writing

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Material versus

Nonmaterial Culture Today, we tend to think that everything is a component of culture. Culture is a way of life created by humans, whatever is not natural. We can divide culture into nonmaterial culture , which includes values, beliefs, behaviors, and social norms, and material culture , which is everything that is a part of our constructed, physical environment, including technology. Well- known monuments, such as the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore, are part of our culture, but so are modern furniture, books, movies, food, magazines, cars, and fashion. Of course, a relationship exists between nonmaterial culture and material culture, and that can take many forms. When someone conjures up a concept like a portable computer, such an invention flows directly from an idea into a material good. Other times, however, it is technology that generates ideas and concepts, values and beliefs. Before phones with cameras and apps such as Instagram, the word selfie did not exist, and before selfies there were no selfie sticks. When it takes time for culture to catch up with technological innovations, there is a cultural lag

Language, Meaning, and Concepts Another way to contemplate culture is the following: It is what feels normal or natural to us but is, in fact, socially produced, like saying “Bless you” when someone—even a stranger—sneezes. Another way to put it is this: Culture is what we do not notice at home but would spot in a foreign context (although remember, the sociologist’s job is to notice these things at home too). In France, no one says “Santé” when a stranger sneezes in the grocery store. When meeting someone for the first time, if you are holding packages in your right hand, have you instead extended your left in greeting? In Saudi Arabia, this action would be construed as highly disrespectful. Have you ever taken public transportation during rush hour? Do the passengers waiting to board generally move aside to let people off the train first? In Moscow, nobody steps aside; in Japan, people wait so long that they practically miss the train! Even your sociology class probably has a different culture— language, meanings, symbols—from a biology or dance class. Another way to think about culture is that it is a way

of organizing our experience. Take our symbols, for example. What does a red light mean? It could mean that an alarm is sounding. It could mean that something is X-rated (the “red-light” district in Amsterdam, for instance). It could also mean “stop.” There is nothing inherent about the meaning of the red light. It is embedded within our larger culture and therefore is part of a web of meanings. You cannot change one without affecting the others. Moving from one culture to another can induce feelings of culture shock—that is, confusion and anxiety caused by not knowing what words, signs, and other symbols mean. People who move fluidly from

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one cultural setting to another learn to code switch by swapping out one set of meanings, values, and/or languages on the fly. Elijah Anderson (1999) and others have pointed out how many minority groups—such as African Americans—learn to code switch in their daily lives by going back and forth between standard English and African American English as they move between predominantly white social contexts (perhaps their workplace) to environments in which they form the majority (such as at home or in church). Language is an important part of culture. According

to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in linguistics, the language we speak directly influences (and reflects) the way we think about and experience the world. On a more concrete level, if you speak another language, you understand how certain meanings can become lost in translation—you can’t always say exactly what you want. Many English words have been adopted in other languages, often as slang, such as hamburger and le weekend in French. Some staunch traditionalists are opposed to such borrowing because they regard it as a threat to their culture. How many words do we have for college? How central does that make higher education to our society? Many words describe the state of being intoxicated. What does that say about our culture?

There are no inherent meanings behind a red light; its

symbolism varies depending on context.

Concepts such as race, gender, class, and inequality are part of our culture as well. If you try to explain the American understanding of racial differences to someone from another country, you might get frustrated because it may not resonate with him or her. That’s because meanings are embedded in a wider sense of cultural understanding; you cannot just extract concepts from their context and assume that their meanings will retain a life of their own. In some cases, when opposing concepts come into contact, one will necessarily usurp the other. For example, when European colonization first hit the Americas, Native Americans believed that owning land was similar to the way Americans now feel about owning air—a resource that was very difficult to put a price on and best understood as a collective responsibility. From a real estate perspective, the Europeans must have been very excited. (“All this land and nobody owns it?”) The issue was not a language barrier: Native Americans had a social order that had nothing to do with assigning ownership to pieces of the earth. Acting on their concepts of ownership, Europeans thus began the process of displacing native peoples from their homelands and attacking them when they resisted.

Ideology

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Nonmaterial culture, in its most abstract guise, takes the form of ideology. Ideology is a system of concepts and relationships, an understanding of cause and effect. For example, generally on airplanes you’re not allowed to use the toilets in the first-class cabin if you have a coach-class ticket. Why not? It’s not as if the lavatories in first class are that much better. What’s the big deal? We subscribe to an ideology that the purchase of an airline ticket at the coach, business, or first-class fare brings with it certain service expectations—that an expensive first-class ticket entitles a passenger to priority access to the lavatory, more leg room, and greater amenities, such as warm face towels. The ideology is embedded within an entire series of suppositions and, if you cast aside some of them, they will no longer hold together as a whole. If everyone flying coach started to hang out in first class, chatting with the flight attendants and using the first-class toilets, the system of class stratification (in airplanes at least) would break down. People would not be willing to pay extra for a first-class ticket; more airlines might go bankrupt, and the industry itself would erode. Even science and religion, which may seem like

polar opposites, are both ideological frameworks. People once believed that the sun circled around the earth, and then, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, along came Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and this system of beliefs was turned inside out. The earth no longer lay at the center of the universe but orbited the sun. This understanding represented a major shift in ideology, and it was not an easy one to make. In a geocentric universe, humans living on earth stand at its center, and this idea corresponds to Christian notions that humans are the lords of the earth and the chosen children of God. However, when we view the earth as a rock orbiting the sun, just like seven other planets and countless subplanetary bodies, we may feel significantly less special and have to adjust our notion of humanity’s special role in the universe. People invest a lot in their belief systems, and those who go against the status quo and question the prevailing ideology may be severely punished, as was Galileo. More recently, the 2016 presidential election had the

potential to shatter the ideology of democracy—that is, the belief that the candidate who receives the most votes ascends to power. The winner of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton, was in fact defeated by Donald Trump, who accumulated the requisite number of Electoral College votes. This was the second time in the last five elections that the winner lost the popular vote, challenging the idea that the United States is a true democracy. That faith was further tested by the proliferation of fake news during the election, Russian meddling through social media, and leaks of stolen e- mails. At the time of this writing, President Trump and Congress both were at or near record low approval ratings; many norms of how we have practiced government have shattered (such as the need for 60 votes to end a filibustered nominee to the Supreme Court or the tradition that presidential candidates release their taxes to the public before the election); and

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yet the institutions of government and the democratic ideology behind them have soldiered on without collapsing. Of course, on occasion ideologies do shatter. The fall

of the former Soviet Union, for example, marked not just a transition in government but the shattering of a particular brand of Communist ideology. Similarly, when apartheid was abolished in South Africa, more than just a few laws changed; a total reorganization of ideas, beliefs, and social relations followed. Often, ideological change comes more slowly. The fight for women’s rights, including equal pay, is ongoing even today, but women won the right to vote way back in 1920.

Studying Culture In the United States, the scholarly study of culture began in the field of anthropology. Franz Boas founded the first PhD program in anthropology at Columbia University in the early 1930s and developed the concept of cultural relativity. Ruth Benedict, following Boas, her teacher and mentor, coined the term cultural relativism in her book Patterns of Culture (1934). Cultural relativism means taking into account the differences across cultures without passing judgment or assigning value. For example, in the United States you are expected to look someone in the eye when you talk to him or her, but in China this is considered rude, and you generally divert your gaze as a sign of respect. Neither practice is inherently right or wrong. By employing the concept of cultural relativism, we can understand difference for the sake of increasing our knowledge about the world. Cultural relativism is also important for businesses that operate on a global scale. But what should one’s position be when local

traditions conflict with universally recognized human rights? For example, should Western businesspeople condone the cutting of the clitoris in young girls as a local cultural practice, something to be respected, as they go about their business in parts of Africa? There are, of course, limits to cultural relativism. In some countries, it is both legal and socially acceptable for a man to beat his wife. Should we accept that wife beating is part of the local culture and therefore conclude that we are not in a position to judge those involved? In the United States, some Jehovah’s Witnesses reject blood transfusions because they believe blood is sacred and not for “consumption” by Christians. If parents refuse a potentially lifesaving surgery for their child because it will require a transfusion, do we respect their right to religious freedom or arrest them for neglect? Where we draw the lines is a difficult matter to decide and sparks a great deal of political debate on topics such as domestic violence, female genital mutilation, and medical practices versus religious beliefs in treating the critically ill. Margaret Mead, Benedict’s student, further

developed ideas about cultural relativity when she wrote Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which has become part of the canon of anthropology and cultural studies. Based on her ethnographic fieldwork among a small group of Samoans, she concluded that women there did not

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Margaret Mead with

two Samoan

women, 1926.

experience the same emotional and psychological turmoil as their American counterparts in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. She found that young women engaged in and enjoyed casual sex before they married and reared children. The book, published in 1928, caused an uproar in the United States and eventually contributed to the feminist movement. The validity of Mead’s findings has been disputed, but her work continues to be a landmark of early anthropology for introducing the idea that cultural scripts , modes of behavior and understanding that are not universal or natural, shape our notions of gender. This concept stands in opposition to the belief that such ideas derive from biological programming.

Cockfighting and Symbolic

Culture Clifford Geertz, another American anthropologist, was well known for his studies of and writings on culture, one of which concerned the meaning of cockfighting in Bali. Cockfighting involves placing two roosters together in a cockpit, a ring especially designed for the event, and watching them fight. The meaning of cockfighting varies, however. Some see it as one of the basest forms of cruelty to animals. Others attach religious and spiritual meaning to the event. In the Balinese village where Geertz lived, cockfighting was primarily a vehicle for gambling, but it was also an important cultural event. Very few men are allowed to referee these fights, and their decisions are treated with more regard than the law. People bet a lot of money, often forming teams that pool their resources. Bettors profess themselves to be “cock crazy.”

A cockfight in Bali, Indonesia. How are roosters central

to Bali’s symbolic culture?

The owners of the prized cocks expend an enormous amount of time caring for them. They feed them special diets, bathe them with herbs and flowers, and insert hot

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peppers in their anuses to give them “spirit.” The cock takes on larger symbolic meaning within Balinese society. According to Geertz (1973),

The language of everyday moralism is shot through, on the male side of it, with roosterish imagery. Sabung, the word for cock, is used metaphorically to mean “hero,” “warrior,” “champion,” “man of parts,” “political candidate,” “bachelor,” “dandy,” “lady-killer,” or “tough guy.”...Court trials, wars, political contests, inheritance disputes, and street arguments are all compared to cockfights. Even the very island itself is perceived from its shape as a small, proud cock, poised, neck extended, back taut, tail raised, in eternal challenge to large, feckless, shapeless Java. (pp. 412, 454)

In the United States, cocks do not have much symbolic meaning. A more central metaphor in American society is baseball. According to anthropologist Bradd Shore (1998), baseball’s function in the United States is similar to cockfighting’s function in Bali. We call baseball America’s favorite pastime and regularly use baseball metaphors in our daily conversations. If your parents inquire about how you’re doing in school this semester, you might say you’re “batting a thousand.” If you ask your friend how it went the other night at a party when she spoke to the smart guy from your sociology class, and she says she “struck out,” you know not to ask, “So when’s your first date?” We could learn a lot about American culture by studying baseball, how people watch the game, and what symbolic meanings they attach to it, just as Geertz learned such things about the Balinese by using cockfights as the center of his analysis. In The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), perhaps his

most famous book, Geertz wrote, “Culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (p. 89). He was trying to get away from a monolithic definition of culture. So for some, culture is watching players hit a small, hard ball into a field and run around a diamond; for others, it’s squatting down in the dust beside a ring and watching two roosters brawl. One pastime isn’t inherently better than the other. They’re both interesting in their own right, and by understanding the significance of these events for the local people, we can better understand their lives.

Subculture Like culture, subculture as a concept can be a moving target: It’s hard to lock into one specific definition of the term. Historically, subcultures have been defined as groups united by sets of concepts, values, symbols, and shared meaning specific to the members of that group. Accordingly, they frequently are seen as vulgar or deviant and are often marginalized. Part of the original impetus behind subculture studies was to gain a deeper

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understanding of individuals and groups who traditionally have been dismissed as weirdos at best and deviants at worst. For example, many music genres have affiliated

subcultures: hip-hop, hardcore, punk, Christian rock. High-school cliques may verge on subcultures—the jocks, the band kids, the geeks—although these groups don’t really go against the dominant society, because athleticism, musical talent, and intelligence are fairly conventional values. But what about the group of kids who dress in black and wear heavy eyeliner? Maybe teachers simply see them as moody teenagers with a penchant for dark fashion and extreme makeup just seeking to annoy the adults in their life, but perhaps their style of self-presentation means more to them.

Goths in Germany (left) and Japan. What characteristics

of goth culture make it a subculture?

Goth culture has its roots in the United Kingdom of the 1980s. It emerged as an offshoot of post-punk music. Typified by a distinctive style of dress—namely, black clothing with a Victorian flair—and a general affinity for gothic and death rock, goth culture has evolved over the last three decades, with many internal subdivisions. Some goths are more drawn to magical or religious aspects of the subculture, whereas others focus mainly on the music. Even the term goth has different meanings to people within the subculture: Some see it as derogatory; some appropriate it for their own personal meaning. An internal struggle has grown over who has the right to claim and define the label. What makes today’s goths a subculture? They are

not just a random group of people in black listening to music (classical musicians usually wear black when they perform, but we don’t consider them gothic). Certain words and phrases are unique to goth communities, such as baby bat (young goth poseur) and weekend goth (someone who dresses up and enters the subculture only on the weekends). Goths in Germany may look very different from those in the United Kingdom, and norms even differ among US cities, so each is a distinct branch of the subculture. Yet as a whole, goths do have their own shared symbols, especially with regard to fashion, so they are visible as a subculture. Not all subcultures, however, adopt characteristic dress or other easily identifiable features. For example, black men on the down low (secretly seeking sex with men) by definition do not want to be identifiable.

Cultural Effects: Give and Take

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How does culture affect us? As we’ve discussed, culture may be embedded in ideologies. Our understanding of the world is based on the various ideologies we embrace, and ideologies tend to be culturally specific. Culture also affects us by shaping our values , our moral beliefs. The concept of equal opportunity is a good example of this. The majority of us have been taught that everybody should have an equal shot at the “American dream”: going to college, obtaining a job, and becoming economically self-sufficient. This is a relatively recent cultural conception. In England 600 years ago, there was no such culture of equal opportunity but rather a feudal system. If you had asked someone in the government of that period, a social elite, if he (and it would definitely have been a man) believed that everyone should have equal opportunity, he would probably have rejected such a claim. He would likely have insisted that the elite, the nobles, should have more rights, privileges, and opportunities than everybody else. Class mobility simply wasn’t a concept that existed. Similarly, the way that the concept of equal opportunity is expressed in the contemporary United States has a particularly American flavor. We have a very individualistic culture, meaning that we hold dear the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to advance, but we believe that people should do it on their own—“pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” as we say. Americans hold tightly to the rags-to-riches dream of triumph over adversity, of coming from nothing and becoming a success despite hardship. The problem with this cultural trope is that, as sociologists like to point out, the larger, structural, macro-level forces—general social stratification, racial segregation, sexism, differential access to health care, and education—keep the concept of equal opportunity more fiction than reality. As a culture, Americans tend to suffer a bit from historical amnesia. Slavery was abolished in 1863, and legal segregation lasted until the 1960s. Historically speaking, this is not very long ago. Our notion of equal opportunity often fails to take into account the very unequal starting positions from which people set out to achieve their goals. If values are abstract cultural beliefs, norms are

how values are put into play. We value hygiene in our society, so it is a norm that you wash your hands after going to the bathroom. When you are little, your parents and teachers must remind you, because chances are you haven’t yet fully internalized this norm. Once you’re an adult, however, you are in charge of your own actions, yet others may still remind you of this norm by giving you a dirty look if you walk from a stall straight past the sinks and out the door of a public restroom. In an office, people might gossip about the guy who doesn’t wash his hands—they are shaming him for not following this norm. When you arrive at college, you enter a new culture with different norms and values, and you must adjust to that new environment. If you’re attending a school with a major emphasis on partying, you might be reading this textbook secretly because the cultural norm in that kind of environment is not to buy the assigned books or even go to class on a regular basis. If you are enrolled at a community college, commuting may be the main cultural practice. You go there for class and then leave shortly thereafter.

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Reflection Theory Culture affects us. It’s transmitted to us through different processes, with socialization—our internalization of society’s values, beliefs, and norms— being the main one. But how do we affect culture? Let’s start with reflection theory , which states that culture is a projection of social structures and relationships into the public sphere, a screen onto which the film of the underlying reality or social structures of our society is shown. For example, some people claim that there is too much violence in song lyrics, particularly in rap music. How do hip-hop artists often respond? “I live in a violent world, and I’m like a reporter. I’m telling it like it is; so if you want to fix that, then fix the problems of violence in my community. I’m just the messenger.” They are invoking reflection theory. A different version of reflection theory derives from

the Marxist tradition, which says that cultural objects reflect the material labor and relationships of production that went into them. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed the distinction between material and nonmaterial culture. Karl Marx asserted that it is a one- way street—from technology and the means of production to belief systems and ideologies. According to Marx’s view of reflection theory, our norms, values, sanctions, ideologies, laws, and even language are outgrowths of the technology and economic means and modes of production. Likewise, for Marx, ideology has a very specific definition: culture that justifies given relations in production. By way of example, consider the creation of limited

liability partnerships. The concept of limited liability emerged in the nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution, when new technologies enabled the growth of factories and long-distance travel. At the same time, European countries such as Great Britain were colonizing regions all over the world and establishing large global trade networks. As merchants and factory owners tried to expand, they needed more capital from investors. To attract the most money, they came up with the idea of limited liability partnerships. Limited liability means that when you invest money in a publicly traded corporation, you are not responsible for its debt (you can’t lose more than what you paid for your shares) or its actions (unless you are on the board of directors). So if you have stock in a cereal company and it goes bankrupt, the farmers who supply the grain can’t hit you up for unpaid bills. Likewise, if several small children choke on the prize included in their boxes of cereal, you cannot be held personally responsible for this tragedy. All you lose is the money you invested in the shares. Even if you didn’t know what limited liability meant before you read this paragraph, the legal concept is something we take for granted as part of our common understanding of how capitalism works. Historically, however, it arose from a choice made in England in a specific context. Marx would argue that the combination of factory labor and global trade relations between England and its colonies necessitated and inevitably led to these kinds of legal structures.

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Like most theories, reflection theory has its limitations. It does not explain why some cultural products have staying power, whereas others fall by the wayside. Why is it that The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013) by Robert Galbraith had terrible sales until it was leaked that the actual author was J. K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series? Conversely, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a popular composer in his own day. Why is he still so popular today? Clearly, the relations of production and underlying social structures—indeed, Western society as a whole—have drastically changed since the late eighteenth century, yet the appeal of Mozart’s music is as strong as ever. If culture is just a reflection of the state of society in a given epoch, then Mozart should have fallen completely out of favor and we would no longer be interested in him or his music, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

How has the cultural significance of Shakespeare’s plays

changed over the last 400 years? Compare the poster for

an 1884 performance of Macbeth (left) with the poster

for the 2015 movie starring Michael Fassbender and

Marion Cotillard (right).

Likewise, if reflection theory is true, why do some products change their meaning over time? Shakespeare is a good example. In nineteenth-century America, Shakespeare was the poet of the people, the playwright for the common man. Scenes from various Shakespearean plays were performed during the intermissions of other events. Conversely, during the intermissions for a full-length Shakespearean play, carnival-like entertainment for the masses called spectacles would be presented. Shakespeare was the most widely performed playwright in England’s former colonies, but not revered in terms of high culture. This is not quite what we associate Shakespeare with today, correct? It’s just the opposite, in fact: His work is now considered high art. In this instance, the same product changed its meaning over time, and reflection theory doesn’t help us understand that change. Most important, reflection theory has been rejected

largely because it is unidirectional—that is, it basically buys the rappers’ defense that culture has no impact on society. Do we really believe that the media have no impact on the way we live or think? Do we really believe that ideologies have no effect on the choices we make?

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No. Most people now understand that an interactive process exists between culture and social structure. Most would agree that culture has an impact on society and it is not just a unidirectional phenomenon.