Sociology

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Culture

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How Many Cultures Are Represented in this Class?

  • What criteria are you using to determine how many cultures are here?

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What is Culture?

  • All the shared activities and beliefs that a group of people agree upon

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Components of Culture

  • What makes up culture?
  • Symbols, language, norms, values, beliefs customs, traditions, food, sports, art, music, dress, technology, objects, religion, education, families, government, economies, etc.

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LANGUAGE

  • There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There are 1,213,000,000 people in the world that speak that language.--

Cultural Relativism

  • Understand another culture from their perspective, do not use your culture to judge another

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Record for Face Piercing

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Other Examples?

  • Can you think of different behaviors from our own?
  • Food, holidays, pets, etc.
  • Where do we draw the line?

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Muslim & Hindu Parents in India Drop Babies 50 ft. for Good Health

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbpRPaIpj1s

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FGM

  • FGM is the cutting of the clitoris of girls in order to curb their sexual desire and preserve their sexual honor before marriage. Those who survive are often traumatized and may suffer adverse health effects during marriage and pregnancy. Human rights activists and international human rights organizations view FGM as a pervasive form of violence against women and have been vocal in the global awareness campaigns to end the practice.

Top Model Katoucha Niane

  • Yves Saint Laurent Model

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Fatima from Somalia

  • 22 years old, lost two sisters in the war and is a survivor of FGM.

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Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Iraqi-Kurdistan

  • FGM is a major problem in some Islamic societies, and the practice has a tremendous cost—many girls bleed to death or die of infection.

Dr. Nahid Toubia, Columbia U.
www.RAINBO.org

Taboos

  • A strong social prohibition
  • Examples?
  • Incest, cannibalism, etc.
  • A mores or a folkway?

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Incest

  • Three groups required brother-sister marriages for their high nobility: the ancient Egyptians, the Incas of Peru, and the old kingdom of Hawaii.

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Thonga of East Africa

  • Some groups also allow sex between fathers and daughters.
  • Permit a hunter to have sexual intercourse with his daughter before he goes on a lion hunt.

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Azande of Central Africa

  • Permit high nobles to marry their own daughters.

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Burundi of Tropical Africa

  • When a son is impotent the mother is supposed to have sex with him in order to cure his impotence.

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Concept of “Culture Bound”

  • Humor/Jokes depend upon cultural context

Q: “Why did the chicken cross the street?

A: “To get to the other side.”

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Material & Ideational Culture

  • Material Culture

- objects and products of a culture

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Ideational Culture

  • Ideas of a culture
  • General Knowledge - facts and setting info. Statements
  • Guidelines for Behavior – norms and values

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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

  • Postulated by Anthropologist Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf
  • Culture gives us language
  • Language gives us ideational culture
  • Ideational culture gives us material culture
  • So, language, ideational culture, and material culture are all positively correlated

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Anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

  • Born in Poland
  • Educated at Columbia U.
  • Arguably the most influential

figure in American linguistics

  • Studied Wishram Chinook,

Navajo, Nootka, Paiute,

Takelma, Yana, etc.

  • Pioneer of Yiddish

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Benjamin Whorf (1897-1941)

  • Student of Edward Sapir
  • American Linguist
  • Chemical Engineering, MIT
  • Linguistics, Yale U
  • Studied Native American lang.
  • Hopi Language (found it to

contain no words, grammar

or expressions that refer to

“time”, or to past, present, or

future)

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Ideational Culture

  • General knowledge

- facts

- setting information statements

  • Guidelines for behavior

- norms

- values

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Norms

  • What is a norm?
  • William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), Yale U.
  • Two types of norms?
  • Mores
  • Folkways

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Mores

  • Formal, written rules for behavior
  • Usually with rigid consequences
  • Examples?
  • Laws, company/school policies, etc.

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Folkways

  • Unwritten, informal rules for behavior
  • Not always severe consequences if not followed, but in some cases yes
  • Examples?
  • Manners, family rules, how fast to drive, how we greet each other…

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The Handshake

Bowing

Rubbing Noses

The Air Kiss

Cultural Universals

  • An element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human groups.
  • Examples?
  • Language, family, religion, art, etc.

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Cultural Diffusion

  • The rate or speed at which material or ideational culture is spread.
  • Radio 40 years to gain 50 million listeners in the U.S.
  • T.V. 14 years to gain 50 million viewers
  • Internet 4 years to gain 50 million users

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Cultural Leveling

  • Process by which material or ideational culture is spread in a culture
  • Examples?
  • Advertising, word of mouth, etc.

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Cultural Laggard

  • When an individual or group does not use a part of the material or ideational culture of their culture, or uses it much after most

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Popular Culture

  • Popular culture – what the masses have access to

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High Culture

  • High culture – usually only the elite have access to

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American Culture

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American Culture is also about:

  • Values – that which we desire
  • What do we value?

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What Americans Value…

  • Money
  • Freedom
  • Houses
  • Family
  • Education
  • Religion
  • Equality…

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Global Culture?

  • What is meant by a global culture?
  • That the world is moving towards one culture (a unicultural world)

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Evidence of a Global Culture

  • Global flow of people
  • Global flow of information
  • Global flow of goods

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Cultural Groups

  • Dominant Culture
  • Subculture
  • Counterculture

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Dominant Culture

  • The group, usually largest in size and/or has the power

  • Sets the norms and values for all

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Subculture

  • Smaller part or group from the dominant culture
  • Rejects norms OR values set by the dominant culture/group
  • Examples?
  • Teens, gangs, Dems/Reps

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Counterculture

  • Rejects BOTH norms AND values set by the dominant culture
  • Negative and positive groups
  • Charismatic leader
  • Separatism
  • Examples?
  • Relig. Cults, KKK,

Amish

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Jim Jones (1931-1978)

  • Peoples Temple, IN, CA, Guyana

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Jonestown, Guyana, So. America

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The Amish – Subculture or Counterculture?

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P. Diddy & the Amish?

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Diddy Spent His Summers with an Amish Family

  • Sean Combs spent his childhood summers with an Amish family, shoveling horse manure daily. His mother enrolled him in the Fresh Air Fund, an organization for inner-city kids to spend time in rural communities each year.
  • He says, "I stayed with an Amish family every summer. No electricity, a bunch of farm work, moving horse manure every morning, no telephones. It was a great experience for me, it was something I really enjoyed."

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Dominant, Subculture or Counterculture Groups Often Feel…

  • Ethnocentrism
  • Egocentrism
  • Xenocentrism

  • Tommie Smith (gold medal) and

John Carlos (bronze medal) display

the Black Power salute on the

200 m winners podium at the

1968 Summer Olympics

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Ethnocentrism

  • Belief that one’s group is superior
  • Produces Us v. Them mentality

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Can Also Produce
In-Group Solidarity

  • 1989

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Out-Group Hostility

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Egocentrism

  • The belief that others think like you and have the same beliefs and/or that they should!

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After 9/11

  • Americans shocked we were not liked by everyone

Xenocentrism

  • The preference for the products, styles, or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own; thinking your culture is inferior

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