CULTURE

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CULTURE

• What is culture?
• Culture is defined as the beliefs, values,
  behavior, and material objects shared by a
  particular people.
• Components of culture
• Material culture
• Nonmaterial culture

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• Example of non-material culture
• Here a president gets a Maori greeting

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• Culture provides a taken for granted orientation
  to life
• 1) People assume that their own culture is normal
  or natural, when in fact it is arbitrary
• 2) Culture provides the lens through which
  reality is evaluated
• 3) Culture provides a behavioral imperative of
  what we should do, and a moral imperative that
  defines right and wrong.

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• Culture shock results from contact with radically
  different culture that challenges basic
  assumptions.

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Components of Culture

• A. Symbols
• A symbol is something to which people attach
  meaning and then use to communicate.
• Symbolic culture includes gestures, language,
  values, norms, sanctions.

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• B. Language
• is a system of symbols (words) that can be put
  together in an infinite number of way to
  communicate abstract thought.
• Language helps in cultural transmission

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• C. Values, Norms and Sanctions
• Values are standards that define what is
  desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful
  or ugly.
• Norms are expected ways of behavior that develops
  our values. May either be proscriptive or
  prescriptive.

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• D. Rituals
• Part of non-material culture that has to do more
  with behavior than attitudes and rules.
• Customary, often ceremonial activities that
  signify a cultures' shared beliefs, values, and
  norms.

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• Mores norms that have great moral significance
• Folkways norms that have less more significance
  than mores.

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• Sanctions are positive (reward, smile) or
  negative (fine, a frown) reactions to how people
  follow norms.
• Subcultures and Countercultures
• Subcultures cultural patterns that distinguish
  some segment of society of societys population

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• Multiculturalism promotes equality of all
  cultural traditions
• Counterculture -groups whose values set their
  members in opposition to the dominant cultures

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• High culture cultural patterns of the rich
  (elites).
• Popular culture cultural patterns that are
  widespread in society.
• Eurocentric dominance of European cultural
  patterns.
• Afrocentric dominance of African cultural
  patterns in peoples lives.

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• Cultural Change is promoted by
• Invention
• Discovery
• Diffusion

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Discussion

• Identify the cultural values and social norms
  that are associated with the automobile.