1. Chapter 2
Culture

2. What is the young Chinese female eating?
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3. What is Culture? Culture: The language, beliefs, values,
norms, behaviors, and even material
objects that are passed from one
generation to the next.
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4. What is Culture?
Material Culture: The material objects that distinguish a group of people, such as their art, buildings, weapons, utensils, machines, hairstyles, clothing, and jewelry.
Non-material Culture: A group’s ways of thinking (including its beliefs, values, and other assumptions about the world) and doing (its common patterns of behavior, including language, gestures and other forms of interaction)
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6. Body Ritual of the Nacirema (Horace Miner)
Nacirema: Inhabited the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. See map to left.
Origins Mythology. Came from the East. Their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great feats of strength— the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and the chopping down of a tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided.
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7. Body Ritual of the Nacirema (Cont.)
Daily Rituals: Extreme, exotic customs with focus on body. Exaggerated concern with health. Body prone to decay. Social relations centered around mouth. Nacirema homes have special shrines (wealthier families have more than one). Daily rituals attempt to ward off decay by rubbing special powders in mouth with magic sticks.
Shrines: Number of significant objects. On wall of each box in which magic charms and potions kept. Obtained from medicine men with great magical powers who tell them how to mix and use potions. Below box is basin in which holy waters mixed. Mysterious altar attached to floor found in these shrines.
Other Rituals: Men scrape faces with sharp objects; women allow their heads to be baked in small ovens. Possibility Nacirema are masochists.
Conclusion: Nacirema obsessed with body and physical decay. Devote time and energy in daily rituals meant to drive off evil spirits that cause physical decline.
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8. Breaking the Nacirema Code
Body Ritual of the Nacirema (Cont.)
Breaking the Nacirema Code
Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” illustrates that character of a culture is not evident in the objects themselves (the material culture) but in the non-material meanings that underlie their use and value (i.e. their “symbolic expression” or non-material culture).
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9. Culture and Taken-for-Granted Orientations
What is Normal, Natural, or Usual?
The Culture Within Us
Culture as Lens
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10. Culture and Taken-for-Granted Orientations
Culture shock: The disorientation that people experience when they come in contact with a fundamentally different culture and can no longer depend on their taken-for-granted assumptions about life.
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11. Culture and Taken-for-Granted Orientations
Ethnocentrism: The use of one’s own culture as a yardstick for judging the ways of other individuals or societies, generally leading to a negative evaluation of their values, norms, and behaviors.
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12. Culture and Taken-for-Granted Orientations
Cultural relativism: Not judging a culture, but trying to understand it on its own.
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13. Food and Culture: An illustration of cultural relativism
Can you figure the food items on the
next slide?
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14. 1 2 3 4 5 7 6 8
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15. Food and Culture (cont.)
What is considered a delicacy in one culture would be regarded as unfit for human consumption by members of another culture.
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16. Components of Symbolic Culture
Symbolic Culture: Another term for nonmaterial culture.
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17. Components of Symbolic Culture
Symbol: Something to which people attach meaning and then use to communicate with others. Symbols include gestures, language, values, norms, sanctions, folkways, and mores.
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18. Components of Symbolic Culture
Gestures: The ways in which people use their bodies to communicate with one another.
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19. Components of Symbolic Culture
Use of Gestures:
Conveying Messages without Words.
Gestures’ Meaning Differ Among Cultures.
Can Lead to Misunderstandings.
Are there any universal gestures?
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21. Components of Symbolic Culture
Language: A system of symbols that can represent not only objects, but can be combined in an infinite number of ways for the purpose of communicating abstract thought.
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22. Components of Symbolic Culture
Use of Language:
Allows Cumulative Human Experience.
Provides Social or Shared Past.
Provides Social or Shared Future.
Allows Shared Perspective.
Allows Complex, Shared, Goal-Directed Behavior.
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23. Language and Perception: Sapir-Whorf Hypotheis
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Theory of Linguistic Relativity) Reverses Common Sense
Rather than objects and events forcing themselves onto our consciousness, it is language that determines our consciousness, & hence our perception of objects and events.
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24. Language and Perception (cont.):
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Language precedes thought
Language is not a given
Language is culturally determined
Language may color how we see the world
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25. Norms and Sanctions Norms: Expectations or rules for behavior.
Sanctions: Expressions of approval or
disapproval given to people for upholding or
violating norms.
Positive Sanctions
Negative Sanctions
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26. Norms and Sanctions Norms and Sanctions
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27. Folkways and Mores
Folkways: Customs or daily habits. Not strictly enforced. Mores: Rules essential to core values. One group’s folkways may be another group’s mores. Taboos: Norms so deeply ingrained that even the thought of them is greeted with revulsion.
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28. Values
Values: The standards by which people define what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.
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29. Values in U.S. Society (Williams)
Achievement and Success
Individualism
Hard Work
Efficiency and Practicality
Science and Technology
Material Comfort
Freedom
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30. Values in U.S. Society (cont).
Democracy
Equality
Group Superiority
Education
Religiosity
Romantic Love
Values listed in bright red
Added to William’s list by Henslin
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31. Emerging Values (Emergent Value Cluster)
Leisure.
Self-fulfillment.
Physical Fitness.
Youthfulness.
Concern for the Environment.
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32. Values and Culture Culture Wars: When values clash.
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33. “Ideal” vs. “Real” Culture.
Ideal Culture: The values, norms, and goals that a group considers ideal, worth aiming for.
Real Culture: The norms and values that people actually follow.
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34. Many Cultural Worlds
Subculture: A world within the dominant culture. Countercultures: Groups with norms and values at odds with the dominant culture.
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35. Technology and Cultural Lag.
Technology: In its narrow sense, tools; its broader sense includes the skills or procedures necessary to make and use those tools.
Cultural Lag: William Ogburn’s term for one part of a culture changing, with other parts being left behind.
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36. Cultural Leveling and Cultural Diffusion.
Cultural Leveling: The process by which cultures become similar to one another, and especially by which Western industrial culture is imported and diffused into industrializing nations. Cultural Diffusion: Spread of cultural characteristics from one group to another.
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