Confront: believe your behaviors are the right ones

complain: isolate yourself in social bubbles with foreigners, living in segregation in society

Conform: adapt to the society you’re in by observing learning and understanding the behaviors of others
and adapting your own to fit the behaviors of society

Cultural relativism views the behavior of a people from the perspective of that person’s own culture.

Ethnocentrism is the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture.

Anthropology Anthropological viewpoints are inspired by observing cross-cultural differences in social

institutions, cultural beliefs and communication styles.

The American Anthropological Association defines anthropology as the study of humans, past and
present.

Sociology Columbia University notes that sociological thinking involves the relationships among people -
- or more specifically, the associations between people and the products of human interaction such as
organizations, technologies, economies, cities, culture, media and religion.

Sociology is the study of social life, social change and the social causes and consequences of human
behavior.

Anthropology focuses on culture

Sociology focuses on society

Culture refers to the beliefs, values, behavior and material objects that, together, form a people's way of
life. (Berger 2010)

Culture includes the traditions we inherit and pass on to the next generation. (Berger 2010)

Culture determines how we view the world around us (Berger 2010)

Symbols are defined as anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share
culture. The meaning of the same symbols varies from society to society, within a single society, and
over time. (Berger 2010)

Language is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another. It can be either
written or spoken or both

- Language is the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to
the next.

- Through most of human history, cultural transmission has been accomplished through
oral tradition (Berger, 2010)

Values are culturally defined standards by which people judge desirability, goodness and beauty, and
which serve as broad guidelines for social living. Values are broad principles that underlie beliefs,
specific statements that people hold to be true. (Berger, 2010)
Material culture reflects a society’s values and a society’s technology, the knowledge that people apply
to the task of living in their surroundings.

Examples include books, buildings, physical objects that future generations can use to try and
understand us. (Berger, 2010)

Non Material Culture reflects beliefs, values, concepts, customs

Examples include Beliefs, values, Religions, ethics and philosophies (Berger, 2010)

Schein Typically used for businesses and organizations

Artifacts Visible structures and processes that represent culture. Material culture (Schein, 2010)

Espoused Values written documents, strategies, visions and goals a company has and preaches (Schein,
2010)

Basic assumptions unconscious beliefs, perspectives, thoughts, and feelings—ultimate source of values
and action. (Schein, 2010)

Society: the structure of relationships within which culture is created and shared through regularized
patterns of social interaction. (Berger, 2010)

Society is a group of people with common territory, interaction, and culture. Social groups consist of
two or more people who interact and identify with one another.

Territory: Most countries have formal boundaries and territory that the world recognizes as
theirs. However, a society’s boundaries don’t have to be geopolitical borders, such as the one between
the United States and Canada. Instead, members of a society, as well as nonmembers, must recognize
particular land as belonging to that society.

Interaction: Members of a society must come in contact with one another. If a group of people
within a country has no regular contact with another group, those groups cannot be considered part of
the same society. Geographic distance and language barriers can separate societies within a country.

*Culture: People of the same society share aspects of their culture, such as language or beliefs.
Culture is a defining element of society

Approaches to studying Culture and Society

• Comparative

• Historical

• Structural

• Functional

• Interpretive

• Critical
Biocultural evolution - the study of the interaction between biology and culture in human evolution

Social evolution - Social evolution is the area of evolutionary biology that studies how social interactions,
especially between individuals of the same species, arise, change and are maintained. A particular focus
is on how cooperative behaviour can be beneficial despite the intuitive advantages of being selfish.