SOC 1100

CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
The sociological study of culture began
with Durkheim in the nineteenth century
and soon became the basis of
anthropology, a social science
specifically focused on the study of
cultural differences and similarities
among the worlds many peoples.
(Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum, 2003)
Giddens et al (2003) Culture consists of the
values the members of a given group hold, the
languages they speak, the symbols they revere
(hold dear), the norms they follow, and the
materials goods they create from tools to
clothing.
 Culture refers to the social heritage of a people
those learned patterns of thinking, feeling and
acting that are transmitted from one generation
to the next including the embodiment of these
patterns in material items.
It includes non-material culture, for example,
abstract creations such as: values, beliefs, symbols,
norms, customs and institutional arrangements
and material culture, for example, food, dress,
physical artifacts or objects like, stone axes,
computers, paintings, hairstyles etc. (Hughes and
Kroehler, 2008).
 By culture sociologists mean the beliefs of the
society and their symbolic representation
through its creative activities.
A symbol is simply a representation, such as
a word or a gesture or an image, which
communicates an idea or feeling.
Culture can best be discussed by
distinguishing between beliefs, which are the
content of the culture, and creative
activities, which express this content in
actions or objects.
Culture also takes the form of creative
activities that express ideas and feeling.
The term culture is often used to refer to
the high culture of a society, that is, its
collections of paintings, its opera houses,
and great works of literature.
But there is also its popular culture, and
this has become an area of growing
interest in sociology.
Cinema, popular music, magazines and soap
opera, as part of our culture in this sense; activities
such as gardening, craftwork, dressing, cooking and
talking are all creative activities that can be
considered part of culture.
The ability to adapt to changes or situations is
found in culture.
Elements of Culture:
Symbols: are constructs that carry a
particular meaning and are recognized
by the people who share them.
Symbols are acts or objects that have
come to be socially accepted as
standing for something else. (Hughes and
Kroehler, 2008).
 Language is defined as a system of symbols
that allows the members of society to
communicate with each other and
facilitates cultural transmission from
generation to generation.
Alphabet is a cultural construct, when
applied in a systematic way leads to words.
Language is the corner stone of every
culture.
It is the chief vehicle of communication.
 Values are abstract ideals, fro example,
monogamy being faithful to a single
marriage partner.
Values are culturally defined standards by
which people assess desirability, goodness,
beauty and together they serve as broad
guidelines for social living.
Values are also broad principles that underlie
beliefs, that is, particular statements that
people hold to be true or false, they are
premised on truths.(Giddens et al, 2003)
Values are abstract standards of
goodness while beliefs are thoughts
about truths; they tend to color the way
we perceive our environment and are at
the core of human personalities.
Beliefs tend to cloud judgment, for
example, by making an offering in
church one will receive Gods blessing.
 Values specify what people ought to do.
Thus, the belief that people should
accumulate wealth, or the belief that they
should live in harmony with the natural
environment, are both values, though rather
different ones.
Values can change over time, for example,
values placing women in a subservient
position to men are slowly giving way to
egalitarian gender values.
Beliefs are concerned with both ideas
about the way things are and ideas
about how they ought to be.
Ideas about how things are include
beliefs about the nature of things, the
physical world, human nature, and the
character of society.
Ideas about how things ought to be are
embodied in values and norms.
Norms are definite principles or rules
people are expected to observe:
they represent the dos and donts of
social like.
For example, norms of behavior in
marriage develop close
relationships towards one another.
Like values, norms vary across cultures.
For example, in some countries cheating
on an examination goes against core
values of individual achievement,
equality of opportunity, hard work and
respect for the rules.
However, Russian students might be
puzzled by this sense of outrage among
their peers.
Norms are rules of behavior that
regulate how people behave.
A typical norm, for example, is the
rule that people should not
accumulate wealth by stealing from
each other.
Norms are either proscriptive or
prescriptive.
Proscriptive norms magnify what should
not be, for example, Polygamy. It
speaks to what ought to be, for
example, it speaks to performance or
behaviour.

Prescriptivenorms suggest what should

be. It speaks to what are acceptable,
for example, manners. It speaks to the
real value.
 Mores - Some norms are so strong that they
are codified as laws.
Laws are rules that are enforced by a special
political organization composed of
individuals who have the right to use force,
for example; Incest taboo law prohibits
sexual engagement between certain kin
group members; bigamy; rape, theft, treason
, are likely to bring severe/punishment and
strong disapproval.
Mores represent the societys
standards for proper moral conduct
thus mores is a corollary of the
normative system that is deemed
essential to sociability.
The violation of mores is
accompanied by swift and strong
action enforced by members of the
community..
Folkways those attributes of a society
that designate customs for routine
casual interaction and have lesser
moral significance, for example,
notions of proper dress, appropriate
breeding and courtesy.
 Folkways are informal actions that are
supported by a system of tradition
e.g. if you point at a grave your finger will
rot; therefore to avoid that you have to
bite your finger after doing so.

Folklore is viewed as a form of

entertainment or relaxation. Story telling (
berere a nancy tales).
 Customs are guidelines for good social
conduct but they are not accompanied by
a system and therefore have no sanction
e.g. people in a public place, may or may
not respond to a greeting.
Sanctions can be positive (a reward) or
negative (a punishment).
Material goods refer to the physical objects
that a society creates, which influence the
way in which people live.
 When the term culture is used on a day-to-
day basis we often think of such things as
art, literature, music, and dance.
Culture refers to the way of life of individual
members or groups within a society:
how they dress, their marriage customs and
family life, their patterns of work, their
religious ceremonies, and their leisure
pursuits.
The concept also covers the goods they
create and the goods that become
meaningful for them e.g. bows and
arrows, plows, factories and machines,
computers, books, dwellings.
We think of culture as a design for
living or tool kit of practices,
knowledge, and symbols acquired.
(Kluckhohn, l949; Swidler, l986).
DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE
Ralph Linton (1976) defined
culture as the way of life of its
members, the collection of ideas
and habits which are learned
shared and transmitted from one
generation to another.
 Clyde Kluckhohn (1949) defined culture as a
design for living held by members of a
particular society.
Culture embodies two fundamental
characteristics Culture is learned, shared
and transmitted.
Culture is relative so it changes. Without a
shared culture members will be unable to
cooperate. It is the culture of the society
that influences the behavior of its people.
 Anthropologist E.D. Taylor (1971) defined
culture as a complex whole including
knowledge beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs
and any other capabilities acquired by
human beings as members of society or a
given civilization.
Robert Bernstein (1974) suggested that culture
is a complex whole that consist of all the ways
we think and act as well as everything we
have as members of society.
Culture and Society:
Although there is a close connection
between the notions of culture and
society they can be distinguished
from each other.
 Society is a system of interrelationships that
connects individuals together.
No culture could exist without society. Without
culture we would not be humans at all.
We would have no language in which to express
ourselves, no sense of self-consciousness, and our
ability to think or reason would be severely limited.
Culture serves as a societys glue, because culture
is an important source of conformity, it provides
ready-made ways of thinking and acting for its
members.
Societyrefers to a group of
people who live within the
same territory and share a
common value.(Hughes and
Kroehler, 2008).
Culture provides the meanings that
enable human beings to interpret their
experiences and guide their actions,
whereas, society represents the
networks of social relations that arise
among a people.
Simply put, culture has to do with the
customs of a people and society has to
do with the people who are practicing
the customs.
 Culture and Changes
Cultural turn
The phrase cultural turn is often used to describe sociologys
recent emphasis on the importance of understanding the role
of culture in daily life. According to Ann Swidler (l986) culture
does not blindly determine our values and behaviours.
Swidler saw culture as a tool kit from which people select
different understandings and behaviours enabling them to
choose among different courses of action rather than
constraining them to conform to a single one.
Our cultural tool kits include a variety of scripts that we
can draw on to shape our beliefs, values and actions.
 Cultural scripts, help to determine our actions as well as
our words.
For example, a stranger in a city and needs directions
to find his way, he sees a woman and as he is about to
approach her to ask directions, she runs in the opposite
direction.
The cultural turn calls on sociologists to examine such
behavior. An understanding of the different cultural
scripts would perhaps help to find answers to such
behaviours.
Cultural turn shows that there is no single reality to social
encounters and that multiple cultural scripts can be
applied in any one situation.
 Nature and Nurture:
Are we shaped by our biology, or are we products
of learning through lifes experiences,, that is, of
nurture.
Biologists and some psychologists emphasize
biological factors in explaining human thinking
and behavior.
Sociologists, stress the role of learning and culture.
Both biology and culture determines human
behavior, in other words, both nature and
nurture has an impact on human beings.
The term sociobiology refers to the
application of biological principles to
explain the social activities of animals,
including human beings.
Wilson (1975) argues that genes
influence not only physical traits, but
behavior as well.
 Cultural Diversity and Cultural differences exist
across societies.
Cultural beliefs vary across cultures.
Human behavior and practices also vary widely
from culture to culture and often contrast radically
with what people from one society might consider
normal
For example, in the modern West, we regard the
deliberate killing of infants or young children as
one of the worst of all crimes. Yet in traditional
Chinese culture, female children were sometimes
strangled at birth because they were regarded as
a liability rather than an asset to the family;
 Subcultures
Subculture - is defined as values and norms
distinct from those of the majority, held by a
group within a wider society.
Countercultures groups that largely reject
the prevailing values and norms of society.
Assimilation is the process by which different
cultures are absorbed into a single
mainstream culture.
 Multiculturalism - respecting cultural diversity and
promoting equality of different cultures.
Small societies ted to be culturally uniform, but
industrialized societies are themselves culturally
diverse or multicultural, involving numerous
different subcultures.
Because of slavery colonialism, war, migration and
contemporary globalization populations have
moved across borders and settled in new areas.
Thus the population of various societies is made up
of a number of groups from diverse cultural and
linguistic backgrounds e.g. Guyana six races.
Cultural Relativism: The practice of
judging a society by its own standards.
Cultural Universals: Values or modes of
behavior shared by all human cultures,
or the patterned and recurrent aspects of
life that appear in all known societies, for
example, language; family, marriage;
incest prohibition.
 Cultural Identity an Ethnocentrism
Every culture displays its own unique patterns of
behavior which seem alien to people from other
cultural backgrounds.
If you travel to another country, you might
probably observe that their everyday habits,
customs and behaviours to be quite different from
what you are accustomed to and you might
experience what is referred to as culture shock.
This is a feeling of being disoriented when
someone becomes immersed in a new culture.
 Ethnocentrism judging other cultures in
terms of the standards of ones own culture.
Zenocentricism is the opposite of
ethnocentrism it is the belief that products
styles or ideas of our society (culture) are
inferior to those that originate elsewhere.
We tend to see others culture as better than
ours e.g. bringing consultants from abroad to
do certain jobs when there are qualified and
competent persons here.
Culturallag - when a person
experiences difficulty adapting to
change.