Culture

Culture is “...all that human beings learn to do, to use, to produce, to know, and to believe as they grow to maturity and live out their lives in the social groups to which they belong.” The culture of any group is passed on from one generation to the next through ongoing, lifelong processes of socialization or enculturation. Social members may even be resocialized in their lifetime if they do not “conform” to the values, mores, norms etc. of their group.

Ethnocentrism vs. Xenocentrism

Ethnocentrism the tendency for each society to place its own culture patterns at the center of things while Xenocentrism is a culturally based tendency to value other cultures more highly than one’s own.

Material Culture vs. Non-Material Culture 

Material culture consists of all things humans make and use while non-material culture consists of non-tangible human creations, including knowledge beliefs, values and rules for behavior.

Characteristics of Culture

• Learned
• A group product/ social/shared
• Transmitted from one generation to generation
• Adaptive/dynamic
• Varies
• Symbolic

Culture is made up of values, norms, mores, folkways, laws and taboo. Values determine for us what is desirable in our life. If we learn other people’s values we learn about other people. Values underlie our preferences, our choices, indicate what we deem as worthwhile in our society. These are “general” rules for behavior and perceptions we hold in a society. 

Norms develop out of our values which comprise the expectations, rules of particular behaviors which come out of our everyday life. Norms are particular ways that we act, and prescribed behavior and rules governing our everyday life. With norms come sanctions, rewards, punishments - you receive approval or disapproval for upholding or violating norms. Desirable behavior is attached to an actual expectation with social consequences. Positive and negative sanctions, rewards, or punishments that occur are social consequences if we adhere or violate a norm. In parallel with cultural values, norms regulate the appearance of a behavior and define and maintain boundaries. Norms are standards of expected behavior yet, these are also relative across time, societies and situations.

Folkways are norms that are not strictly enforced, we expect people to comply, but if they don’t we don’t make a big deal about it.  Examples of these are customs, habits and commonly accepted practices which usually involve unimportant matters: table manners, accepting your place in line rather than cutting ahead, wearing appropriate clothing. Folkways have few restrictions, and mild sanctions. 

Mores (means “manners” in French) are norms that are essential close to legalistic aspect of our societal life. It is comprised of attitudes from the past which are habituated and passed on to generations that is why very little deviation is allowed. These includes our duties and obligations that are common to cultural morality. In this sense, mores become the fundamental ideas about what is right/wrong, virtuous and sinful. They involve moral vision based on social cohesion, continuity, and community in human life. Due to this, mores eventually become laws - part of social life and unchanging. There is strict enforcement and insistence on conformity which we learn through socialization via our institutions in society.

Laws are norms which come from mores. Laws have strict and formal sanctions, punishments i.e. to violate a law is to violate society itself. Laws are codified and enforced by those in the authority. Formal legal codes are necessary to manage relationships in interdependent, self interested, contractual societies. As an example, criminal law has to do with formal, clear definitions, specialization, and enforcement. It prohibits behaviors such as murder, fraud, desecrating sacred objects or places while civil law has to do with social relations, disputes, compensation, loss through negligence. All societies have some form of law the prohibit certain behaviors.

On the other hand, a taboo is a norm so strongly ingrained that to violate it creates disgust, revulsion, horror. Examples of such is cannibalism, being incest, necrophilic or pedophilic. 

Most societies have similar laws and mores, but the rule of sociology is:

“One culture’s mores are another group’s folkways, and another group’s laws!”
(cultural and ethical relativism)

Components of Culture
Language - reflects cultural reality and what a culture considers important, shapes our view of reality (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
Symbols - anything that represents something other than itself, meanings are arbitrary and not inherent to the symbol which are then shared by a substantial number of people in a given culture

Cause of Culture Change
Invention- development of something that is totally new
Innovation- an improvement of something that have existed
Diffusion- spreading of inventions and innovations in other culture

Cultural Lag - a condition when some parts of culture change, and other parts do not.