a day (Pew Research Center, 2013, 2015).
• What does the creation of such symbols suggest about
culture?
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The Elements of Culture (3 of 9)
Language
• Language is a system of
symbols that allows people
to communicate with one
another.
– Cultural transmission
– Sapir-Whorf thesis
Here the English word “read”
is written in twelve of the
thousands of languages
humans use to communicate
with one another.
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Figure 2.2
Language in Global Perspective
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The Elements of Culture (4 of 9)
• Does Language Shape Reality?
– Counter to Sapir-Whorf thesis
▪ We do fashion reality out of our symbols
▪ But language does not determine reality
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The Elements of Culture (5 of 9)
Values and Beliefs
• Values
– Broad guidelines for social living; values support
beliefs; culturally defined standards of desirability,
goodness, and beauty
• Beliefs
– Specific thoughts or ideas people hold to be true
– Matters individuals consider to be true or false
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The Elements of Culture (6 of 9)
• Key values of U.S. culture
– Equal opportunity
– Achievement and success
– Material comfort
– Activity and work
– Practicality and efficiency
– Progress
– Science
– Democracy and free enterprise
– Freedom
– Racism and group superiority
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The Elements of Culture (7 of 9)
• Sometimes one key cultural value contradicts another.
– Value conflict causes strain.
– Values change over time.
• Values change over time.
• Social diversity
– Ethnicity shapes values
• Global perspective
– Lower-income nations have cultures that value
survival.
– Higher-income countries have cultures that value
individualism and self-expression.
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Figure 2.3
Cultural Values of Selected Countries
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The Elements of Culture (8 of 9)
Norms
• Rules and expectations by which a society guides the
behavior of its members
• Mores
– Widely observed and have great moral significance
• Folkways
– Norms for routine and casual interaction
• Social control
– Attempts by society to regular people’s thoughts and
behavior
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The Elements of Culture (9 of 9)
Ideal and Real Culture
• Ideal culture
– Way things should be
– Social patterns mandated by values and norms
• Real culture
– Way things actually occur in everyday life
– Social patterns that only approximate cultural
expectations
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Technology and Culture (1 of 7)
2.3 Analyze how a society’s level of technology shapes its
culture
• Material culture
– Includes a wide range of physical human creations or
artifacts
– Contains artifacts that partly reflect underlying cultural
values
– Reflects a society's technology or knowledge used to
make a way of life in particular surroundings
• Technology
– Knowledge that people use to make a way of life in
their surroundings
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Technology and Culture (2 of 7)
• Standards of beauty—including
the color and design of everyday
surroundings—vary significantly
from one culture to another.
• This Ndebele couple in South
Africa dresses in the same bright
colors they use to decorate their
home.
• Members of North American and
European societies, by contrast,
make far less use of bright colors
and intricate detail, so their
housing and clothing appear
much more subdued.
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Technology and Culture (3 of 7)
Hunting and Gathering
• Use of simple tools to hunt animals and gather vegetation
for food
• No formal leaders
– A simple and egalitarian way of life
• Vulnerable to forces of nature
– Storms and droughts can destroy food supply
– Few effective ways to respond to accidents or disease
• Way of life is vanishing
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Technology and Culture (4 of 7)
Horticulture and Pastoralism
• Horticulture: use of hand tools to raise crops
• Appeared around 10,000 years ago
• Pastoralism: the domestication of animals
• Pastoral peoples remain nomadic
– Horticulturalists make settlements
• Generally believe world inhabited by spirits
– Come to believe in one God as the creator
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Technology and Culture (5 of 7)
Agriculture
• Large-scale cultivation using plows harnessed to animals or
more powerful energy sources
• First appeared in the Middle East
• Changed societies, called “dawn of civilization”
• Permanent settlements
• Money replaces bartering
• Brings dramatic increase in social inequality
– Serfs or slaves
• Agrarian technology gives people enough control over the world
that cultural diversity dramatically increases.
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Technology and Culture (6 of 7)
Industry
• The production of goods using advanced sources of energy to drive
large machinery
• Steam power in England, about 1775
• Workers in large factories
• Industrial technology raises living standards
• Pros and cons
– Intensifies individualism and expands personal freedom
▪ Weakens human community
– Raises living standards
▪ Has led people to abuse the natural environment
– Laborsaving machines and medical treatment
▪ Weapons capable of destroying all
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Technology and Culture (7 of 7)
Postindustrial Information Technology
• Postindustrial phase based on computers and new
information technology
– Based on computers and other electronic devices
• Workers need symbolic skills
– Include the ability to speak, write, compute, design
and create images
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (1 of 10)
2.4 Discuss dimensions of cultural difference and cultural
change.
High Culture and Popular Culture
• Many cultural patterns are readily available to only some
members of society.
– High culture: cultural patterns that distinguish a
society’s elite
– Popular culture: cultural patterns that are widespread
among society’s population
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Global Map 2.1
Foreign-Born Population in Global Perspective
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (2 of 10)
Subculture
• Cultural patterns that set apart some segment of society’s
population
• Subcultures involve difference and hierarchy
• Counterculture
– Cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely
accepted within a society
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (3 of 10)
• Reality television is based
on popular culture rather
than high culture.
• Duck Dynasty stars the
Robertson family, who
operate a successful
business in Louisiana
meeting the needs of duck
hunters.
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (4 of 10)
Multiculturalism
• Recognizes the cultural diversity of the U.S.
• Promotes the equality of all cultural traditions
• Eurocentrism: Dominance of European cultural patterns
• Afrocentrism: Dominance of African cultural patterns
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National Map 2.1
Language Diversity across the United States
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (5 of 10)
Counterculture
• Cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely
accepted within a society
• Still flourishing
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (6 of 10)
Cultural Change
• Cultural integration
– Close relationships among various elements of a
cultural system
• Cultural lag (Ogburn 1964)
– Uneven change of cultural elements that may disrupt
a cultural system
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Figure 2.4
Life Objectives of First-Year College Students, 1969 and
2015
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (7 of 10)
• Causes of cultural change
– Invention
▪ Creating new cultural elements
▪ Telephone or airplane
– Discovery
▪ Recognizing and better understanding something
already existing
▪ X-rays or DN A
– Diffusion
▪ Spread of cultural traits
▪ Jazz music or much of the English language
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (8 of 10)
Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
• Ethnocentrism
– Practice of judging another culture by the standards of
one’s own culture
• Cultural relativism
– Practice of judging a culture by its own standards
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (9 of 10)
• In the world's low-income
countries, most children must
work to provide their families
with needed income.
• Is it ethnocentric for people
living in high-income nations
to condemn the practice of
child labor? Why or why not?
• This young boy works long
hours carrying firewood in
Laos.
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Cultural Diversity: Many Ways of Life
in One World (10 of 10)
A Global Culture?
• Societies now have more contact with one another than
ever before
– The flow of goods
– The flow of information
– The flow of people
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Theories of Culture (1 of 5)
2.5 Apply sociology’s macro-level theories to gain greater
understanding of culture.
Structural-Functional Theory: The Functions of Culture
• Culture is a strategy for meeting human needs.
• Values are core of a culture.
• Every culture has cultural universals.
• Evaluate
– Cultural diversity is ignored.
– Importance of change is downplayed.
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Theories of Culture (2 of 5)
• From a structural-functional
point of view, we might ask
if this universal character
reflects the fact that
families carry out important
tasks not easily
accomplished in other
ways.
• What tasks do families
perform?
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Theories of Culture (3 of 5)
Social-Conflict Theory: Inequality and Culture
• Cultural traits benefit some members at the expense of
others.
• Cultural values of competitiveness and material success
are tied to our country’s capitalist economy.
• Evaluate
– Understates the ways cultural patterns integrate
members into society.
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Theories of Culture (4 of 5)
Feminist Theory: Gender and Culture
• Culture is “gendered”
– Society defines what is male as more important than
what is female
• Evaluate
– Understates ways in which cultural patterns integrate
members of a society
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Theories of Culture (5 of 5)
Sociobiology: Evolution and Culture
• Sociobiology: a theoretical approach that explores ways in
which human biology affects how we create culture
• Approach rooted in Charles Darwin and evolution
• Contends living organisms change over long periods of
time based on natural selection
• Evaluate
– Might be used to support racism or sexism
– Little evidence to support theory
– People learn behavior within a cultural system
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Culture and Human Freedom
2.6 Critique culture as limiting or expanding human freedom.
• To what extent are human beings, as cultural creatures,
free?
Culture as Constraint
– We know our world in terms of our culture.
Culture as Freedom
– Culture is changing and offers a variety of
opportunities.
– Sociologists share the goal of learning more about
cultural diversity.
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Applying Theory: Culture
Culture
Blank
Structural-Functional Social-Conflict and Sociobiology Theory
Approach Feminist Theories
What is the level of analysis? Macro-level Macro-level Micro-level
What is culture? Culture is a system of Culture is a system that Culture is a system of
behavior by which benefits some people and behavior that is partly
members of societies disadvantages others. shaped by human biology.
cooperate to meet their
needs.
What is the foundation of Cultural patterns are Marx claimed that cultural Cultural patterns are
culture? rooted in a society’s core patterns are rooted in a rooted in humanity’s
values and beliefs. society’s system of biological evolution.
economic production.
Feminist theory says
cultural conflict is rooted
in gender.
What core questions does the How does a cultural How does a cultural How does a cultural
approach ask? pattern help society pattern benefit some pattern help a species
operate? people and harm others? adapt to its environment?
What cultural patterns are How does a cultural
found in all societies? pattern support social
inequality?
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