Chapter 2 – Culture and Society

Society, Culture and its Components

• Culture and Society are words that we often use without systematically defining and analyzing. 
• Societies create culture. 
• Societies are groups of people living in one territory that is governed by a political authority who share a distinct identity.  These societies create culture, which includes the values, norms, material culture, and language of the society. 

Components of Culture

• Values are ideas about what is good, bad, desirable, and proper.  Sometimes, these values are held by every single culture. 
• Example, honesty is a value upheld by all societies. 
• In other cases, values are different across societies.  In some societies, like in the United States, being assertive and direct is valued.  Yet, in other societies, like in Japan, such characteristic could be seen as rude.  
• Norms are rules of behavior. 
• Norms differ in how serious they can be.  Some norms can be broken, and while people will notice these infractions, the consequences are not too big. 
• Example, if instead of a glove, you chose to wear a sock on your hand at school, most people might notice, but chances are that you will be left alone.  Breaking other norms, such as stealing and killing, could result in much more serious consequences. 

Symbols and Language

• Symbols are items that represent other items such as the men and women’s sign on restrooms or the flags of different countries. 
• Language is the primary mode of communication in a society. 
• Language is a system of symbols.  These symbols mostly made up of words.  These words represent other items. 
• Thus, when I write the word “house”, you might think of a structure with walls, doors and windows. 

Material Culture

• Material culture. refers to all the material produced by a society – it includes products such as tables and cars, but also art, garbage, weapons, tools, computers, etc. 

Relationship between Society and Culture

• Here are three ways of thinking about this relationship:
  • Societies create culture
    • Societies create culture: One way of thinking about this relationship is that society are the individuals and institutions that create everything that we consider culture. 
    • People create values (think religion) and norms (rules of behavior) that reflect those values.  In this sense, culture is seen as a “product” of society. 
  • Society is the container of culture
    • Society can also be understood as an empty vase that can hold anything. 
    • In this metaphor, we would fill this empty container with substance such as rules, values, art, language, etc.  Think about a group of people without culture – meaning, no language to communicate with, no norms to dictate how they should interact, no values to guide their behavior, and no materials created. 
    • In this sense culture provides the substance of any society.
  • Society is like hardware and culture like software
    • Think about a smart phone. 
    • A smart phone is made up of hardware (the case, the circuits, the chips inside, etc.) and software (the programs, apps, music downloaded into your phone). 
    • This metaphor is better than previous in that culture “does things” (much like an application on your phone) as opposed to just being contained inside a vase. 
    • This image of culture is much more active, and therefore more accurate. 

Definition of Terms

• Culture
  • the values, norms, and material goods characteristic of a given group.
• Values
  • ideas held by individuals or groups about what is desirable, proper, good, and bad.
• Norms
  • Rules of conduct that specify appropriate behavior in a given range of social situations.  Norms prescribe given types of behavior or forbid them.
• Material culture
  • The physical objects that society creates that influence the ways in which people live. 
• Language
  • the primary vehicle of meaning and communication in a society – a system of symbols that represent objects.
• Symbol
  • An item that stand for or represents another item
• Society
  • A group of people who live in a particular territory, are subject to a common system of political authority, and are aware of having a distinct identity from other groups.

Societies and Mode of Production

• Human societies have evolved through time, and this evolution is highly dependent on the mode of production of these societies. 
• The “mode of production” is the primary method in which a society produces its required material needs. 
• This methods have changed with time in this sequence:
  • hunting and gathering societies – obtained food and materials through hunting and gathering.
  • pastoral societies – tended to domesticated animals
  • agrarian societies – used agriculture – technological advances allow for the use of land to cultivate large amounts of plants and vegetables
  • industrial societies – used machines to produce goods
• As societies change, they tend to become bigger in size, less nomadic, more wealthy and more unequal, and this is all related to a society’s mode of production.
• If your society’s mode of production is hunting and gathering, then there is very limited resources for your society. 
• Thus, hunting and gathering societies must be very mobile.  They must be able to move to new places with new resources.
• Societies cannot be too large because it is difficult to move large numbers of people.  Also, larger societies would consume resources in an area much faster, and this is not necessarily desirable. 
• Smaller numbers make more sense for these types of societies.  The mobility that is required of hunting and gathering societies also requires that material belongings be limited and light in weight.  Thus, there is not much material wealth produced in hunting and gathering societies. 
• As societies develop ways to manipulate their land and resources through technology, they become larger in size because they have more resources and because they do not have to be as mobile. 
• In both pastoral and agricultural societies, technology allows for the domestication of animals and cultivation of land.  Domesticating animals is a much more reliable form of obtaining meat and milk than hunting.  Cultivation of land is much more reliable than gathering plants and vegetables. 
• In both cases, humans have more control over their environment. 
  • First, there are more resources (food), so populations grow and societies become larger.
  • Second, societies become more sedentary – since they can produce a lot more food now, they don’t have to migrate as much as hunter and gatherers. 
  • Third, societies produce more wealth and since they don’t have to move as much and have to deal with carrying many heavy things, they can accumulate more wealth – now they’re not restricted to bows, arrows, water bags, but can accumulate more clothes, weapons, food reserves, art, animals, furniture, etc.  The fact that there is more wealth being accumulated also means that there is now more potential for inequality: some own a lot, some own very little.  This results in a more stratified society. 
• Finally, as societies develop the ability to use machines, their productivity increases exponentially.  At this point, there is no need to move/migrate.  Agriculture and industries provide all the food and resources society needs, so people of society settle into crowded cities around factories where the jobs are.  Now that there are a lot of resources and people are completely sedentary, there is the ability to accumulate much more wealth than before, and this also creates the potential for more social inequality. 
• Thus, the modes of production of a society affect its size, need for mobility, wealth production, wealth accumulation and the levels of social inequality. 

Cultural Conformity and Cultural Diversity

• Cultural Conformity
  • culture is a driving force towards assimilation and homogenization. 
• Culture is something that is shared and agreed upon by society. 
  • Language, for example, is useless unless people agree that a word, which is a symbol, will mean the same thing to everybody. 
• Cultural conformity also has other advantages.  If we all agree to the same values, then we should have less conflict. 
  • For example, if we all agree that cats are not food, then we won’t have conflicts about people eating cats. 
• But sometimes, there is no cultural agreement as there are new developments in culture, and we can see how these situations create conflict. 
• We are not in complete agreement on what the norms should be for these situations, and they can create conflict. 
• We create cultural conformity through two methods. 
  • Socialization. 
    • We socialize people regarding the values, norms, and culture.
    • For example, we teach children to say “thank you” as a norm. 
  • Social control.  We use social control when people break the norms of a society. 
    • Thus, for a small infraction, such as farting in public, we might give someone a weird look, and that might be enough to make a person feel embarrassed, and maybe they won’t do it again.  However, if the infraction is more serious, such as stealing something from someone or hitting them, the form of social control may invoke violence, or intervention of the law to put that person in jail. 
• One problem that arises from this is the limits that culture places on individual freedom.  As cultures pressure individuals into conforming to the rest of society, individuals tend to feel that they can’t express themselves in their own way, or do the things they want to do.  
• Cultural Diversity – More modern societies have become very heterogeneous. 
• This is due to increases in immigration, division of labor, and globalization. 
• Because of this, modern societies are made up of many different subcultures.  These subcultures have values and norms distinct from those of the majority, held by a group within a wider society. 
• Subcultures can be based on many different factors including race, ethnicity, language, age, music, region, occupation, and many others.  Thus, we can speak of Black culture, Mexican American culture, Latino culture, youth culture hip-hop culture, Southern culture as subcultures of American culture. 
• Some subcultures are actually countercultures in that their take the opposite values of mainstream culture. 
• Assimilation refers to the acceptance of a minority group by a majority population in which the new group takes on the values and norms of the dominant culture. 
• In the concept of “assimilation” we often think of new groups being incorporated into the majority by losing their original culture and language and adopting the host’s culture and language.  We use a culinary metaphor to refer to this: “the melting pot”.  In this melting pot, the old ingredients and new ingredients mix and become indistinguishable from one another.  
• However, assimilation, as a model of ethnic integration, has proven to be flawed.  Instead of a “melting pot”, what we find is that a “salad bowl” metaphor reflects reality more.  In a salad bowl, all the ingredients, the tomatoes, chicken, lettuce, are all mixed together, but they retain their original qualities.
• Immigrants come to the U.S., and they learn English, but they don’t necessarily forget their language, history, and culture.
• This is called multiculturalism – a condition in which ethnic groups exist separately and share equally in economic and political life. 
• Multiculturalism is more respectful and considerate of different people’s cultures. 
  • It does not ask that immigrants leave their cultures behind, but instead accepts those cultures as equal and celebrates the cultural diversity that is created.   

Ethnocentrism vs. Cultural Relativism

• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at other cultures through the eyes of one’s own culture, and thereby misrepresent/misunderstand them. 
• When studying other cultures, sociologists seek to avoid ethnocentrism.  Our own cultures provide a “lens” through which we see the world. 
• However, we often assume that the world we see through our own lens is, or should be, what everybody else sees.  For example, when you see a cow through an American culturalal lens, what you would see is a source of food.  However, in other cultures, cows are seen as holy, and are not to be killed. 
• In order to truly understand other cultures, then, we can’t approach the subject through our own cultural lenses. 
• Sociologists look to understand different cultures within their own contexts without judging them.  The practice of judging a society and culture by its own standards and not others is cultural relativism. 
• Cultural relativism is itself riddled with controversy.  Should we accept all cultural practices as equally legitimate?  If so, if we think a different society has a cultural practice that we consider to violate human rights (ex. slavery), should we simply accept it?