Today: Rurality and Culture Elements of culture Theoretical

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Today Rurality and Culture

• Elements of culture
• Theoretical perspectives on culture
• Understanding cultural change and cultural
  variation
• Why cultural capital
• Elements of rural culture

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Summing up last time

• You now have a basic toolkit for conducting your
  own social science research, and critically
  evaluating the findings of others.
• You should know
• The steps of the scientific method and hw they
  work
• The advantages and disadvantages of different
  types of research methods
• The difference between reliability and validity
• The advantages and disadvantages of different
  types of sampling strategies

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Culture and Society

• Society
• Constituted of a number of people
• Live in the same territory
• Exists relatively independently of other
  societies
• Participate in a (relatively) common culture
• Culture
• Learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge,
  material objects and behavior

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Material vs. Nonmaterial Culture

• Material Culture physical or technological
  aspects of daily lives
• Nonmaterial Culture ways of using material
  objects, customs, beliefs, governments, patterns
  of communication
• Cultural Lag period of maladjustment when the
  nonmaterial culture is still adapting to new
  material conditions

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Elements of Culture

• Language
• Abstract system of word meanings and symbols
• Foundation of every culture
• Permeates all parts of society
• A Cultural Universal practices and beliefs
  common to most societies
• Other examples?

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Elements of Culture

• Norms (about behavior)
• Established standards of behavior maintained by
  society
• Formal norms written down and enforced
• Informal norms understood by not precisely
  recorded
• Mores highly necessary to the welfare of a
  society
• Folkways govern everyday behavior

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Elements of Culture

• Sanctions
• Penalties and rewards for conduct concerning a
  social norm
• Positive Sanctions
• Negative Sanctions

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Elements of Culture

• Values
• Collective conceptions of good vs. bad, proper
  vs. improper, morally right vs. wrong

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Theoretical Perspectives

• Functionalist Perspective
• Cultural competency helps an individual
  function well in society.
• Social stability requires consensus.
• Socialization into expected standards of
  behavior.
• All cultures are legitimate recognize cultural
  uniqueness.
• Can this actually be dysfunctional?

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Theoretical Perspectives

• Conflict Perspective
• The role of power in defining what is mainstream,
  and what is deviant whose interests are
  supported?
• Dominant Ideology set of cultural beliefs and
  practices that help maintain powerful social,
  economic, and political interests
• US individual achievement, self reliance, rather
  than cooperative behavior support Capitalism

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Theoretical Perspectives

• Symbolic interactionist
• Culture is a set of shared symbols (language,
  practices) that reflect basic values and have
  been
• Constructed though social interaction
• Agreed-upon by members of the culture
• May be difficult to understand by non-members and
  can be used to define cultural boundaries

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Cultural Variation

• Subculture segment of society that shares a
  distinctive pattern of mores, folkways, and
  values different from the larger society.
  Sometimes associated with deviance.
• Counter Culture subculture that conspicuously
  and deliberately opposes certain aspects of the
  larger culture
• Culture Shock feeling of disorientation,
  uncertainty, or fear when immersed in an
  unfamiliar culture

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Attitudes Toward Cultural Variation

• Ethnocentrism perceive ones culture and way of
  life as the norm or superior
• Functionalist vs. Conflict Perspective
• Cultural Relativism view peoples behavior from
  the perspective of ones own culture
• Xenocentrism belief that the products, styles,
  or ideas of ones society are inferior

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Cultural Change

• Innovation process of introducing a new idea or
  object to culture
• Discovery making known or sharing the existence
  of an aspect of reality
• Invention existing cultural items are combined
  into a form that did not previously exist
• Diffusion process by which a cultural item is
  spread from group to group
• Technology, communication

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Thinking about cultural change / variation

• Theory perspectives
• Functional
• differences fill specialized roles, can exist
  within. Change is adaptive.
• Conflict
• differences due to power imbalances or struggles.
  Change represents challenges to the status quo.
• Interactionist
• new cultural forms are shaped through social
  interaction or agreement

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Thinking about rural culture

• Is there a rural culture in the US and what
  might it look like?
• Should we care about it?
• What might the different theoretical perspectives
  have to say about it?
• How might we recognize and measure it?
• Change versus stability in rural places / people

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Elements of a rural culture

• Specialized language
• Unique values (ideas of right and wrong)
• Unique norms (standards of behavior)
• Material culture products

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Theoretical perspectives

• Functionalist
• How does rural culture keep things running
  smoothly for the culture and for society as a
  whole (filling roles)
• Conflict
• How are stereotypes of rural people and
  environments used to reinforce existing power
  structures and distribution of resources
• Symbolic Interactionist
• How is rural culture created within the culture
  and in larger society through interactional
  patterns

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How might we recognize and measure rural culture?

• Prevalence of certain practices / interactional
  forms
• Typical behaviors, attitudes, values
• has been suggested that we define rural this way
  at least partially
• But would it vary by
• Region?
• Race?
• Gender?
• Who would count as real rural?

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Do rural / urban values and behaviors differ?

• Behaviors examples?
• Attitudes
• More politically conservative?
• Rural less supportive of env movement ?
• Rural more utilitarian values toward nature?
• Rural less concerned about environmental quality?
• BUT what about
• cause-effect relationship
• control variables?

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How do we define real rural

• Official definitions of rural places are based on
  population / density
• Other choices cultural practices, occupations
• These may or may not have little to do with each
  other
• people versus places as rural
• How much change are we willing to accept

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Rural cultural change

• Links to urban areas, outside world
• Exchange of goods / resources
• Exchange of ideas (non material culture)
• New people physically present
• New types of employment
• May be seen as a threat to tradition
• May be seen as an opportunity to innovate

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The small town death wish

• An example of negative aspects of rural culture
• Resistance to change, new ideas
• Tendency to look back, not forward
• Resistance to outsiders more generally
• Lack of recognition of dependence on outside
  world or larger social forces that affect well
  being
• Poor community self image
• Lack of cooperation for the common good

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The Small Town Death Wish, Cont.

• Functional within, but dysfunctional in a
  changing world (cant view cultures in isolation)
• Community stagnation / decline
• Out-migration of best and brightest
• Alienation of those who would help
• Mediocrity and dumbing down
• The response
• emotion, rather than reason
• prairie society does not belong to those who can
  come and go

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How do we think about cultural capital

• Remember our definitions of Capitalresources
  that can be invested to create other
  resources/profit
• Theoretical perspectives on cultural capital
• Functionalist knowing how to behave profits
  the person in his/her context (note the
  dysfunctionality of small town death wish)
• Conflict cultural capital can be used to
  maintain inequality / class differences
• Interactionist how is what counts as cultural
  capital socially agreed on, and what are the
  rules that govern this?

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What about Legacy?

• We inherit cultural capital (values, attitudes,
  norms, materials) from
• Family
• Other institutions
• This inheritance is shaped by our personal
  characteristics
• Gender, race, ethnicity, class, place

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Next time

• Continue to talk about socialization to rural
  life and the institutions that foster it.
• Readings
• Re-skim Flora and Flora Ch. 2 for socialization
• Elder, King, Conger. 1996. (on web)
• Recommended Schaefer Ch 4