Week 3: CULTURE

Culture is the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together form a people's way of life. It includes what we think, how we act, and what we own

Culture refers to both thoughts (nonmaterial culture) and things (material culture)

Nonmaterial culture is the ideas created by members of a society, ideas that range from art to Zen. Material culture, by contrast, is the physical things created by members of a society, everything from armchairs to chopsticks

Culture shapes not only what we do but also what we think and how we feel

Culture shock is personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life (inability to read meaning in strange surroundings)

No way of life is 'natural' to humanity; humans create their own way of life

Only humans rely on culture rather than instinct to create a way of life and ensure our survival (Harris, 1987; Morell, 2008)

With homo sapiens, the biological forces we call instincts had mostly disappeared, replaced by a more efficient survival scheme: fashioning the natural environment for ourselves

Culture refers to a shared way of life; a nation is a political entity, a territory with designated borders; society is the organised interaction of people who typically live in a nation or some other specific territory

The Elements of Culture Symbols: anything that carries a particular meaning

recognised by people who share a culture (they vary within a single society)

Language: the key to the world of culture, is a system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another. It not only allows communication but is also the key to cultural transmission, the process by which one generation passes culture to the next

Values and beliefs: values are culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful and that serve as broad guidelines for social living. Values are what people who share a culture use to make choices about how to live

Values are broad principles that support beliefs, specific thoughts or ideas that people hold to be true

Values are abstract standards of goodness, and beliefs are particular matters that individuals consider true or false

Values vary from culture to culture around the world Lower-income nations develop cultures that value survival

(physical safety, economic security) People in higher-income countries develop cultures that

value individualism and self-expression

Norms: rules and expectations by which a society guides the behaviour of its members

Norms operate as a system of social control, attempts by society to regulate people's thoughts and behaviour

High culture refers to cultural patterns that distinguish a society's elite and popular culture designates cultural patterns that are widespread among a society's population

Subculture refers to cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society's population

Multiculturalism is a perspective recognising the cultural diversity and promoting equal standing for all cultural traditions

Eurocentrism is the dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns

Counterculture refers to cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society (May 1968, hippies, militant groups)

Cultural integration is the close relationships among various elements of a cultural system

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

The logical alternative to ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, the practice of judging a culture by its own standards

The functionalist approach explains culture as a complex strategy for meeting human needs, it considers values the core of a culture

Criticism: by emphasising a society's dominant cultural patterns, this approach ignores the cultural diversity that exist in many societies, it downplays the importance of change

The social-conflict approach stresses the link between culture and inequality

Culture is shaped by a society's system of economic production

“It is not the consciousness that determines human beings; it is the the social being that determines the consciousness.” (Marx & Engels, 1978: 4)

Criticism: this approach understates the ways that cultural patterns integrate members of society

How the culture of society (if you have lived in another country) differs from the way of life here

Röyksopp - You don't have a cluehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0kDUXGkywk