Chapter 3: Culture

Table of Contents

1. Culture and Society
2. Components of Culture
3. Popular Culture
4. Cultural Change and Diversity
5. Sociological Analysis of Culture
6. Cultural Patterns for the Twenty-First Century

I. Culture and Society

1. The Importance of Culture in a Changing World
   1. Culture is the knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society.

2. Culture has been referred to as our tool kit for survival. Not only is culture essential for our individual survival and communications with others, but it is also fundamental for the survival of societies.

2. Material and Nonmaterial Culture
   1. Material culture consists of the physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share. Raw materials are transformed into material culture through technology–the knowledge, techniques, and tools that make it possible for people to transform resources into usable forms, and the knowledge and skills required to use them after they are developed.
      

Nonmaterial culture consists of the abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people's behaviour (e.g., language, beliefs, values, rules of behaviour, family patterns, and political systems).

3. Cultural Universals
   1. According to anthropologist George Murdock, cultural universals are customs and practices that occur across all societies (e.g., appearance, activities, social institutions, and customary practices).
      
      
   2. While these customs and practices may be present in all cultures, they vary from one group to another and from one time to another within the same group.

II. Components of Culture

1. Culture could not exist without symbols-anything that meaningfully represents something else-because there would be no shared meanings among people.
   
   
2. Language is a set of symbols that express ideas and enable people to think and communicate with one another; it may be either verbal (spoken) or nonverbal (written or gestured).

1. Language is not solely a human characteristic; other animals use sounds, gestures, touch, and smell to communicate with each other, but they use signals with fixed meanings that are limited to the immediate situation (the present) and cannot encompass past or future situations.

2. Humans are unique in their ability to manipulate symbols to express abstract concepts and rules and to create and transmit culture from one generation to the next.

3. Language and Social Reality
1. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language not only expresses our thoughts and perceptions but also influences our perception of reality.

2. Many social scientists agree that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis overstates the idea that language completely determines our thoughts and behaviour patterns; language may influence our behaviour and interpretation of social reality but does not determine it.
   
   
4. Language and Gender
   1. According to some scholars, the English language ignores women by using the masculine gender to refer to human beings in general, and nouns show the gender of the person we expect to be in a particular occupation.
      

2. Words have positive connotations when relating to male power, prestige, and leadership; when related to women, they carry negative overtones of weakness, inferiority, and immaturity. Thinking of women in sexual terms reinforces the notion that women are sexual objects.
   
   
5. Language, Race, and Ethnicity
1. Language may create and reinforce our perceptions about race and ethnicity by transmitting preconceived ideas about the superiority of one category of people over another.
   
   
2. Especially problematic are words that have more than one meaning, overtly derogatory terms, the voice of verbs, and the pejorative use of certain adjectives.

6. Language Diversity in Canada
1. Language has been referred to as the keystone to culture. Canada is a linguistically diverse society consisting of Aboriginal languages, French and English, and heritage languages. A major issue throughout Canadian history has been how to foster a unified culture and still recognize two official languages (the two solitudes of Canadian society).
   
   
2. Canada's Aboriginal languages are tangible symbols of Aboriginal culture and group identity and are tremendously important to Canada's indigenous people. Aboriginal people's cultures are oral cultures-they are transmitted through speech rather than the written word. Despite the efforts of Canadian Aboriginal people to maintain their languages, these languages are among the most endangered in the world.
   
   
3. The term heritage language groups refers to those groups whose language is not English, French, or one of the Aboriginal languages. Canada has experienced a number of changes in the composition of heritage language groups as a result of increased immigration.

4. There are several different theoretical interpretations of the impact of language diversity on a culture. From a functionalist perspective, language is a stabilizing force in society and an important means of cultural transmission. Conflict theorists, in contrast, view language as a source of power and social control.
   
   
3. Values are collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture.
   1. In 1991, participants in the Citizen's Forum on Canada's Future identified the following core Canadian values:
      1. Equality and fairness
      2. Consultation and dialogue–Canadians settle their differences in a peaceful, consultative manner.
      3. Accommodation and tolerance
      4. Support for diversity
      5. Compassion and generosity
      6. Canada's natural beauty
      7. Commitment to freedom, peace, and nonviolent change.
         
         
   2. Value contradictions are values that conflict with one another or are mutually exclusive (achieving one makes it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve another). For example, values of morality and humanitarianism may conflict with values of individual achievement and success.
      
      
   3. Ideal culture refers to the values and standards of behaviour that people in a society profess to hold; real culture refers to the values and standards of behaviour that people actually follow.
      
      
4. Norms–established rules of behaviour or standards of conduct–are classified as folkways, mores, or laws based on their relative social importance:
   1. Folkways are informal norms or everyday customs that may be violated without serious consequences within a particular culture (e.g., wearing appropriate clothing for a specific occasion).
      
      
   2. Mores are strongly held norms with moral and ethical connotations that may not be violated without serious consequences in a particular culture. The strongest of the mores are referred to as taboos–mores so strong that their violation is considered to be extremely offensive and even unmentionable.

3. Laws are formal, standardized norms that have been enacted by legislatures and are enforced by formal sanctions.

III. Popular Culture

1. High culture consists of activities usually patronized by elite audiences, while popular culture consists of activities, products, and services that are assumed to appeal primarily to members of the middle and working classes (e.g., rock concerts, spectator sports, movies, and television soap operas).
   
   
2. According to Pierre Bourdieu's cultural capital theory, high culture is a device used by the dominant class to naturalize the differences between social classes.
   1. People must be trained to appreciate and understand high culture; individuals learn about high culture in upper middle- and upper-class families, and in elite education systems, especially higher education.

2. Once they acquire this trained capacity, they possess a form of cultural capital; persons from poor and working-class backgrounds typically do not acquire this cultural capital.
   
   
2. Divergent Perspectives on Popular Culture
   1. Functionalists suggest that popular culture may be the most widely shared aspect of culture (the "glue") that holds society together (e.g., sports fans and media watchers) and helps people temporarily forget their problems (e.g., Walt Disney World).
   2. Popular culture also has dysfunctions; it may undermine core cultural values rather than reinforce them (e.g., talk shows on radio and television).
   3. Conflict theorists note that corporations create popular culture in the same way that any other product or service is produced. Popular culture has been turned into a commodity–objects outside ourselves that we purchase to satisfy our human needs or wants.

4. The relationship between race, gender, and popular culture is intertwined. For example, images found in popular culture have been linked to negative stereotypes of African American women (e.g., Aunt Jemima and mammy cookie jars).
   
   
5. Distinctions between high and popular culture may be exaggerated; items of popular culture may come to be designated as high culture and vice versa.

IV. Cultural Change and Diversity

1. Cultural change is continual in societies, and these changes are often set in motion by discovery, invention, and diffusion.
   1. Discovery is the process of learning about something previously unknown or unrecognized (e.g., discovery of the polio vaccine).
      
      
   2. Invention is the process of combining existing cultural items into a new form (e.g., guns, video games, airplanes, and computers).

3. Diffusion is the transmission of cultural items or social practices from one group or society to another (e.g., pinatas).
   
   
1. According to William F. Ogburn, cultural lag is a gap between the technical development (material culture) of a society and its moral and legal institutions (nonmaterial culture).
   
   
2. Cultural diversity refers to the wide range of cultural differences found between and within nations.
1. Homogeneous societies include people who share a common culture and are typically from similar social, religious, political, and economic backgrounds (e.g., Sweden). Heterogeneous societies include people who are dissimilar in their backgrounds (e.g., the United States).
   
   
2. A subculture is a group of people who share a distinctive set of cultural beliefs and behaviours that differ in some significant way from that of the larger society (e.g., Hutterites, Chinatown, and other ethnic subcultures).
   
   
3. A counterculture is a group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles (e.g., skinheads and members of some paramilitary militias).
   
   
3. Culture shock is the disruption that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own and believe they cannot depend on their own taken-for-granted assumptions about life (e.g., Napoleon Chagnon and the Yanomamo).
   
   
4. Ethnocentrism is the assumption that one's own culture and way of life are superior to all others.
   1. Ethnocentrism can serve a positive function by promoting group solidarity and loyalty; however, it also can be dysfunctional when it leads to conflict, hostility, and war.
      
      
   2. Ethnocentrism also can be a problem within a society when it leads to social isolation, prejudice, discrimination, and oppression of one group by another.
      
      
   3. By contrast, xenocentrism is the belief that the products, styles, or ideas of another society are better than those of one's own culture.

6. Cultural relativism–the belief that the behaviours and customs of a society must be viewed and analyzed within the context of its own culture–is an alternative to ethnocentrism and xenocentrism.

V. Sociological Analysis of Culture

1. Functionalist Perspective
   1. According to functionalist theorists, societies where people share a common language and core values are more likely to have consensus and harmony.
      
      
   2. Culture may be dysfunctional when it contributes to war or internal strife.

2. Conflict Perspective
   1. Conflict theorists suggest that values and norms help create and sustain the privileged position of the powerful in society.
      
      
   2. According to Karl Marx, people are not aware that they are being dominated because they have false consciousness, meaning that people hold beliefs they think promote their best interests when those beliefs actually are damaging to their interests.
      
      
3. Interactionist Perspective
   1. Interactionists view society as made up of the sum of all people's interactions; people create, maintain, and modify culture as they go about their everyday activities.

2. According to interactionists, people continually negotiate their social realities. Values and norms are not independent realities that automatically determine our behaviour; we reinterpret them in each social situation we encounter.
   
   
4. In viewing culture from any these perspectives, the impact of race, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, and age must be taken into account in examining people's experiences.

VI. Cultural Patterns for the Twenty-First Century

1. Cultural diversity will increase in importance.
   
   
2. Technology will continue to have a profound effect on culture.
   
   1. Television and radio, films and videos, and electronic communications will continue to accelerate the flow of information and expand cultural diffusion.
      
      
   2. However, most of the world's population will not participate in this technological revolution.
      

3. Some scholars have predicted a single global culture, a worldwide interconnection of culture without regard for national identities or boundaries; others have predicted that placeless global subcultures, such as science, business, and diplomacy, will create linkages based on shared interest, ideology, and information around the world.
   1. Critics note that cultural imperialism, the extensive infusion of one nation's culture into other nations, is taking place rather than the development of a homogeneous global culture.

2. If a global culture were to emerge, it most likely would include components from many societies and cultures. However, a global culture is less likely to occur with the current resurgence of nationalism in nations such as those of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

3. The study of culture helps us not only understand our own "tool kit" of symbols, stories, rituals, and world views, but also expand our insights to include those of other people of the world who also seek strategies for enhancing their own quality of life.

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