Culture: System and Education

What is Culture? Values, beliefs and behaviors. There is a material component as well. Culture plays a tremendous role in defining who we are, and how we live our lives. -It helps define the taken-for-granted aspects of our lives.

Two Aspects of Culture Material culture: the physical artifacts that distinguish a given culture. In our case, these are things like personal computers, automobiles, McDonald’s, etc. Nonmaterial culture: the beliefs, values and ways of behaving based on these beliefs and values. Big one: Language.

Material Culture Exercise Get into groups of three. Pull out three to five things you have with you-they can be any physical item you have (but let’s not play TMI, okay?). Look at the values listed on the slide. What values do these items embody? There can be more than one value.

American Values Achievement and Success Individualism Activity and Work Efficiency and Practicality Science and Technology Progress Material Comfort Humanitarianism Freedom Democracy Equality Racism and Group Superiority Education Religiosity Romantic Love and Monogamy Private Property Value Clusters: Values that go together to create a larger whole. A new value cluster: Leisure Self-Fulfillment Physical Fitness Youth (Relatively) New Values: Environmentalism Security

Why Culture Matters Culture Shock: This happens when one is met with fundamental differences between one culture and another. Ethnocentrism: This is the tendency to use one’s own culture as the standard for judging the culture of others. Cultural Relativism: Understanding a culture in that culture’s own terms. This is something like Weber’s ideas about Verstehen.

Culture is Everywhere! Subcultures Countercultures Institutional Cultures It is possible to find differences in culture between social classes. Example: Working Class use of language vs. Middle Class use.

Values, Norms, Folkways and Mores Values: standards about what is desirable, good, bad, ugly, or beautiful, etc. Norms: Expected behavior based on values 1. Folkways: Less strictly enforced norms. 2. Mores: Norms that are extremely important, and rather strictly enforced.

Culture as a system Culture is an open system, which means that it affects, and is affected by, other cultures around it, and cultural innovations. Efflorescence: A blooming of culture that results from cultures coming into contact. Syncretism: The creation of a new culture resulting from the combination of cultures.

How does culture change? Technological innovations Diffusion Acculturation

Ideology, Culture, and Education Culture helps define ideology Ideology-system of ideas and explanations that account for the existing social arrangements. The story of why things are the way they are. Dominant ideology-The ideology held by those with power and in some way imposed on the members of a society

Political Economy Political Economy is the term used to describe the distribution of resources and power in a society.

Schools, Political Economy and Education Schools are a source of ideological management: They make sure that one story gets told and others are marginalized. This story tends to be the one that supports the political economy. Schools help reproduce the ideology, culture, and political economy. They also teach habits of mind that help make people more manageable.