THE BASICS OF CULTURE

Culture is…. The total way of life shared by members of a society. There are two categories… MATERIAL CULTURE: physical objects that people create. Examples: cars, books, computers, etc. Called artifacts. NONMATERIAL: abstract human creations such as language, beliefs, rules, etc.

Ideal vs. Real Culture Ideal culture = guidelines that group members claim to accept. Real culture = refer to actual behavior patterns… reality. Example… American’s value honesty, but in real culture it is not always practiced…

A Society is… Different from culture in that a society is a group of mutually interdependent people who have organized in such a way as to share a common culture and feeling of unity. Put simply… SOCIETY= PEOPLE & TERRITORY- we cannot avoid CULTURE= THINGS- we choose

Three approaches to the study of culture. Functionalists take culture as a given and look at it’s effects. Conflict Theorists see culture as a social product and asks why particular aspects of culture develop…who benefits? Interactionists looks at how culture is learned and communicated individual to individual… how is it passed on?

All sociologists agree that… Culture is problem solving. Culture is relative and unique to each situation. Culture is a social product. This is the CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Beliefs play a huge part in culture Important b/c people base their behavior on what they believe. Can be true or false… examples.. Romans thought Caesar was a god The Tanla of Madagascar believe their souls pass on to become snakes. Many people in Nazi Germany believed that hanging pictures of Hitler on their walls would protect them from bombs. Caesar = god????

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one’s own culture as the standard used to judge all others. Cultures can be so different that one may encounter “culture shock” when confronted by a different culture. Culture Shock=disorientation felt when one encounters a different culture.

Social Product CULTURE DEPENDENT ON LANGUAGE. Some elements of culture are deliberate. People modify and change it. CULTURE DEPENDENT ON LANGUAGE. Language allows us to change our culture at a very rapid rate…not the slow process of evolution.

Culture and Biology The Biological Perspective focuses on culture universals…similarities shared by all cultures. Example: woman as mother figure. SOCIOBIOLOGY is the study of the biological basis of all forms of culture. Takes evolution and natural selection into consideration. Asks… ”how do biological and social factors work together to determine human behavior?”