Understanding

Culture
Society
Politics

SPECIAL PROJECT

Submitted to: Anne Chrisbert Capistrano

Submitted by: John Marley Santos
 Table of Contents
Topics
Man’s Social and Cultural Background
Culture
Human Origin
Human Societies
Socialization
Human Rights
 MAN’S SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND
“Change is the only permanent thing in this world” –Heraclitus
In our society today, we can see a lot of changes and developments that affect
our life. Machines have mad our work easier. Computers have allowed us to
communicate with more people faster. Genetic engineering has helped us
produce disease resistant plants. Changes such as these have resulted in
modernization of nation-state.
A nation-state is a sovereign state whose citizens or subjects have a common
culture. They speak the same language, have a common descent, and share a
common history. Having citizens with common culture, the nation-state,
therefore, is a major component of personal identity. Personal identityis the
concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life.
Culture refers to that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts,
morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society. Culture serves as a foundation of man’s continuing interaction
with his surroundings.
 CULTURE
Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range
of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies.
Cultural universals are found in all human societies; these include expressive
forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage,
cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical
expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the
immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including
practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy,
literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural
heritage of a society.

In the humanities, one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been
the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the
arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also
sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such
hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions
between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or
folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural
capital. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the
symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from
each other such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to
the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged
in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical
theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to
manipulate the lower classes and create a false consciousness. Such perspectives
are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the
theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture
arises from the material conditions of human life, as humans create the
conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved
biological dispositions.
When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and
values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the
set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the
peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting
the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices
within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. "bro culture"), or a
counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance
of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or
evaluated because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system
of a given culture.

Etymology
The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the Ancient Roman orator
Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul
or "cultura animi" using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a
philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for
human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a modern
context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was
man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, "refers to all
the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through
artifice, become fully human.

Anthropology
Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culturein the
20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American
anthropology, where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to
classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate
symbolically encoded experiences socially.[citation needed] American
anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role
in research on culture: biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural
anthropology, and in the United States, archaeology. The term Kulturbrille, or
"culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas, refers
to the "lenses" through which we see our own countries. Martin Lindstrom
asserts that Kulturbrille, which allow us to make sense of the culture we inhabit,
also "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately.

Sociology
The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society. For sociologist
Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals
through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of
history. As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as the ways of
thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a
people's way of life. Culture can be any of two types, non-material culture or
material culture. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that
individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms,
morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture is the
physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have
made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological
studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to
culture, past or present.

Psychology
Cognitive tools suggest a way for people from certain culture to deal with real-life
problems, like Suanpan for Chinese to perform mathematical calculation
Starting in the 1990s psychological research on culture influence began to grow
and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. [ Culture
psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and
culture, and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For
example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their
positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the
way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some
researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across
cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive norms, culture shock is also
studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other
cultures. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently
cross culture. For example, people that are raised in a culture with an abacus are
trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people
view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by
their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the
avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when
understanding the human mental operation.

Cultural Studies
In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism
such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed
cultural studies. Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified
"culture" with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film,
food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as
determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations
and the organization of production.
Reaction Paper
As a beginning therapist it is important to recognize and have an understanding of
the various cultures we may experience in practice. By having an understanding
we can better understand and treat our clients that we see. In addition, it not only
enhances our therapeutic relationships with our clients, but also enhances our
knowledge on the various cultures that exist. For this paper I will interview a
person that is from a different culture that I do not have knowledge on. With this
interview my hope is to gain insight to the specific culture so I can be more aware
of the practices of this culture and gain knowledge to successfully treat clients of
this culture in the future. In addition, it will also allow me to gain more
information on the person I am interviewing and have a closer look into their
cultural worldview.
 HUMANS ORIGIN
Humans are unique creatures on the planet, though it wasn't always this way.
Long ago, some bizarre human relatives, such as Nutcracker Man and a Homo
species whose miniature bodies resembled the hobbits on Lord of the Rings,
roamed Earth. Scientists are even finding evidence that modern humans crossed
paths with some of our relatives, with fossils suggesting Homo sapiens may have
had sex with Neanderthals and even a newly discovered species called the
Denisovans. In news and features, we will cover human evolution and origins,
revealing the mysteries of humanity, details on human ancestors and the
evolutionary steps that led to modern humans.
 HUMAN SOCIETIES
What Is Human Society?
Humans generally do not live alone, isolated from each other. Instead, individuals
tend to live in communities with other people related by ethnicity, nationality,
religion, or some other cultural element. A human society is a group of people
who share a common lifestyle and organization. Human societies can be classified
in many different ways, depending on who is doing the categorizing.

Types of Societies
For example, anthropologists generally use the groups' method of subsistence to
define them. If members of the group survive by hunting animals and gathering
plants to eat, then anthropologists classify their group as a hunter-gatherer
society. If the people tend to raise animals for meat, blood, or milk, then the
society is called pastoralist. More stationary societies who grow crops to harvest
are named agriculturalist, and those societies can eventually evolve into
industrialized agriculturalist with the advent and implementation of fossil-fuel
based technologies.

By contrast, political scientists tend to categorize societies by their political

structure--who's in charge matters! Bands have loose organization and informal
leadership traditions, often defaulting to the elders to make decisions and guide
the youngsters. Tribes have a more structured society, heavily based on kinship
relationships. Larger and more complex societies, called chiefdoms, involve
multiple extended families under the control of one relatively permanent leader.
Finally, the most complex political organization is called a state, which began
making its appearance around 10,000 years ago around the same time as the
agricultural revolution.
Pre-industrial societies accounted for the majority of all human societies until the
18th century. Agriculturally based, these rural societies tended to be fairly small
and limited in their contact with other societies. There were a few social classes,
and individuals were not socially mobile; if you were born to an artisan, then you
became an artisan.

Industrial societies arose in Western Europe and then the United States beginning
in the late 18th century as the Industrial Revolution spread the idea and the
technology of mass production. Using fossil fuels to massively increase the rate
and scale of production, industrial societies could increase the carrying capacity of
their land. More food = more people! Specifically, more people were moving off
of their farms and into new urban city centers. Closer to the factory jobs, people
began experiencing the new lifestyle that urbanization afforded - poor living
conditions, higher crime rates, and almost non-existent safety standards on the
job.
 SOCIALIZATION
In sociology, socialization is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies
of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the
means by which social and cultural continuity are attaine.

Socialization is strongly connected to developmental psychology Humans need

social experiences to learn their culture and to survive.
Socialization essentially represents the whole process of learning throughout the
life course and is a central influence on the behavior, beliefs, and actions of adults
as well as of children.

Socialization may lead to desirable outcomes—sometimes labeled "moral"—as

regards the society where it occurs. Individual views are influenced by the
society's consensus and usually tend toward what that society finds acceptable or
"normal". Socialization provides only a partial explanation for human beliefs and
behaviors, maintaining that agents are not blank slates predetermined by their
environment scientific research provides evidence that people are shaped by both
social influences and genes.

Importance of Socialization
Socialization is an important part of the process of personality formation in every
individual. It is true that genetics is the reason behind the structure of human
personality, but socialization is the one that causes this personality to be molded
to specific directions through the process of accepting or rejecting beliefs,
attitudes and societal norms. Because of the dynamics in socialization, we tend to
have different personalities although we are living in the same society. For
example, the Yanomamo Indians living on the border area between Brazil and
Venezuela tend to train the younger generation of boys to become aggressive and
strong. On the other hand, the Semai tribe living on the central Malay Peninsula in
Malaysia does not like violence and hostility. This is why the younger generation
of boys is trained to become gentle and peace-loving.
Types of Socialization

Generally, there are five types of socialization: primary, secondary,

developmental, anticipatory and resocialization.

Primary socialization
This type of socialization happens when a child learns the values, norms and
behaviors that should be displayed in order to live accordingly to a specific
culture.
Example: A child hears his father talk bad words against an old lady. The child
would think that this behavior is socially acceptable, so he would start talking bad
words against older people.

Secondary socialization
This type of socialization occurs when a person learns an appropriate behavior to
be displayed within a smaller group which is still part of a larger society. The
changes within the values, attitudes and beliefs of an individual are seen to be
less important than the changes made in him as he participates in the larger
society.
Example: A high school graduate chooses a career in Business Management after
participating in a small group career seminar led by college business majors.

Developmental socialization
This type of socialization involves a learning process wherein the focus in on
developing our social skills.
Example: A shy senior high school student starts to teach English to new freshmen
students in order to develop verbal communication.
Anticipatory socialization
This type of socialization refers to the process wherein a person practices or
rehearses for future social relationships.
Example: A child anticipates parenthood as he observes his parents perform their
daily roles.

Resocialization
This type of socialization involves rejecting previous behavior patterns and
accepting new ones so the individual can shift from one part of his life to another.
Resocialization is said to be happening throughout human life cyc
 HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex,
nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Human rights include
the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion
and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is
entitled to these rights, without discrimination.

International Human Rights Law

International human rights law lays down the obligations of Governments to act
in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect
human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.

One of the great achievements of the United Nations is the creation of a

comprehensive body of human rights law—a universal and internationally
protected code to which all nations can subscribe and all people aspire. The
United Nations has defined a broad range of internationally accepted rights,
including civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. It has also established
mechanisms to promote and protect these rights and to assist states in carrying
out their responsibilities.

Economic, Social and Cultural rights

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into
force in 1976. The human rights that the Covenant seeks to promote and protect
include:
the right to work in just and favourable conditions;
the right to social protection, to an adequate standard of living and to the highest
attainable standards of physical and mental well-being;
the right to education and the enjoyment of benefits of cultural freedom and
scientific progress.
Civil and Political rights
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its First Optional
Protocol entered into force in 1976. The Second Optional Protocol was adopted in
1989.

The Covenant deals with such rights as freedom of movement; equality before the
law; the right to a fair trial and presumption of innocence; freedom of thought,
conscience and religion; freedom of opinion and expression; peaceful assembly;
freedom of association; participation in public affairs and elections; and
protection of minority rights. It prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life; torture,
cruel or degrading treatment or punishment; slavery and forced labour; arbitrary
arrest or detention; arbitrary interference with privacy; war propaganda;
discrimination; and advocacy of racial or religious hatred.