Culture

What is Culture? Culture: is the entire way of life for a group of people who share similar ways of thinking, believing, and living, expressed in common elements or features.

Cultural Universals

Customs and practices that occur across all societies

7 Universals 1.Economy- 2.Institutions- 3.Arts- 4.Language- 5.Environment- 6.Recreation- 7.Beliefs-

Examples of Cultural Universals Switch to Table from Textbook

Components of Culture

Beliefs/Religions Shared ideas people hold collectively within a culture. Specific statements that people hold to be true or false. Beliefs are the basis for many of a culture’s norms and values. Beliefs orient people to the world by providing answers to otherwise imponderable questions about the meaning of life.

Components of Culture  Culture: a society’s (group’s) system of shared, learned values and norms; these are the society’s (group’s) design for living –Values: abstract ideas about the good, the right, the desirable –Norms: social rules and guidelines; guide appropriate behavior for specific situations  Folkways: norms of little moral significance dress code; table manners; timeliness  Mores: norms central to functioning of social life –bring serious retribution: thievery, adultery, alcohol

Values

Culturally defined standards by which people assess desirability, goodness, and beauty and that serve as broad guidelines for social living. Values determine what is considered right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, good and bad. Values can provide rules for behavior, but can also be the source of conflict.

American Values Examples

American Values

Emerging American Values Values change over time: Material comfort Personal growth U.S. always valued hard work Recently, increasing importance of leisure Time off from work for: Travel Family Community service

Norms

Specific cultural expectations for how to behave in a given situation. Norms are expectations for behavior A society without norms would be in chaos; with established norms, people know how to act, and social interactions are consistent, predictable, and learnable. Social sanctions are mechanisms of social control that enforce norms.

Folkways

Folkways are norms governing everyday behavior whose violation might cause a dirty look, rolled eyes, or disapproving comment Example: Walking up a “down” escalator in a department store challenges our standards of appropriate behavior

Mores

Mores: Means “manners” in French. Mores are norms that are essential to American Values, close to legalistic. Mores: The fundamental ideas about what is right/wrong, virtuous and sinful

Mores Strict enforcement, and insistence on conformity, we learn through socialization via our institutions (school) in society. Examples: Americans eat beef, not horse, dog, cat; you do not expose your genitals in public

Sociologists Ian Robertson illustrated the difference between Folkways and Mores: “A man who walks down a street wearing nothing on the upper half of his body is violating a folkway; a man is wearing nothing on the lower half of his body is violating one of mores (requirement that people cover their genitals and buttocks in public “(1987)

Iceberg

The Iceberg Metaphor The metaphor of culture as an “iceberg” is extremely helpful in that it identifies aspects of culture that are: Immediately visible= explicit, visible, taught (above the water line). Only about one-eighth of an iceberg is visible above the water. The rest is below. Part of the iceberg that emerges & submerges with the tides= “now you see it, now you don’t” (at the water line) Deep beneath the surface= “hidden culture” (below the water line)

HOW IS CULTUE EMBEDDED IN PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS? THINK OF CULTURE AS AN ICEBERG: you see it, but perhaps not the important parts Symbols; language Behaviors Practices Customs Norms beliefs, traditions, priorities, assumptions, values

The Iceberg Metaphor