1. Culture
Sociology 12

2. What is Culture?
2.1 demonstrate an understanding of the concept of culture 2.2 analyze factors related to cultural variation 2.3 analyze factors related to cultural uniformity 2.4 investigate the process of cultural change

3. So… What is Culture?
Why is this thing so difficult to define???

4. Culture
Culture is the combined thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs of a group of people who tend to live in the same geographic area.
Although cultures begin within specific geographic locations, they can spread across the globe due to voluntary or forced migration.
Culture is expressed through a variety of methods including dress, language, religion, music and food.

5. Cultural Expression Tower
Food
Geography
Language
Religion
Dress
Architecture
Music

6. My Cultural Expression Tower
Maple Syrup, Lobster & Blueberry Grunt
Rocks & Ocean
Yeahohyeah & Sonyer
Lapsed Baptist
Jeans & Hoodies
Huge, old houses with the Lunenburg Bump & Widow’s Walks
Bluegrass & East Coast tunes
Create your own!!

7. “I am…” Poem
An “I am…” poem is a poem that is all about you and the things that you are.
This particular “I am…” poem is going to be about your cultural identity.
Using the starter “I am…” finish the sentence with something that describes you in terms of your culture, how you define yourself.

8. Where I’m From – George Ella Lyon, 1989
I am from clothespins,  from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.  I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening,  it tasted like beets.)  I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.
I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,            from Imogene and Alafair.  I'm from the know-it-alls           and the pass-it-ons,  from Perk up! and Pipe down!  I'm from He restoreth my soul           with a cottonball lamb           and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,  fried corn and strong coffee.  From the finger my grandfather lost            to the auger,  the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures,  a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. 
I am from those moments-- snapped before I budded -- leaf-fall from the family tree.

9. Now it’s your turn!
Get something to write on and something to write with and create your own “I am…” poem.
Be sure to think about the tower of cultural expression (but feel free to write about what you feel is culturally relevant to you) :
Food
Geography
Language
Religion
Dress
Music
Architecture
8-10 lines, no more than 15 please!
Be prepared to share! Anonymously or not?
This is formative assessment, so I will be collecting these.

11. Cultural Stereotypes Cultural Stereotypes, or National Character?
Are generalizations about national groups just caricatures?

13. How Can Stereotypes Be Harmful?

15. Where I’m From Poems Due!
Anyone brave enough to share? 

16. Is Culture Necessary?
Culture is essential for our individual survival and our communication with other people
Also essential for the survival of societies
“the common denominator that makes the actions of individuals intelligible to the group”
Laws, rules, norms…

17. What determines your likes, dislikes, and personality characteristics?
Your genetic makeup or your environment?

18. Nature VS Nurture We are not born knowing how to treat other people
People often think that our kindness or hatred toward other people is “just human nature”
What we do is determined by nurture, rather than nature
Nurture: our social environment
Nature: our biological and genetic makeup
Nature V Nurture Debate

19. Instincts People often think human nature is instinctive
Instinct: a biologically determined behaviour pattern common to all members of a species that predictably occurs whenever certain environmental conditions exist
Spiders building webs
My rat terrier chasing shrews and mice
Humans do not have instincts
What we tend to think of as instinctive behaviour is actually reflexes and drives

20. Reflexes & Drives
Reflex: a biologically determined involuntary response to some physical stimulus
A sneeze after breathing in pepper through the nose
Blinking when dust gets in your eye
Drive: a biologically determined impulse common to all members of a species that satisfy needs such as sleep, food, water, or sexual gratification

21. Reflexes & Drives
These do not determine how people behave in society; even the expression of these biological characteristics is channeled by culture
The appropriate way to sneeze (an involuntary response) is to use a tissue or turn away from others (a learned response)
We sleep on mattresses

23. Culture as a Toolkit
Culture helps us survive in society since we don’t have “instincts” to tell us what to do
Culture is a “tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals, and world views, which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems”
The tools we choose vary according to our personalities and each specific situation

24. Material & Nonmaterial Culture
Our “Cultural Toolbox” is divided into 2 major parts:
Material Culture: consists of the physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share
Trees, books, houses, clothes, music,
It is our buffer against the environment
(shelter protects us from the environment & provides privacy)
Nonmaterial Culture: the abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behaviour
Language, beliefs, values, rules of behaviour, family patterns, political systems

25. Nonmaterial Culture & Beliefs
Nonmaterial culture is based on beliefs
Beliefs: the mental acceptance or conviction that certain things are true or real
These beliefs may be based on tradition, faith, experience, scientific research or some combination of these
Faith in a supreme being
Conviction that education is the key to success
Opinion that smoking causes cancer

26. Cultural Universals All humans face the same basic needs
Food, clothing, shelter
We engage in similar activities that contribute to our survival
Cultural Universals: customs and practices that occur across all societies
Appearance, activities (sports, games, visits), social institutions, customary practices

27. Cultural Universals
These cultural universals are present in all cultures
Joking is a universal practice
Yet their specific forms vary:
from one group to another
from one time to another within the same group
What is considered a joke in one society may be an insult in another

28. How Sociologists View Cultural Universals
Cultural universals ensure the smooth and continual operation of society
The self-interest of individuals must be balanced with the needs of society as a whole
Cultural universals help fulfill these functions of society

29. How Sociologists View Cultural Universals
Cultural Universals are not the result of functional necessity
They have been imposed by members of one society on members of another
Religion is a cultural universal
Traditional religious practices of indigenous peoples have often been repressed by subsequent settlers or conquerors
Sociological Question to keep in mind:
Who determines the dominant cultural patterns?

30. Cultural Universals Cultural Universals group activity
“What’s for dinner?”

31. Nature Vs Nurture Nature Vs Nurture in Nature
Nature Vs Nurture & Homosexuality

32. Components of Culture
The specifics of individual cultures vary widely, but all cultures have 4 common non-material cultural components:
Symbols
Language
Values
Norms
These components contribute to both harmony and conflict in a society

33. Symbols
Anything that meaningfully represents something else

34. Language
A set of symbols that express ideas and enable people to think and communicate with one another

35. Values
Collective ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad, and desirable or undesirable in a particular culture

36. Norms
Established rules of behaviour or standards of conduct