Sociology chapter 3

Culture

• Culture is extremely a broad concept. To sociologists, culture is made of all of the ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and products common to and defining a group's way of life. Culture holds  together everything humans create and have as they interact together. 
• Culture distinguishes between thoughts and things. 
• Culture is viewed as a macro system
• Culture is an asset of society, like a software of a computer system.
• Culture shapes the way we see the world. It impacts how we think, how we act, what we value, how we talk, the organizations we create, the rituals we old, the laws we make, how and what we worship, what we eat, what we wear and what we think of as beautiful or ugly. 
• Cultures vary widely around the world. readers of this book are familiar with Western industrialized cultures. Such ways of life often seem normal and often better to readers. however, other vastly different cultures exist around the world that also seem normal or better to their inhabitants. Encountering these different cultures can result in culture shock, confusion that occurs when encountering unfamiliar situations and ways of life. Often cited to research conducted by anthropologist Napolean Chagnon who visited Yanomamo people who live in the rain forests of Brazil Venezuela. 

Types of Culture 

Material Culture

Tangible parts of the culture or the parts of culture that you can see or touch. Any physical object created by humans is a part of material culture. This includes books, clothing, art, building, computer software, inventions, food, vehicles, tools and so on. 

Non-Material Culture

The intangible creations of human interaction or parts of culture that up cannot see or touch are also called by symbolic culture. These exist as ideas, languages, values, beliefs, behaviors, and social institutions. 

High Culture

consists of things that are generally associated with the social elite. The opera, cotillions, classical music and luterature, wine tastings, and the fine arts are all examples of high culture. these activities may not be available to everyone, for several reasons. they may be too expensive, or they may be located in exclusive locations that are largely inaccessible without special membership or hefty financial resources.  Additionally, special preparation or knowledge may be important in understanding or fully appreciating these activities.

Popular Culture

 To sociologists, high culture is not evaluated as being “better” than popular culture. They are simply different aspects of the larger culture that sociologists find so interesting.  popular culture consists of activities that are widespread in a culture, with mass accessibility and appeal, and pursued by large numbers of people across all social classes. Examples of popular culture include fast-food restaurants, rock concerts, television situation comedies, and best-selling novels. Sociologists have devoted considerable attention to studying many facets of our popular culture. 

Aspects  of Culture

Norms, Values, Beliefs & Ideologies, Religion, Language, Arts & Literature.

Cultural Lag

Material culture, such as technology, may change faster than non-material culture. The result may by a cultural lag, in which a gap occurs as different aspects of culture change at different rates. As an example, we keep working to develop planes that will fly, higher and faster, and carry more payloads on a lower unit cost. Because airplanes can be measured against these standards, inventions in this area appear rapidly and predictably. In the area of non-material culture, on the other hand there often are no such generally accepted standards. Whether one prefers a Hussain, a Picasso, or a Gainsborough, for example, is a matter of taste, and styles of painting fluctuate unevenly. Similarly, in institutions such as government and the economic system there are competing forms of styles, Governments may be dictatorships, oligarchies, republics or democracies.

Society

Society refers to people interacting within a limited terriroty guided by their culture. Society is an organisation of people whose associations are with one another. Neither society nor the culture can exist with one another. Some definitions of society (particularly older ones) specify that interaction

occurs within some shared boundary. Increasing globalization and the rapid expansion of communication, information, and transportation technologies all make culture sharing and convergence possible across the globe. Dropping this geographic aspect of the definition of society allows a more accurate and complex understanding of all that a society is.

Norms

Latin Norma, means a pattern, rule or a standard. The concepts were introduces by Sumner in his book called "folkways". Norms are derived from our societal values. Norms constitute the shared rules or expectations specifying appropriate behaviors in various situations. We need norms to maintain a stable social order. They both direct and prohibit behavior.Norms tell us what we should do (wait our turn, pay bills on time, show respect for our elders, etc.); they also tell us what we should not do (hit our spouse, curse aloud at a church service, run red lights, etc.). Norms are enforced through a process of internalization. They become part of who we are as individuals and as a culture.Norms vary over time. Women wearing trousers, especially in public areas or to work, is a relatively recent occurrence. Similarly, recent bans on smoking in many public places signifies shifting norms regarding smoking.

Kinds of Norms

• Folkways: (customs) are weak norms that are often informally passed down from previous generations. They often deal with everyday behaviors and manners. Most folkways are not written down and enumerated. They are the type of things that most of us learn from others to do or not to do. We learn from direct guidance and reinforcement. Parents teach children to share their toys and reward them with hugs and smiles. We also learn folkways through encountering others’ reactions.Violations of folkways are not considered severe breaches of great moral significance. Generally, no serious negative social sanctions (e.g., arrest) result when a folkway is broken.
• Mores (pronounced more-ays) (strict norms) are strongly held norms. Both "mores" and "folkways" are terms coined by the American sociologist William Graham Sumner.Normal dress for women at work excludes clothes that are highly revealing.
  Talking to oneself in public is not considered a normal behavior.
  Chewing with one's mouth closed is expected.
• Taboos: norms that are so objectionable that they are strictly forbidden. Taboos are often things considered unthinkable in a culture. Common examples include incest (sexual relations) and cannibalism (the practice of humans consuming flesh or organs of other human beings). These are certain forbidden behaviors in the form of rituals. 
• Laws: (Codified rules and regulations) Law is a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior.[2] Law as a system helps regulate and ensure that a community show respect, and equality among themselves. 

When studying cultures and cultural variations, sociologists must be aware of ethnocentrism (superiority complex) , judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture. Because we all live within a culture, we tend to see the way our culture does things as “normal” or “natural” and the ways that other cultures do things as “abnormal” or “unnatural.” We also tend to judge our own familiar culture’s ways of doing things as “better.” Restaurant service provides a familiar and simple example. Americans often consider attentive restaurant waitstaff who check with diners several times during a meal as providing good service. Europeans visiting the United States might consider such service annoying. Good service in many places in Europe is defined by an almost invisible waitstaff that provides service without “hovering” around tables. Conversely, Americans visiting Europe might find such service lacking. Things that are greatly different than our own cultures may evoke ethnocentric feelings.

Xenocentrism is the preference for the products, styles, or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own. It is an inferiority complex. Some might argue this is simply a case of 'the grass is always greener in the next pasture,' meaning that things always seem better from a distance than where we are. Let's look at Shane who is from Tokyo, Japan, and Cate who is from a small town in Ireland. When Cate looks at the fast-paced, highly-industrialized city of Tokyo, she may be envious of the fast transportation systems and the centralized locations of shops, restaurants, bars, and healthcare centers. However, Shane may see the easy-going lifestyle of rural Ireland and dream of a simpler, less hectic, unplugged lifestyle. 

Between ethnocentism and xenocentrism lies patriotism (vigorous support for one's country)
Rather than being ethnocentric, sociologists need to develop cultural relativism. This means not judging but studying a culture on its own. In other words, sociologists try to understand other cultures and why they behave and believe as they do rather than judging them “unnatural” or “wrong.”
The process of a cultural group losing its identity and being absorbed into the dominant culture is known as assimilation.

Another major component of culture, and a special kind of symbol, is language. Language is a system of symbols that allows communication among members of a culture. These symbols can be verbal or written

Symbols are central to our understanding and sharing of culture. A symbol is something that stands for, represents, or signifies something else in a particular culture. It can represent, for example, ideas, emotions, values, beliefs, attitudes, or events. A symbol can be anything. It can be a gesture, word, object, or even an event.

Cultural Integration

Cultural integration is a form of cultural exchange in which one group assumes the beliefs, practices and rituals of another group without sacrificing the characteristics of its own culture. Other examples of cultural integration include American restaurants such as McDonald's opening branches in foreign countries such as Japan and foreign films playing in American theaters. In Pakistan, the driving force to keep cultural integration alive is Islam. It is responsible for maintaining peace and harmony in the society of Pakistan.