1. CULTURE What is ‘culture’?
What diversities and changes are found within cultures?
How can we understand culture?

2. Culture and Society
Culture: totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior
Society: largest form of human group
Society members learn culture and transmit it from generation to generation

3. Non-Material Culture
Symbols
Language

4. Non-Material Culture (continued)
Beliefs
Values
Norms: folkways, mores, taboos, laws

5. Norms & Sanctions

6. How are beliefs, values, and norms related?
Example of education:
Beliefs?
Values?
Norms?

7. Culture: Sometimes inconsistent and contradictory
Overt and Covert Culture
High Culture and Popular Culture

8. Explaining Cultural Similarities and Differences
Variation between cultures
Similarities
Differences
Variation within cultures
Subcultures
Countercultures

9. Questions: The Case of Turkey
Is there a distinctive “Turkish” culture?
If so, what is it and what are its roots?
Does it have a coherence or does it conceal other voices?
How is it changing?

10. A global culture? The global economy: the flow of goods
Global communication: the flow of information
Global migration: the flow of people
Social/cultural implications and debates?

11. Alternative approaches of culture
Functionalist view:
Culture is a system for meeting human needs
Culture promotes integration, stability, order
Conflict view:
Cultural practices benefit some people more  dominant ideology
Materialism: How people meet their material needs affects their culture
The rise of the “culture industry” (Adorno and the Frankfurt School)
The role of cultural hegemony (Gramsci)
Interactionist view:
Culture produced, reproduced, and redefined through social interaction

12. Thinking About Culture: Old & New
Ethnocentrism
Cultural Relativity
Multiculturalism